"Chrotechilde, I want my milk--my cake--I am hungry."
"Corbe," Sigebert whispered to him with his face bathed in tears and his lips palpitating; "brother--wake up. Alack, we are no longer in our palace at Chalon."
At these words, Corbe woke up completely, and answered with a sigh:
"I thought we were in our palace."
"We are not there any longer, brother; I am so sorry!"
"Why do you say that? Are we no longer the King"s sons?"
"We are poor King"s sons--we are here in prison. But grandmother, where is she? And where is our brother Childebert? Where can they be? Perhaps they also are prisoners."
"And whose fault is it? It is the fault of the army that betrayed us!"
cried little Corbe angrily. "I heard everybody say so around us--the troops fled without striking a blow. I heard them say that Duke Warnachaire prepared the treason! Oh, the scoundrel!"
"Not so loud, Corbe, not so loud!" cautioned Sigebert with a smothered voice. "You will wake up Merovee--poor little fellow! I wish I could sleep like him. I would not then be thinking."
"You are always weeping, Sigebert; tell me why?"
"Are we not now in the hands of our grandmother"s enemies?"
"Be not afraid; she will soon come with another army and set us free; she will kill Clotaire. Are you not hungry?"
"No! Oh, no! I am neither hungry nor thirsty."
"The sun has long been up; they will surely soon bring us something to eat. Grandmother was right; war is tiresome and uncomfortable, but only when one is not a prisoner. But how Merovee does sleep! Wake him up!"
"Oh, brother, let him sleep quietly; perhaps he also thinks, as you did, that he is in our palace at Chalon."
"So much the worse! We woke up--I do not want him to sleep any longer--why should he?"
"Corbe, you can not have a good heart."
"Sigebert! They are opening the door--they are bringing us something to eat."
Indeed, the door opened. Four personages stepped into the house. Two of them were clad in jackets of hides, and one of these carried a roll of rope. Clotaire II and Warnachaire accompanied the two men. The duke had his battle armor on, the King a long light blue silk robe bordered with ermine.
"Seigneur King," said Duke Warnachaire in a low voice, "will you not wait for the return of Constable Herpon?"
"Who can tell whether he will be back to-day?"
"You must remember that his horses are fresh; Brunhild"s are exhausted with the march. It is impossible that he should have failed to overtake the Queen at the foot of the Jura mountains, into which she will not dare to risk herself. The constable may be back with her from one moment to another."
"Warnachaire, I am in a hurry to be done with it; such a blow will be of little moment to Brunhild; why delay it to wait for her to witness?
It should be done quickly."
Saying this, the young King made a sign to the two men, who thereupon stepped towards the three children on the straw pallet. The sleep of childhood is so profound that little Merovee was not yet awakened by the noise. His two brothers, however, crouched back into the remotest corner of the pallet, stunned and frightened, especially at the sinister faces of the two men clad in hide jackets. The two cowering children held each other in a close embrace, trembling and without uttering a word. At a second sign from Clotaire II, one of the two men, he who carried the coil of rope, unwound it and stepped closer to the children, while his companion drew from his belt a long, straight and sharp knife, of the kind that is used by butchers; he slightly tested the freshly sharpened edge of the blade with the tip of his thumb, while Fredegonde"s son urged the executioners on with the impatient order:
"Move on, slaves; hurry up!"
The executioner made to the King a sign with his hand, as if to say: "You need not fear, I shall be quick about it." In the meantime his a.s.sistant had come within reach of the children, who, livid and dumb with terror, trembled so convulsively that their teeth were heard to chatter. The executioner"s a.s.sistant placed a hand on each, and without turning his head asked:
"Which first? The taller, the smaller, or the one asleep?"
"Begin with the eldest," answered Clotaire II in a hollow imperious voice. "Hurry up! Hurry up!"
The two children retreated still farther back into the corner in which the pallet was placed and did not loosen their hold upon each other.
"Mercy!" cried Sigebert in a smothered and plaintive voice. "Mercy for my brother! Mercy for me!"
"We are a King"s sons!" cried Corbe with even more anger than fear. "If you do any harm to me, my grandmother will have you all killed!"
At this moment, awakened at last by the noise, little Merovee sat up on the pallet and looked around with wonderment but not in terror. The six-year-old child could not understand what was going on; he rubbed his eyes and turning his little head, with his eyes still swollen with sleep, hither and thither, he looked alternately from the four new arrivals to his brothers, as if asking what it all meant. The King having said "Begin with the eldest," the a.s.sistant seized Sigebert. More dead than alive, the hapless child offered no resistance, but let himself be bound hands and feet, as the lamb does in the slaughter-house; he only murmured in a woebegone voice:
"Seigneur King! Good seigneur King, do not have us killed--why would you have us killed? We are willing to be slaves. Send us out to herd your sheep far away from here; we shall obey you in all things; but, O, seigneur, mercy, good seigneur King, mercy! Mercy for my two little brothers and for me!"
As a worthy grandson of Clotaire I, Clotaire II remained unmoved by the prayers of his victim.
Sigebert pa.s.sed from the hands of the a.s.sistant to those of the executioner. The child"s arms were bound behind his back, and his feet were tied together; his physical prostration rendered him unable to keep upon his feet. He fell upon his knees before the slaughterer. The latter took hold of the child by its long hair and firmly bending its neck back against his own knee left the child"s throat well distended and exposed to the knife. With a smothered voice and casting an agonizing glance at the mayor of the palace Sigebert murmured:
"Warnachaire, you who called me during our late journey your "dear boy,"
will you not implore mercy for me--"
These were the innocent child"s last words. Clotaire II gave a motion of impatience. The executioner approached his knife to the child"s throat, but doubtlessly experiencing a fleeting sentiment of pity, he turned his head aside and shut his eyes as if to escape seeing the dying glance of his victim. The movement was but transitory, the long knife quickly plowed its way through the child"s throat and, operated as a saw, cut down until it struck the vertebrae of the neck. Two jets of purple blood spurted from the wide-gaping wound and fell in opposite directions like a ruddy dew on a fold of the robe of Fredegonde"s son and upon the iron greaves of Duke Warnachaire. Withdrawing his knee which had served him for a block, the executioner left the body to its own weight. It fell backward; the inert head rebounded upon the floor; a slight tremor ran over the expiring child"s shoulders and limbs, and the lifeless body of Sigebert sank motionless in a pool of blood.
During the time that the murder of Sigebert was enacting, Merovee wept scalding tears on the straw where he remained seated; the child wept because, as he murmured, "they were hurting" his brother, but with one so young no thought of death could enter his head. His brother Corbe, however, a boy of violent and vindictive character, did not emulate the gentle resignation of Sigebert. He fought and shrieked, and tried to bite and scratch the a.s.sistant who was to bind him fast. The latter was only tying the last knots when the first child"s throat was cut.
"Dogs! Murderers!" cried Corbe in his weak, shrill voice, while his eyes flashed fire from the midst of his pale face. He straightened himself and he writhed so convulsively in his bonds that the executioner was hardly able to hold him. "Oh!" he screamed, grinding his teeth and panting for breath in the struggle; "Oh, my grandmother will put you all to the torture for this--you will see--you will see--Pog will get you, yes--every one of you--you will be put to awful tortures!"
Turning towards the mayor of the palace of Burgundy, Clotaire II said, pointing his finger at Corbe: "Warnachaire, it would have been impolitic to leave this hateful and vindictive child alive! Even if dethroned he would have become a dangerous man."
It took both the Frankish executioners to overpower Corbe. But neither his screams nor leaps could avail him. Seeing that he struggled violently in his bonds, the a.s.sistant knelt down upon the child"s chest in order to pin him to the ground, while the executioner himself wound around his wrist the long hair of the young prince, and was thus able to draw the head towards himself so as to leave the neck distended and exposed to the knife. A second time the blade cut into the flesh; a second time the blood spurted out--and the corpse of Corbe rolled over upon that of his brother.
Only little Merovee was left. The child had remained on the straw pallet. Whether out of ignorance of the danger that he was in, or whether due to the thoughtlessness of infancy, when he saw the executioner"s a.s.sistant approach him, he rose, walked towards him submissively, and referring to the resistance that Corbe offered, said with infantine innocence as he wiped off his tears:
"My brother Sigebert did not resist--I shall be as gentle as Sigebert--but do not hurt me."
Saying this the child then threw his little blonde head back and himself offered his neck to the executioner.
At that instant, a rider covered with dust burst into the house crying in a voice half choked with gladness:
"Great King! I have ridden ahead of Constable Herpon. He brings Queen Brunhild prisoner. After two days of the hottest chase, he succeeded in overtaking her at Orbe, in the foot-hills of the Jura."
"Oh, my mother! You will soon thrill with joy in your sepulchre. I have, at last, in my power the woman whom you were not able to smite!"
exclaimed the son of Fredegonde. He then turned to the executioners who still held Merovee in their hands: "Do not kill that child--let him be taken to my tent. Wait for my orders. You do not know, oh, great Queen, what glory awaits you!" added Clotaire II with an expression of diabolic ferocity. And addressing Warnachaire: "Let us now go out and give a worthy reception to this daughter of a King, this wife of a King, this grandmother and great-grandmother of Kings--Brunhild, Queen of Burgundy and Austrasia! Come, come!"