A change had come over the village with a fountain in the middle of it, the one where the road worker would leave each day to go and hammer out enough stones for the highway to buy himself a little bread to hold his poor hungry body and his poor uneducated soul together. The prison on the cliff was not of so much interest now as it had been in the past. There were soldiers to guard it, but not many; and there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would really do if a serious problem came up, apart from knowing that it would probably not be what they were told to do.
Far and wide, the land received rain, but it gave little in return. Every green leaf, every blade of grass and every grain was as rough and poor as the people who lived there. It was all leaning over, sad, broken, and hurting. Houses, fences, animals, men, women, children, and the land they lived on -- all used up.
Local leaders (often very good men on their own) were a blessing to the country, giving a nice touch to all that was done by the government, as they would be rich men who lived good lives and much more. But, as a group, these men had in some way brought things to where they were now. It is strange how the world, which had been made just for these leaders, should have been so quickly destroyed by them. Surely there must have been something wrong with the way God planned it! But that is how it was. The last drop of blood had been forced out of the rocks, and the turn of the screw on the instruments of torture had taken from the land until there was nothing more to get, and now the leaders were starting to run from the awful effects of their own selfish lives.
But this is not the change that had come over the village and many other villages like it. For many years, the leaders had squeezed what they could from the villages and almost never visited the people apart from when they were out hunting, at times hunting for people, and at times hunting for wild animals, for whom they had cleared the trees from much of the land, leaving it empty and dead. No, the change that had come over the villages was in the looks on the strange faces of the poor, and the change was not that they were without (in this one village) the beautiful rich face of Sir.
In these times, the road worker worked alone in the dust, not often thinking about how he had been made from dust, and how he would one day return to the dust, because he was too busy thinking about how little he had for food that night, and how much more he would eat if he had the money. In these times, as he lifted his eyes from his quiet work, and looked out over the road, he would see someone coming on foot, something that in other days did not often happen, but which now happened a lot. As the walker came closer, the poor labourer would see, without surprise, that it was a man with long rough hair, an almost wild look, tall -- in timber shoes that would not be comfortable even for a road worker -- serious, rough, dark, covered in the mud and dust of many highways, wet from the rain that flooded many low places on the road, carrying leaves and seeds in his clothes from where he had been sleeping under the trees on the way.
Such a man came up to him, like a ghost, at noon one hot but cloudy July day, as he was sitting on his pile of stones under a low cliff on the side of the road, to hide from the hail that had been falling.
The man looked at him, looked at the village at the bottom of the hill, at the windmill, and at the prison on the cliff. When he had marked out these places in his uneducated mind, he said in an accent that the road worker could only just understand:
"How goes it, Jack?"
"All is well, Jack."
"Shake then!"
They shook hands, and the man sat down on the stone pile.
"No dinner?"
"Nothing but a little before I go to bed these days," said the road worker with a hungry look on his face.
"It is the same everywhere I go," the man said angrily.
He took out a dirty old pipe, filled it, lighted it by hitting a piece of metal against a piece of stone that he carried with him, and then breathed in on the pipe until it started to burn well. That is when he quickly dropped something into it from between his thumb and finger. A flame jumped up from it and then died down into a very little cloud of smoke.
"Shake then.” It was the road worker’s turn to say it this time, after watching the man light his pipe. They again shook hands.
"Tonight?” asked the road worker.
"Tonight," said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth. "Where?"
"Here."
He and the road worker sat on the pile of stones looking at each other without talking. The hail was falling between them like very small knives, until the sky started to clear over the village.
"Show me!" said the traveller then, moving to the very top of the hill, where it looked down on the village.
"See!" returned the road worker, pointing. "You go down here and straight through the street, past the fountain..."
"To the devil with all that!" the other cut in, moving his eyes over the country below them. "I go through no streets and past no fountains. Okay?"
"Okay! What you want is six miles past the top of that hill on the other side of the village."
"Good. When do you finish your work?"
"When the sun goes down."
"Will you wake me up before you go home? I have walked through two nights without resting. When I finish my pipe I will sleep like a child. Can you wake me?"
"Sure."
The traveller finished his pipe, put it inside his shirt, pulled off his big timber shoes, and lay down on his back on the pile of stones. He was soon deeply asleep.
As the labourer went about his dirty work, and the hail clouds rolled away, showing strong lines of sunlight that lighted up different parts of the land, the little man (who was wearing a red hat now, in place of his blue one) seemed very interested in the man lying on the pile of stones. He looked that way so often that he was not able to use his tools well, and one could see that he was not getting much real work done. The sleeping man's sun-browned face, the long black hair and beard, the rough red wool hat, the mix of hand- made cloth and animal skins, the big body, made thin by a hard life, and the angry look on his lips even when he was sleeping, all interested the road worker. The traveller had walked a long way, and his feet were sore, his ankles rubbed and bleeding. His big shoes, filled with leaves and grass, had been heavy to carry over the many long miles, and his clothes had many holes in them, like the sores on his own body. Bending down near him, the road worker tried to see if there was a secret weapon in his shirt, but he could not, because the man kept his arms folded strongly over his chest when sleeping. Strong cities with walls, guards, gates, big ditches, and bridges over them that could be lifted and dropped, seemed easy to break when measured against this man. And when the worker lifted his eyes to look out at the sky, he could see in his mind's eye, other men like this, men who would let nothing stop them, going to important places all over France.
The man did not wake either when hail fell or when the sun came through, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was filled with colour. Then the road worker, having brought his tools together for the walk down to the village, went to wake him.
"Good!" said the sleeper, lifting himself up on one elbow. "Six miles past the top of that hill?” he asked.
"About."
"About. Good!"
The road worker went home, with dust moving ahead of him as the wind chose, and he was soon at the fountain, squeezing himself in between thin cows that had been brought there to drink. It was almost like he was whispering to the cows too as he whispered to others in the village. When the people had finished what little food they had that night, they did not go quietly to bed as they did most nights. Instead, they came out into the open again, and stayed there. A strange movement of whispers was on them all; and on top of that, when they came together at the fountain after dark, they all started looking in the same direction, at the sky there. Mr. Gabelle, the Marquis' leader in that place, started to worry. He went alone to the top of his house and looked at the sky in that direction too. Hiding behind his chimney, he looked down at the faces in the dark by the fountain below, and he sent word to the man who cared for the church building to be ready to ring the warning bell soon.
The night grew later. The trees around the old castle, separating it from the rest of the world, moved as the wind grew stronger, as if they were trying to destroy the building in the darkness of the night. Up the steps, the rain itself hit wildly against the great front door, like a runner with news to wake up the people sleeping inside. Little pieces of the wind moved through the rooms, around the old spears and knives on the walls, and sadly up the steps, where it shook the curtains of the bed where the last Marquis used to sleep. From east, west, north, and south, through the trees, four rough men with heavy steps were breaking small branches and pushing flat the grass as they moved carefully toward the castle's yard, where four lanterns were lighted. Then they each moved off in a different direction before all was black once again.
But not for long. Soon the castle started to make itself seen by some light of its own, as if it was a light. Then a line of light could be seen moving behind the walls, showing through windows and other openings. It grew bigger and stronger. Then, from twenty big windows, flames came out, and the stone faces of the castle, awake now, were looking out from a fire.
There was some talk outside the house, from the few people who were still there, and someone put a saddle on a horse and went off on it. In the darkness, the horse was pushed on through the rain, not stopping until it reached Mr. Gabelle's door, near the village fountain.
"Help, Gabelle! Everyone, help!"
The warning bell started ringing, but no one came to help. The road worker and two hundred and fifty of his friends, stood with their arms folded at the fountain, looking at the fire in the sky. "It must be forty feet high," they said angrily; and they never moved.
The rider from the castle, and the tired horse ran through the village and up the hill leading to the prison. At the gate, a group of officers were watching the fire. At some distance from them were a group of soldiers. "Help, men... officers! The castle is on fire. We can still save some important things from the fire if we hurry! Help, help!" The officers looked toward the soldiers who looked at the fire. They said nothing to the soldiers, but answered the rider by biting their lips and lifting there shoulders. "It must burn."
As the rider raced down the hill again, the village was also starting to light up. The road worker and his two hundred and fifty friends, acting as one, had raced into their houses and were putting candles in every window. Because people were so poor, they needed to get most of their candles from Mr. Gabelle, but when he would not give them candles, the road worker, who had always been very humble to such leaders, had said that coaches could be used to make a fire if needed, and they could cook the man's horses with the fire if they so chose.
The castle was left to flame and burn. In the noise of the fire, a red-hot wind coming as if from hell itself, seemed to be blowing the building away. The stone faces looked like they were in great pain. When big pieces of timber and stone fell, the face with two little marks on each side of its nose, was, at first covered. But it soon worked its way out of the smoke again, like it was the face of the cruel Marquis, burning to death and fighting with the fire as he died.
The castle burned. The closest trees, touched by the fire coming from the castle, also burned and died. Trees at a distance, set on fire by the four angry men, became an even bigger circle of fire and smoke around the burning building. Metal melted in the stone lake of the castle fountain after the water dried up. Containers of water at the top of the four towers, that were there to be used in stopping a fire, were of no effect against the fire, as four great walls of flame ate them up. Big tears in the wall branched out like a chemical action moving quickly from one atom to another. Birds, caught by surprise, only had time to turn before the heat killed them and they fell into the burning building below them. Four angry shapes moved away, east, west, north, and south, along the dark roads toward new targets, helped on their way by the light they had helped to make. The people in the village had control of the bell now, having done away with the man whose job it was to ring it, and they were now ringing it to show their happiness.
Not only that, but the village, drunk with hunger, fire, and bell-ringing, and thinking that Mr. Gabelle was the one behind the taxes... forgetting that not many taxes were paid in those last days, because the people were too poor to pay anything... was in a hurry to talk with him about it, and made a circle around his house, asking for him to come out and talk. Seeing this, Mr. Gabelle put heavy bars across his door, and chose instead to talk to himself. The end effect of this talking was that he returned to the roof of his house behind his chimney. This time he was thinking (because he was a little man and still wanted to hurt those who were planning to hurt him) that he would throw himself head first from there, hoping to kill one or two people in the crowd below as he himself died.
It must have been a long night for Mr. Gabelle up there, with the burning castle for his candle, and the bell and hits on his door for music. And it was made worse by the lantern rope the crowd had put up in front of his gate. The village clearly wanted to hang him in place of the lantern. It would have been a very difficult time, spending a whole summer night so close to the black ocean, ready as Mr. Gabelle was, to take that jump into it! But the sun came up at last with the candles of the village burning out and the people happily leaving. Mr. Gabelle came down, carrying his life with him for a while.
In other villages, less than a hundred miles away, in the light of other fires, there were government leaders who were not as lucky, not that night and not on other nights. For them, when the sun came up, it found them hanging over streets that had once been at peace, in villages where they had been born and where they had lived all their lives. Also, there had been other people from towns and villages who had not been as lucky as the road worker and his friends in this village. The government leaders had been able in those towns and villages to turn the soldiers against the people and they were the ones hanging from ropes in the morning light. The angry shapes did not stop moving, east, west, north, and south. It made no difference who was hanged; the fires still burned. No government leader, even those expert in numbers, could tell how high the hanging stage would need to be to stop that fire.