The Iron Arrow Head or The Buckler Maiden: A Tale of the Northman Invasion
After traversing several tortuous streets, Eidiol and his suite arrived at the door of the skipper's house. Guyrion opened it, and Gaëlo, Shigne, Rustic, Anne and her father were speedily gathered together in the apartment on the lower floor, whose shutters they prudently closed.
"Light a lamp, sister," said Guyrion, "and let me have a cup with water, some lint and oil;" and addressing Gaëlo, while Anne fetched the materials required for dressing the Northman's wound, "roll up your armlet; I shall extract the arrowhead; after the wound is washed with cold water and covered with lint saturated in aromatic oil, you will feel relieved."
Gaëlo removed his armor, rolled up the sleeve of his reindeer jacket, and left his bleeding arm bare. In himself trying to extract the arrow from his wound, the pirate had broken the shaft, leaving the sharp arrowhead imbedded under the flesh. The operation of extraction was thereby rendered more difficult. Nevertheless, Eidiol succeeded in taking hold of a portion of the shaft that still obtruded above the flesh, and by dint of no little dexterity finally drew out the arrowhead itself. Greatly pained during the operation, Gaëlo felt relieved when the missile was at last extracted. Before placing the lint on the wound, the old skipper moistened a piece of cloth in water and was about to wash away the clotted blood that covered almost all the upper arm, when he uttered a cry of surprise, took a step back, gazed anxiously upon Gaëlo and exclaimed with intense curiosity:
"Who burnt into your arm these two Gallic words: 'Brenn—Karnak' – that I see here? Speak, young man!"
"My father; he burnt the inscription into my arm shortly after my birth."
"Where is your father?"
"He, as well as my mother, are dead."
"He surely was not of the Northman race?"
"No, although he was born in their country, and always went to battle with them. He was of the Gallic race – "
"In what year did your father's father go to live among the Northmans?"
"Towards the middle of the last century."
"Was that not after a fresh and violent insurrection broke out in Brittany, when the Bretons, in order to make a head against the Franks, applied for aid from the Northmans, who happened to have their camp at the mouth of the Loire?"
"Yes," answered Gaëlo. "But how come you to know all that? Who told you of it?"
"What were the circumstances that induced your grandfather to join the Northmans?"
"After the fresh insurrection of Armorica, which at first bade fair to succeed, dissensions broke out among the Breton chiefs. Even my grandfather's family was divided. In the course of a violent altercation with one of his brothers, the two drew their swords. Wounded in that fratricidal duel, my grandfather left Brittany forever, and embarked with a troop of Northmans who were just then setting sail at the mouth of the Loire to return to Denmark, where my father and myself were born."
"Your grandfather's name was Ewrag," Eidiol proceeded with increasing emotion; "he was the son of Vortigern,5 one of the most valiant companions-in-arms of Morvan, who heroically resisted the arms of Louis the Pious on the moor of Kennor, the marsh of Peulven and across the defiles of Armorica. Vortigern's grandfather was Amael, who lived to be more than a hundred years, declined to be the jailor of the last descendant of Clovis, and was one of the chiefs of the bands of Charles Martel, the ancestor of Charles the Great, whose descendant reigns to-day under the name of Charles the Simple."
"Old man!" cried Gaëlo, "who could have informed you so accurately on the history of my family?"
"Your family is mine," answered Eidiol, over whose eyes the film of a tear was gathering. "I am a descendant of Joel, the brenn of the tribe of Karnak.6 My grandfather was your grandfather's brother. That is our kinship."
"What say you?" cried Gaëlo. "Are you really of Joel's stock, like myself? Are we of the same family?"
"These words, which your father traced on your arm as a sign of identification, are carried by me also, as well as by my son and my daughter, obedient to the recommendation of Ronan the Vagre,7 one of our joint ancestors who lived in the days of Queen Brunhild."
"We are relatives!" cried Anne and Guyrion in chorus, drawing near to Gaëlo, while Shigne and Rustic listened with redoubled interest to the conversation between the old skipper and Gaëlo.
"We are relatives!" repeated Gaëlo looking alternately from Eidiol to Anne and Guyrion, and turning to the warrior maid he proceeded: "Shigne, I am doubly grateful to you; the young girl so magnanimously saved by you happens to be my own relative."
"She shall be like a sister to me," answered the Buckler Maiden in her grave and sonorous voice. "My sword will ever be ready in her defense."
"And in default of your sword, fair heroine," put in Rustic, "my two arms joined to those of Master Eidiol and of my friend Guyrion will ever protect Anne the Sweet, although it unfortunately happened that all our three pairs of arms proved insufficient to defend the poor child from Rolf."
"Good father," Gaëlo said to Eidiol, "please tell me for what reason you left Brittany."
"Your grandfather, Ewrag, had two brothers, like himself, the sons of Vortigern. When, on the occasion of the fatal dissension that you spoke of, Ewrag quitted Brittany to settle down in the country of the Northmans, his two brothers, Rosneven and Gomer, the latter of whom was my grandfather, continued to live at the cradle of our family, near the sacred stones of Karnak. Nominoë, Judicaël, Allan Strong-Beard were successively elected the chiefs of Armorica. More than once during that time did the Franks invade and ravage our country, but they never were able to establish their conquest as firmly as they succeeded in doing in the other regions of Gaul. The druid influence long kept alive among our people an inveterate hatred for the foreigner. Unhappily, the perfidious counsels of the Christian priests, coupled with the example set by the Frankish seigneurs, who had gradually become by the right of conquest the hereditary masters of both the land and the peoples of Gaul, at last had their fatal effect upon the Breton chiefs themselves. Originally elected by the free suffrage of the people, as was the ancient Gallic custom, and chosen by reason of their bravery, wisdom and patriotism, these chiefs sought to render their office hereditary in their own families, in imitation of the seigneurs all over Gaul. The Christian priests joined the Breton chiefs in their iniquitous scheme, and ordered the people to submit to these new masters, as they had ordered them to submit to Clovis and his leudes. By little and little Brittany lost her old franchises. The chiefs, one time elective and temporary, now having become hereditary and autocratic with the assistance of the clergy, stripped the Breton people of almost all their rights. Nevertheless, until now they have not degraded them to the point of treating them as slaves or serfs. Of the two brothers of your grandfather, one, Gomer, my own grandfather, saw the gradual debasement of Brittany with grief and indignation. Gomer was a mariner. His home being in Vannes, like Albinik's,8 one of our ancestors, he often made trips to England and also carried cargoes as far south as the mouths of the Somme and the Seine. On one occasion he ascended the river as far as Paris. His trade of mariner brought him in contact with the dean of the Skippers' Guild of Paris, who had a pretty and bright daughter. My grandfather married her. My father was born of that union. He also became a skipper. His life was spent amidst the ordinary trials of our people, good and evil successively alternating. I followed the same trade. My life has until now been as happy as it is possible to be in these disturbed times. Only two misfortunes have so far befallen me: the death of Martha, whom I lost yesterday, and, about thirty years ago, the disappearance of a daughter, the first born of all my children. Her name was Jeanike."
"And how did she come to disappear?"
"My wife, being sick at the time, confided the child to one of our neighbors for a walk outside of the city. We never saw her again, neither her nor the neighbor."
"Fortunately the children that are left to you must have alleviated your grief," remarked Gaëlo. "But tell me, good father, did you ever have any tidings from the branch of our family that remained in Brittany?"
"I learned from a traveler that the tyranny of the Breton seigneurs rested ever heavier upon the people of Armorica, and that they are now wholly ridden by the priests."
"Eidiol," said Gaëlo picking up the iron arrowhead which the old man dropped on the floor after it was extracted from the arm of the young pirate, "preserve this iron arrowhead. It will increase the number of the relics of our family. Should you ever meet again those of our relatives, who, perhaps, still live in Brittany, and who may have preserved the legends left by our ancestors, add this relic to the others together with the legend of our own times – "
Gaëlo was interrupted by a great noise on the street that seemed to be drawing nearer and nearer. Presently the tramp of horses and clanking of arms were distinguished. Rustic ran to open the upper panel of the door, looked out, and turning to those within announced in a low voice:
"It is Count Rothbert passing with his men, accompanied by the Archbishop of Rouen. He is no doubt coming back from the ramparts and is returning to his castle."
"Good father," said Gaëlo gravely, and rolling down his armlet, "you promised to accompany me and my companion to the palace of the Count of Paris. Come; time presses. I am in a hurry to fulfil the singular mission that has brought me to the city."
"What mission is that?"
"The Beautiful Shigne is to notify the count that Rolf, the Northman pirate chieftain, demands Ghisèle, the daughter of Charles the Simple, King of the French, for his wife; and I am to notify him that Rolf demands Neustria for his dower."
Eidiol remained for a moment mute with stupor, and then cried out: "Such is the termination of royal stocks! One of the descendants of Joel declined to be the jailor of the last descendant of Clovis, and now another descendant of Joel is commissioned to notify the successor of Charles the Great that his daughter is demanded from him by an old pirate, soiled with all manner of crimes, and to boot, one of the most beautiful of the few provinces still left to the King!"
A few minutes later the Beautiful Shigne and Gaëlo, having again thrown the hooded great-coats of two of the Parisian mariners over their own casques and armor, marched under the guidance of Eidiol to the castle of Count Rothbert, in order to carry to him the message of old Rolf.
CHAPTER XII
ARCHBISHOP FRANCON
One of the pavilions of the royal residence at Compiegne served as the apartment of Ghisèle, the daughter of Charles the Simple, King of the Franks. The young princess usually was in the company of her female associates in the large hall on the first floor. A high and narrow window, made of little glass squares, pierced a wall ten feet thick, and opened upon the sombre and vast forest in the midst of which rose the palace of Compiegne. This morning Ghisèle was engaged upon a piece of tapestry. She had just completed her fourteenth year. Married at sixteen, her father, Charles the Simple, was a parent at seventeen.
Ghisèle's face was childlike and mild. Her nurse, a woman of about forty, handed to her the strands of woolen thread of different colors which the princess used at her work. At the princess' feet, on a wooden bench, sat Yvonne, her foster-sister. A little further away, several young girls were busily spinning, or conversed in an undertone while plying their needles.
"Jeanike," said Ghisèle to her nurse, "my father always comes to embrace me in the morning; he has not yet come to-day."
"Count Rothbert and seigneur Francon, the Archbishop of Rouen, arrived last night from Paris with a large escort. The chamberlain was sent to wake up the King, your father. Since four in the morning he has been in conversation with the count and the archbishop. The conference must be on some very important matter."
"This night call makes me uneasy. I only hope it does not mean some bad news."
"What bad news is there to be feared? The proverb runs: 'Can the Northmans be in Paris?'" retorted the nurse smiling and shrugging her shoulders. "Do not take alarm so quickly, my dear child."
"I know, Jeanike, that the Northmans are not in Paris. May God save us from those pirates! May He hold them back in their frozen haunts."
"The chaplain was telling us the other day," put in Yvonne, "that they have hoofs of goats and on their heads horns of oxen."
"Keep still! Keep still, Yvonne!" exclaimed Ghisèle with a shudder. "Do not mention those pagans! Their bare name horrifies me! Alas, were they not the cause of my mother's death?"
"It is true," answered the nurse sadly. "Oh, it was a fearful night in which those demons, led by the accursed Rolf, attacked the castle of Kersey-on-the-Oise after a rapid and unexpected ascent of the river. The Queen, your mother, was nursing you at the time. She was so frightened that her breasts dried and she died. It was upon that misfortune that you shared my milk with my little Yvonne. Until that time I had felt very wretched. A stray child, sold in her early years to the intendant of the royal domain of Kersey, my fate improved when I became your foster-mother. It helped my eldest son, Germain, to become one of the chief foresters of the woods of Compiegne."
"Oh, nurse," replied Ghisèle with a sigh, her eyes filling with tears, "everyone has his troubles! I am a King's daughter, but am motherless. For pity's sake never mention in my hearing the name of those Northmans, of those accursed pagans who deprived me of a mother's love!"
"Come, dear child, do not cry," said Jeanike affectionately and drying the tears on Ghisèle's face, while the princess' foster-sister, kneeling upon the little bench and unable to repress her own tears, looked at the princess disconsolately.
At that moment the curtain over the farther door of the apartment was pushed aside, and the King of the Franks, Charles the Simple, stepped in. This descendant of Charles the great emperor, was then thirty-two years of age. His bulging eyes, his retreating chin, his hanging lower lip imparted to his physiognomy a look of such stupidity and dullness that anyone would pronounce him a fool, at first sight. His long hair, the symbol of royalty, framed in a puffed face that was fringed with a sparse beard. The King looked profoundly downcast, and brusquely said to Jeanike:
"Go out, nurse! Out of the room everybody!"
The King remained alone with Ghisèle. The child embraced her father tenderly and looked to find in his presence the needed consolation for the painful thoughts that the recollection of her mother had awakened in her. Charles the Simple quietly submitted to the caresses of his daughter, and said:
"Good morning, child; good morning. But why do you weep?"
"For very little, good father. I was feeling sad. Your sight banishes my sadness. You are late this morning. My nurse tells me that last night the Count of Paris arrived at the castle together with the Archbishop of Rouen."
The King sighed, and nodded affirmatively with his head.
"They did not, I hope, bring you bad news, father?"
"Alas," answered Charles the Simple, sighing again and looking up at the ceiling, "the tidings that they bring would be disastrous, aye, they would, if I refuse to accept certain conditions!"
"And is it in your power to fulfil those conditions?" asked Ghisèle, and the girl looked into her father's face with so childlike and mild a countenance that Charles the Simple, but not wicked, seemed embarrassed and touched. He dropped his eyes before his daughter and stammered:
"Those conditions! Oh, those conditions! They are hard! Oh, so very hard! But – what is to be done? Fain would I resist. But I am forced to. What would you have me do if I should be forced to do what should give us pain?"
"You can not be commanded, you, the master, the sovereign, the King of the Franks!"
"I, King of the Franks!" cried Charles the Simple with bitterness and rage. "Is there, perchance, a King of the Franks in existence? The counts, the dukes, the marquises, the bishops, the abbots – they are the kings! Have not the seigneurs, for the last century, made themselves the sovereign and hereditary masters of the counties and duchies which they were simply put there to administer during their lives and in the name of the King? Who is it that reigns in Vermandois? Is it I? No, it is Count Herbert! Who reigns over the country of Melun? Is it I? No, it is Count Errenger! – and over the country of Rheims? Archbishop Foulque; and in Provence? Duke Louis the Blind; and in Lorraine? Duke Louis IV; and in Burgundy? Duke Rodulf; and in Brittany? Duke Allan – Those are the brigands, they and so many other thieves, small and large, who have plucked us of one province after another; bit by bit they have appropriated to themselves the royal heritage of our fathers. I tell you this, my child, in order that you may understand that, however hard the conditions may be that are imposed upon me, I must, alas! submit. The seigneurs command, I obey. Am I in a condition to resist them? Are they not intrenched in the fortified castles that they have made Gaul to bristle with all over the face of the land? I barely can muster up enough soldiers to defend the small domain that is left to me. Over what region can I say that I reign to-day – I, the descendant of Charles the Great, the redoubtable emperor who ruled over the world? I do not possess the hundredth part of Gaul! Figure it out, Ghisèle, figure it out, and you will see that there is nothing now left to me but the Orleanois, Neustria, the country of Laon and my domains of Compiegne, Fontainebleau, Braine and Kersey. How would you expect me to resist the seigneurs, and that I say 'No!' when they order me to say 'Yes!' seeing my forces are so trifling?" And Charles the Simple, stamping the floor with rage, clenched his fists and cried out: "Oh, my poor Ghisèle! If we only had our ancestor Charles the Great to defend us now, we would not now be dictated to as we are! The brave emperor would march forth at the head of his troops to crush the insolent seigneurs and archbishops in their own lairs! – Alack! Alack! I have neither the courage, nor the will, nor the power! They call me 'the Simple'! – They are right," added the King overcome with sorrow and weeping profusely. "Yes, yes; I am a simpleton! But a poor simpleton who is greatly to be pitied – especially at this hour – my child!"
"Good father!" exclaimed Ghisèle, throwing herself on the neck of the King whose face was bathed in tears. "Do not give way to grief so. Will there not always be enough land left to you in which to live in peace with your daughter who loves and your servants who are attached to you?"
The King looked fixedly at Ghisèle, and wiping his eyes with the back of his hand said in a voice broken with sobs: "Do you know what Count Rothbert – " but suddenly breaking off he proceeded with an explosion of idle rage: "I abhor this family of the Counts of Paris! It is they who robbed us of the duchy of France. – Those people are our most dangerous enemies! Some fine day, that Rothbert will dethrone me absolutely, as his brother Eudes dethroned Charles the Fat! Oh, felonious, impudent and thieving family! With what joy would I not exterminate you, if I only had the power of Charles the Great! – But I have no courage – I do not even dare to order them to be killed. They are well aware of this – and that is why they trample over me!" The King's voice was smothered by his sobs. He could only add: "Shame and humiliation!"
"I conjure you, dear father; drive away these evil thoughts – But what did that wicked Count Rothbert say to you?"
"First of all, he said to me that the Northmans were before Paris, and in immense numbers."
"The Northmans!" cried Ghisèle turning pale and shuddering from head to foot with fear. "The Northmans before Paris! Oh, woe, woe is us!" and the child hid her face in her hands, while tears inundated her countenance and her frame shook with convulsive sobs.
With his eyes fixed on the floor, not venturing to raise them lest they should encounter his daughter's, Charles the Simple proceeded with a tremulous voice:
"The Count of Paris, as I was saying, informed me that the Northmans were before the city. 'What would you have me do against it?' I asked him; 'I have neither soldiers nor men; you, seigneurs, who are the masters of almost all Gaul, have nothing else to do but to defend your own possessions; that is your concern.' Rothbert answered me: 'The Northmans threaten to burn down Paris, massacre the people, and to overrun Gaul ravaging and sacking the fields and towns. No resistance can be offered them. The majority of the villeins and serfs refuse to take the field against them. The soldiers at the disposal of us, the seigneurs, are too few in number to pretend to combat the pirates. We must treat with them.' I then, my little Ghisèle, said to the count: 'Very well, treat; that is your affair, seeing those pagans are before your walls of Paris and in your duchy of France.' 'And so I did,' Rothbert answered me; 'I treated in your name with the envoys of Rolf, the Northman chief.'"
"With Rolf," murmured Ghisèle clasping her hands in horror. "With that pirate! That felon steeped in crime and sacrilege! That monster who was the cause of my mother's death!"
"Alas! To the desolation of us both, dear daughter, this accursed Rothbert, aiming only at the protection of his city of Paris and of his duchy of France from the clutches of the old Northman brigand, promised in my name that I would relinquish Neustria to him – Neustria, the best of the provinces left to me – and besides – "
As Ghisèle perceived that her father hesitated to finish the sentence, she wiped his tears and asked; "And besides, what else do they demand, father?"
Charles the Simple remained for a moment silent, and shuddered. Presently, however, overcoming the imbecile weakness of his character, he broke out into fresh tears, crying: "No! No! I will not! However much of a simpleton I may be, that shall never be. No! For once, at least, in my life I shall act the King!" And closing his daughter in his arms, Charles the Simple covered her head with kisses and cried: "No! No! He shall not have my Ghisèle! The insolence of that old brigand, to think of marrying – the grand-daughter of Charles the Great – and she a child of barely fourteen! Sooner than see you the wife of Rolf, I would kill you – I would kill you on the spot. Oh, Lord God, have mercy upon me!"
Ghisèle heard her father's words almost without understanding them. She was gazing upon him with mingled doubt and stupor when a new personage stepped into the hall. It was Francon, Archbishop of Rouen. The man's impassive face, cold and hard, resembled a marble mask. He approached close to Ghisèle and her father, who still clung together in a close embrace, and pointing with his hand to the curtain behind which he had kept himself concealed up to then, said in his sharp, short style:
"Charles, I have heard everything."
"You spied upon me!" cried the King. "You have dared to surprise the secrets of your master!"
"I mistrusted your weakness. After our interview with Rothbert, I followed you. I have overheard everything;" and addressing himself to the young girl who, trembling at every limb, had fallen back upon her seat, the Archbishop of Rouen proceeded in a solemn and threatening voice: "Ghisèle, your father told you the truth. He is King only in name. The little territory that he still is master of is, like his crown, at the mercy of the Frankish seigneurs. They will dethrone him whenever it should please them, as they dethroned Charles the Fat and crowned in his stead Eudes, the Count of Paris, only twenty-five years ago."
"Yes! Yes! And there will be no lack for a bishop to consecrate the new usurper, just as there was found one to consecrate Count Eudes, not so, Francon?" cried Charles the Simple with bitterness. "Such is the gratitude of the priests towards the descendants of the Frankish Kings that have made the Church so rich!"
"The Church owes nothing to Kings; the Kings owe to the Church the remission of their sins!" was the disdainful reply of the archbishop. "The Kings have bestowed wealth upon the Church here below, on earth; they have been rewarded a hundredfold in heaven and all eternity. Now, Ghisèle, listen to what I have to say to you. If, by reason of your refusal, or the refusal of your father, the Northman pagans should, as they threaten to do, renew against Gaul the frightful and sacrilegious warfare that we are all familiar with, but which they promise to put an end to in the event of your father's consenting to grant your hand to their chieftain Rolf and to relinquish Neustria to him, then you and your father will be alone responsible for the frightful ills that will anew desolate the land."
