The Pilgrim's Shell or Fergan the Quarryman Part 2

"That's true, my dear Fergan, and my grat.i.tude is great."

"Have I not freely taken you for wife?"

"Yes, notwithstanding you could have chosen from the serfs of the seigniory a companion who would not have been deformed."

"Joan," replied the quarryman with sad bitterness, "if your countenance had been as beautiful as your heart is good, whose would have been the first night of our wedding? Would it not have belonged to Neroweg 'Worse than a Wolf,' or to one of his whelps?"

"Oh, Fergan, my ugliness saved us this supreme shame."

"The wife of Sylvest, one of my ancestors, a poor slave of the Romans, also escaped dishonor by disfiguring herself," was the thought that flashed through the quarryman's mind while he sighed, and pondered: "Oh, slavery and serfdom weigh upon our race for centuries. Will the day of deliverance, predicted by Victoria the Great,[A] ever come."

Joan, seeing her husband plunged in meditation, said to him: "Fergan, do you remember what Pierrine the Goat told us three days ago on the subject of our son? She had, as was her custom, led her sheep to the steepest heights of the great ravine, whence she saw one of the knights of the Count of Plouernel rush on a gallop out of a copse where our little Colombaik had gone to gather some dead wood. Pierrine was of the opinion that that knight carried off our child under his cloak."

"The suspicions of Pierrine were well founded."

"Good G.o.d! What is it you say?"

"A few hours ago, while I was at the quarry, several serfs, engaged in repairing the road of the castle which was partly destroyed during the last war, came for stone. For the last three days I have been like crazy. I have been telling everybody of the disappearance of Colombaik.

I spoke about it to these serfs. One of them claimed to have seen the other evening, shortly before nightfall, a knight holding on his horse a child about seven or eight years, with blonde hair--"

"Unhappy we! That was Colombaik."

"The knight then climbed the hill that leads to the manor of Plouernel, and went in."

"But what can they do to our child?"

"What will they do!" exclaimed the serf shivering, "they'll strangle him, and use his blood for some infernal philter. There is a sorceress stopping at the castle."

Joan uttered a cry of fright, but rage swiftly followed upon her fright.

Delirious and running to the door she cried out: "Fergan, let's go to the manor--we shall enter even if we have to tear up the stones with our nails--I shall have my child--the sorceress shall not throttle him--no!

no!" The serf, holding her by the arm, drew her back. Almost immediately she fainted away in his arms. Still, in a m.u.f.fled voice, the poor woman muttered: "It seems to me I see him die--if my heart were torn in a vice I could not suffer more--it is too late--the sorceress will have strangled the child--no--who knows!" Presently seizing her husband by the hand, "You meant to go to the castle--come--come!"

"I shall go alone when the moon is down."

"Oh, we are crazy, my poor man! Pain leads us astray. How can one penetrate into the lair of the count?"

"By a secret entrance."

"And who has informed you of it?"

"My grandfather Den-Brao accompanied his father Yvon the Forester in Anjou during the great famine in 1033. Den-Brao, a skillful mason, after having worked for more than a year in the castle of a lord of Anjou became his serf, and was exchanged by his master for an armorer of Neroweg IV, an ancestor of the present lord. My grandfather, now a serf of the lord of Plouernel, was engaged in the construction of a donjon which was attached to the castle. The work lasted many a year. My father, Nominoe, almost a child at the commencement of the structure, had grown to manhood when it was finished. He helped his father in his work, and became a mason himself. After his day's work, my grandfather used to trace upon a parchment the plan of the several parts of the donjon which he was to execute. One day my father asked him the explanation of certain structures, the purpose of which he could not understand. 'These separate stone works, connected by the work of the carpenter and the blacksmith,' answered my grandfather, 'will const.i.tute a secret staircase made through the thick of the wall of the donjon, and it will ascend from the lowest depth of this edifice to the top, while it furnishes access to several reducts otherwise invisible. Thanks to this secret issue, the Lord of Plouernel, if besieged in his castle, and unable to resist his enemies, will be able to escape, and reach a long subterraneous gallery which comes out at the rocks that stretch to the north, at the foot of the mountain, where the seigniorial manor-house rises.' Indeed, Joan, during those days of continual wars, similar works were executed in all the strongholds: their owners always looked to preserving the means of escape from their enemies. About six months before the completion of the donjon, and when all that was left to do was the construction of the staircase and the secret issue, traced upon the plan of my grandfather, my father broke both of his legs by the fall of an enormous stone. That grave accident became the cause of a great piece of good fortune."

"What say you, Fergan!"

"My father remained here, at this hovel, unable to work by reason of his wounds. During that interval the donjon was finished. But the artisan serfs, instead of returning every evening to their respective villages, no longer left the castle. The seigneur of Plouernel wished, so it was said, to hasten the completion of the works and to save the time lost in the morning and evening by the traveling of the serfs. For about six months the people of the plain saw the movement of the workingmen gathered upon the last courses of the donjon, which rose ever higher.

After that, when the platform and the turrets which crown it were finished, nothing more was seen. The serfs never re-appeared in their villages, and their bereaved families are still awaiting them."

"What became of them?"

"Neroweg IV, fearing they might reveal the secret issue constructed by themselves, had them locked up in the subterraneous place, that I stated to you. It is there that my grandfather, together with his fellow workingmen, twenty-seven in number, perished, a prey to the tortures of hunger."

"That's horrible! What barbarity!"

"Yes, it is horrible! My father, kept at home by his injuries, alone escaped this fearful death, overlooked, no doubt, by the seigneur of Plouernel. Trying to fathom the mystery of my grandfather's disappearance, my father recalled the information he had received from his father on the plan of the donjon and its secret issue. One night, accordingly, my father betook himself to that secluded spot, and succeeded in discovering an airhole concealed amid brushwood. He slid down this opening, and after walking long in a narrow gallery, he was arrested by an enormous iron grating. Seeking to break it, he pa.s.sed his arm through the bars. His hand touched a ma.s.s of bones--human bones and skulls--"

"Good G.o.d! Poor victims!"

"It was the bones of the serfs, who, locked up in this subterraneous pa.s.sage with my grandfather, had died of hunger. My father did not try to penetrate further. Certain of the fate of my grandfather, but lacking the energy to avenge him, he made to me this revelation on his death-bed. I went--it is a long time ago--to inspect the rocks. I discovered the subterraneous issue. Through it, to-night, will I enter the donjon and look for our child."

"Fergan, I shall not try to oppose your plan," observed Joan after a moment of silence and suppressing her apprehensions; "but how will you clear that grating which prevented your father from entering the underground pa.s.sage? Is it not above your strength?"

"That grating has been fastened in the rock, it can be unfastened with my iron pick and hammer. I have the requisite strength for that job."

"Once in the pa.s.sage, what will you do?"

"Last evening I took from the wooden casket, hidden yonder under the rubbish, a few strips of the parchment where Den-Brao had traced the plan of the buildings; I have posted myself on the localities. The secret gallery, in its ascent towards the castle, comes out, on the other side of the donjon, upon a secret staircase built in the thick of the wall. That leads, from the lowest of the three rows of subterranean dungeons, up to the turret that rises to the north of the platform."

"The turret," queried Joan, growing pale, "the turret, whence occasionally strange lights issue at night?"

"It is there that Azenor the Pale, the sorceress of Neroweg, carries on her witchcraft," answered the quarryman in a hollow voice. "It is in that turret that Colombaik must be, provided he still lives. It is there I shall go in search of our child."

"Oh, my poor man," murmured Joan, "I faint at the thought of the perils you are about to face!"

"Joan," suddenly interjected the serf, raising his hands towards the starry sky, visible through rifts in the roof, "before an hour the moon will have set; I must go now."

The quarryman's wife, after making a superhuman effort to overcome her terror, said in a voice that was almost firm: "I do not ask to accompany you, Fergan; I might be an enc.u.mbrance in this enterprise. But I believe, as you do, that at all costs we must try to save our child. If in three days you are not back--"

"It will mean that I have encountered death in the castle of Plouernel."

"I shall not be behind you a day, my dear husband. Have you weapons to defend yourself?"

"I have my iron pick and my hammer."

"And bread? You must have some provisions."

"I have still a big piece of bread in my wallet; you will fill my gourd with water; that will suffice me."

While his wife was attending to these charges, the serf provided himself with a long rope which he wound around him; he also placed a tinder-box in his wallet, a piece of punk, and a wick, steeped in resin, of the kind that quarrymen use to light their underground pa.s.sages. These preparations being ended, Fergan silently stretched his arms towards his wife. The brave and sweet creature threw herself into them. The couple prolonged this painful embrace a few moments, as if it were a last adieu. The serf then, swinging his heavy hammer on his shoulder and taking up his iron pick, started towards the rocks where the secret issue of the seigniorial manor ran out.

CHAPTER III.

AT THE CROSS-ROAD.

The day after Fergan the Quarryman decided to penetrate into the castle of Plouernel, a considerable troop of travelers, men of all conditions, who had left Nantes the day before, were journeying towards the frontier of Anjou. Among them were found pilgrims, distinguishable by the c.o.c.kle-sh.e.l.l attached to their clothes, vagabonds, beggars, peddlers loaded with their bundles of goods. Among the latter a man of tall stature, with light blonde hair and beard, carried on his back a bundle surmounted with a cross and covered with coa.r.s.e pictures representing human bones, such as skulls, thighs, arms, and fingers. This man, named Harold the Norman, devoted himself, like many other descendants of the pirates of old Rolf,[B] to the trade of relics, selling to the faithful the bones which they stole at night from the seigniorial gibbets. By the sides of Harold marched two monks, who called each other Simon and Jeronimo. The cowl of the frock of Simon was pulled over his head and completely concealed his face; but that of Jeronimo, thrown back over his shoulder, exposed the monk's dark and lean visage, whose thick eye-brows, as black as his beard, imparted to it a savage hardness.