The Poniard's Hilt Part 12

And these others--men with shaven heads, wan, clad in rags; these women and these girls, some of whom are pretty--who are they?

They are the slaves of the Church; they look happy at the sight of their day of justice and vengeance. But other slaves there are, not a few in number, who fled terrified into the woods. They imagined they saw the fires of heaven roll down upon the Vagres, who could be sacrilegious enough to put to the sack and fire the house of the vice-regent of G.o.d on earth, their holy bishop.

And what is Ronan doing? There he sits in full gala on the episcopal bench, decked in sacerdotal garb, and coiffed in the fur cap which count Neroweg left behind when he fled demented out of the banquet hall. Four Vagres a.s.sist Ronan. They are odd-looking clerks! Jolly deacons! Among them is Wolf's-Tooth, the giant whose waist a barrel's hoop would hardly encircle.

"Brother, are we all together?"

"Ronan, only the Master of the Hounds is missing. When the conflagration was at its height, he was seen by one of our men running towards the door of the bishopess; he leaped through the flames and re-issued at the garden door running with a fainting woman in his arms."

"He is doubtlessly engaged in making her regain consciousness. Well, while the bishopess is being revived, shall we try the bishop?"

"The holy man has tried people, whom he said were under his jurisdiction, as bishop of the city of Clermont. He is now under our jurisdiction. Let us try him!"

Louder than the Vagres themselves, the slaves of the prelate set up the cry:

"Let us judge the bishop!"

"Bring him forward, on the spot!"

Two Vagres went out in quest of the holy man of G.o.d, who had been kept locked up in a contiguous compartment. He was brought in pinioned. Pale and wrathful he was pushed before the tribunal of Ronan and his four Vagre clerks.

"Seigneur bishop," said Ronan to him, "thy 'charity,' thy 'piety,' thy 'exalted chast.i.ty' (thou seest I am giving thee all the honorary t.i.tles that thou and thine bestow upon one another, holy men that ye are) thy 'exalted chast.i.ty' will be kind enough to inform us of thy name?"

"Incendiary! Pillager! Sacrilegious wretch! Those are your names! I d.a.m.n and excommunicate you, you, together with your whole band! You stand excommunicated in this world and in the next, where you will suffer everlasting tortures!"

"Thy 'exalted chast.i.ty' answers my question with insults. Seeing that thou refusest to state thy name, I shall answer for thee. Thy name is Cautin--"

"May my name burn your tongue!"

"Slaves of the bishopric," proceeded Ronan addressing those who surrounded him, "what charges have you to prefer against your bishop?"

"He grinds us down with toil and with taxes. He oppresses us from morning till night all the year long!"

"For food he lets us have a handful of beans, for clothes rags, and for shelter rickety mud huts!"

"Our slightest oversights are visited with the whip!"

"He violates our daughters! What resistance can the female slave offer when threatened? She submits with a shudder--she weeps--"

"That a Frank should be ready to subjugate us and whelm us with misery we can understand: he is a conqueror who abuses his power. But that bishops, Gauls like ourselves, should join the Frank in order to share with him the plunder that he levies upon us--that we cannot understand; such action must draw down the severest punishment upon the heads of the perpetrators. Oh! Our old priests, the venerated druids, never allied themselves with the Roman conquerors of Gaul. No! No! With the sword in one hand, the mistletoe twig in the other, they were ever the first to give the signal for war against the foreigner; they roused the peoples to revolt with the words: 'The country and freedom!' The response came swift from the ma.s.ses; out of their midst arose the Chief of the Hundred Valleys, Sacrovir, Vindex, Marik, Civilis! And the Romans trembled in their very Capitol!"

"Bishop," Ronan proceeded, "has thy exalted truthfulness anything to answer to the accusations of thy slaves?"

"They are all d.a.m.ned criminals, sacrilegious wretches who will have to answer for their crimes when they appear before the throne of G.o.d, on the day of last judgment. Ever after they will gnash their teeth--"

"Bishop, has thy exalted purity nothing else to say than utter insults?"

"And may it please the Lord to turn these insults into so many tongues of fire to pierce your bodies, ye accursed men!"

"While waiting for the fulfillment of thy wishes, listen to the further indictment against thee: Thou didst covet the goods of one of thy priests named Anastasius; he declined to let thee have them; thou didst inveigle him to Clermont; thou didst there have him seized, bound hand and foot and thrown alive into a grave with a decomposing corpse. Wilt thou dare deny that thou art guilty of that felony?"

"A wonderful council this is, made up of beggars, sacrilegious wretches and slaves, to interrogate a bishop!"

"We shall proceed. Thy exalted poverty, in its rage to augment its wealth, conceived this evening, under guise of a miracle, a veritable bandit's trick: thou didst plunder Count Neroweg under pressure of the fear of the devil. Under the code of the Vagrery, to plunder a Frank is a pious act. But if the Vagres delight in pillaging our conquerors, it is only in order to administer to the wants of the poor by making them sharers in the plunder. On the other hand, to plunder a thief for self-gain is a sin according to the code of the Vagrery. Moreover, thou didst absolve the count of a crime in order that thou mightst possess a young slave, a girl of barely fifteen years. Now, then, under the code of the Vagrery, such episcopal profligacy also is a d.a.m.nable sin that demands punishment."

And addressing himself to the Vagres, Ronan added:

"Bring in the young slave!"

Ronan was right. To impute fifteen years to the girl was to add to her actual age. Her blonde hair that was parted in two long and thick braids, reached almost down to her feet, which were bare, like her arms and shoulders. In fetching her from the burg, the brutal leude had barely given her time to dress before lifting her on the crupper of his horse. Accordingly, now that she faced the Vagres what suppliant fear was not readable in the large blue eyes of the poor child, who still trembled visibly! Her nocturnal ride on the crupper of the Frankish warrior's horse, the burning of the episcopal villa, the strange aspect of the Vagres--how many subjects of alarm to her young heart! The young girl's cheeks must once have been full and rosy; they now were hollow and pale. The infantine figure, bearing the stamp of suffering, was painful to behold. As the young slave stepped into the chapel a feeling of sadness came over Ronan; his very voice betrayed his emotion when he addressed her:

"What is your name, my child?"

"I am called Odille."

"Where were you born?"

"Far from here--in one of the uplands of the Mont-Dore."

"How old are you, little Odille?"

"My mother said to me this spring: 'Odille, it is to-day fourteen years that you have been the joy of my life.'"

"How did you become the slave of the Frankish count? Tell us your history."

"My father died young. I lived in the mountain with my grandfather, my brother and my mother. We lived off the yield of our herd, and we spun wool. No sorrow had ever befallen us except my father's death. One day the Franks scaled the mountain in arms. They took our herd and said to us: 'We shall carry you to the burg of our count to restock his domain with slaves and cattle.' My brother attempted to defend us. The Franks killed him. They tied my mother and me to one rope, and drove us together with our herd of sheep before them. My grandfather begged them on his knees to allow him to follow us. But the Franks said to him: 'You are too old to gain your bread as a slave.' 'But if I am left alone, I shall die of hunger on the mountain!' 'Die, then!' was their answer, and they made us move on before them. My grandfather followed us, weeping, at a distance. The Franks stoned him to death. On their way they captured other slaves, took in other droves of cattle, and killed other people of the mountain when they refused to follow. They descended into the valley; there they made some further captures of people and cattle.

There were about fifty of us, men, women and girls. The Franks slaughtered all the children as being worthless. The first night we slept in a wood. On that night the Franks violated the women despite all their entreaties. I heard the sobs of my mother. They separated me from her in the evening and did me no harm. The chief of the band kept me, he said, for the count. The next morning we resumed our march, with me separated from my mother. More people were killed who did not wish to march on--more slaves and cattle were taken. After that the troop marched to the burg. Before arriving there a second night was spent in the woods. The chief who reserved me for the count made me sleep beside his horse. Early the next morning we proceeded on our route. I tried to discover my mother in the crowd--the Frank said to me: 'She died; two warriors contended for her last night; in the tussle she was killed.' I wished to lie down and die, but the chief raised me on his horse, and we arrived on the count's domain--"

"Dost thou hear, bishop?" broke in Ronan. "Dost thou hear, renegade Gaul? It is thy allies, the Franks, who in this as well as in the other provinces, put old men and babes to death as useless mouths, and carry away the men and women of our race to restock the lands of Gaul which the kings have parceled out among their warriors after plundering us of our patrimony. It is thy allies, thy friends, thy brothers in Christ and in G.o.d who commit these execrable deeds. And yet thou orderest these poor people, under the penalty of h.e.l.l, to obey those plunderers, those thieves, those ravishers, those murderers, who violate and kill mothers under the very eyes of their daughters! Didst thou hear that story, Gallic bishop?"

"The Franks respect the property of the Church and the servants of the Lord--while you, accursed pack, you dare to lift impious hands against both the property and the priests of the Church!"

"Proceed," said Ronan to Odille.

"We arrived at the burg. The count had me taken to his chamber. He threw himself upon me; I tried to resist; he struck me in the face with his fist; my face was bathed in blood; pain and fright rendered me senseless, and the seigneur count violated me. I was afterwards locked up with other female slaves in the apartment of his wife G.o.degisele; a very gentle woman for so wicked a man. To-night, one of the leudes came for me and brought me hither on his horse. He said to me that I was to be the bishop's slave."

"And does that frighten you, poor child, to be a slave of the seigneur bishop?"

"My mother and relatives were killed; I am a slave and disgraced besides. I tried to strangle myself with my hair; but I was afraid--and yet I wish I could die."

"And she is only fourteen, bishop! Didst thou hear?"

"Sit down on the steps of the altar, little Odille. Here you have only friends; you are still young, do not despair."

The child contemplated the Vagre with wondering eyes; he spoke to her in a gentle voice. She stepped towards the altar and sat down; she looked at Ronan only; she listened only to his words.

"O! Master of the Hounds! Master of the Hounds!" cried one of the l.u.s.ty Vagres, who stood near one of the small doors of the chapel opening into the garden. "Whither are you bound with the bishopess on your arm? Would she not like to come and see her darling husband, the holy Bishop Cautin, before we hang him?"