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

"A curse upon that Italian priest whom I captured with the Bishop of Nantes! That Jeronimo turned my head speaking to me of the Crusade. He made me fear for my salvation, pointing out that the hand of God weighed heavy upon me by the death of one of my sons, killed by his own brother!"

"Both your sons are dead, Neroweg! I myself felled the fratricide with a blow of my iron bar at the moment he was about to do violence to the daughter of Bezenecq the Rich! Both the wolves and the whelps of the seigniories are beasts of prey and of carnage. They must be exterminated!"

"My son Gonthram did not die, and Jeronimo promised me, in the name of God, that if I departed for the Crusade and let the Bishop of Nantes free, I would insure the recovery of my son. Oh, heart-broken at the sight of one son dead and the other dying, I was bereft of reasoning! I obeyed the priest and departed for Palestine, – to my greater undoing. Bitterly I repent the day!"

Fergan, struck at the tenderness that the seigneur of Plouernel had not been able to suppress at the mention of his son Gonthram, said to him: "You love your son?"

Neroweg shot with his eyes daggers of hatred at the serf as he lay stretched out on the sand at the latter's feet. Two tears rolled down his savage face. But wishing to conceal his emotions from Fergan, he turned his head brusquely aside. Joan and Colombaik, having drawn near the quarryman, listened in silence to his dialogue with Neroweg. While the seigneur sought to hide his tears, the woman saw them and said in a whisper to her husband: "Despite his wickedness, that seigneur weeps at the thought of his son. His sorrow affects me."

"Oh, father," put in Colombaik, joining his hands, "if he weeps, be you merciful! Do not harm him!"

The serf remained silent a moment, then, addressing his seigneur said: "You are moved at the thought of your child, and yet you meant to have mine strangled. Do you imagine a serf has not, like you, a father's heart?"

Neroweg answered with an outburst of sarcastic laughter.

"What are you laughing about?"

"I laughed as I would if I heard an ass, or other beast of burden, talk about his 'father's heart,'" rejoined the seigneur of Plouernel. "You vagabond, were I not in your power now, I would kill you for the vile dog that you are!"

"In his eyes a serf has no more soul than a beast of burden!" repeated the quarryman. "Yes, this man speaks in the sincerity of his savage pride. He weeps for his own child. After all he is human. And yet, what is a serf to him? An animal without heart, reason or feeling! But why should I wonder? Neroweg cannot choose but share with his likes that opinion of our animal abjectness. Our craven attitude confirms it. Our conquerors are thousands, while we, the conquered, number millions, and yet we patiently bear the yoke. Indeed, never did more docile cattle march under the whip of a master, or stretch the neck to the butcher's knife!" After a moment's silence, Fergan resumed: "Listen, Neroweg! You are in my power, disarmed and fettered. I am about to fulfil a great act of justice by braining you with my cudgel like a wolf caught in a trap. It is the death that you deserve. Had I a sword, I would not use it on you. But what you have just said has made me think and somewhat spoils my pleasure. I admit it; by reason of our brutishness and cowardice, we deserve to be looked upon and treated like cattle by you, our seigneurs. 'Tis true, we are as craven as you are ferocious, but if our cravenness explains your criminal conduct, it does not excuse it. So, you shall die, Neroweg! Yes, in the name of the horrid ills that your race has made mine suffer, you shall die! I only wish to keep a memento of you, a descendant of the Nerowegs," and Fergan leaned forward over the seigneur of Plouernel. The latter, believing his last hour had come, could not restrain a cry of anguish. But the serf only pulled from Neroweg's robe one of the shells that it was sprinkled with, as symbols of a pious pilgrimage. For an instant Fergan contemplated the shell with a pensive mien. Joan and her son, following with astonished and uneasy looks the movements of the quarryman, saw him raise his ragged kilt, that only half-covered his thighs, and detach a long belt of coarse cloth that was wound around his waist. Inside the belt the quarryman carried several pious mementos, that had been handed down from generation to generation in his family, and which, before finally marching away with the troop of the Crusaders, he had taken with him. To them he added the shell he had just pulled from the robe of Neroweg VI. Refastening his belt, the serf cried out: "And now, justice and vengeance, Neroweg! I have accused you, judged and condemned you. You shall now die!" Looking around for his heavy and knotted staff, he grasped the massive implement with both his powerful hands, while his wife and child implored aloud: "Mercy!" The serf, however, throwing himself upon the seigneur of Plouernel planted one foot on the latter's breast: "No, no mercy! Did the Nerowegs know mercy for my grandfather, for Bezenecq the Rich, or for his daughter?" Saying which, the quarryman raised the cudgel over the head of Neroweg, Worse than a Wolf, who, gnashing his teeth, faced death without blanching. It would have been over then and there with the seigneur of Plouernel had not Joan embraced the knees of her husband, imploring him aloud: "For the love of your son, have mercy! Without the water that you took from this seigneur, Colombaik would have expired in the desert!"

Fergan yielded to the prayers of his wife. Despite the justice of the reprisal, it went against his nature to kill an unarmed enemy. He threw his staff far away; remained for an instant gloomy and silent and then said to his seigneur: "It is said that despite your crimes, you and your likes at times remain true to your vows. Swear to me, by the salvation of your soul and by your faith as a knight, to respect from this moment the life of my wife, of my child and of myself. I do not fear you so long as we are alone in this desert, but if I meet you at Marhala or Jerusalem with the other seigneurs of the Crusade, I and mine will be at your mercy. You could order us burned or hanged. Swear that you will respect our lives, I shall then have mercy upon you, and set you free."

"An oath to you, vile serf! To soil my word by passing it to you!" cried out Neroweg, and he added with another outburst of sardonic laughter: "As well might I give my word as a Catholic and a knight to the ass or any other beast of burden!"

"This is too much!" yelled Fergan exasperated, while he ran to pick up his club. "By the bones of my father, you shall die!"

At the very moment, however, when the serf had anew seized the cudgel, Joan, clinging to his arm said with terror: "Do you hear yonder growing noise?.. It approaches… It rumbles like thunder!"

"Father," cried out Colombaik, no less horrified than his mother, "look yonder! The sky is red as blood!"

The serf raised his eyes, and, struck with the strange and startling spectacle, forgot all about Neroweg. The orb of the sun, already near the horizon, seemed enormous and of purple hue. Its rays disappeared at intervals in the midst of a burning mist which it lighted with a dull fire, and whose reflection suddenly crimsoned the desert and the air. The frightful spectacle seemed to be seen through some transparent glass tinted with a coppery red. A furious gale, still distant, swept over the desert and carried with its dull and prolonged moanings a breath as scorching as the exhalations of a furnace. Flocks of vultures fled at full tilt before the approaching hurricane, scurrying over the ground or dropping down motionless, palpitating, or uttering plaintive squeaks. Suddenly the sun, ever more completely eclipsed, disappeared behind an immense cloud of reddish sand that veiled the desert and the sky, and that advanced with the swiftness of lightning, chasing before it the jackals and the lions, that roared with fear, and rushed by, terror-stricken, a few steps from Fergan and his family.

"We are lost! This is a sand-spout!" cried out the quarryman.

Hardly had the serf uttered these words of despair when he found himself enveloped by a sand cloud as fine as ashes, and dense as a fog. The mobile soil, hollowed, thrown up and up-turned by the irresistible force of the sand-spout, opened at the feet of Fergan, who, with wife and child, disappeared under a sand wave. The gale furrowed, beat about and tossed up the sands of the desert as a tempest furrows, beats about, and tosses up the waters of the ocean.

CHAPTER III.

THE EMIR'S PALACE

The city of Marhala, like all others in the Orient, was crossed by narrow and sinuous streets, bordered with whitewashed houses, bearing narrow windows. Here and there the dome of a mosque or the top of a palm tree, planted in the middle of an interior court-yard, broke the uniformity of the straight lines formed by the terraces, that surmounted all the houses. Since about fifteen days, and after a murderous siege, the city of Marhala had fallen into the power of the army of the Crusaders, commanded by Bohemond, Prince of Taranto. The ramparts of the city, half torn down by the engines of war, presented at several places only a heap of ruins, from which a pestilential odor escaped, due to the decomposition of the Saracen bodies that were buried under the débris of the walls. The gate of Agra was one of the points most violently attacked by a column of Crusaders under the order of William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, and also most stubbornly defended by the garrison. Not far from the spot rose the palace of the Emir of Marhala, killed at the siege. According to the manner of the Crusaders, William had his standard raised over the door of the palace, of which he took possession.

Night was falling. Maria, a large wrinkled old woman, with a beaked nose, protruding chin, and clad in a long Saracen pelisse, sat crouched upon a kind of divan, furnished with cushions, in one of the lower halls of the Emir's palace. She had just issued the order to some invisible person: "Let the creature come in, I wish to examine her!"

The creature that came in was Perrette the Ribald, the mistress of Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. The young woman's complexion, now tanned by the sun, rendered still more striking the whiteness of her teeth, the coral tint of her lips and the fire of her eyes. The expression of her pretty face preserved its blithe effrontery. Her tattered costume was of both sexes. A turban of an old yellow-and-red material partially covered her thick and curly hair; a waistcoat or caftan of pale green and open embroidery, the spoils of a Saracen and twice too large for her, served her for a robe. Held at the waist by a strip of cloth, the robe exposed the naked legs of the Ribald, together with her dusty feet, shod in shoddy sandals. She carried at the end of a cane a small bundle of clothes. Upon entering the hall, Perrette said to the old woman deliberately: "I happened on the market place when an auction sale of booty was being conducted. An old woman, after eying me a long time, said to me: 'You seem to be the right kind of a girl. Would you like to exchange your rags for pretty clothes, and lead a merry life at the palace? Come with me.' I answered the old woman: 'March, I follow! Feastings and palaces are quite to my taste.'"

"You look to me to be a wide-awake customer."

"I'm eighteen years old. My name is Perrette the Ribald. That's what I am."

"Your name is written on your brazen brow. But are you good company? Not quarrelsome and not jealous?"

"The more I look upon you, honest matron, the surer I am of having seen you before. Did you not keep at Antioch the famous tavern of the Cross of Salvation?"

"You do not deceive yourself, my child."

"Ah, you must have made many a bag of gold besans in your holy brothel."

"What were you doing in Antioch, my pretty child?"

"I was in love … with the King!"

"You are bantering, my friend, there was no king in the Crusade."

"You forget the King of the Vagabonds."

"What! The chief of those bandits, of those skinners, of those eaters of human flesh?"

"Before he became the king of the bandits, I loved him under the modest name of Corentin the Gibbet-cheater. Oh, what has become of him?"

"You must have left him?"

"One day I made a slip. I committed an infidelity towards him. I do not plume myself upon my constancy. I left the King of the Vagabonds for a duke."

"A duke of beggars?"

"No, no! A real duke. The handsomest of all the Crusaders, William IX."

"You were the mistress of the Duke of Aquitaine?"

"That was in Antioch, after the siege. William IX was crossing the market-place on horseback. He smiled, and reached his hand out to me. I placed my foot on the tip of his boot, with one jump I landed in front of his saddle, and he took me to his palace," and seeming to recall some droll incident, Perrette laughed out aloud.

"Are you laughing at some of your tricks?" asked the old shrew.

"On that same day when the Duke of Aquitaine took me on his horse, a very beautiful woman went by in a litter. At the sight of her he turned his horse and followed the litter. I, fearing he would drop me for the other woman, said to him: 'What a treasure of beauty is that Rebecca the Jewess, that has just gone by in a litter.' Ha! ha! ha! old lady," Perrette added, breaking out anew into roars of laughter. "Thanks to that lucky slander, my debauché turned about and galloped off to his own palace, fleeing from the litter no less frightened than if he had seen the devil. And so it happened that, at least for that one day, I kept my duke, and we spent the night together."

"I see. And what became of your king?"

"On the same evening of that adventure, he left Antioch with his vagabonds on an expedition. I have not seen him since."

"Well, my little one, in default of your king, you will find your duke back. You are here in the house of William."

"Of the Duke of Aquitaine?"

"After the siege of the city, William took possession of the Emir's palace. He gives to-night a feast to several seigneurs, the flower of the Crusade. Almost all old customers of my tavern in Antioch: Robert Courte-Heuse, Duke of Normandy; Heracle, seigneur of Polignac; Bohemond, Prince of Taranto; Gerhard, Count of Roussillon; Burchard, seigneur of Montmorency; William, sire of Sabran; Radulf, seigneur of Haut-Poul, and many more merry blades, without counting the gentlemen of the cloth, and the tonsured lovers of pretty girls, of Cyprus wine and of dice."

"Is it for this one feast, you old mackerel, that you are engaging me?"