The Poniard's Hilt; Or, Karadeucq and Ronan. A Tale of Bagauders and Vagres

"Brothers, to you the treasures – to me the handsome bishopess!"

"Yours, Master of the Hounds, be the bishopess; ours, the booty of the episcopal villa! Long live the Vagrery!"

CHAPTER II

BISHOP AND COUNT

In the summer season Bishop Cautin inhabited a villa situated not far from the city of Clermont, the seat of his episcopacy. Magnificent gardens, crystalline springs, thick arbors, green lawns, excellent meadows, gold harvests, purpled vines, forests well stocked with game, ponds well supplied with fish, excellently equipped stables – such were the surroundings of the holy man's palace. Two hundred ecclesiastical slaves, male and female, cultivated the church's "vineyard," without counting the domestic personnel – the cup-bearer, the cook and his assistants, the butcher, the baker, the superintendent of the bath, the shoemaker, the tailor, the turner, the carpenter, the mason, the master of the hounds, besides the washerwomen and the weavers, most of the latter young, often handsome female slaves. Every evening one of these girls took to Bishop Cautin, who lay softly tucked on a feather bed, a cup of warm and highly spiced wine. Early in the morning another girl took in a cup of creamy milk for the first breakfast of the pious man. And thus lived that good apostle of humility, chastity and poverty!

And who is that portly, handsome and still young woman, who resembles Diana the huntress? With her bare neck and arms, clad in a simple linen tunic and her long black hair half undone, she leans on her elbows over the balcony that crowns the terrace of the villa. At once burning and languishing, the eyes of this woman now rise towards the starry sky, now seem to peer through this mild summer's night, under shelter of which, with the stealthy step of wolves, the Vagres are wending their way towards the bishop's residence. The woman is Fulvia, Cautin's bishopess, whom he married when, still a simple friar, he did not yet aspire to a bishopric. After he was promoted to the higher office that he now fills in the hierarchy, he piously calls her "my sister," agreeable to the canons of the councils.

"Woe is me!" the bishopess was saying. "Woe to these summer nights during which one is left alone to inhale the perfume of the flowers, to listen to the murmur of the nocturnal breezes in the foliage of the trees, murmurs that so much resemble the stolen kisses of lovers! Oh! I always fear the unnerving heat of these summer nights! It penetrates through my whole frame! I am twenty-eight years of age. I am now twelve years, married, and I have counted these conjugal years with my tears! A recluse in the city, a recluse in the country by the orders of my lord and master, my husband, Bishop Cautin, who spends his time in the women's part of the house among my female slaves, whom the profligate debauches while pleading the canons of the councils that, he says, order him to live chastely with his wife – such is my life – my sad life! My youth is ebbing away without my enjoying a single day of love or of freedom. Love! Freedom! Shall I grow old without knowing you? Woe is me!"

And the handsome bishopess rose, shook her black hair to the night breeze, puckered her black eyebrows and cried defiantly:

"Woe to violent and debauched husbands! They hurl women into perdition! Loved, respected, treated, if not as wife, at least truly as his sister by the bishop, I would have remained chaste and gentle. But disdained and humiliated before the lowest of the domestic slaves, I have grown to be wrathful and vindictive. From the height of this terrace, and often my cheeks mantling with shame, I follow with distracted gaze the young slaves of the field when they go out to work in the morning and return in the evening. I have struck my husband's concubines with my hands – and yet, poor wretches that they are, they do not yield to the lover who begs, but to the master who orders. I struck them in anger, not in jealousy. Before that man became odious to me, I was indifferent to him. Nevertheless, I might have loved him, had he wished it – and as he willed. 'Sister-wife' of a bishop – it looked attractive! How much good could not be done! How many tears could not be dried! But I have had only my own to dry, soon finding myself degraded and despised. The measure overflows; I have wept enough; I have moaned enough; I have sufficiently resisted the temptations that devour me! I shall flee from this house, even at the risk of being captured and sold as a slave! Can it be called to live, this dragging of my days in this opulent villa, a gilded grave? No! No! I wish to leave this sepulchre! I wish to breathe the free air! I wish to see the sun! I wish to move free in space! I crave a single day of love and freedom! Oh! If I could only see again the young lad, who more than once went by this terrace early in the morning! What warm and loving glances he shot at me! What a beautiful and fearless face looked from under his red headcover! What a robust and graceful build did not his Gallic blouse reveal with the belt of his hunting knife! He must be some forester slave of the neighborhood! A slave! What does it matter! He is young, handsome, nimble and amorous! My husband's concubines also are slaves! Oh! Shall I never enjoy a day of love, of freedom?"

In the meantime, what is the bishop doing while his bishopess, lost in revery on the balcony over the terrace, contemplates the stars, sighs into the darkness, and breathes her sorrows and her devilish hopes upon the midnight breezes? The holy man is drinking and conferring with Count Neroweg, who happens on this night to be his guest. The banquet hall in which they are seated is built after the Roman fashion. It is a spacious room, ornamented with marble pillars, and decked with gilded work and fresco paintings. Gold and silver vases are ranged on ivory sideboards. The floor is slabbed with rich mosaics that are pleasing to the eye. But still more pleasing to the eye is the large table loaded with drinking cups and half-emptied amphoras. The leudes, Neroweg's companions in arms and his equals in time of peace, have gone to play at dice with the bishop's clerks and familiars in the vestibule, after having partaken of supper at the same table with the count, as is the custom. Here and there along the walls the rough weapons of the leudes are stacked up – wooden bucklers, iron-rimmed staves, 'francisques' or double-edged axes, 'haugons' or demi-pikes furnished with iron grappling hooks. The count's buckler is illumined with a painting that represents three eagle's talons. Left alone at table with his guest, the prelate induces Neroweg to drain cup after cup. At the lower end of the table sits a hermit laborer. He drinks not, neither does he speak. At times he seems to listen to the conversation of the two topers. Oftener, however, he is steeped in thought.

The Frank, Count Neroweg, has the appearance and emits the odor of a wild-boar in spring; his face resembles a bird of prey, with his beaked nose and restless little eyes that alternately assume a savage and then a sleepy look; his coarse yellow hair, tied over his head with a leather thong, falls back over his neck like a mane; the coiffure of these barbarians remained unchanged during the last two centuries. Neroweg's chin and cheeks are closely shaven, but his long reddish moustache droops down to his chest, which is covered by a doe-skin jacket, shines with grease, and is dotted with wine spots. Long leathern straps criss-cross over his lower hose from his coarse iron-spiked shoes up to his knees. He has removed his heavy sword from his broad and loosely hanging baldric and laid it upon a seat nearby, beside a stout holly club. Such is the convivial guest of the prelate, such is Count Neroweg, one of these new masters of the old lands of Gaul.

Bishop Cautin resembles a large, fat, ruttish fox – lascivious and sly eyes, red ears, a mobile and pointed nose, hirsute hands. He prinks in his violet robe of fine woven silk. And what a paunch! One would say there was a barrel under the gown.

As to the hermit-laborer – all respect for that priest, a worthy disciple of the young man of Nazareth! He is thirty years of age at the most. His face is pale, and it is at once mild and firm; his beard is blonde, his head is prematurely bald; his long brown robe, made of some coarse material, is here and there frayed by the brambles on the lands that his toil has cleared. The man's bearing is rustic, his hands are strong, the plow and the hoe-handle have made them horny.

The bishop again fills another large cup to the Frank, saying:

"Count – I repeat it – the twenty gold sous, the meadow lands and the little blonde female slave – either I must have them, or you get no absolution!"

"Bishop! I shall fall upon your house with all my leudes and sack it; I shall roast you over a slow fire – and you will give me absolution – "

"Impious man! Sacrilegious blasphemer! Pharaoh! Hog of profligacy! Reservoir of wine! How dare you hold such language to your bishop! And you a son of our apostolic Church!"

"You shall give me absolution, will ye, nill ye!"

"Oh! The beast! Is it that you are itching to fall into the very bottom of hell? Is it that you are itching to remain for centuries in succession broiling in pails full of burning pitch! You seem to be itching after a thorough trouncing with the forks of the devils! Devils with toads' heads, rams' horns, serpents for their tails, elephants' trunks for arms, and cloven hoofs – aye archcloven!"

"Did you see them?" queried the Frank with a savage and yet frightened mien. "Did you, bishop? Did you see those demons?"

"Whether I saw them! They brought before me in a cloud of bitumen and sulphur Duke Rauking, who, the sacrilegious wretch! struck Bishop Basile with his cane!"

"And did the devils carry off Duke Rauking?"

"They threw him into the bottomless pit! I counted them; there were thirteen of them; a large red devil, that was Lucifer, led them. Such a fate is in store for you, if I refuse you absolution."

"Bishop, you may be saying all that only to frighten me out of my twenty gold sous, the fine meadow lands, and the pretty blonde slave!"

The prelate rang a bell; one of his confidential servants stepped in; the holy man said to him a few words in Latin while with his eyes he indicated a spot on the mosaic floor. The servant went out again. The hermit-laborer thereupon addressed the bishop, also in Latin:

"What you propose to do is an unworthy trick! It is a sacrilegious fraud!"

"Hermit, is not everything allowed to the clergy of our holy Church in order to terrify these brutes of Franks into subjection?"

"Fraud never is allowed – "

Cautin shrugged his shoulders, and addressing the count in the Frankish tongue – the prelate spoke the language like any of the barbarians – he said:

"Are you a Christian and a Catholic? Did you receive holy baptism?"

"Bishop Macaire, twenty years ago, ordered me to step naked into the stone tank of his basilica; he then threw a handful of water upon my head and mumbled some Latin words."

"You are a Catholic – a son of our holy Church – by reason of which you must respect and obey me as your father in Christ!"

"Bishop, you are trying to confuse me by such language, but I will not be duped by you. Our great King Clovis conquered and subjugated Gaul at the head of his brave leudes. My father Gonthram Neroweg was one of his warriors, and – "

"You lie, count! It is to the bishops that your King owed his conquest; it was they who ordered the people to submit to Clovis; without them, your great King would have remained only a chief of brigands. Never forget that, barbarian! You may now proceed with what you had to say, and speak respectfully."

"When Theodorik lived, the son of Clovis who had Auvergne as one of his kingdoms, he allotted to me vast domains in this region – lands, people, cattle and houses, and he sent me here as his representative. He made me what is called 'graf' of this country, and what we Franks call 'count'; and he authorized me to preside together with the chief bishop of the city and the magistrates of the city of Clermont."

"What are you driving at with that long digression?"

"I wish to prove, first of all, that King Clovis committed many more crimes than I did, and that his crimes did not prevent him from entering paradise, as the bishops themselves declare."

"True enough, brute that you are! But you seem to forget what that paradise cost him. St. Remi, who baptized him, was so richly endowed by him that the holy prelate was able to buy an estate in Champagne that cost him five thousand pounds of silver by weight."

"I then meant to say that if you are bishop, I am count of the conquered country, and I can force you to give me absolution!"

"Ah! You blaspheme!" and the bishop struck under the table with his foot. "Ah! You dare to defy the anger of the Lord! You – soiled with execrable crimes!"

"Well! Yes! Is it perchance an unpardonable crime to kill a brother? I confess that I murdered my brother Ursio! Give me absolution!"

"You seem to forget the murder of your concubine Isanie, and of your fourth wife Wisigarde, whom you married when two previous ones were still alive, and you then took a fifth wife, Godegisele – "

"And did you not give me absolution for all those sins? By the faith of the Terrible Eagle, my glorious ancestor! It cost me five hundred acres of the best stretches of my forest, thirty-eight gold sous, twenty slaves, together with the superb cloak of Northern marten skin in which you strutted about last winter, and which King Clovis presented to my father!"

"You have been absolved of those first crimes – as to them you are as white as the pascal lamb, but for the fresh crime of your brother's murder."

"I did not kill Ursio out of hatred, I only killed him for his part of our inheritance."

"And what else should you have killed your brother for, beast? To eat him up?"

"Did not the great Clovis also kill all his relatives for their heritage, and yet you declare that he entered paradise. I also wish to go there, and I have killed fewer people. If you do not promise paradise to me on the spot and without any further payments, if you refuse to give me absolution, I shall have you torn into pieces by four horses, or hacked to pieces by my leudes."

"And I tell you that if you do not expiate your fratricide by a gift to the Church, you shall go to hell, like a new Cain who killed his brother."

"What you are after is my hundred acres of meadow land, my twenty gold sous, and my pretty little blonde slave."

"What I am after is the salvation of your soul, unhappy man! What I aim at is to save you the torments of hell, the very thought of which should make you shudder with terror."