by Eugène Sue
“Would you, perchance, want to prevent me?”
“On the contrary, Sir; I have come in the name of my seigneur to offer you the advice of my old experience in order to help you to collect ransom from these villeins. Jacques Bonhomme is a wily customer; he has hiding places where he keeps his coin under shelter, and even provisions and cattle.”
“Chaplain,” the Captain broke in upon the bailiff, “we shall have to cut the ears of this fellow who comes here to mock us. Draw your cutlass and give him absolution for his sins.”
“Sir, listen to me, and you will be convinced that I am not joking!” cried the bailiff. “Are you the son of the Duke of Norfolk?”
“A bastard son by my mother’s virtue. But seeing she bestowed upon me a good fist, good eyes and good teeth I hold her quits. I remain noble from one side.”
“The Duke your father knows that you hold the field in this region, and he is charmed with your prowesses. He wrote so to my master.”
“A short time ago, on the occasion of one of my archers’ return to Guyenne, I wrote to my father: ‘My lord, in your life you gave me nothing but a kick with your left foot which I still feel; but I am none the less your affectionate bastard who is doing havoc in Gaul and who signs himself — Captain Griffith.’”
“Sir,” said the bailiff handing a letter to the Captain, “here is the answer of the noble Duke, your father.”
Greatly astonished, Captain Griffith broke the seal on the parchment and read: “One of the poltroon French knights whom I took prisoner at the battle of Poitiers will deliver this letter to you and also six thousand florins for his ransom. You are a fine scamp. Persevere in your exploits — Norfolk.”
“What a father!” exclaimed the Chaplain raising his hands to heaven. “What a son!”
“Six thousand florins!” cried Captain Griffith. “Well! The good man must have remembered my worthy mother”; and addressing the bailiff he asked: “Where are the six thousand florins?”
“In the purses of the vassals of my seigneur, the Sire of Nointel, who was taken prisoner at the battle of Poitiers by the noble Duke of Norfolk. But, oh! My master is ruined by the costs of war and not a florin in the castle. But he gave his word as a Christian and a knight to pay his ransom to your father or to you, Sir. He will keep his word. It is an established custom that the vassals must ransom their seigneurs when taken prisoner. I therefore come, Sir Captain, to offer to you, by order of my master what little service I can render to you to the end of aiding you in collecting the sum, a very difficult thing to do without our aid. If you want a proof, all you have to do is to follow me not far from here, and you will see something that will greatly astonish you.”
Captain Griffith, whose curiosity was now pricked, started his horse at the pace of the bailiff’s, and resuming its march the troop descended the flank of the hill at whose foot lay the straggling village of Cramoisy, consisting of about three hundred cottages and houses. The silence of the tomb reigned in these homes. They were deserted, and the open doors showed their interiors to be empty and bare. Stupefied, Captain Griffith reined in his horse and said to the bailiff:
“By the devil! Where are the inhabitants of these shanties?”
“The other villages of this seigniory are as deserted as this one. You will find there, Sir, neither women, nor men, nor children, nor cattle,” answered the bailiff. “There are left, as you see, only the four walls of the houses. You will, therefore, find it difficult to collect here even the smallest fraction of your six thousand florins. Jacques Bonhomme is a sly fox; he had wind of your coming and has run into the earth to escape you. But, to a sly fox a sly limehound. I know the burrow of Jacques Bonhomme. Follow me, Sir.”
“Where to? Whither do you lead us?”
“Only one league from here.... But we shall have to descend from our horses at the outskirts of the forest. You can leave there the gross of your troop. A dozen of your archers will be enough for the job I have in mind. The risk is slight.”
“Why would you have me descend from horseback, and leave behind the bulk of my troop?”
“It will, in the first place, be impossible for us to ride on horseback over the quagmires, jungles and bogs that we shall have to cross in order to arrive at the hiding place of Jacques Bonhomme. In the second place, the fox has a sharp ear. The noise made by a large troop would give him the alarm.”
“Captain,” suggested the Chaplain, “suppose this scamp were but leading us into an ambuscade?”
“Chaplain, never did Griffith recoil before danger,” was the Captain’s answer; “moreover, if this bailiff with a marten’s snout should deceive us, let him be forewarned. At the first suspicion of treachery we shall promptly hack him to pieces.”
“That’s right,” returned the Chaplain. “Let’s march! His skin answers for our lives.”
“March!” ordered Captain Griffith, and guided by the bailiff, who had been rejoined by his men, the troop left the village of Cramoisy and wended its way towards a forest, the skirt of which drew its length along the horizon.
CHAPTER II.
THE FOX’S BURROW.
ABOUT TWO LEAGUES from the village of Cramoisy, and in the thickest of the seigniorial forest of Nointel, is a vast subterranean grotto, cut into the chalky rock that offers little resistance to the pick and the mattock. The cavern dates from the far-back troubled days when the Norman pirates were in the habit of rowing up the Somme, the Seine and the Oise and raiding the surrounding lands. Such of the serfs whose dire misery did not reach the pitch of constraining them to join the Normans, and who sought to escape the flood of pillage and massacre, had dug the underground place of refuge. Carrying thither their little havings, and even cattle, they remained hidden until the pirates left the country. Similar places were in later years contrived in almost all parts of Gaul by the vassals of the nobility for the purpose of escaping the brigandage of the English, of the robber bands and of the bands of mercenaries who devastated the provinces, finally also to escape the extortions of the seigneurs that now became intolerable, seeing that Jacques Bonhomme was forced to pay the ransom of their masters who had been taken prisoners at the battle of Poitiers. In other regions of Gaul the peasants withdrew with their families upon rafts which they anchored midstreams of rivers, and which frequently were either submerged or carried away by the floods to be finally swamped with the wretched mass of humanity that they bore. Never before had desolation and panic reached such a pitch in the unfortunate country; the huts were almost all abandoned, the fields uncultivated and a famine was apprehended similar to that which desolated Gaul in the year 1000.
The underground retreat whither the inhabitants of Cramoisy and several other villages of the seigniory of Nointel took refuge consists of a long vault, at the extremity and to the right and left of which are several other galleries in which cattle, goats and sheep are crowded. A well, used for a drinking trough, is dug in the center of the principal gallery. Above, an opening, partially masked with stones and underbrush, admits some light and air to the dark and icy asylum that oozes with the moisture of the earth. There, more than a thousand people crowded together — men, women and children who fled from their homes. The milk of the cattle, a few handfuls of rye or wheat pounded between two stones entertain rather than appease the tortures of hunger. A steaming, suffocating and nauseous heat, produced by the agglomeration of people and cattle, pervades the gloomy place. Now plaintive wails are heard, then the outbursts of violent quarrels, such as are certain to break out among semi-savages whom suffering exasperates. Wan and half naked children, who, however, preserve the carelessness of their age, played at this moment at the edge of the well which just happened to be lighted by a ray of sunlight that filtered through the rocks and underbrush which concealed the only air-hole of the vault. That sun ray also lighted a group of three persons, huddled together in a dug-out near the well. The three persons were Aveline, Alison and Mazurec.
When the little village of Nointel was pillaged b
y the troupe of Captain Griffith, the handsome tavern-keeper succeeded in saving what moneys she had and fled to Cramoisy where she joined Aveline. Learning there that the English were still ravaging the neighborhood, she joined the peasants in their flight to the underground retreat.
Aveline, now far advanced in pregnancy, expected every day to be delivered of the child of her disgrace and the fruit of the iniquity perpetrated upon her by her seigneur. Barely covered in a few rags, she lay on the cold and bare earth. Ever sympathetic, Alison held upon her knees the languishing and pale head of the young girl, whose thinness had now become shocking. Her hollow cheeks imparted monstrous size to her eyes, which she attached beseechingly upon Mazurec, engaged at the moment in sharpening upon a stone the teeth of a pitch-fork while muttering to himself: “William is long in returning from Paris; we are waiting for him so as to start the massacre ... sacred reprisals!”
Thus muttering to himself, Mazurec continued sharpening his fork. He had become a hideous sight. Having lost his right eye since the judicial combat with the knight of Chaumontel, the now hollow, quivering and half closed eyelids on that side of his face exposed a blood-clotted cavity. His crushed nose is a mass of scars, purplish like his torn-up upper lip which exposes his broken teeth. His long matted hair falls upon the ragged goat-skin jacket which he wears and from which protrude his nervy, but now haggard arms. Attaching upon her husband a beseeching look, Aveline said to him in a weak and sad voice: “Mazurec, if I give birth to a child before dying ... promise me not to kill it!... Answer me ... I beseech you in God’s name.... Have mercy on the innocent creature.”
“I promise nothing,” answered the vassal in a hollow voice without stopping from his work; “we shall see what’s to be done.”
“He will kill the innocent child, Dame Alison!” cried Aveline weeping and hiding her head.
“Keep still!” replied Mazurec with the mien of a tiger that rendered his face still more frightful; “Keep still, or I may believe you are proud of having a child of your seigneur.”
Aveline answered with a hysterical sob, while Alison cried indignantly: “Wretch, you will yet be the cause of your wife’s death!”
“I had as lief she was dead as alive ... as to the child she now carries ... he shall not live ... I shall smother the noble whelp.”
“Well, then, why don’t you kill both mother and child. That would be less cruel than to kill Aveline by little and little as you are doing!” And looking at Mazurec with eyes of angry reproach, Alison added: “Oh, Mazurec the Lambkin, the unfortunate girl whose death you now wish, once made your heart bound with joy when you passed the door at which she used to spin!”
At these words which recalled to Mazurec the spring-tide of his love, days that were sweet even to the wretched serf, the young man broke down in tears, threw the fork aside, and closely embracing his wife, whose pale face he covered with kisses, he said: “Pardon me, my poor Aveline!... Oh, my blood has turned to gall ... I have suffered so much.... I still suffer so much.... Pardon me, my dear wife!”
Mazurec was uttering these words when suddenly the species of air-hole above the well was almost wholly obstructed with large stones that were being rolled about by the men of the bailiff of Nointel, and the bailiff himself, applying his mouth as closely as he could to the little opening that was left, shouted down into the cavity: “All of you, vassals of the parish of Cramoisy and neighboring villages, you are taxed, as your quota of the ransom of our very noble, very high, very dear and very powerful seigneur, the sum of one thousand florins; the other parishes of the seigniory shall be similarly taxed. Rummage around your purses quickly so that you meet the sum demanded. You have hiding places where you bury your valuables. Choose quickly between death and your money. If within the time it shall take me to utter a ‘pater’ and an ‘ave,’ one of you does not come out with the money, you will all be smoked to death like so many foxes in their burrow, after which the corpses will be rifled.”
The bailiff stopped; the air-hole was tightly closed with clods of earth; and the cavern was plunged into utter darkness.
“Oh, my God! What’s going to happen? Leave me not Mazurec,” cried Aveline in a tremor and throwing her arms around her husband who jumped up the better to hear the announcement made by the bailiff, and which, repeated from mouth to mouth by the vassals, left them steeped in gloomy silence. The unhappy serfs clung all the more tightly to their little coin, their last resource, the only fruits left to them of their crushing labors and homicidal privations, seeing that they had succeeded in saving it from the rapacity of their seigneurs only by dint of untold privations and nameless devices, often struggling against the torture itself that was frequently inflicted upon them in the hope of wringing from them the disclosure of the hiding places where they kept their little treasure buried. The first shock being over, cries of indignation and revolt resounded in the cavern. The noise increased more and more.
“We leave our homes to live in holes like wild beasts, and we are hunted down even here!”
“To be pillaged by the English, and be forced besides to pay for the ransom of our seigneurs!”
“No! No! Let them choke us with smoke, let them burn us, let them massacre us.... They shall get not one denier from us!”
“We shall throw our few remaining sous into the well, sooner than deliver them to our butcher!”
It did not take the bailiff long to say his “pater” and “ave.” Seeing none of the serfs coming out of the cavern to bring him the sum demanded, he ordered the burrow of Jacques Bonhomme to be smoked. The work was easily done. The cavern was entered by a narrow and steep passage cut into the rock. The Englishmen of Captain Griffith and the retinue brought by the bailiff heaped up at the mouth of the entrance a mass of dry leaves and branches, set fire to the same, and with the aid of their long lances shoved on the brasier a heap of green branches the thick and acrid smoke of which soon filled the interior of the cavern, the only opening that could have allowed the smoke to escape having been tightly closed in advance.
Ghastly was the scene that ensued. Suffocated and blinded by the black and pungent smoke, the vassals were a prey to distracting pain. The cattle, submitted to the identical trial, became furious, broke their ropes and rolled in the darkness amid the crowd whom they trampled under foot or gored with their horns. The wails of women and children, the imprecations of men, the lowing of the cattle made an infernal concert. Several of the serfs succeeded in groping their way to the well and threw themselves in to escape prolonged torture; others threw themselves headlong towards the mouth of the cavern, but smothered by the thick smoke and the flames that entered the passage and that now converted the entrance into a furnace, dropped down into the middle of the flames and were consumed; others again threw themselves down flat upon the ground, scratched the earth with their nails and, burying their faces in the earth imagined in their wild delirium they could thus take breath; lastly not a few were the mothers who, wishing to spare their children a long agony, strangled them quickly to death.
Mazurec held Aveline tightly in his arms while he shuddered at the thought of the horrible death that awaited her. The tender sentiments of their happier days took possession of his heart and mind and he racked his brain for a means of escape. It was in vain. Long worn out by misery and sorrow, the young woman was not equal to so rude an additional strain. In her death agony she fastened her lips to Mazurec’s as though, wishing to escape suffocation, she strove to inhale her husband’s breath.
By degrees her hold on him was relaxed, with one convulsive effort she embraced her husband and then her arms dropped by her side.
“Dead!” shrieked the serf; “dead and unavenged, my dearly beloved Aveline!”
“You can still revenge her and save us both and many more of these unfortunates,” came panting from Alison, who still preserved her senses and energy. “Let us hasten!” continued the tavern-keeper with an ever more oppressed voice. “Let us endeavor to get out of here; ... I shall give
the bailiff three hundred florins that I have sewn in my clothes; ... he will allow us to escape; ... if he does not, kill him; ... take your pitch-fork; ... it lies there.... Let’s flee!...”
Mazurec emitted a cry of savage joy. The imminence of danger and the hope of revenge increased his strength tenfold. He seized the fork with his right hand, with his left he dragged Alison after him, and guided by the ruddy glow at the mouth of the cavern, the vassal plied his fork so as to clear a passage through the crowd that ran about delirious. Some he threw down, others he walked over. Finally he reached the approaches of the burning pile near which a number of corpses lay strewn. Dropping the hand of Alison and hitting upon a plan that had occurred to none during the general panic, Mazurec thrust his pitch-fork into the midst of the burning pile, scattered it, threw some of it behind him, opened a passage to himself, cleared the space which was covered with burning embers, and after a few bounds found himself at the issue of the cavern. For a moment Mazurec stood still inhaling the free air; his strength returned speedily; and making one last effort he rushed out. At the unexpected sight of Mazurec, foaming at the mouth with rage and brandishing his fork, both the Englishmen and the bailiff’s men drew back in terror. Mazurec lost no time; he rushed upon the bailiff, buried the fork in the bowels of his seigneur’s menial, threw him down, and, maddened with rage, trampled him under foot while he again and again thrust his pitch-fork into the bailiff’s breast, his face and every part of his body that he could reach, uttering at every thrust: “This is for your having dragged Aveline to your master’s bed!... This is for your having now smothered Aveline to death!”
At the sight of the terrific spectacle Captain Griffith broke out in a loud guffaw saying: “I take this expert poker under my protection. I admire his dexterity in the use of his pitch-fork!” In the midst of these exclamations Captain Griffith suddenly remained silent, then clapping his hands he proceeded in new ecstacy: “By the devil! Here are my two beautiful black eyes and plump ankles! Oh, this time you will not escape me, my belle! Mine be your treasures!”