The Iron Arrow Head or The Buckler Maiden: A Tale of the Northman Invasion

As the monk spoke, he began to remove, with the assistance of several other brothers, the enormous iron bars and chains that reinforced the massive gate from within. About to throw open the gate, however, he heard, from a short distance without, mournful moans and canticles rising from female voices. Such was the panic that the approach of the Northmans threw the church people into, that the gate-monk, frightened out of his senses by the feminine lamentations which were slowly drawing nearer, did not venture, despite all insistence on the serfs part, to open the gate of the abbey, and refused admittance even to Savinien's welcome load. In the midst of the altercation between the monk and the serf, there appeared from behind a clump of trees, that rose at a distance from the abbey, a short procession of nuns distinguishable by their black and white robes, as well as by the long veils that covered their faces and that were intended to withdraw the saintly maids from the gaze of the profane. Four of the nuns carried on a stretcher, improvised of recently felled tree-branches, the inert body of one of their companions. The pall-bearers, together with the other eight or ten nuns who composed the funeral cortège, emitted incessant and heart-rending lamentations. Another young nun, whose veil was partly raised, preceded the body by a few steps, wringing her hands in despair, and from time to time crying out distracted:

"Lord! Lord! Have mercy upon us! Our holy abbess is killed!"

Savinien, who, from the moment admission into the abbey was refused him, had been casting increasingly anxious and uneasy looks at his load, piously dropped down on his knees the moment he saw the mortuary procession, led by the weepful nun, approach. Stepping more rapidly ahead of her suite, the latter walked up to the gate of the abbey, and, with a voice broken by sobs, cried through the wicket:

"My dear brothers, open this holy place of asylum to the poor lambs who are fleeing before ravaging wolves. Already our venerable mother in God has succumbed. We are carrying her mortal remains. Open the gate of the sacred monastery!"

"Is that you, Sister Agnes?" inquired the big gate-monk through the wicket "Are those Northman demons so near that they have invaded the convent of St. Placida?"

"Alack, my dear brother! Last night, about a score of the accursed pagans disembarked not far from our convent," answered the nun with an outburst of sobs. "Awakened by the light of the flames that shot up from the conflagration, and by the cries of terror of the serfs who occupied the outside buildings, a few of us managed to throw on our clothes and to flee in all haste with our holy abbess through a gate that opened on the field. But alack! alack! so severe was the shock upon our venerable mother, already enfeebled by disease, that after about a quarter of an hour's march she fainted in our arms, – and immediately," proceeded Sister Agnes after she had overcome a fresh fit of heart-rending sobs, "immediately our venerable mother passed from the earth to heaven! – We are bringing her body with us in order that the last rites may be performed over her remains, and that they may be buried in consecrated ground."

The gate-brother listened to the distressful tale, sobbing no less loudly than Sister Agnes and smiting his chest. When she finished he quickly opened the gate and sent one of his assistants to notify the abbot of the misfortune. The body of the deceased mother-superior entered the abbey, together with the nuns who accompanied it, and followed by Savinien's two wagons of hay. The somber face of the serf seemed to lighten up with a sinister joy, which he had no little difficulty in suppressing, when at last he found himself within, and the abbey gate closed behind him.

The fugitives who crowded the court-yard of the abbey dropped upon their knees at the passage of the nuns. The latter, led by one of the monks, marched to the parvis of the basilica, followed by the crowd who sang in chorus the prayer that for fully a century had been repeated in all the abbeys and all the castles of Gaul:

"Lord, have mercy upon us! Lord, deliver us from the Northmans! Lord, exterminate the accursed pagans!"

The funeral cortège arrived at the entrance of the basilica and was received by one of the deacons. The prelate had hastily donned his sacerdotal robes. Priests bearing the cross aloft and carrying candles stood behind the officiating prelate. They looked down-cast and pale, and trembled. They repeated the funeral psalms with precipitation and absent-mindedly. The evidence before them of the pirates' being nigh, made them shudder. The first prayers being finished, the body, still carried by the nuns upon the improvised stretcher of branches, was taken to the choir and deposited upon the flagstones, not far from the chanters' desk.

An indescribable disorder reigned in the interior of the vast church. Monks, assisted by serfs, were in hot haste finishing the removal of the precious ornaments of the splendid basilica. Ranged in the transepts, or aisles, that extended to either side of the nave, were a number of crypts, subterranean grooves, above which rose numerous mausoleums erected to the memory of kings and queens of the stock of Clovis and of Charles Martel. The frightened faces of the monks of St. Denis, the lamentations that they uttered while at work removing the sacred ornaments from the altars, the funeral chants that were sung in muffled voices for the repose of the soul of the mother-superior, whose body had just been carried into the church by the nuns, the moans of the noble Franks and their families, who had taken refuge in the holy place – all these lugubrious notes added fuel to the general feeling of dread.

Attracted, probably, more by curiosity than piety, the larger number of the soldiers, who were sent by the Count of Paris for the defense of the abbey, had followed the funeral procession into the church. These men of war, savage, coarse and as impious as either the Northmans or the Arabs, brusquely pushed their way forward as far as the choir where the body of the mother-abbess lay surrounded by her nuns. Little affected by the religious character of the ceremony or by the solemnity of the sacred place, these soldiers fastened their licentious glances upon the daughters of the Lord, whose faces they sought to discover across the transparency of their lowered veils. On his knees beside one of these, who, likewise on her knees and her forehead bowed down, seemed steeped in prayer, Sigefred, a captain of the soldiers, made bold to touch the elbow of the holy maid. The latter was for an instant startled, but controlled herself, and remained silent. Encouraged by his success, Sigefred quietly raised the veil which fell from the head of the nun down to her waist, and carried his audacity to the point of sliding a profane hand up to the collar of the maid's robe. No sooner had he committed the indignity than he quickly withdrew his hand as if it had touched a piece of burning coal.

"By the navel of the Pope!" growled Sigefred in an undertone, "This nun has a skin of iron!"

The venturesome ruffian had no time for another word. He dropped dead, stabbed with a dagger by the nun of the skin of iron. For an instant the other soldiers remained dumb with stupefaction, seeking to explain how the long and large sleeves of the saintly maid could conceal an arm and hand whose epidermis seemed of metal.

"A miracle!" cried some of the witnesses of Sigefred's attempt. "A miracle! The Lord protects the chastity of his virgins by covering them with a tissue of steel mail!"

"Treason!" cried the less credulous warriors, drawing their swords. "These nuns are soldiers dressed like women! Treason! To arms! To arms! Revenge Sigefred! To the devil with miracles and maids!"

"Skoldmoë!" suddenly shouted with resonant voice the mother-abbess whose funeral was being celebrated, and rising to her full length, freeing herself from her long veil and dropping her black robe to her feet, Shigne the Buckler Maiden stood there in her battle armor, with her bold face framed in a hair-net of iron mail that replaced her usual casque. "Skoldmoë!" she shouted again, repeating her war-cry. "Up, my virgins! Mercy for the women! Exterminate the men! Kill them all, to the last one!" and brandishing a double-edged axe, she bounded forward like a panther and struck down one of the Frankish warriors who rushed upon her.

"Skoldmoë!" cried back the other Buckler Maidens, likewise disengaging themselves of their veils and their monastic robes, and like Shigne, they forthwith charged upon the soldiers with their axes and swords.

The faithful, only a minute before absorbed in prayer, fled in dismay towards the doors of the basilica; the monks hid themselves behind the mausoleums over the royal crypts or embraced the altars – their last refuge. The vault of the church resounded with cries of terror, with hysterical moans, and with invocations to the Supreme Being, while above the confused noise rose the din of the Northman virgins' battle-cry, the thud of their heavy blows, the shrieks of the soldiers whom they smote.

Sister Agnes, who had introduced the pirate women into the abbey, was a poor victim of sacerdotal authority. She had been compelled to enter the convent of St. Placida. The previous night the Northman warrior maids forced open the doors of the monastery. She saw her opportunity to regain her freedom, and aided the Buckler Maidens in carrying out the strategem which Shigne devised in order to capture the abbey of St. Denis.

More numerous than the pirate women, the soldiers in the abbey strove to break a passage through the frightened mass at the door and join their comrades in the interior of the church in order to overpower their assailants. But the prodigy of a combat with woman warriors, some of whom were of surpassing beauty, struck the younger of the men with amazement. Their arms were involuntarily stayed in the act of striking the beautiful maids. These, on the contrary, fired by the example of Shigne, who was making havoc among the soldiers with her battle-axe, fought with matchless heroism. The older soldiers, being less susceptible to the emotions of some of their younger companions at the thought of a struggle to the death with young women, fell upon these with fury. Several of Shigne's virgins were killed, others were wounded. But the latter did not seem to feel their wounds, and only fought with increased ardor.

The mêlée was still at its height when Fultrade arrived back at the abbey from the mission that the Count of Paris had charged him with. The noise of the battle in the church drew him thither. When he entered he saw Shigne with her back against the mausoleum of Clovis battling with intrepidity against two Frankish soldiers. The heroine whirled her weapon with such agility and dexterity that every time her battle-axe struck the swords of her two adversaries the sparks were made to fly by the shock of the iron against the steel. During this struggle the sword of one of the soldiers was broken. At the moment when Shigne was about to let her axe descend upon his head and kill her disarmed adversary, Fultrade, who had glided silently behind the mausoleum, seized her by the legs. Thus taken by surprise, Shigne fell to the ground and dropped her axe. The two Frankish soldiers threw themselves upon her and made desperate efforts to keep her under their knees.

"Skoldmoë!– To me, my sisters!"

But the voice of the Buckler Maiden was drowned in the general clash of arms and in the furious roars of the soldiers, mingled with the war-cry of the other virgins who still continued the fray under the fretted vaults of the basilica. In vain the heroine called to her companions. Fultrade, who had knelt down beside her in order to assist the two soldiers in keeping her on the floor, placed both his hands upon her mouth, and yielding to his licentious instinct, whispered to the two men at arms:

"Comrades, this witch is young and beautiful; let us drag her into the crypt of this mausoleum; she shall be ours!"

The two Franks broke into a savage laugh of approval, and aided by Fultrade dragged the Buckler Maiden, despite the superhuman resistance that she offered, into a cavity that was dug under the mausoleum – an underground nook perpetually lighted by a sepulchre lamp.

CHAPTER VII

KOEMPE!

The monk and the two soldiers had barely stretched the Buckler Maiden upon the slab-stones of the crypt, when an icy terror ran through their frames. A noise, at first heard indistinctly, now smote their ears with all its formidable meaning. It was the war-cry of the Northman pirates. "Koempe!" "Koempe!" resounded from the court-yard of the abbey. The cry grew louder; it invaded the church; it presently reached clear, powerful, distinct into the underground recess of the crypt.

"Malediction upon us!" exclaimed the monk listening. "It is the war-cry of the Northmans! They have invaded the abbey!"

"Where could they have entered by?" asked one of the soldiers with chattering teeth. "The demons must have leaped out of hell!"

"To me, my virgins!" the warrior maid now cried with renewed vigor, although still held pinioned to the ground under the knees of the monk and the soldiers. "To me, my sisters! Skoldmoë! Skoldmoë!"

The last words of Shigne were answered by the sonorous voice of Gaëlo:

"Shigne, here I am!" and almost immediately the young pirate appeared at the entrance of the crypt, followed by Simon Large-Ears, Robin Jaws and Savinien, the serf who had driven the two wagons loaded with hay into the abbey. All three shouted at the top of their voices: "Koempe! To death and to the sack! Pillage! Pillage!"

At the sight of the unexpected reinforcement that rushed to the aid of their fair prisoner, Fultrade and his accomplices quitted their intended victim. Shigne leaped to her feet, seized the sword of one of the soldiers, plunged it into the breast of the monk, who dropped stone dead, and, still trembling with rage and shame, rushed sword in hand upon the young pirate.

"Either I shall kill you, or you will kill me, Gaëlo! You shall not be allowed to say that you saw me exposed to extreme outrage!"

Stupefied at the sudden attack of a young woman to whose aid he had hastened to come, Gaëlo at first contented himself with parrying Shigne's blows, but wounded in the face by her weapon, he precipitated himself upon her crying:

"Your will be done! Either you shall kill me, or I shall kill you!"

The combat between Gaëlo and Shigne was furious. Simon Large-Ears and Robin Jaws, who had turned their first attention to the two soldiers hidden in the remotest corner of the crypt under Clovis' mausoleum, killed them both. As they stepped out, Simon Large-Ears said:

"These nuns who came whining to the gate of the abbey while we were concealed under the hay of Savinien's wagons, turned to strategem like ourselves in order to get in. Theirs was a feminine ruse!"

"Oh, Simon," answered Robin pointing to the Buckler Maiden and Gaëlo, who were engaged in a deadly duel; "what a pity! To think of such a magnificent lad and so beautiful a girl seeking to kill each other, instead of making love!"

"And if they survive they will love each other but hobblingly. It is clear that in their rage both will lose some member. Just watch the blows that they deal to each other!"

Never had Gaëlo met more redoubtable an adversary than Shigne. To inordinary strength she coupled skill, coolness and intrepidity. Carried away by the ardor of the struggle, the pirate forgot his passionate love. If he at all kept in mind that he was fighting with a woman, he only felt all the more nettled at finding in her such indomitable powers of resistance. After a long exchange of parried thrusts, Gaëlo succeeded in dealing so violent a blow with his sword upon the virgin's skull that neither her hair-net of linked iron, nor her thick head of hair, through both of which the pirate's sword cut its way, could save her from a severe scalp wound. The blood poured down Shigne's face, her weapon slipped from her grasp, and she dropped down first upon both her knees and then on her side.

"Unhappy me!" cried Gaëlo in despair. "I have killed her!" and kneeling down beside the young woman, he raised her beautiful head, now pale, bleeding and with eyes half closed.

"Gaëlo," murmured the Buckler Maiden in a fainting voice, "you were able to vanquish me; I love you!" and her eyes closed.

Struck with sympathy, Simon and Robin approached Gaëlo to offer him their services, when a new cry arose from the distance, and again dominated the lingering clash of arms between the Northman pirates and the small remnant of the rapidly diminishing garrison of the abbey. It was the cry of "Berserk!" "Berserk!" warningly uttered by the pirates themselves.

"Lodbrog the Giant is again in a fit of fury!" cried Simon Large-Ears in terror. "The berserker is as terrible to his friends as to his enemies. Gaëlo, the fray may roll this way; your sweetheart is perhaps not dead; let us carry her into the crypt; she will be there safer than here."

Gaëlo hastened to follow Simon's advice. Raising the insensible warrior maid in his arms, he laid her down gently in a remote corner of the sepulchral recess.

A prodigious spectacle, a giant battle, was elsewhere taking place at that moment. The Frankish soldiers posted on the ramparts had left their posts to run to the assistance of their companions, first engaged by the Buckler Maidens and subsequently attacked by the band under Gaëlo that emerged out of Savinien's hay wagons. Until then, Lodbrog the berserker had fought valiantly without his intellect being clouded. But the intoxication of the battle, the odor of carnage, the sight of the Frankish reinforcement that poured down from the ramparts and rushed toward the main door of the basilica crying: "Death! Death! Kill the Northmans!" – all this combined threw the giant into a new attack of frenzy. Brandishing a spiked iron mace, the Northman, leaped forward with a roar and dashed upon the compact group of Franks. Ten blacksmiths' hammers beating upon ten anvils could not produce the deafening sound produced by Lodbrog's mace falling, falling again, rising only to fall again and again upon the casques and the armors of the soldiers. Some sink to the earth, crushed under the thundering blows, without uttering a sound: their skulls are ground into pulp within their casques like nuts in their shells; others roll to the ground emitting shrieks of pain and rage. The corpses are heaped up high at the feet of Lodbrog. He mounts the heap. He mounts it as on a pedestal, and his size assumes still more gigantic proportions. The tops of the casques of the soldiers who still dare sustain the contest with him, barely reach his belt. Gaëlo, who rushed out of the basilica, thinking his aid needed in the general battle that he imagined was in progress, arrived at the moment when the surviving soldiers were surrounding the berserker, then at the climax of his fury. The spectacle presented looked like assailants trying to scale a tower. Twenty arms holding twenty swords rose at once to smite the giant. But towering above those arms and swords appeared the cuirassed bust of the colossus, and his iron mace rose and descended, splintering swords, cracking heads, crushing limbs, pulverizing arms! Gaëlo, the others of his band and the surviving Buckler Maidens precipitated themselves upon the rear of the soldiers who besieged Lodbrog. Suddenly the berserker was heard to emit a fresh roar, throw his mace into the air, stoop down and immediately rise again holding a soldier by the hair and belt. Vainly did the luckless Frank struggle to escape from the giant's clutch. He was hurled wrathfully from on high against the handful of soldiers who still assailed the Northman. Several of them rolled over the ground. Lodbrog despatched them by trampling over their prostrate bodies with his colossal feet like an enraged elephant that tramples upon and pounds his victims to death. Thereupon, seeing no more enemies to fight, all his opponents having been killed or wounded by himself or the other pirates, but still a prey to his own vertigo of destruction, riddled with wounds that he did not feel, but the gushing blood of which reddened his armor that was broken through in twenty places, Lodbrog's eyes fell upon a large black mausoleum just within the basilica. It was the tomb of Fredegonde.[4 - For the career of the notorious Fredegonde, see "The Branding Needle," the seventh of this series.] The giant rushed in headlong; he seized with both his mighty hands one of the pillars that supported the entablature; shook it; loosened it with an effort of superhuman strength; the pillar yielded and carried down with it a portion of the architecture of the mausoleum, which thereupon crumbled to the ground. The loud crash of the ruin added fuel to the rage of the berserker. His eyes encountered the sepulchral light that escaped from the crypt where the Beautiful Shigne lay. The berserker rushed thither with the roar of a goaded bull, and vanished from sight.

CHAPTER VIII