The Blacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code: A Tale of the Grand Monarch

"Noble and generous heart!" cried Serdan.

Salaun remained silent and pensive. Nominoë, still upon his knees beside Bertha, and overcome with sorrow by the death of Tina, dared at this moment to raise his moist and suppliant eyes to his father. His looks seemed to say:

"Do you still deem me so guilty for loving Mademoiselle Plouernel?"

"It is upon my knees, monsieur, that I expected to confess to you a love that I, nevertheless, feel proud of! But, alas! this love has caused the death of an innocent girl! Therefore, also, it is upon my knees that I wish to ask your pardon for that misfortune, seeing that, although unwittingly, yet, Oh, just heavens! I am not a stranger to it! Now, Nominoë, rise!" added Bertha, herself rising with dignity. "Your father, I doubt not, has restored me to his esteem. For this esteem I am grateful to you, monsieur; I shall not be unworthy of it," observed the young girl, answering a gesture of approbation from Salaun.

And turning towards Nominoë, who had also risen from the ground, she proceeded in a trembling and resigned voice, and endeavoring to control the pangs of her soul:

"Our marriage, even with the approval of your father, is henceforth impossible, Nominoë! The remembrance, the shadow of that ill-starred girl would always rise between us!" said Bertha shuddering.

But proceeding with a poignant smile:

"Courage, my friend! Thanks to God, our life is not confined to the life of this world! At this moment, when I take my leave of you, I say to you not adieu! I say till we meet again, Nominoë! Perhaps, although still very young, I may precede you to one of those mysterious worlds where my mother awaits me – and whither that sweet girl, your bride, has taken flight! Oh! At least, I shall be able to meet their eyes without fear, I shall then tell all to them. And the day when, departing from this earth, you will come to join us, the hearts of all us three will fly to meet your spirit! Till we meet, then, my friend! Alas, my presentiments did not deceive me. My love was kindled in sentiments too celestial to be for this world; – having come from yonder, on high, it must reascend to its divine source!" and Bertha pointed Nominoë heavenward with a mien of sublime simplicity.

Nominoë, his father, and Serdan listened to Mademoiselle Plouernel with inexpressible emotion, while Madok the miller came out of the underground gallery, looking hither and thither with precaution. An instant he remained motionless with surprise at the sight of Serdan and Lebrenn conversing with Mademoiselle Plouernel, whom he had seen on the road to Mezlean on the day of Tina's wedding. Casting thereupon a look of somber reproach upon Nominoë, seeing he now met him again for the first time since the nuptial ceremony at which he filled the role of "Brotaer," the miller beckoned to Salaun to step aside and said to him in an undertone:

"What is the demoiselle doing here? She is as good as her brother is wicked, but – she is a daughter of Plouernel."

"And our men?" inquired Salaun interrupting Madok, and not considering the moment opportune for answering his question. "Have they arrived? Did they bring the arms that were promised us, the pikes, muskets and ammunition?"

"Yes, they brought the last load of arms concealed among faggots and green branches. They went down into the underground gallery through the ruins of the dungeon. They report everything ready for to-night in the parishes. The tocsin is to sound with the rising of the moon. A package-carrier who went through Plouernel left the news that the people of Nantes and Rennes have risen in revolt, and that fighting is going on in the suburbs. The troops are getting the worst of it."

"That I knew," answered Salaun. "We must not be found behindhanded. Wait here for me; I shall return immediately."

Salaun walked back to his son and Mademoiselle Plouernel, who said to him in a voice that she strove to render firm:

"Monsieur Lebrenn, I shall now return to the castle; to-morrow I shall depart for the manor of Mezlean, where I desire to live in absolute seclusion. I shall not see you again, Nominoë; but at least I carry with me in my solitary retreat your father's respect, and the remembrance of a love that I am proud of, because it sprang from a generous sentiment. In offering my hand to your son, Monsieur Lebrenn, I meant to do a worthy act."

"Infamy and treason! Her hand to a vassal!" suddenly broke in a voice that shook with rage. "Malediction upon the miserable woman!"

And emerging from the copse behind which they had for an instant lain concealed, there suddenly appeared upon the clearing the Count of Plouernel and the Marquis of Chateauvieux.

After having explored the avenues of the park, the Count had come across several of his forester guardsmen, from whom he inquired whether they had seen Mademoiselle Plouernel. They saw her, was their answer, about two hours ago, walking in the direction of one of the park gates, which they found open; great was their surprise upon first noticing on the dust of the road the imprint of Bertha's little feet; but their surprise redoubled when they saw the tracks of the young girl running towards the narrow and shaded path that led to the clearing. Agitated by a vague presentiment, the Count alighted from his mount, the Marquis did likewise, and the Count ordered one of the equerries who accompanied him to run back immediately, and by all means to return with the forester guardsmen, whom he had just met. Thereupon the Count of Plouernel and the Marquis of Chateauvieux, leaving their horses in charge of another equerry, dived into the copse, followed the path and, arriving at the clearing, stood petrified at the sight of Bertha conversing with strangers. Finally, as they listened they caught the last words that Mademoiselle Plouernel was addressing to Salaun Lebrenn on the subject of her love for Nominoë. Informed by his bailiff that two members of the Lebrenn family, a vassal family of his own domains, and mariners of the port of Vannes, were pointed out as mutinous and dangerous people, the Count was fired with an incontrollable fury at hearing his sister admit her love for a miserable mariner of the vassal race. The love, at which the Count's family pride rose in revolt, furthermore dashed the projected double marriage that he pursued. He now could explain to himself the cause of Bertha's continuous delays in giving her consent to her marriage with the Marquis of Chateauvieux. The latter, no less wounded in his vanity than the Count of Plouernel felt wounded in his family pride, shared his friend's fury and followed him, when, unable any longer to control himself, the Count dashed into the clearing.

The Count of Plouernel drew his sword and with the flat of the blade struck Nominoë across the face, crying:

"Vile clown! That is for your having dared to raise your eyes to Mademoiselle Plouernel – while you wait to be hanged from the gibbet!"

Such was the violence of the blow that although it was given with the flat of the sword blood spurted out of Nominoë's cheek and forehead. He emitted a terrible cry, and clenched his fists, but noticing a traveling cutlass hanging at Serdan's side he seized it and precipitated himself upon the Count of Plouernel.

"Count!" shouted the Marquis of Chateauvieux, also drawing his sword, "let us kill the vassal like a dog!"

Salaun ran to the help of his son, who was attacked by two adversaries at once; jumped at the neck of the Marquis of Chateauvieux; threw him to the ground; and, despite all the resistance that he offered, disarmed him; while Nominoë, after dexterously parrying a blow aimed at him by the Count of Plouernel, struck back so heavily with the reverse of the cutlass upon the Count's wrist that his hand was paralyzed and dropped the sword. All this happened with the swiftness of thought. Despite the Count's conduct towards her, Mademoiselle Plouernel emitted a cry of terror at the sight of her brother engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with Nominoë. At the risk of being struck by both in the heat of the combat, she rushed forward to separate them. Trembling at the danger that the young girl ran, Serdan threw his arms around her and held her back. The girl uttered a piercing cry, staggered, became ashen pale; her head fell backward, she fainted away overcome with terror, and would have dropped to the ground but for Serdan holding her up and seating her gently upon the grass with her back supported by the old oak tree. Mademoiselle Plouernel had lost all consciousness. In the midst of the tumult, the forester guardsmen whom one of the Count's equerries had gone in search of as ordered by his master, stepped upon the scene, armed with their muskets and hunting knives.

"To me, guardsmen! Arrest these assassins! Do not kill them, I shall bring them to justice!" cried the Count of Plouernel, whom the blow of Nominoë's cutlass had rendered helpless, and who held his bleeding and mutilated right hand in his left, while Nominoë himself, seeing Bertha lying unconscious at the foot of the old dead oak, flung away his cutlass, and thinking only of Mademoiselle Plouernel, threw himself upon his knees beside the young girl.

At the call of their seigneur, the guardsmen, to the number of eight, rushed upon Salaun Lebrenn and Serdan. Disarmed by Nominoë, the latter could offer no effective resistance to the men who sought to seize him. Salaun, however, drawing his mariner's sword, returned thrust for thrust to the guardsmen who attacked him, and called out to his son, who was on his knees beside Bertha:

"Up, Nominoë! Defend yourself! Let us defend ourselves!"

Salaun's voice expired upon his lips. He was knocked down by a heavy blow, dealt from behind with the butt of a musket by one of the guardsmen while he fought two others in front, one of whom he succeeded in wounding. Serdan was also floored, and then pinioned with the shoulder straps of the guardsmen, the same as Salaun, who had dropped to the ground dazed by the blow which he received. Finally, Nominoë, delirious with grief, was, upon a sign from the Count of Plouernel torn from Bertha by the foresters. His mind seemed to wander. He allowed himself to be bound without offering any resistance whatever.

"Monseigneur," a lackey came and said to the Count of Plouernel, "Madam the Marchioness and Monsieur the Abbot took a carriage to join in the search for mademoiselle; they met the equerry who was bringing the forester guardsmen; their carriage is near by; Madam the Marchioness sent me to receive monseigneur's orders."

"Go and tell Monsieur the Abbot that I request him to come here without delay. We need his services," the Count of Plouernel answered the lackey.

And addressing the Marquis of Chateauvieux:

"My friend, you will have to help the Abbot to transport my sister to the carriage. I shall join you there – I can hardly hold myself on my feet; I am losing so much blood that I am afraid I shall faint."

Then, finally, turning to the three prisoners, who stood with lowering brows, motionless and silent, and firmly bound, the Count cried:

"Bandits! Murderers! I am vested with low and high judicial powers in my seigniory. You shall be tried to-night – and hanged to-morrow."

"Marquis, were there not four of these brigands? I only see three. What became of the fourth?"

"Indeed, it seems to me there were four of them – one of them had a white vest on," answered the Marquis of Chateauvieux, remembering having seen Madok the miller, who, at the approach of the forester guardsmen disappeared in the thickest of the wood.

"Monseigneur," said one of the foresters to the Count, "as we entered the clearing we saw a man flee through the copse; he was probably the companion of the prisoners, the one you are missing."

"The wood will have to be beaten and the bandit found – he shall be hanged with his accomplices."

Abbot Boujaron arrived at that moment. He looked bewildered. He was informed of the tragic adventure and helped the Marquis of Chateauvieux to transport to the carriage Mademoiselle Plouernel, who, pale and inert, seemed dead but for the convulsive tremors that shook her frame from time to time. She was laid down upon the cushions of the carriage near the Marchioness. The Count took a seat beside his sister, and the carriage returned to the castle at full speed.

Bertha was taken to her own apartment and locked up with her nurse. She was not to come out again but to be consigned to a cloister by orders of the King. Before nightfall, Serdan, Salaun Lebrenn and his son, whom the foresters led off, were separately imprisoned in the cells of the manor – the sumptuous Renaissance palace was furnished with its subterranean prisons, the same as the ancient feudal dungeon, seeing that the seigneur of the Seventeenth exercised, like his ancestor of the Eleventh Century, the functions of high and low judicial magistrate. Reassured on the score of the wound received by the Count of Plouernel, the Marquis of Chateauvieux hastened to obey the orders of the Governor of Brittany, who summoned him to Rennes without delay, together with the two companies of his regiment; but he left, however, with the Count, for the latter's security, the detachment of Sergeant La Montagne, which he had summoned to Plouernel the day before.

CHAPTER VII.

EZ-LIBR

It was close on midnight. The moon, now on the wane, had just risen in a cloudless sky. Hardly had the silvery crescent lifted itself above the horizon when the parish bells, spread over an area of about ten square leagues round about the burg of Plouernel sounded the tocsin at their loudest. At the signal, a troop of peasants armed with hatchets, hay-forks, scythes and old halberds, and preceded by a sort of vanguard consisting of fifty men armed with muskets, sallied out of the burg of Plouernel. They followed in silence the long avenue that led to the iron gate of the court of honor before the castle. At the head of this vanguard marched Gildas Lebrenn, the leasehold peasant of Karnak, Madok the miller, three leasehold peasants of the domain of Plouernel itself, and Tankeru. Tankeru carried, flung over his shoulder, his heavy blacksmith's hammer into the head of which he had cut the Breton words: EZ-LIBR – To Be Free. His arms were bare; in the pocket of his leathern apron was a roll of paper partly visible above the edge. The light of the moon illumined Tankeru's face. In two nights the sturdy man's hair had turned grey. His features were hardly recognizable since Tina's death. Despair had left its stamp upon them. He stopped at about a hundred paces from the iron gate of the castle, and said to Madok in a hollow voice:

"We swore to Salaun Lebrenn that we would follow his advice and place justice on our side before coming to blows, and to submit the Peasant Code for the approval of the Seigneur Count. Perhaps he has already hanged Salaun; but, dead or alive, Salaun has our word. We shall keep it! Tell our men to stop at the avenue. We shall enter the castle unarmed."

The order was given and executed. The vanguard, together with the troop of armed vassals, halted under the trees of the avenue. Tankeru and his five companions advanced to the iron gate, which closed the entrance to the court of honor and stood between two pavilions, where the gateman or porter was housed. The vestibule and all the windows on the first floor of the castle could be seen brilliantly illuminated. Tankeru drew near the gate and called:

"Halloa! Porter! Porter! Come out!"

The porter, clad in a rich livery, came out of one of the pavilions, and approaching Tankeru, inquired:

"Who goes there? What do you want?"

"We want to speak with your master, and on the spot. Open the gate of the castle."

"You, clown?" answered the porter, with the insolence of a lackey, as he spied through the iron bars the blacksmith and his companions, all of whom were poorly clad. "Go your ways! Go, barefooted rabble! If you don't, I shall take my cane and come out – and then, look to your backs!"

"If you do not open, I shall force the gate!" cried Tankeru to the porter, who started to return to his pavilion grumbling.