The Poniard's Hilt; Or, Karadeucq and Ronan. A Tale of Bagauders and Vagres

"Here are the six of us – let us forward!"

The Master of the Hounds was among the six Vagres. Seeing him examine the handle of his axe, the bishopess leaped down from her wagon, and, her eyes sparkling, her nostrils inflated and her cheeks on fire, she rolled up the right sleeve of her silk robe, and thus baring her white, beautiful and strong arm up to the shoulder, she cried:

"Give me a sword! A sword!"

"Here is one! What will you do with it, beautiful bishopess in Vagrery?"

"I shall fight beside my Vagre!" Saying this the bishopess seized the proffered weapon like a Gallic woman of ancient days, and dashed forward upon the foe.

"Little Odille, you wait here for me. When the Franks are slain I shall return to you," said Ronan to the young girl, who, pale with fear, sought to hold him back with both hands and rested upon him her beautiful blue eyes now moist with tears. "Do not tremble, poor child!"

"Ronan," she murmured convulsively seizing the arm of the Vagre, "I have neither father nor mother left; you delivered me from the count and the bishop; you have a good heart; you are full of pity for the poor; you have treated me with the tenderness of a brother; it was only last night that I saw you for the first time, and yet it seems to me that I have known you long, long – "

And the girl took both the Vagre's hands, kissed them, and added with tremulous lips:

"If those Franks should kill you! – "

"If they should kill me, little Odille?"

Saying this the Vagre turned his head towards the hermit, and pointing to him with his eyes added:

"Should the Franks kill me, yonder good hermit-laborer will protect you."

"I promise you, my child, should misfortune befall your friend, I shall protect you."

"Little Odille," Ronan now said with almost embarrassed mien, "one kiss on your forehead – it will be first, and may be the last."

The child was weeping silently; she reached her girlish forehead to Ronan; he touched it with his lips, and raising his sword dashed off on a run. Hardly had Ronan left when the cry of the Vagres was heard attacking the leudes. At the cries, Odille threw herself distracted into the arms of the hermit, hid her face on his breast and sobbed aloud:

"They will kill him! They will kill him!"

"Courage, Franks! Courage, my sons in God!" shouted Cautin from the cart-wheel to which he was bound fast. "Exterminate those Moabites! Above all cut to pieces that she-devil wife of mine, that brazen woman with the orange dress with the blue sash and silver embroidered stockings. No mercy for the Jezebel! the shameless wench! the slattern! Hack her to pieces! – "

"Bishop! Bishop! Your words are inhuman. Remember the mercifulness of Jesus towards Magdalen and the adulteress!" exclaimed the hermit, while Odille, with her head resting on the breast of that true disciple of the young man of Nazareth murmured:

"They will kill Ronan! They will kill him!"

"Here I am back to you, little Odille! The Franks did not kill me. The people whom they brought in chains are all set free!"

Who said this? It was Ronan. What? Back so soon? Yes! The Vagres do their work quickly. With one bound Odille was in the arms of her friend.

"I killed one of them – he was just about to run my Vagre through with his sword!" cried the bishopess returning from the encounter. And throwing down her blood-stained sword, her eyes sparkling, her bosom half covered by her long black tresses that, together with her robe, were thrown into disorder by the heat of the combat, she said to the Master of the Hounds: "Are you satisfied with your wife?"

"Strong in the embrace of love, and strong in battle are your arms!" answered the young man delighted. "And now, a full cup of wine!"

"To drink in my very face wine that was mine! To court and caress before my own eyes that impure woman who was my wife!" murmured the bishop. "Oh, monstrous! These are the signs that foretell frightful calamities about to afflict the earth."

Three of the Vagres were wounded. The hermit attended them with so much skill that he might have been taken for a physician. He was about to proceed to another of the wounded men when his eyes fell upon the people whom the leudes had brought with them and who were now set free by the men of Ronan. These unhappy folks who only a few minutes before were prisoners, were covered with rags; nevertheless the joy of deliverance shone upon their faces. Invited by their liberators to eat and drink in order to recruit their strength, they were eagerly acquitting themselves of their task. While they drained the pouches of wine and caused the loaves of bread and the hams to vanish, the monk said to one of them, a robust man despite his grey hair:

"Brother, who are you? Whence do you come?"

"We are colonists and slaves. We formerly owned and cultivated the parcels of land that the son of Clovis newly joined as benefices to the salic and military domains that the Frankish count Neroweg previously held from his father by the right of conquest."

"Did the count, accordingly, strip you of your fields and houses?"

"Would to heaven, dear hermit, that he had done so!"

"Your answer is strange!"

"The count, on the contrary, left the fields to us, and he even added two hundred acres to them, the accursed man! The two hundred acres belonged to my friend and neighbor Fereol, who fled out of fear for the Franks."

"Your property is doubled, friend, and yet you complain!"

"Indeed I complain! Is it that you do not know what is going on in Gaul? This is what the count said to me: 'My glorious King has made me count of this country, and, besides, he has given me as a benefice, which I hope will become hereditary as my military lands, all these domains, including the cattle, houses and people upon them. You will cultivate for me the fields that belong to you; I shall join several new parcels to them; you will be my colonist and your laborers my slaves; all of you will work for me and my leudes; you will furnish them as well as myself with all that we shall need. You shall help my mason and carpenter slaves in the building of a new burg that I shall have erected after the Germanic fashion. It is to be large, commodious and properly fortified, and it is to be located in the center of an old Roman camp that I discovered nearby. Your horses and cattle having become mine will haul the stones and logs of wood that are too heavy for men to carry. Besides that you shall pay me a hundred gold sous annually, ten of which I shall give to the King when I annually render him homage for the lands that I hold.' 'A hundred gold sous!' I cried. 'My lands, jointly with those of my neighbor Fereol, will not yield such a sum year in and year out! How do you expect me to pay you a hundred gold sous, besides feeding you, your leudes and your retinues, and keeping myself, my family and my laborers, now your slaves, alive?' Threatening me with his club, the count answered me saying: 'I shall have my hundred gold sous every year – if you fail, I shall have my leudes cut off your feet and hands – ' "

"Poor man!" observed the hermit sadly. "And like so many others you consented to the servitude? You accepted the hard conditions?"

"What else was I to do? How could I resist the count and his leudes? I only had a few laborers, and to them the priests preached submission to the conquerors, who, sword in hand, say to us: 'The fields of your fathers, fructified by their labors and yours, are now ours – you shall cultivate them for us.' What were we to do? Resist? It was impossible! Flee? That would be to rush into slavery in some other region, seeing that all the provinces are equally invaded by the Franks. I had a young wife – both servitude and a wandering life frightened me more for her sake than for mine – moreover, I was attached to the region and the fields on which I was born. The thought was unbearable to me of having to cultivate those very fields for another, and yet I preferred not to leave them. Myself and my laborers resigned ourselves to shocking misery, to incessant toil! Such was the life we led for many a year. By dint of hard work and privations I succeeded in supplying the wants of Neroweg and his leudes, and of making my lands yield from seventy to eighty gold sous a year. Twice did the count put me to the torture in order to force me to give him the hundred gold sous that he demanded of me. I did not own one denier outside of the moneys that I paid him. My torture and subsequent long physical pain was all the comfort that he had for his cruelty."

"And did the thought never occur to you," asked Ronan, "of choosing some fine dark night to set the burg on fire?"

"Alas! The priests persuade the slaves that the harder their lot is on earth, all the happier will they be in paradise. I could not rely upon my companions in slavery, besotted as they were with the fear of the devil and unnerved by misery. Besides, I had little children; and their mother, consumed with grief, was ailing; finally, this year, the poor creature fortunately died. My sons had grown up to be men, and they and I, together with a few other slaves who were all tired of unrequited and continuous toil for the benefit of the count and his leudes, finally took to flight. We took refuge on the domain of the Bishop of Issoire. It was but an exchange of masters, still we hoped to find the prelate a less cruel master than the count. The count was set upon recapturing me who had managed for so many years to extract from my lands so much wealth for him and his leudes. Having learned of our asylum, he ordered some of his leudes to take horse and reclaim us from the Bishop of Issoire. The bishop surrendered us. His men bound our hands, and the leudes were taking us back to the count when these good Vagres killed our captors and set us free. By my faith! Vagres we shall now be – all of us – I, my sons and the other slaves whom you see yonder. Will you have us, ye bold runners of the night?"

"Yes, yes!" cried the companions of the colonist. "It is better far to run the Vagrery than to cultivate our fathers' lands under the club of a count and his leudes!"

"Bishop! Bishop!" remarked Ronan to the prelate. "Behold what your allies have turned our old Gaul into! But, I swear by torch and fire, by blood and massacre, I swear, the hour shall come when neither prelates nor seigneurs will have aught but smoldering ruins and bleaching bones to rule over! Up! new brothers in Vagrery! Be like ourselves 'Wand'ring men,' 'Wolves,' 'Wolves-Heads!' Like ourselves you will live like wolves and happy – in summer under the leafy green, in winter in caverns warm. Up, my Vagres! Up! The sun is high! We have in these carts still much booty left to be distributed on our way. Let us proceed, little Odille and beautiful bishopess! Let us pillage the seigneurs, and give freely to the poor! Let us keep only just enough to feast upon to-night in the fastness of Allange under the dome of the stately old oak trees. On the march! And to-morrow, when the last pouch will have been emptied, then on the hunt again, my Vagres, so long as there shall be a single burg left standing in Gaul, or a single episcopal residence! Let us burn down all the dens of tyranny! Death to the seigneurs and their bishops!"

And the troop resumed its march to the sound of the Vagres' song. When, at sunset, they arrived at the fastness of Allange, which was one of their haunts, all the booty that was taken at the episcopal villa had been distributed along the route among the poor. Only a few mattresses for the women, the gold and silver goblets out of which to drink the bishop's wine, and the necessary provisions for the night's festival were left. The eight teams of oxen were to furnish the roast for the gigantic feast, because gigantic it was to be seeing that the troop of Vagres had gathered many recruits on the route – slaves, artisans, laborers and colonists, all of whom were enraged with misery, without counting a number of young women, all of whom were eager to run the Vagrery.

CHAPTER VII

VAGRES AT FEAST

What delightful feasts are those held in Vagrery! Does, stags, wild-boars, killed by the Vagres the day before in the thickets of the forest that shade the fastness of Allange – all, together with the oxen from the wagons, have been dispatched and grilled over a roaring oven. What! An oven in a forest? An oven large enough to embrace oxen, does, stags and wild-boars? Yes; the good God has dug for the good Vagres a number of large pits in the secluded fastnesses of Allange. They are spacious craters, now extinct like other volcanic apertures in Auvergne. Is not one of these deep semi-circular grottoes, in which a man can stand upright, a veritable bake-house? Fill up the grotto with dry wood; one or two dead oaks will suffice; set the pyre on fire; it burns up high and becomes a brasier: the bottom, the walls, the lava vault – all are soon red hot, and into the chasm, ablaze like the mouth of hell, stags, does, whole wild-boars and oxen are rolled in to broil. That done, the opening of the grotto is closed with lava rocks, a huge oven of glowing embers. Four or five hours later, oxen and game, grilled to the point, are served steaming and toothsome upon the table. What! Tables also in Vagrery! Certes, and covered with the finest of green carpet. What table? What carpet? The lawn of a forest clearing. And for seats? Again that lawn. For tent the lofty oaks; for ornaments the arms suspended from the branches. For dome the starry sky. For chandelier the moon at her fullest. For perfumery the night odor of wild flowers. For musicians the nightingales and all the other songsters of the woods.

Several Vagres, placed on watch at the outskirt of the forest and near the approaches of the fastnesses of Allange, guarded the troop against a surprise in case that, the sack and burning of the villa becoming known, the Frankish counts and dukes of the region should fear an attack upon their own burgs, and start with their leudes in the pursuit of the Vagres.

Despite his ire, Bishop Cautin excelled himself as a cook. Long before had a certain sauce known to be a favorite with the bishop been the subject of talk in Vagrery. The holy man was ordered to produce it. He did. He filled with it a large caldron into which each one dipped his roast, whether of game or beef – it was a toothsome sauce, made of old wine and oil, aromated with wild thyme. It was pronounced delectable. Biting into her Vagre's roast with her white teeth the bishopess remarked:

"I now no longer wonder that he who was my husband always showed himself so implacable towards his kitchen slaves, and that he had them whipped for their slightest negligence – the seigneur bishop was a better cook than any of them. No wonder he was hard to please!"

Only two of the guests did not join in the spirit of the feast – the hermit-laborer and the young female slave who sat near Ronan. As to Ronan, he did ample justice to the repast; but the monk seemed to be absorbed in contemplation as he looked up at the starry vault overhead, and little Odille also dreamed – as she contemplated Ronan. The gold and silver vases, whatever their previous destination, circulated from hand to hand; the wine pouches collapsed in even measure as the stomachs of the drinkers became inflated; merry jokes, loud outbursts of laughter, kisses stolen and given from and by Vagres and Vagresses; – it was a mirthful and giddy festivity. Ever and anon, nevertheless, and generally on the subject of some pretty face, a dispute would break out between two Vagres, just as used to happen during the ancient banquets of the Gauls. Then swords would be taken down from the trees and crossed by the combatants, but never in hatred, ever in the exuberance of spirit:

"That thrust is for you – mine shall the pretty girl be!"

"And this other thrust is for you – the damsel shall be mine!"

"Hit! That is for her roguish eyes!"