The Pilgrim's Shell; Or, Fergan the Quarryman: A Tale from the Feudal Times

"Oh, William, only the other day my lips were white and frozen. The fire of your kisses has returned to them their reddish hue."

"Which proves that I can perform as great prodigies as you, my beautiful witch."

"You quit giving me that name, William. It recalls the days I spent in the turret of Neroweg Worse than a Wolf, whom I execrate, – days of shame and trial to me, and whose memory haunts me."

"But you are well revenged for those days of shame. Count Neroweg is now poorer than the lowest of his serfs as a result of his losses at the gaming tables of Joppa where he met such consummate gamblers that they won from him five thousand gold besans, his silver plate, his baggage, his horses, his arms and even his sword. By Satan! I imagine I see that Neroweg, that Worse than a Wolf, that Count of Plouernel, so rudely plucked at the start of his Crusade, fighting with an old cap on for helmet, a stick for a lance, and for charger an ass, a goat or good Palestine mastiff!"

"Let's drop that sad topic, and talk about yourself, who have been the dream of my youth. Now that I am yours, I should feel happy, and yet my heart is cruelly tormented. Your inconstancy makes me despair. I am dying with jealousy. Can it be that that infamous Perrette the Ribald has her share of your caresses?"

"What a frisky and bold girl that Perrette is! After the siege of Antioch, cup in hand, her hair to the breeze – "

"Be still, William, I am jealous of her!"

"Poor Ribald! She must have died on the route. She never turned up again after that moment."

"I could have strangled her with my hands, and Yolande, also!"

"A ravishing girl! What a beautiful shape! A skin of satin! One imagines, seeing her, the Diana of old resurrected!"

"You are pitiless!" replied Azenor with a tremulous voice. "I hate those two women."

"Let others conquer Jerusalem! As to me, I'm satisfied with conquering German, Saxon, Bohemian, Hungarian, Wallachian, Moldavian, Bulgarian, Greek, Byzantine, Saracen, Syrian, Moorish and negro beauties. Yes, by Venus! If I am anxious to enter Jerusalem, it is for the purpose of capturing the handsomest of the Arabian virgins."

"You bold and debauched fellow, it is not an only woman I have to fear for a rival! I am crazy for this man! Woe is me!"

"In order to appease your anger, I shall confide to you that there is a whole race your jealousy has nothing to apprehend from. Heavens and earth! the mere sight of a woman of that one breed would make me as chaste as a saint, and would turn your lover into another St. Anthony!"

"Of what race are you speaking?"

"Of the Jews!" answered the Duke of Aquitaine with a look of disgust. "Oh, when I had all the Jews and Jewesses exterminated from my seigniories, not one woman of that accursed species escaped the torture, and death!"

"Whence do you gather such a rage against those wretched people? What harm have they done you? You have shown yourself cruel towards them," said Azenor the Pale with a slight tremor in her voice.

"Blood of Christ! See me take a Jewess for mistress! a Jewess!" replied the duke, trembling anew. An instant later, wishing no doubt to disengage himself from the thoughts that haunted him, William cried out joyfully: "To the devil with the Jews, and long live Love! A sweet kiss, my charmer! A conversation on those infernal people leaves me an after-taste of sulphur and brimstone, as if I had tasted the kitchen of Satan! Let mine be the ambrosia of your kisses, of your passionate caresses, my loving one!"

A few distant cries and a tumult that broke out among the duke's men-at-arms interrupted his conversation with Azenor. He turned his head, and saw Walter the Pennyless riding towards him, holding a small vermillion cup in the hand that was free from his horse's bridle. "What noise is that?" asked the duke, taking the cup and passing it to Azenor.

"Seigneur duke, at the moment when your black slaves let down a pouch of water to fill this cup, into which I had first pressed the juice of two citrons and the sugar of one of the reeds found in this country and the marrow of which is as sweet as honey, the stragglers gathered around. 'Water! Water! I die of thirst!' cried some; 'My wife and children are dying for want!' cried others. By my sword, the Sweetheart of the Faith, never did frogs at a mid-summer drought croak more frightfully than those scamps. But some of your men-at-arms soon put an end to the frightful croaking, by laying about with their lances. The impudence of that rag-tag and bob-tail crowd is inconceivable! 'Where are those clear fountains that you promised us at our departure from Gaul?' they yelled in my ears; 'where are the refreshing shades?'"

"And what answer did you make, my merry Gascon, to those ignorant questioners?" asked the duke laughing, while Azenor, leaning out of the litter, was imbibing and enjoying the contents of the little vermillion cup.

"I assumed the rude voice of my friend, Cuckoo Peter, and said to those brutes: 'Faith is a rich fountain that refreshes the soul. You have faith, ye soldiers of Christ. Dare you ask where are the shady gardens? Is not faith, besides a fountain, also an immense tree that spreads over the faithful its protecting branches? Rest yourselves, spread yourselves in that shade. Never will an earthly oak tree have afforded you a more delectable shelter under its leafy branches. Finally, if these various refreshments should not yet suffice you, then broil in the heat like fish under the sand!'"

"Well answered, my worthy Gascon!" And turning to his troop, the duke ordered in a loud voice: "On the march, and make haste, lest the army capture without us the city of Marhala, where a rich booty awaits us."

CHAPTER II.

SERF AND SEIGNEUR

The cloud of dust raised by the troop of the Duke of Aquitaine was lost at a distance in a burning mist, whose reddish vapors were invading the horizon. Those among the stragglers who had resisted the fatigue, a consuming thirst, or painful wounds, followed haltingly, at great distances from one another, the road to Marhala, marked with so much human débris, above which flocks of vultures, for a moment frightened away, again leisurely flapped their wings. The last group of the stragglers had disappeared in the whirlwind of dust raised by the train, when three living creatures, a man, a woman and a child – Fergan, Joan the Hunchback and Colombaik – were left alone in the midst of the desert. Colombaik, dying with thirst, was stretched upon the sand beside his mother, whose sore feet, wrapped in blood-clotted rags, could no longer support her. On his knees beside them, his back turned to the sun, Fergan sought to shade his wife and child with his body. Not far from them, the corpses of a man and woman were in sight. An hour before the woman had succumbed to the agonies of childbirth, bringing forth a still child. The little being lay at the feet of its mother, almost shapeless, and already blackened and shriveled by the fiery sun. The man had been killed by the blow of a lance of one of the duke's men-at-arms for having tried to capture one of the water pouches.

Joan the Hunchback, seated beside Colombaik, whose head she held upon her knees, wept as she muttered: "Do you no longer hear me, dear heart? Do you not answer me?" The tears of the poor woman left their furrows on the dust-covered face of the child as they dropped, and ran down his cheeks to the corners of his parched lips. His eyes half shut, and feeling his face bathed in his mother's tears, Colombaik carried his fingers mechanically towards his cheeks and his mouth, as if seeking to quench his thirst with the maternal tears. "Oh!" muttered Joan, observing the motions of her child, "Oh, if but my blood could recall you to life!" And, struck by the idea, she said to the quarryman: "Fergan, take your knife and open one of my veins; we may be able to save the child!"

"I was myself thinking of letting him drink blood," answered Fergan; "but I am robuster than you – " and the serf stopped short, interrupted by the sound of a great flapping of wings above his head. He felt the air agitated around him, raised his eyes and saw an enormous brown vulture, its neck and head stripped of feathers, letting itself heavily down upon the corpse of the still-born child, seize the little body between its talons, and, carrying off its prey, rise into space emitting a prolonged cry. Joan and her husband, for a moment forgetful of their own agonies, followed with frightened eyes the circulating flight of the vulture, when the serf descried, approaching from afar, a pilgrim mounted on an ass.

"Fergan," said Joan to the quarryman, whose eyes were fastened on the pilgrim, as he drew nearer and nearer, "Fergan, weakened as you are, if you lose blood for our child, you will perhaps die. I could not survive you. Who, then, would protect Colombaik? You can still walk and carry him on your shoulders. As to me, I am beyond proceeding. My bleeding feet refuse to carry me. Let me sacrifice myself for our child. You will then dig me a grave in the sand, that I be not eaten up by the vultures or the wild beasts."

Instead of answering his wife, Fergan said to her sharply: "Joan, spread yourself on the ground; do not budge; pretend to be dead, as I shall. We are saved!" Saying which the serf threw himself down flat on his stomach beside his wife. Already the heavy breathing of the pilgrim's donkey was heard approaching. Though prodded, the beast moved slowly and with great effort, its legs sinking up to the knees in the sand. Its master, a man of tall and robust stature, was clad in a tattered brown robe, that fell to his feet, shod in sandals. In order to protect himself against the heat of the sun, he had drawn over his head like a cowl the tippet of his robe, which was sprinkled over with shells and bore the red cross of the Crusader on the left shoulder. From the donkey's pack-saddle hung a knap-sack, together with a large pouch of water.

While drawing near the corpses of the man and the woman whose new-born child had just been carried off by the vulture, the pilgrim, speaking to himself, said in a low voice: "Dead bodies everywhere! The road to Marhala is paved with corpses!" Saying this he arrived near the place where Joan and Fergan lay motionless on the sand. "And still more dead bodies!" muttered the pilgrim, turning his head aside, and he kicked his mule with both heels to hasten its pace. Hardly had he gone a few steps, when, rising and springing forward with one bound, Fergan jumped on the crupper of the donkey, seized the traveler by the shoulders, threw him back and on the ground, and, placing both his knees on the pilgrim's chest, held him down while hurriedly calling: "Joan, there is a full pouch at the donkey's saddle, take it quick, and give our child to drink!" The courageous mother was not able to walk, but dragging herself on her knees and hands as far as the donkey, which had stood still after its master was thrown down, she succeeded in unfastening the pouch, and, weeping with joy she returned to her child, again dragging herself on her knees with the help of one hand while holding the pouch with the other, muttering: "Provided it is not too late, my God, and that our child can be recalled to life!"

While Joan hastened to give her child to drink in the hope of plucking him from the claws of death, Fergan was engaged in a violent struggle with the traveler, whose traits he could not distinguish, the tippet of the latter's robe having wound itself completely around his head. As robust as the quarryman, this man made violent efforts to extricate himself from the embrace of the serf. "I mean you no harm," Fergan was saying to him, continuing to struggle with his adversary. "My child is dying of thirst! you have in your pouch a precious beverage; I shall take it in the knowledge that you would have answered with a refusal, had I requested you for a few drops of the water that it contains."

"Oh, that I have not a single weapon to kill this dog who steals away my water!" groaned the pilgrim while redoubling his efforts to disengage himself. "In a minute I would have killed you; I would have cut you to pieces, vagabond!"

"I know this voice!" cried out Fergan, and brusquely pulling aside the folds of the tippet that covered the face of the traveler, the serf remained dumb with astonishment. Under him lay Neroweg, Worse than a Wolf!

The seigneur of Plouernel profiting by that moment of confusion, freed himself from Fergan's hold, rose, and thinking only of his pouch of water, cast his eyes about him. He saw a few steps away Joan, radiant with joy, yet tearful, on her knees near Colombaik, and holding the pouch which the child pressed with his two little hands, while he drank with avidity. He seemed to regain life in the measure that he slaked his consuming thirst.

"That bastard is drinking up my water!" Neroweg yelled with fury. "In this desert, water is life," and he was about to rush upon Joan and her child when the quarryman, recovering from his stupor, seized the Count of Plouernel between his robust arms: "We are not here in your seigniory; you covered with iron and I naked! Here we are man to man, body to body! In the midst of this desert we are equals, Neroweg! I shall have your life, or you shall have mine. Fight for it!"

A terrific struggle ensued, in the midst of the cries of Joan and Colombaik, who trembled for husband and for father. The seigneur of Plouernel was a man of redoubtable strength; but the serf, although weakened with privation and fatigue, drew energy from his hatred of his implacable enemy. A Gallic serf, Fergan was struggling with a descendant of the Nerowegs! The combatants swayed forward and back, silent, desperate, breast to breast, face to face, livid, terrible, foaming with rage, palpitating with a homicidal ardor, furiously pressing each other, under a brassy sky, in the midst of thick clouds of dust raised by their own feet. On their knees, their hands joined in prayer, passing alternately from hope to fear, Joan and Colombaik dared not approach the two athletes, who ever and anon reappeared through the cloud of dust, frightful to behold. Suddenly the thud of a heavy fall was heard, simultaneously with the exhausted voice of Fergan: "Woe is me! Oh, my wife! Oh, my child!" Fergan lay prone upon the sand, vainly battling against Neroweg, who, having gained the upper hand, sought to strangle his adversary. He held him under his left knee while raising himself by his right leg that he stretched out with a violent effort. At the cries of despair, "My wife! My child!" emitted by the serf, Colombaik ran to his father, threw himself flat on the ground and clinging to the bare and stiff leg of Neroweg, the child bit him in the calf. The sharp and unexpected pain drew from the Count a scream, and he turned back sharply towards Colombaik. Fergan, thus freed from the grasp of his seigneur, lost no time to spring upon his feet, and now keeping the advantage, succeeded in throwing Neroweg down. Calling his son to his aid, the serf managed to pinion the arms of the Count with a long cord that held his own robe at the waist, and to bind his legs with the fastenings of his own sandals. Feeling his strength exhausted by this desperate combat, Fergan, ready to faint, covered with perspiration, threw himself on the sand beside Joan and his son. These hastened to approach to his lips the pouch in which there still was some water left, while the seigneur of Plouernel, breathing fast and broken, shot at the quarryman looks of impotent rage.

"We are saved!" said Fergan when he had slaked his thirst and felt his strength returning. "By husbanding the water still left in this pouch, we shall have enough to reach Marhala with. I have a provision of dates in my knap-sack. The ass will serve you and the child to ride on, my poor Joan. I can still walk. As to the seigneur of Plouernel," Fergan proceeded with a somber look, "he will soon need neither provision nor conveyance!" And rising to his feet, while his wife and child followed his movements with uneasy eyes, the serf approached Neroweg. The seigneur, still stretched upon the sand, writhed in his bands, tugging to burst them; then, exhausted by his idle efforts, he lay motionless. "Do you recognize me?" asked the serf, crossing his arms on his breast, and looking down upon the fettered seigneur of Plouernel; "Do you recognize me? In Gaul you were my seigneur, I your serf. I am the grandson of Den-Brao the Mason, whom your grandfather, Neroweg IV, killed of hunger in the subterranean donjon of Plouernel. I am a relative of Bezenecq the Rich, who died under the torture, in the presence of his own daughter, herself going crazy with fear, and dying at the very moment when I was rescuing her from her cell. I had to dig her grave among the rocks that lie about the issue of the secret passage from your castle."

"By the tomb of the Saviour! Is it you, vagabond, who penetrated to the turret of Azenor the Pale? You helped her in her flight?"

"I went to look in your den for my child, whom you see yonder."

"Woe is me! I am alone in this desert, without arms, bound hand and foot, at the mercy of this vile serf. How comes this dog to have survived this long journey? A curse upon him!"

"I have survived in order to avenge upon you the wrongs you have perpetrated upon my kin. This is not the first time that a descendant of Joel the Gaul locks horns with a descendant of Neroweg the Frank. Before us, in the course of centuries that rolled by, the ancestors of us two have met arms in hand. Fate so wills it. It is a war to death between our two races. The struggle, mayhap, will continue yet ages to come. Neroweg, I am the evil genius of your race, as you and yours are the persecutors of mine."

"That I should have to meet this miserable runaway serf, and find myself in his power in the midst of a Syrian desert!" muttered the seigneur of Plouernel, a prey to superstitious terror. "Jesus, my God, have mercy upon me! I am a great sinner! Mighty Saint Martin, come to my help!"

"Neroweg," proceeded Fergan, after a moment's reflection, "the heat grows suffocating, despite the sun's being veiled behind that reddish mist that is slowly rising heavenward. My wife and I shall not proceed on our journey until the moon rises. You and I shall have time to talk matters over, before taking leave of each other forever."

The seigneur of Plouernel contemplated the serf with a mixture of astonishment, defiance and terror. Fergan exchanged a look with Joan, and sat down on the sand at a little distance from Neroweg. Indeed, the atmosphere was becoming so stifling that the travelers, panting for breath, and streaming in perspiration, yet, without making any motion, would have been unable to resume their journey.

"In Gaul, at your seigniory, you were at once indicter, judge and executioner over your serfs. To-day, my seigniory is this desert! and you my serf! In my turn I shall be the indicter, the judge and the executioner. The indictment I shall draw up will be the recital of my journey. You may then, perhaps, understand the horror that you, seigneurs, inspire your serfs with, when you will have learned the dangers that we brave to escape your tyranny and enjoy a day of freedom. When we left your seigniory, we were three thousand Crusaders, men, women, or children. Our numbers increased daily. Thus, after we had traversed Gaul from west to east, from Anjou to Lorraine, we were more than sixty thousand when we crossed over into Germany. Other troops of Crusaders, no less numerous than ours, and also proceeding from Gaul, to the north from Flanders, to the south from Burgundy or Provence, struck like ourselves the route for the Orient. After traversing Hungary and Bohemia, skirting the Adriatic to Wallachia, and following the banks of the Danube, we arrived at Constantinople. Thence we entered Asia Minor, and from Asia Minor we made into Palestine, where we now are. What a journey! For poor serfs, barefooted and in rags, the road is long. To tramp fifteen hundred leagues in order to escape the oppression of the seigneurs! But unhappy serfs that we are! We flee the seigneurs, and the seigneurs pursue us into Palestine. The seigneur Baudoin seizes Edessa, and there you have a 'Count of Edessa'; Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, takes Tripoli, and there you have a 'Prince of Tripoli.' When we shall have arrived in Galilee, in Nazareth, in Jerusalem, we may live to see a 'King of Jerusalem,' a 'Baron of Galilee,' a 'Marquis of Nazareth!' – a full seigniorial hierarchy."

"This miserable serf has gone crazy," muttered the seigneur of Plouernel to himself. "He may, perhaps, forget to kill me."

"Our troop left Gaul, as I said, sixty thousand strong, under the lead of Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. On the road the inoffensive inhabitants were pillaged, ravaged and massacred to the cry of 'God wills it!' Deceived on the length of the journey and in their ignorance, hardly had the Crusaders left Gaul, when, at the sight of each new town they asked: 'Is that Jerusalem?' 'Not yet,' answered Cuckoo Peter, 'we must march on!' And we marched. At the start it was a joy, a delirium, a triumphal procession! Serfs and villeins were the masters. People fled and trembled at our approach. The 'soldiers of Christ' sacked or burned the towns, set fire to the harvests, killed the cattle that they could not drag along, slaughtered old men and children, raped the women and then cut them to pieces, heaped up booty, and from city to city repeated the question: 'Is not that Jerusalem, either?' 'Not yet!' answered Cuckoo Peter and Walter the Pennyless. 'Not yet! March on, march on!' And we marched. The strangers, at first taken by surprise, allowed themselves to be pillaged and massacred by the 'soldiers of the faith.' But, soon apprised by report of the ravages committed by the Crusaders and of their ferocity, these were fought with determination, and so effectively were they cut down, that our troop, consisting of more than sixty thousand people at the start, numbered at its arrival in Constantinople only five or six thousand survivors. During the journey through Asia Minor and Palestine, that number was reduced by one-half through battles, the pest, hunger, thirst and fatigue. Among the survivors, some, seized and kept for serfs of the new seigniories of Edessa, Antioch or Tripoli, have been forced to cultivate these lands for the seigneurs under the killing sun of the Holy Land. Others, and I am of the number, preferring freedom to renewed servitude, risked their lives in order to continue their march to Jerusalem. Some expect to find considerable booty in the Holy City; others imagine they will gain Paradise by rescuing the tomb of Christ. Of them all, I alone wish to reach Jerusalem, in order to see the places where, now a thousand and odd years ago, my ancestress, Genevieve, witnessed the death of the young man of Nazareth. This is how was accomplished the pilgrimage of those thousands of serfs and villeins, whose bones mark a long trail from the frontiers of Gaul to this place. Fatality drove them. They were forced to move on, or perish on the road. Thus, myself, fleeing from your seigniory to escape your gaolers, would but have been exposed to renewed servitude had I stopped in Gaul. Beyond the frontiers, to separate myself from the Crusaders, and take my chances with my wife and child among nations in arms against the 'soldiers of the cross,' would have been insanity. There was no choice but to march, and march again. Moreover, miserable as it was, yet our vagrant life was no worse than the life of serfdom. That's how it happened, Neroweg, that we meet here in the desert where you are mine, just as in your seigniory I was yours, – at my will and mercy, in life and death. Do you understand?"

The seigneur of Plouernel muttered in a hollow voice, expressive of concentrated rage: "Oh, to perish by the hand of a vile serf!"

"Yes, you shall die. But I mean to make your dying hour a long-drawn torture. The vain-glory, the cupidity, the ambition of founding seigniories in the Orient, the hope of buying back your forfeitures and of escaping from the claws of the devil have driven you seigneurs to the Crusade! Oh, how stupid you were! How many of you, haughty seigneurs, after having sold or mortgaged your lands to the Church, are not this hour ruined by gaming and debauchery, and reduced to beg your way! How many have not been massacred or abandoned by your serfs a few miles from your seigniories! How many of you have not died of the pest or under the scimiter of the Saracen! Let this thought embitter your dying hour, Neroweg, you are about to die like a beggar midst the sands of Syria, while the Bishop of Nantes, your mortal enemy, having slipped through your fingers, now enjoys the largest part of your domains! At this hour you groan with a rage that is impotent, and my vengeance begins."