Heroines of the French Epic
Page 50
So Bertha – who was certain she would have lost her head –
Did what he said: still shaking, she spun around and fled.
With thanks to God she vanished inside the forest’s depths
And took her leave of Tybert , without his leave, or let!
On seeing this, the youngster was more than sorely vexed:
‘My lords!” he cried in fury, “That’s something you’ll regret!
When we return to Paris I’ll see you hang, I pledge!”
THE DAY WAS COLD and wet, with icy rain and steady,
640 As through the closest gap young Bertha fled in terror
Till she was out of sight of Tybert, or of any!
“My lords,” the sergeant cried, “I think that God in Heaven
Will verify our stand! We’ve made a foolish error
In travelling these miles for such a vile intention!
That maiden seems to me of noble birth and temper.
‘Godspeed’ to her I say, and may the Lord protect her!
This wilderness is full of savage bears and leopards,
Who’ll make of her their prey if there is none to help her.
We too have been as wolves instead of sturdy shepherds –
650 Which burns my honest heart and makes my conscience heavy.”
At this they mounted horse, the four of them, and left there.
AMONG THE THORNY THICKETS young Bertha fled away.
May God above protect her, in His most holy name,
For you and I must leave her to wander on afraid
Until it’s time to find her and tell of her again:
We’re going with the soldiers, who turned the way they came!
“Companions,” said Mōrant, “I think it best we slay
A pig and take its heart back to represent the maid’s,
For old Margiste to witness, as surely she will crave.
660 You know that we have promised to show the haughty dame
A heart, as proof of slaughter, and, doing this, we may
Acquit us of our duty and free ourselves of blame.
And as for you, young master, in good St Simon’s name,
I swear, if you don’t like it, it’s your heart we’ll exchange!”
“My lords,” responded Tybert “what other course remains?
Since Bertha has escaped us, let’s do the best we may.
I fear much more than you do, I’m not afraid to say,
The outcome of this journey, whichever course we take!”
The word of each was given, and never with such haste,
670 To do as Mōrant counselled and as you’ve heard me state.
I’ll not prolong the matter – suffice it now to say
They slew a pig near Paris, then passed the city gates.
Margiste was very happy to hear her nephew say:
“My dearest aunt, we bring you the token that you craved,
In proof that we’ve accomplished the task upon us laid.
In truth, here is the heart of the creature we have slain.”
The crone replied: “Companions, our gratitude is great!
There never was a daughter less worthy of the name!”
THE SOLDIERS went away; as soon as they were able
680 They hurried to their homes, dismounting, and dismaying.
Young Tybert stayed behind, then with the crone he hastened
To see the queen – I mean, the vixen who’d replaced her,
Who beamed with joy to see the boy employed to aid her!
“My lady,” said the youth, “enjoy your fortune’s favour!
Fair Bertha is no more – our naked swords have slain her.”
“The Lord be praised for that!” exclaimed Aliste the traitor.
“Good Tybert, you have earned my great appreciation.”
Those very words she said, with merry heart and gaily
To Tybert for the part he’d played, and still was playing.
690 There truly never was so wicked a betrayal
Since Judas sold for coin the life of Christ our Saviour!
May God above, Who bore the Cross’s bane to save us,
Ensure these villains too receive their proper wages!
King Pepin had received the Magyar delegation
Most richly, and with gifts as rich as the occasion.
So now, when all done, they went back full of praises
For Pepin to their lord and land, with salutations
From him and his new bride: God bring her to damnation,
I’ve had enough of her until we meet her later!
700 To Bertha I’ll return, for she remains forsaken
Among the forest’s depths, in fear and trepidation,
With every step she takes, beseeching God to aid her!
She doesn’t know her way, and every moment takes her
Still further from the spot where evil plot has placed her.
The Second Geste – Bertha abandoned
YOUNG BERTHA, IN the forest, wept bitterly and groaned
With fear to hear the hooting of owls and howling wolves.
The lightning was enormous, with heavy thunder-rolls,
The sleeting rain was constant, the gusty wind was cold –
A foul day for a lady abandoned and alone.
710 She softly called on Jesus, and all His saints of old:
“Almighty God in Heaven, I hold this to be so:
That You were born of Mary, and when Your star arose
It shone upon the Magi and led them by its glow,
As any hence who follow Your shining Light will know,
To witness God incarnate and worship at His throne:
King Jaspar came with incense, King Balthazar with gold,
King Melchior, the third one, with precious myrrh – and lo!
You took their humble tokens and gave them Heaven’s hope!
Dear Lord, as this is truly the truth I love and know,
720 Take my despair and give me Your help to bear this load!”
On saying this, she huddled inside her heavy coat
And, with her faith in Jesus, went on through wood and wold.
Ere long she saw before her a mighty valley’s slope,
And called again on Jesus, our staff for any road,
And on His Mother Mary, before she stepped below.
Her bosom filled with sorrow, her spirit stilled with woe,
She cried aloud: “How cruel a heart to me you’ve shown,
Margiste, to so betray me and break your solemn oath!
Alas for me, how wretched my royal life has grown –
730 How little I resemble the heir to any throne!
St Julian! Lord Jesus! Direct me where to go
To save my feeble body from savage beast or foe!
My faith in God is stalwart – I fear not for my soul!”
HOW CRUEL WAS that day for one so fair and noble.
No sumpter bore her trunk – she had no trunk or clothing,
No hall of vaulted dome, no home at all to go to.
Her heart was more adrift than Jonah in the ocean!
No lady was as fair, from there to Thessalōny
Or northern Wales – but now, her body’s strength was broken,
740 Her tender face was worn and pallid with emotion:
Of this you can be certain: her nimble step was slower.
Her muddy robe was wet, impeding more her progress.
She thirsted – and she found some water that was flowing:
But dark it was as beer, and soon her throat was choking.
FAIR BERTHA WANDERED onward in terror of her life.
It’s sur
ely little wonder her bosom heaved with fright:
She hurried on, bewildered, not knowing where to hide,
But always on the lookout for dangers, left and right,
Before her and behind her, until her body tired.
750 And every time she halted, most tenderly she cried
And fell in supplication upon the path she plied,
Or prostrate on the grasses, to offer prayer to Christ.
She kissed the ground beneath her, for pity, countless times,
And then, when she had risen, she filled the air with sighs.
She thought about her mother, Queen Blancheflor the wise:
“Ah madam,” she lamented, “if you could know the plight
That I am in this moment, your wits would turn awry!”
Then, with her hands together, she raised them to the sky:
“Dear God, Who is our witness, from where You dwell on High,
760 Protect me in this forest from all I must abide!
And may Your loving Mother, direct my steps to find
Some shelter for my body and comfort for my mind!”
At last, her limbs exhausted, she sat beneath a pine,
Invoking still St Mary and our Lord Jesus Christ,
And wringing still, in worry, her lovely hands of white.
FAIR BERTHA, GOOD and kind, within the wood abided.
She strove as best she could to cross the slope and climb it,
In great desire to reach the open fields beside it.
But many were the paths, and all so narrow-winding
770 She didn’t know at all if she had picked the wisest.
“A curse on you, Margiste!” she cried, “You wicked liar!
Why did you, with such speed and jealousy, consign me
To such a savage place, in secrecy and silence,
Where very soon, I’m sure, the woodland beasts will find me?
Your treachery has trumped my happiness entirely!
A curse on you, I say! A curse upon your slyness!
How anguished is my heart! How sad I am and frightened!
How terrible my plight! O God, in Heaven highest,
And Mary, blessed Maid, illuminate my blindness!”
780 QUEEN BLANCHEFLOR’S young daughter, that pearl of loveliness,
Was lost inside the forest, her face a mask of dread.
If noble Flor her father, a king of high prowess,
Had known of her misfortune, he would have lost his head!
Good Bertha had a sister, called Aalais, who had wed
A Saxon duke, a marquis and royal count who held
All Brandenburg, the townships and countryside as well –
And so she was related by marriage and descent
To emperors and princes and kings of noble geste:
Was she, who’d grown so lovely – the rose and lily blent –
790 To wither in the forest of criminal neglect?
She wept as she succumbed to the weight of her distress:
“Dear Jesus, shall I ever behold my friends again?
I have become a victim of fortune’s cruel jests:
Impoverished, abandoned, an object of contempt,
When I had thought my honour had risen to its crest,
To be the wife of Pepin, most powerful of men,
And led in state to Paris, surrounded by the best.
But now, I see it clearly: it seems that I was meant
To journey to the highest, then plummet to the depths!”
800 She raised her arms for pity, then crossed them on her breast.
BENEATH A FOREST-PINE fair Bertha sat and rested.
She wore a sleeveless coat above the shift she’d slept in,
And over that a cloak of Eastern make whose edging
And lining were of furs, both grey and white together.
She looked of noble birth, in visage and in vestment,
But they could not conceal a heart bereft and wretched.
The driving rain and wind had used her so ungently,
The hail and mud had soiled and made her clothes so heavy,
She stumbled in a swoon beneath a rocky crevice.
810 As soon as she awoke, she broke into lamenting.
Invoking St Denis, she called upon the Heavens:
“If Flor, my father, knew the wicked woe and peril
To which he let me go, I know he’d lose his senses!
His noble heart would mourn and, throbbing with a vengeance
To know me lost and lorn, a victim of deception,
He’d gallop dusk to dawn to find me and to fetch me!
But now I cannot see a way or means whatever
To let him know my fate and bring him to my rescue!
May God above, Who bore the Cross for our redemption,
820 And knows my love is pure and reverent, protect me
From the abusive claws and lust of lawless felons,
And every foaming jaw that roams this wood and weather!”
SHE SAT BENEATH a beech-tree, amid the wicked wold,
Beside a little river they used to call Minclo –
And now she had to cross it, by swimming through the flow:
“To You, my Lord and Saviour, I do commend my soul,
My body and my spirit, and all I am or own,
As Your devoted servant forever and in troth.”
She swam across, but hitting her foot against a stone,
830 She holed her shoe and suffered a cut to her right toe.
She bled as if a dagger had sliced her to the bone.
“Ah, woe is me!” she whimpered, “I’d cry for help, although
I fear the beasts around me would hear me and approach!
There’s little good awaits me whichever road I go,
And even in my mantle I’m dying from the cold.
Whatever fate awaits me, my faith in God is whole.
Ah, Pepin! Wife and husband should tread a common road,
But you are safe in Paris, and here I bleed alone!”
SHE LEANED UPON the ground, though hard it was and stony,
840 And she the gentlest child, the loveliest and noblest,
Most modest maid alive from Danube to the ocean!
I do not know who made that nook upon the knoll there,
But that was where she stopped: her tearful throat was choking:
She’d limped there like a horse whose fetlock had been broken.
The brambles, as she’d fled, had ripped her clothing open,
And, as she lay, she tried to tie it up or hold it.
Her features weren’t as soiled and spoiled as was her clothing:
Her face was still as white as chalk beneath the hoer,
As shining as a claw and blushing as a rose’s.
850 A trailing branch had struck her cheekbone and her shoulder
So painfully that now an ugly bruise had opened.
Young Bertha swooned with pain, her body weak and frozen,
But still her Faith was firm: she prayed with great emotion,
Though, fearing beasts might hear, she kept her voice well lowered –
She spoke because her woe would not remain unspoken:
“Ah, destiny!” she groaned, “Your grinning face is gloating,
As fortune spins her wheel to turn my fortunes over,
To fling me from the heights and bring me to the lowest!
A fish that swims the sea has more than I to hope for,
860 For it is free, while I’m as trapped in here and hopeless
As any finch or lark the hungry hawk approaches.
Some bear or lion near – I fear it every moment –
&nb
sp; Will seize me in its claws or teeth and tear me open.
Dear Jesus, as You know the truth of my devotion,
Allow Your Mother’s love to fill my breast so wholly
It keeps my heart afloat with hope until the moment
Her loving arms themselves in Heaven are enfolding
My soul – like many more from Satan’s clutches cloven!”
UPON THAT DAY the weather was horrible and harsh,
870 And Bertha wept, who bore it, and had for hours past,
In pain and awful anguish; but with her loyal heart
She bore it as a burden the will of God demands
Of those who’d make the journey on Paradise’s path.
“If only my good mother could know of what has passed,
And how she’d lost her daughter in forest-land of Mans!
How foolish or deceitful the counsel was that charged
Margiste with my well-being and Tybert as my guard!
May God allow these traitors, one day, to be unmasked
In everybody’s presence and punished at the last!
880 When at St Herbert’s abbey I crossed the Rhine for France,
I didn’t think my lodgings would be so very dark!”
IN FOREST-LAND of Mans young Bertha kept advancing,
As night fell on the wood and she withstood its harshness.
Her face and head were bare, or covered only partly,
And she was numbed with cold, for she had reached a pathway
Where only bushes stood against the blizzard’s blasting.
She sheltered where she could, as, with her strength departing,
She wiped her lovely face with lace upon her garment,
And called upon the souls of both those blessed martyrs
890 And saints who suffered so: St Catherine and St Barbara.
They suffered many trials till their appeals were answered
At Paradise’s door by God Himself thereafter.
“Let me accept with Grace the suffering I’m asked to,
This misery, this cold! But, oh, Eternal Father,
Who know my soul is strong, defend its mortal armour
From the attacking claws of beasts that seek to harm me,
And every other foe this woeful forest harbours!”
BE PATIENT WITH my story, I beg of all of you!
Its verses are well crafted and what they tell is true: