"Father, we were about to strip off her clothes and tie her to the whipping-post. But she fought us so hard that she slipped away from us."
"Oh, Father!" cried Septimine in a voice suffocated with sobs and raising her suppliant hands to the abbot; "order me killed, but spare me the disgrace!"
"Charles," said Father Clement, "this slave girl sought to help the young prince to escape!... Drag her away!" he added to the slaves at the door; "Have her well whipped!"
The slaves took a step forward, but Berthoald held them back with a menacing gesture. Approaching Septimine he took her hand and said: "Fear not, poor child; Charles the chief of the Franks will not allow you to be punished."
The young woman, not yet daring to rise, turned her charming face towards Berthoald, and remained no less struck by the generosity of the young man than by his comely looks. Their eyes met. Berthoald felt a profound emotion, while Charles said to Septimine: "Come, I pardon you; but why the devil, my little girl, did you want that royal urchin to run away?"
"Oh, seigneur, the child is so unhappy! My father and mother, the same as myself, felt pity for him.... That is all our crime, seigneur.... I swear by the salvation of my soul;" and sobs again choked her voice.
Again joining her hands, she could only utter the words: "Mercy; mercy for my father and mother! Have pity upon us, n.o.ble seigneur!"
"You are weeping fit to choke yourself," said Charles, touched, despite his roughness, at the sight of such youth, anguish and beauty: "I forbid that your father and mother be punished."
"Seigneur ... they want to sell me and to separate me from my parents.... Have pity upon us!"
"What about that, monk?" asked Charles, while Berthoald, who felt his sorrow, admiration and pity increase by the second, could not take his eyes from the charming maid.
"Seigneur," answered Father Clement, "I gave orders that, after being severely whipped, the three slaves, father, mother and daughter, be sold and taken far away from the convent. One of those slave-dealers who travel through the country came this morning to offer me two carpenters and a smith that we stand in need of. I offered him the young girl in exchange together with her father and mother. But Mordecai refused the exchange."
"Mordecai!" involuntarily exclaimed Berthoald, whose face, suddenly turning pale, now expressed as much fear as anxiety. "That Jew!"
"What the devil is the matter with you?" said Charles to the young man.
"You look as white as your cloak."
Berthoald sought to control his emotions, dropped his eyes and answered in a quivering voice: "The horror that these accursed Jews inspire me with is such ... that I can not see them, or even hear their names mentioned, without shuddering, despite myself." Saying this, Berthoald quickly took his casque from the table and put it on his head, pushing it down as far as he could so that the visor might conceal his face.
"I can understand your horror for the Jews," replied Charles; "I share your aversion for that race. Proceed, monk."
"Mordecai consented to take the girl, for whom he has a place; but he does not want either the father or the mother. I, accordingly, sold him the girl, reserving the right of having her punished before delivery to him. I shall sell her parents to some other slave-dealer."
"Seigneur!" cried Septimine breaking out into a fresh flood of tears, "slavery is a cruel condition, but it seems less hard when borne in the company of those whom we love--"
"The bargain is closed," said the abbot. "Mordecai paid me earnest money; he has my word; he is waiting for the girl."
When Berthoald heard that the Jew was in the convent he trembled anew, retreated into a niche in the wall, and threw the cape of his long Arabian cloak over his casque so as to conceal his face. He then addressed the Frankish chief in a hurried voice like a man in fear of some imminent danger and anxious to leave the place:
"Charles, before I bid you good-bye, perhaps for a long time, cap the climax of your generosity towards me. Give the father and mother of this child their freedom, and buy her back from the Jew to prevent her being separated from her parents. Guilty though she was, it was only pity that led her astray. You are about to place vigilant soldiers in this place.
The little prince"s escape will not need to be feared."
Hearing the tender words of Berthoald, Septimine raised her face to him, full with ineffable grat.i.tude.
"Rest a.s.sured, Berthoald," said Charles; "and you, my girl, rise; this abbey, where I wish to establish my warriors, shall have three slaves less. I can refuse nothing to this valiant officer."
"Take this, my child," said the young man putting several Arabian gold pieces into the hand of Septimine. "This is to help you, your father and mother to live. May you be happy! Bless the generosity of Charles Martel; and remember me occasionally."
With an unconscious movement that absolutely controlled her will, Septimine took the hand that Berthoald reached out to her, and without taking the gold pieces that he tendered and that rolled down over the floor, she kissed the young man"s hand with such pa.s.sionate thankfulness, that his own eyes were moistened with tears. Charles Martel noticed the circ.u.mstance, and pointing at the young folks, cried with the boisterous laugh peculiar to himself:
"Upon the word of Martel, I believe he weeps!"
Berthoald pulled the cape of his cloak further down over his face, leaving it now almost wholly covered.
"You are right, my brave fellow, to lower your cape and conceal your tears."
"I shall not long treat you to the spectacle of my weakness, Charles; allow me to depart immediately with my men for the abbey of Meriadek."
"Go, my good companion in arms. I excuse your impatience. Be vigilant!
Keep your men in daily exercise; let them be ever ready to answer my first call. I may have to use them against the accursed Bretons who have withstood our arms since the days of Clovis. You are the count of the county of Nantes, close to the frontiers of that bedeviled Armorica.
Your loyal sword may yet have occasion to render me such service that in the end it may yet be I who will be your debtor. May we soon meet again!
A happy trip and a fat abbey are my best wishes to you."
Thanks to the cape that almost wholly veiled Berthoald"s face, he was able to conceal from Charles the cruel agony that he became a prey to the moment he heard Charles say that some day he might receive orders to invade the country of the Bretons that had so far remained indomitable.
He bent a knee before the chief of the Franks and left the refectory in such a state of wild and complex anxiety that he did not even have a parting look for Septimine, who remained upon her knees amidst the Saracen gold pieces that lay strewn around her.
The young officer crossed the courtyard of the abbey to reach his horse, when, turning the corner of a wall, he found himself face to face with a little grey-bearded man. It was the Jew Mordecai. Berthoald shivered and walked quickly by; but although his face was hidden under the cape of his cloak, his eyes encountered the piercing ones of the Jew, who smiled sardonically while the young chief walked rapidly away.
The Jew had recognized Berthoald.
PART II.
THE ABBEY OF MERIADEK
CHAPTER I.
ELOI THE GOLDSMITH.
A gold and silversmith"s shop is a sight agreeable to the eye of the artisan who, freeman or slave, has grown old at the beautiful art made ill.u.s.trious by Eloi, the most celebrated of all Gallic goldsmiths. The eye rests with pleasure upon the burning furnace, upon the crucible where the metal boils, upon the anvil that seems to be of silver veined with gold--so much gold and silver has been beaten on it. The work-bench, equipped with its files, its hammers, its chip-axes, its burins, its bloodstone and agate polishing stones is no less pleasing to the eye. Then there are also the earthen molds into which the metal is poured, and here and there upon little tables some models taken from the debris of antique art that have been found among the ruins of Roman Gaul. There is nothing from the grinding of the files to the panting breath of the bellows, that is not like sweet music to the ear of the artisan grown old at the trade. Such is the pa.s.sion of this art that the slave at times forgets his bondage, and has no thought but for the marvels that he fashions for his master.
Like other rich convents of Gaul, the abbey of Meriadek had its little gold and silver shop. An old man, almost ninety-six years of age, was overseeing the work of four young apprentices, slaves like himself, all busy in a vaulted ground floor room, lighted by an arched window, that was furnished with iron bars and that opened upon a moat full of water, the convent having been built upon a sort of peninsula almost wholly surrounded by deep ponds. The forge was placed against one of the walls, into the thick body of which a kind of vault was dug that led below by several steps. It contained the supply of charcoal required for the work. The old goldsmith, whose face and hands were blackened by the smoke of the forge, wore a smock-frock half hidden by a large leathern ap.r.o.n, and was engaged in chiseling with great professional delight a little silver abbatial crosier that he held on his knees.
"Father Bonaik," said one of the young slaves to the old man, "this is the eighth day that our comrade Eleuthere has not come at all to the workshop ... where can he be?"
"G.o.d knows, my boys ... but let us talk of something else."
"I am half of your opinion, old father; on the matter of Eleuthere I have as strong a desire to speak as to hold my tongue. I have discovered a secret. It burns my tongue. And I fear it will be cut off if I talk."
"Come, my lad," replied the old man, chiseling away at his work, "keep your secret. That"s the most prudent thing you can do."
But more inquisitive than the old man, the other young apprentices insisted so much with their comrade that, overcome by their importunities, he told them: "Day before yesterday--it was the sixth day since the disappearance of Eleuthere--I took, by order of Father Bonaik, a silver bowl to the abbey. The attendant at the turning-box told me to wait while she went inside to inquire whether there were any articles of silver that needed mending. Left alone during her absence, I had the curiosity to step upon a stool so as to look out of a high window that opened upon the garden of the monastery. And what did I see? Or, rather, what is it that I thought I saw? Because there are resemblances that are so striking ... so extraordinary--"
"Well, what did you see in the garden?"