One would think that it hurts you to see them.... We have about twenty female slaves in the carts that we are dragging after us as part of the booty. Some of them are very beautiful. You never as much as had the curiosity of looking at them ... yet they belong to you as much as to the rest of us."

"I have told you that I lay no claim whatever to my share of human flesh," impatiently answered Berthoald. "The sight of those poor creatures is painful to me. You refused to give them their freedom....

Have your way.... But do not mention them again to me."

"Well, it is no loss to us. After having amused ourselves with them on the road we can sell them for at least from fifteen to twenty gold sous each, according to what a Jew, who looked at them, said to us."

"Enough!... I have heard enough about the Jew and the slaves!" and wishing to put an end to a conversation that was painful to him, he touched the flanks of his horse with his spurs to join his Frankish companions whom he hailed from afar. "Friends, good news! Our abbey is rich, well stocked with cattle, and fertile; and we are to succeed an abbess; whether she be young or old, handsome or ugly, I do not yet know. We shall see her within an hour and shall be able to judge."

"Long live Charles Martel!" cried one of the warriors. "There's no abbess without nuns.... We shall have a good laugh with the nuns!"

"I would have preferred to have dispossessed some fighting abbot. But I console myself with the thought that we are to be masters of numerous herds of swine."

"Richulf, you can think of nothing but loins of beef and ham!"

Thus gaily conversing, the warriors followed the avenue bordered with poplars. The abbey was presently descried from the distance, rising in the center of a sort of peninsula, and reached from this side by a narrow road that was built between two ponds.

"Hurrah for Charles Martel!"

"What a magnificent building! Look at it, Berthoald!"

"Vast domains! And that grand forest in the horizon--it surely all belongs to our abbey. We shall be able to hunt at our ease."

"It must be full of game. We shall hunt deer, bucks and wild boars....

Long live Charles Martel!"

"And the ponds that extend down there on either side of the road, they must be full of fish.... We shall fish carp, tench and pike that I like so well!... Long live Charles!"

"Do you not find, comrades, that this abbey has a certain martial aspect, with its high battlements, its counter forts, its ramparts, its few and narrow windows and its ponds that surround it like a natural defence?"

"So much the better! Within its walls we shall be entrenched as within a fortress; and should it please the successors of our good Charles, or the phantom kings, to dispossess us in turn, as we are about to dispossess this abbess, we shall be able to prove that we wear hose and not skirts."

"Our tapers are lances, our benedictions sabre cuts."

"Let us hasten our horses; it will soon be night and I am hungry....

Upon the word of Richulf, two whole hams, four pikes and a whole mountain of cabbage will barely suffice to appease my hunger."

"Sharpen your teeth, glutton! As to me, I propose to invite the abbess and her nuns. The feast will then be complete."

"I shall invite the young and handsome ones to share our lodgings at the abbey. What say you, comrades?"

"What! Invite them, Sigewald!... They must, by my beard! They shall be forced to remain with us.... The good Charles will laugh at the move. If the Bishop of Nantes should raise a howl, we shall tell him to come and take his sheep from the wolves."

"The devil take the Bishop of Nantes! The day of these tonsured people has gone by, that of the soldier has come!... We are masters in our house!"

While his companions were delivering themselves of these gross jokes, Berthoald preceded them silent and pensive. Charles had invested him with the high dignity of count; he dragged a rich booty behind him in his carts; the donation of the abbey insured to him the possession of a large income; all notwithstanding, the young chief seemed troubled in mind; at times a bitter and painful smile curled his lips. The Frankish riders were presently on the narrow road at either side of which an immense pond extended as far as the eye could reach. Richulf presently said to the young chief: "I do not know whether it is the dusk that impedes my sight, but it looks to me as if this road is cut off by a mound of earth a little distance ahead of us."

"Let us look at that a little closer," said Berthoald, putting his horse to a gallop. Richulf and Sigewald followed him. Soon the three found their advance intercepted by a deep and wide moat cut into the road and filled with water that flowed into it from two ponds. On the other side of the moat rose a kind of breastwork of earth protected with enormous piles. The obstacle was serious. Night drew near, and on either side the ponds extended as far as the eye could reach. Berthoald turned around to his companions who were no less surprised than himself: "The breastwork, like the abbey, has a decidedly martial mien."

"This ground has been recently thrown up. The bark of the piles is still fresh, as also the leaves of the hedge that crowns the parapet.... What the devil can these precautions of defence mean?"

"By the hammer of Charles!" said Berthoald. "Here we have an abbess who is well up in the art of entrenchment! But there must be some other route to reach the abbey and--" Berthoald did not finish the sentence. A volley of stones thrown by slingers hid behind the hedge that crowned the parapet, reached the three warriors. Their casques and cuira.s.ses broke the shock, but the young chief was rudely struck in the shoulder, while the horse of Richulf, that was near the edge of the road and was. .h.i.t in the head, reared so violently that it fell over upon its rider and both rolled into the pond, which was so deep at that spot that horse and rider disappeared completely. The Frank soon rose back to the surface and managed with great difficulty to clamber up the bank, while his horse swam away frightened towards the center of the pond, where, finally exhausted, it rolled over and sank.

"Treason!" cried Berthoald.

The deep moat filled with water was thirty feet wide. In order to cross it, according to the art of war, it would have been necessary to fetch lumber from a great distance and commence a regular siege. Night, moreover, was on. While the young chief consulted with his companions upon the unexpected occurrence, a voice from behind the hedge called out: "This first volley of stones is but a shower of roses to what is in store for you if you attempt to force a pa.s.sage."

"Whoever you be, you shall pay dearly for this a.s.sault," cried Berthoald. "We are come by orders of Charles, chief of the Franks, who made a gift of the abbey of Meriadek to me and my men. I command here.

It is for you to obey."

"And I," replied the voice, "make you a gift, preparatory to something better, of that volley of stones that you just got."

"We can not to-night force a pa.s.sage; but we shall encamp on this road.

To-morrow, at break of day, we shall storm your entrenchment. So, I warn you, the abbess of this convent and her nuns will be treated like women of conquered towns. The young ones will be distributed among us, the old ones will be whipped, and the men will be slaughtered."

"Our holy abbess, Dame Meroflede, minds not such threats," answered the voice. "The abbess consents to admit the chief of those bandits, but alone, into the convent.... His companions will camp for the night on the causeway. To-morrow at break of day he shall rejoin his troop. And when he shall have reported to them what he saw in the monastery, and in what style preparations are making to receive them, they will realize that the very best thing for them to do will be to return and fight near Charles, the heathen who dares to dispose of the goods of the Church! By the horns of Satan, we shall know how to chase you hence!"

"I shall punish your insolence!"

"My horse is drowned," added Richulf in a rage; "the water streams from my armor; I am chilled through; my stomach is empty; and yet we are condemned to spend the night in the open!"

"Enough words! Decide!" replied the voice. "From the top of this breastwork a long plank will be lowered over to you. However unsteady of foot your chief may be, he will be able to cross the moat in safety. I shall take him to the abbey; to-morrow he shall rejoin his companions, and may the devil, who brought you here, lead you back to h.e.l.l!"

During this debate the other Franks of Berthoald's troop and presently also the carts and baggages, all of which entered without mistrust upon the narrow causeway, had come up to where the young chief stood. He explained what had happened, and showed them the moat and the opposite breastwork, which, under the circ.u.mstances, could neither be cleared nor taken. The straggling beneficiaries of the abbey, no less nonplussed and no less furious than Berthoald himself, broke out into threats and imprecations against the abbess. Nevertheless, night having now fallen, there was no choice but to camp upon the road. It was also decided that Berthoald should proceed alone to the abbey, and that early the next morning they were to consider what to do, according to his report; but whatever their decision might be upon Berthoald's report, it was determined that if Berthoald should fall a victim to treason and not return in the morning, force would be immediately resorted to. As to himself, wholly disregarding any danger that might threaten, Berthoald insisted upon accepting the offer of admitting him to the monastery. The young chief yielded in this as much to the spirit of adventure as to an overpowering curiosity to see the fighting abbess. Agreeable to the tender made by Ricarik, who guarded the breastwork, a plank was pushed out horizontally from within the parapet, it swayed to the right and left for a moment and then dropped so that one end rested on the side of the ditch where Berthoald stood and the other remained firmly fastened to the parapet. Berthoald left his horse in charge of one of his companions, and with a firm and light step walked over the plank, quickly reaching the parapet, into which the plank was immediately drawn back.

CHAPTER V.

ASYLUM.

Berthoald was received by the intendant, whom, controlling his own anger, he followed to a near spot where two horses stood saddled.

Ricarik left about a dozen slaves and colonists behind to watch the trench under the starry sky, and motioning Berthoald to one of the horses, leaped upon the other and galloped ahead. The young chief rode in the wake of his guide, rage alternating in his breast with curiosity concerning the fighting abbess who gave such unsatisfactory tokens of resignation to the decree that dispossessed her of her benefice. In the course of the ride towards the abbey, Berthoald encountered two other protected ditches, like the first, but crossable by means of drawbridges that were let down to allow him and his guide to pa.s.s. A short while after crossing the second of these two ditches, Berthoald stood near the outer enclosure of the abbey. The enclosure consisted of thick joists well fastened together and planted from bank to bank of the two ponds that lay on both sides. The buildings of the abbey rose upon a vast peninsular field, accessible only from the side of the causeway that had just been put in a state of defence. Behind the monastery, a tongue of land connected with the forest, whose crest bordered the horizon, thus offering another pa.s.sage. Berthoald noticed many lights inside of the enclosure, projected, no doubt, by torches. The intendant took a copper horn that hung from the pommel of his saddle and blew a call. An iron-barbed door facing the jetty opened slowly. Preceded by his guide, Berthoald entered the first courtyard of the abbey, and found himself face to face with the abbess on horseback, surrounded by several torch-bearing slaves. Meroflede had lowered the cape of her scarlet cloak half over her forehead. At her side hung a gold-handled hunting knife in a steel sheath. Berthoald was seized with astonishment at the sight of the woman as she sat in the light of the torches. Her costume, at once monastic and martial, set off the supple and easy frame of the abbess. The young chief found her handsome as far as he could judge across the shadow projected upon her face by her half-drawn cowl.

"I know that you are Berthoald," said Meroflede in a vibrating and sonorous voice; "and so you have come to take possession of my abbey?"

"This abbey has been given me and my companions of war by Charles, the chief of the Franks. Yes, I have come to take possession."

Meroflede indulged in a laugh of disdain, and despite the shadow that veiled her face, her laughter exposed to the eyes of Berthoald two rows of pearly white teeth. The abbess gave her horse a slight touch of her heel and bade the young man follow.

At the moment when Meroflede's horse was put on the march, Broute-Saule--now healed of the peckings of the sparrow-hawk, and no longer clad in rags, but wearing on the contrary an elegant green jacket, buck-skin hose, neat leather shoes and a rich fur cap--placed himself at the horse's head with his hands on the reins. Thus walking between the abbess and Berthoald, the young hawk thief watched attentively the slightest motion of Meroflede and covered her with ardent and jealous eyes. From time to time he cast an uneasy glance at the young chief. The torch-bearing slaves followed close behind the abbess and Berthoald to the inner courtyard. Meroflede entered with Berthoald and indicated to him fifty colonists in martial order and armed with bows and slings.

"Do you think these premises are sufficiently protected, my valiant captain?" asked Meroflede.

"For me and my men, a slinger or an archer is no more dangerous than a dog that barks at a distance. We let the arrows whiz, the stones fly and get within our sword's length. To-morrow at break of day you will know what you have to expect, dame abbess ... should you insist upon defending the abbey."

Meroflede again laughed and said: "If you love a fight at close quarters your taste will be suited to-morrow."