by Eugène Sue
“Seigneur count, I am speaking to the point because I am in a hurry to embrace my wife and daughter. It is now about twenty-seven years ago, in the year 885, when the Northmans, under the lead of Hastain, to-day master and Seigneur of the country of Chartres, invaded the country and laid siege to Paris for the fifth or sixth time.”
“On that occasion, at least, and it was the only time, the plebs of Paris, under the command of Eudes, my brother, offered a brave resistance, since when the pirates have no longer ravaged the city. It will be so again now. I swear it to God, will ye, nill ye, villeins, you shall be marched to the ramparts to give battle!”
“Until that year of which you speak, Paris had never offered any resistance to the pirates. The reason was simple. The people, the guilds and the artisans did not care to undertake the defence—”
“Yes, yes!” broke in Rothbert with concentrated rage “That plebs allowed the churches, the abbeys and the castles to be pillaged and set on fire!”
“The Northmans only plunder the rich. They surely do not care to load their barks with our rags, our rough furniture and our sand-stone pots when they can load them to overflowing with vases of gold and silver and all manner of costly things with which the castles, the churches and the abbeys are gorged. They attack the seigneurs. Let the seigneurs defend themselves!”
“By the death of Christ! This old man has gone crazy!” cried Rothbert beyond himself with rage and yet not daring fully to give a loose to his pent-up anger. “How could we defend ourselves without the aid of the people! Could I repel thirty thousand Northmans with the two thousand soldiers that I keep in my duchy of France?”
“Oh, I know it! You can do nothing without the people. Your brother, Count Eudes, knew it also. At the approach of the pirates he sought to propitiate the people, and convoked the deans of the guilds at his little castle of Paris. My father, the then dean of the skippers, said to your brother: ‘You, kings, seigneurs and clergymen, need us to protect your goods from the pillage of the Northmans. Well, then, let us strike a bargain. Lighten our taxes, render our lives less hard, and we shall defend your riches.’ ‘Agreed!’ answered Count Eudes, and certain franchises and other measures of relief for the plebs of the city were agreed on. On the morrow that good plebs rushed to the ramparts and fought with intrepidity. Many of them were killed, many more were wounded. My father and myself were among the latter. The Northmans were repelled. But the danger being over, the King, the seigneurs and the dignitaries of the Church forgot their promise.”
While Eidiol spoke the Count of Paris controlled his indignation with difficulty; finally he broke forth pale with rage: “Do you mean that your plebs will refuse to defend the city?”
“I think so. We, the skippers, will take on board our vessels our own families and those of our friends who are willing to follow us. We shall sail out of the waters of Paris on one side while the Northmans enter by the other, and we shall calmly ascend the Seine towards the Marne, leaving you, seigneurs and abbots, to arrange matters with the Northmans the best way you may know how.”
“Listen to him! The infamous poltroon! Is your vile slave’s heart moved neither with anger nor shame at the bare idea of the disgrace of seeing the foreigners, the Northmans, in Paris!”
At these insulting words a slight flush suffused Eidiol’s face, a spark of lightning glistened in his eyes. But the self-possessed old man controlled himself and answered:
“Count, my grandfather read in the old parchments of our family that a small colony of men of my race, now more than three centuries ago, lived free and happy in a corner of Burgundy when the Arabs invaded and ravaged Gaul—”
“And that colony of cravens,” broke in the count, “trembling before the Arabs, like you now before the Northmans, of course left the pagans to ravage, pillage and burn down the country!”
“Count,” proceeded the old skipper proudly, “the people of that colony were killed to the last man because they fought in defence of their rights, their families, their soil and their liberty. But, seeing that that handful of brave men were, with the single exception of the indomitable Bretons, the only free men in all Gaul, the Arabs were able to ravage the other provinces and to settle down in Languedoc. In this century the same thing will happen with the Northmans. The population — a horde of slaves on the field, a mass of wretched beings in the towns — is indifferent to the ills that smite you — you rich seigneurs and prelates. And now, adieu. I am in a hurry to return to Paris and embrace my wife and daughter.”
While Eidiol was uttering these last sentences, the count issued some orders in a low voice to one of his officers, who thereupon hurriedly left the apartment. The old man moved towards the door, but Rothbert, motioning his men to bar the passage, cried in a menacing tone:
“You shall not go to introduce disturbance and revolt in my city of Paris!” And addressing the abbot: “Have you a prison in the place?”
“We have cells, and quite strong, too, in which to keep the impious criminals who dare resist our will.”
“Let one of your clerks show the way to my men, who will lock this insolent skipper in one of these cells of the abbey.”
Eidiol was unable to suppress a first impulse of astonishment and sorrow.
“My son,” said he, “has remained on board of my vessel; allow me to see him and apprise him of what has happened to me, that he may inform my wife and daughter. They will otherwise feel uneasy at my absence.”
“Your wishes,” answered Rothbert with a cruel smile, “shall be satisfied. I have sent to fetch the other skippers from your vessel.”
“Treason!” cried Eidiol. “They will come confident that no harm is meant, and a prison cell awaits them!”
“You have said it,” replied the Count of Paris, and, pointing his finger at Eidiol, he ordered his officers: “To prison with him!”
“My dear wife, my sweet daughter! How uneasy will you not feel when to-morrow you see neither my son nor myself coming back home,” murmured the old man sadly, and, without offering any resistance, he followed the officer who took him in charge and conducted him to the subterranean cells of the abbey.
CHAPTER VI.
SISTER AGNES.
SHORTLY AFTER THE count’s departure from the abbey, the reinforcement of a hundred soldiers promised by him arrived at the place. Their captain spent the night in preparing the fortifications for the defence. Under the physical lash of their foreman, above all intimidated by the fear of the fiery furnace of hell, the serfs and villeins transported to the platform of the walls large stones, logs of wood and heavy beams, intended to serve as projectiles against the expected assailants. They were also made to carry heavy barrels of oil and pitch, which, boiled in large caldrons, were held ready to be poured over the heads of the enemy; besides a large number of bags full of chalk dust, whose contents, dropped upon the besiegers, would serve to blind them.
During the night and part of the morning the cattle of the abbey’s domain were driven within its walls. Thither also a large number of the abbey’s serfs and villeins congregated, summoned by the abbot to its defence. Many more, however, took to flight, determined to join the Northmans the moment they disembarked and to glean whatever they could in the wake of the invaders’ tracks.
Many “Franks”, as the free holders of little farms were styled, who lived in the environs of St. Denis, bundled up their most valuable havings and went for shelter behind the walls of the abbey. The court-yards and galleries of the cloister became by the hour more encumbered with a frightened crowd, whose baggage was piled up high hither and thither, while cattle of every description were huddled close together in the garden and on a spacious meadow that was enclosed within the fortifications.
Finally, the abbot himself, helped by his canons who were armed with spades and mattocks, was busily engaged in the work of hastily burying under the ground of a little sequestered court all the rich paraphernalia of the church — vases, reliquaries, chalices, monstrances, statues, crosses
, candelabra, chalice-covers, and other holy utensils wrought in silver or solid gold, and enriched with costly ornaments, — all proceeding from the toil and taxes of the serfs and villeins. A small group of priests were upon their knees in the basilica, imploring, amid moans, the assistance of heaven and invoking all manner of maledictions upon the heads of the Northmans.
The larger part of the day had been spent in continual frights. The men at the lookout, who kept watch on the ramparts above the gate, saw it frequently open in order to give passage to belated serfs and herds of cattle, or to wagons filled with the fodder needed for feeding the large number of horses and other animals that had been crowded within the walls. Two of these conveyances, loaded with hay, and each drawn by a double yoke of oxen, were conducted by a man of sinister face and barely dressed in rags. The man was well known in the abbey. So soon as he hove in sight, a monk of large paunch, who was placed at the wicket of the gate, cried:
“Blessings upon you and your load! We have so many cattle within that we have been in fear of want of provender for them. Have you any tidings of those pagan Northmans? Have their vessels been seen on the Seine? Are they near or still far away?”
“They are said to be drawing nearer. But thanks to God, the abbey is impregnable. Oh! A curse upon these Northmans!” answered the serf, whose name was Savinien. As the man spoke, a strange smile flitted over his careworn countenance; he cast a sly side-smile upon the load of hay that was heaped up high on the wagons and added: “I have driven my oxen so fast, in order to place myself at the order of our holy abbot, that, I fear, the poor brutes are foundered. — See how heavy they breathe!”
“They will not have to blow long. They will be speedily killed to feed the large number of noble Franks who have fled hither for refuge,” replied the monk.
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 controlle
d 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.