The Iron Arrow Head or The Buckler Maiden: A Tale of the Northman Invasion

CHAPTER VII
KOEMPE!

The monk and the two soldiers had barely stretched the Buckler Maiden upon the slab-stones of the crypt, when an icy terror ran through their frames. A noise, at first heard indistinctly, now smote their ears with all its formidable meaning. It was the war-cry of the Northman pirates. "Koempe!" "Koempe!" resounded from the court-yard of the abbey. The cry grew louder; it invaded the church; it presently reached clear, powerful, distinct into the underground recess of the crypt.

"Malediction upon us!" exclaimed the monk listening. "It is the war-cry of the Northmans! They have invaded the abbey!"

"Where could they have entered by?" asked one of the soldiers with chattering teeth. "The demons must have leaped out of hell!"

"To me, my virgins!" the warrior maid now cried with renewed vigor, although still held pinioned to the ground under the knees of the monk and the soldiers. "To me, my sisters! Skoldmoë! Skoldmoë!"

The last words of Shigne were answered by the sonorous voice of Gaëlo:

"Shigne, here I am!" and almost immediately the young pirate appeared at the entrance of the crypt, followed by Simon Large-Ears, Robin Jaws and Savinien, the serf who had driven the two wagons loaded with hay into the abbey. All three shouted at the top of their voices: "Koempe! To death and to the sack! Pillage! Pillage!"

At the sight of the unexpected reinforcement that rushed to the aid of their fair prisoner, Fultrade and his accomplices quitted their intended victim. Shigne leaped to her feet, seized the sword of one of the soldiers, plunged it into the breast of the monk, who dropped stone dead, and, still trembling with rage and shame, rushed sword in hand upon the young pirate.

"Either I shall kill you, or you will kill me, Gaëlo! You shall not be allowed to say that you saw me exposed to extreme outrage!"

Stupefied at the sudden attack of a young woman to whose aid he had hastened to come, Gaëlo at first contented himself with parrying Shigne's blows, but wounded in the face by her weapon, he precipitated himself upon her crying:

"Your will be done! Either you shall kill me, or I shall kill you!"

The combat between Gaëlo and Shigne was furious. Simon Large-Ears and Robin Jaws, who had turned their first attention to the two soldiers hidden in the remotest corner of the crypt under Clovis' mausoleum, killed them both. As they stepped out, Simon Large-Ears said:

"These nuns who came whining to the gate of the abbey while we were concealed under the hay of Savinien's wagons, turned to strategem like ourselves in order to get in. Theirs was a feminine ruse!"

"Oh, Simon," answered Robin pointing to the Buckler Maiden and Gaëlo, who were engaged in a deadly duel; "what a pity! To think of such a magnificent lad and so beautiful a girl seeking to kill each other, instead of making love!"

"And if they survive they will love each other but hobblingly. It is clear that in their rage both will lose some member. Just watch the blows that they deal to each other!"

Never had Gaëlo met more redoubtable an adversary than Shigne. To inordinary strength she coupled skill, coolness and intrepidity. Carried away by the ardor of the struggle, the pirate forgot his passionate love. If he at all kept in mind that he was fighting with a woman, he only felt all the more nettled at finding in her such indomitable powers of resistance. After a long exchange of parried thrusts, Gaëlo succeeded in dealing so violent a blow with his sword upon the virgin's skull that neither her hair-net of linked iron, nor her thick head of hair, through both of which the pirate's sword cut its way, could save her from a severe scalp wound. The blood poured down Shigne's face, her weapon slipped from her grasp, and she dropped down first upon both her knees and then on her side.

"Unhappy me!" cried Gaëlo in despair. "I have killed her!" and kneeling down beside the young woman, he raised her beautiful head, now pale, bleeding and with eyes half closed.

"Gaëlo," murmured the Buckler Maiden in a fainting voice, "you were able to vanquish me; I love you!" and her eyes closed.

Struck with sympathy, Simon and Robin approached Gaëlo to offer him their services, when a new cry arose from the distance, and again dominated the lingering clash of arms between the Northman pirates and the small remnant of the rapidly diminishing garrison of the abbey. It was the cry of "Berserk!" "Berserk!" warningly uttered by the pirates themselves.

"Lodbrog the Giant is again in a fit of fury!" cried Simon Large-Ears in terror. "The berserker is as terrible to his friends as to his enemies. Gaëlo, the fray may roll this way; your sweetheart is perhaps not dead; let us carry her into the crypt; she will be there safer than here."

Gaëlo hastened to follow Simon's advice. Raising the insensible warrior maid in his arms, he laid her down gently in a remote corner of the sepulchral recess.

A prodigious spectacle, a giant battle, was elsewhere taking place at that moment. The Frankish soldiers posted on the ramparts had left their posts to run to the assistance of their companions, first engaged by the Buckler Maidens and subsequently attacked by the band under Gaëlo that emerged out of Savinien's hay wagons. Until then, Lodbrog the berserker had fought valiantly without his intellect being clouded. But the intoxication of the battle, the odor of carnage, the sight of the Frankish reinforcement that poured down from the ramparts and rushed toward the main door of the basilica crying: "Death! Death! Kill the Northmans!" – all this combined threw the giant into a new attack of frenzy. Brandishing a spiked iron mace, the Northman, leaped forward with a roar and dashed upon the compact group of Franks. Ten blacksmiths' hammers beating upon ten anvils could not produce the deafening sound produced by Lodbrog's mace falling, falling again, rising only to fall again and again upon the casques and the armors of the soldiers. Some sink to the earth, crushed under the thundering blows, without uttering a sound: their skulls are ground into pulp within their casques like nuts in their shells; others roll to the ground emitting shrieks of pain and rage. The corpses are heaped up high at the feet of Lodbrog. He mounts the heap. He mounts it as on a pedestal, and his size assumes still more gigantic proportions. The tops of the casques of the soldiers who still dare sustain the contest with him, barely reach his belt. Gaëlo, who rushed out of the basilica, thinking his aid needed in the general battle that he imagined was in progress, arrived at the moment when the surviving soldiers were surrounding the berserker, then at the climax of his fury. The spectacle presented looked like assailants trying to scale a tower. Twenty arms holding twenty swords rose at once to smite the giant. But towering above those arms and swords appeared the cuirassed bust of the colossus, and his iron mace rose and descended, splintering swords, cracking heads, crushing limbs, pulverizing arms! Gaëlo, the others of his band and the surviving Buckler Maidens precipitated themselves upon the rear of the soldiers who besieged Lodbrog. Suddenly the berserker was heard to emit a fresh roar, throw his mace into the air, stoop down and immediately rise again holding a soldier by the hair and belt. Vainly did the luckless Frank struggle to escape from the giant's clutch. He was hurled wrathfully from on high against the handful of soldiers who still assailed the Northman. Several of them rolled over the ground. Lodbrog despatched them by trampling over their prostrate bodies with his colossal feet like an enraged elephant that tramples upon and pounds his victims to death. Thereupon, seeing no more enemies to fight, all his opponents having been killed or wounded by himself or the other pirates, but still a prey to his own vertigo of destruction, riddled with wounds that he did not feel, but the gushing blood of which reddened his armor that was broken through in twenty places, Lodbrog's eyes fell upon a large black mausoleum just within the basilica. It was the tomb of Fredegonde.⁴ The giant rushed in headlong; he seized with both his mighty hands one of the pillars that supported the entablature; shook it; loosened it with an effort of superhuman strength; the pillar yielded and carried down with it a portion of the architecture of the mausoleum, which thereupon crumbled to the ground. The loud crash of the ruin added fuel to the rage of the berserker. His eyes encountered the sepulchral light that escaped from the crypt where the Beautiful Shigne lay. The berserker rushed thither with the roar of a goaded bull, and vanished from sight.

CHAPTER VIII
THE RESCUE

A night and almost a whole day had passed since Anne the Sweet, taken into one of the underground cells of the abbey of St. Denis by Father Fultrade, had escaped the outrageous purposes of the monk.

Deepest darkness reigned in the dungeon in which Anne the Sweet was confined. The feelings of terror and despair that at first seized her at being separated from her mother, had been followed by mental and physical prostration. Her tears had run dry. Seated on the stone slabs of the cell with her back to the wall, the young girl dropped into a feverish slumber agitated by sinister dreams. One time, it was the monk Fultrade who appeared before her, and then she awoke shuddering with horror – a horror that was intensified by the brooding darkness around her. At other times Anne dreamed that she had been forgotten in the underground chamber, and felt herself a prey to the agonies of hunger while her torture was rendered still more excruciating by the heart-rending cries of her mother, likewise a prey to the torments of famine. Suddenly the young girl was awakened from her cruel dreams by a loud noise of voices and steps that tumultuously drew near. She leaped up, listened, and recognizing the voices of Eidiol and of Guyrion the Plunger, she bounded towards the door which she struck with all her strength, crying:

"Father! Brother! Deliver me! Come, come to my help!"

"Step back from the door, my child!" answered the skipper. "We shall break it in."

Beside herself with joy, the young girl fell back a few steps. Shaken from its hinges by the blows of the iron bars that Eidiol and Guyrion and Rustic the Gay wielded with energy, the door soon fell over and Anne rushed into the arms of her father and brother; but looking around as if missing someone she had expected to see, she asked with fear:

"And my mother? Where is my dear mother?"

"You will see her in an instant, my child. It is from her I just learned about the treason of the infamous monk," answered the dean of the Skippers' Guild, who could not bestow sufficient caresses upon the daughter whom he feared to have lost. "When she saw me," continued the happy father, "poor Martha felt such a pang that she lost consciousness. Fortunately she returned to her senses, but her weakness is such that she could not walk out of the cell in which she also was confined. It is near by."

"But you here, father, in this abbey?" the young girl inquired, as soon as her first emotions were calmed. "And you, too, brother? And you, Rustic? Am I dreaming? Is it yourselves I see in this dungeon?"

"The Count of Paris posted some archers along the banks of the Seine in order to stop all the vessels that ascended the river," the old man explained. "Two of his soldiers took me to Rothbert. I had an altercation with him, and he ordered me locked up here."

"And the traitor thereupon sent us one of his men to say that my father wanted to see us immediately," added Guyrion; "we came without suspecting any harm – "

"And we had hardly set foot inside the abbey," broke in Rustic the Gay, "when the count's soldiers fell upon us unexpectedly and took us also prisoners."

"But you are now free," replied Anne. "Who set you free?"

"The Northman pirates, my dear child."

"Great God!" cried the young girl affrighted and clasping her hands. "Oh! father! were those pagans merciful to you?"

"Pagans who set us free are better than Christians who imprison us. Moreover, these brave and wily folks entered the abbey by strategem, and have slaughtered about a hundred Frankish soldiers, without counting the monks whom they despatched."

"After which, sister," proceeded Guyrion, "they started to pillage the basilica and the abbey. There is a heap of booty, as high as the portal of the cloister, piled up in the court-yard."

"And then," said Rustic, "the Northmans descended into the cellar to stave in the heads of the casks of wine that the abbot kept there. In this way they landed at the entrance of the gallery that leads to these underground dungeons. Expecting to find large treasures locked up there, they broke in the door. They found us huddled together in the gallery. Their chief, a magnificent young warrior whom they call Gaëlo, ordered them to treat us well and to assist us in setting the rest of the prisoners free. That is the history of our own deliverance."

"Thus, my child, we reached the cell in which your mother was confined," added Eidiol, again embracing Anne the Sweet.

"The young chief Gaëlo quitted us to join old Rolf, the chief of all the Northman forces," rejoined Guyrion, "who had just disembarked near the abbey. He entered the place and now holds it with a large body of men. The pirates are now hastily throwing up earth-works above the abbey on the side of Paris. Before sailing up towards the city they wish to fortify themselves here so as to have a safe place of refuge."

"Halloa! Halloa, there! Where are the Parisian skippers?" Gaëlo's voice was at this moment heard calling out from a distance. "Come here, my worthy men; Rolf wishes to see you!"

"Young man," said Eidiol to the pirate who was approaching them, "we thank you for having set us free. We shall follow you. But grant that my son remain near his sister and mother, who, like ourselves, were locked up in this underground prison. They need his protection."

"Let it be so," answered Gaëlo.

While Anne the Sweet and her brother walked to the cell where Martha lay, the dean of the Skippers' Guild of Paris, together with Rustic the Gay and his other men, followed Gaëlo to be presented to Rolf, who was feasting in the apartment recently occupied by the gourmandizing and craven Abbot of St. Denis. On their way thither, the young pirate left Eidiol and his men for an instant, and ran to one of the lower apartments of the abbey whither the Beautiful Shigne, whose wound, although serious, was not mortal, had been transported and was being tended. When Lodbrog the berserker, still under the spell of his vertigo of fury dashed into the crypt of the mausoleum of Clovis where the wounded warrior maid lay, the structure would inevitably have been demolished had he not stumbled at the first step of the short stone stairs that led down into the cell, and rolled to the bottom where he fell prostrate, bleeding to death from the wounds that he had received, not a few of which would have even singly proved mortal.

CHAPTER IX
THE NORTHMAN SEA-KING

Rolf, the Sea-King and supreme Chief of the Northman pirates, was a man far advanced in years. His beard and hair, naturally of a yellow blonde, were heavily streaked with grey. Numerous scars criss-crossed his face, which was of a brick-red hue, tanned and copper-colored by the sun and the sea air. His physiognomy was rendered hideous by a saber cut that put out his left eye and cut his nose off to the bone. His single eye glistened like a burning coal under its bushy eye-brow; his heavy lips, half-hidden under his bristling moustache and by his shaggy beard, imparted to his mouth a scoffing and sensuous expression. Rolf was of middle size and of athletic frame. His arms were abnormally long. Like his champions, the Northman Chieftain wore an armor of iron scales. But, in order to feast and frolic more at ease, he had doffed his cuirass, and now kept on only a jacket of reindeer-skin, blackened at several places by the friction of his armor, and that fell open from time to time, exposing his shirt and, under his shirt, a chest as hirsute as that of the bears of the northern sea. The pirate chieftain was just finishing his repast. Canons and a few other surviving dignitaries of the abbot served Rolf upon their knees. The friars looked haggard and were pale with fear. He allowed them to move about only on all fours, or upon their knees when they were wanted to reach out dishes and wine cups to him. Every time that the movements of these servitors seemed too slow, either the pirates themselves, or former serfs of the abbey, who now saw their opportunity to avenge the ill-treatments that they had been subjected to, quickened, with kicks and sticks, the motions of the holy men.

Rolf, just finishing his sumptuous feast, seemed to be in great good humor. Half seas over with the old wines of Gaul, he was indulging himself in the well upholstered easy-chair of the abbot. He had just placed a woman on each knee, when, back from his call upon the Beautiful Shigne, and at ease concerning her recovery, Gaëlo entered the banquet-hall, accompanied by Eidiol, Rustic and the other skippers whom he was to present to Rolf.

"So the priests of this place were keeping you prisoners!" remarked Rolf to the skippers while wiping with the back of his hand his thick moustache, still wet with wine. "You should side with us against the church rats and the castle falcons!"

"We river-pikes can escape the rats and the falcons easy enough," answered Eidiol. "Nevertheless, we love to see the falcons transfixed with arrows, and the rats drowned in their traps. We applaud your victory over the monks of St. Denis."

"Are you of the city of Paris?"

"Yes, seigneur; I am the dean of the Skippers' Guild."

"Will the Parisians defend their city?"

"If you injure the poor folks, yes; if, however, all you mean to do is to burn down the churches, levy ransoms on the rich abbeys and on the palaces of the Frankish seigneurs, then the people will not budge."

"So, then, the good people of Paris will offer us no resistance. That will be wise on their part. What with the reserve that I shall leave in this fortified abbey, and my two thousand vessels that will ascend the Seine as far as Paris, resistance could come neither from Count Rothbert nor from Charles the Simple. Your King will pay us ransom, after which we shall wing our flight towards the North on the tracks of the swans, – unless I should take it into my head to settle down in this country of Gaul, the same as my comrade Hastain did when he settled down in the country of Chartres. He! He! my champions! I am growing old. Perhaps I should settle down in this country, in some fat province rich in pretty girls and good wine! Oh, my champions! As our saga sings: 'I am an old sea-crow; for nearly forty years I have grazed with my wings the fresh waters of rivers and the briny waves of the sea'. Now, then, there must be an end of this, my brave champions! Charles the Simple has a daughter called Ghisèle. She is a girl of fourteen, and pretty enough to make one's head swim. Maybe I shall take the daughter of Charles the Simple to wife and demand of him a whole province for dower. What think you of this project?"

No less intoxicated than their chieftain, the pirates emitted loud roars of laughter and answered vociferously:

"We shall drink to your wedding, old Rolf! A handsome maid belongs in your couch. Glory to the husband of Ghisèle, the daughter of Charles the Simple."

"The old brigand is drunk as a thrush in autumn, Master Eidiol; what wild scheme is that which he pursues?" whispered Rustic to the old skipper.

A great tumult interrupted the answer. The noise proceeded from without, it grew louder and approached the apartment. Imprecations and threats were vociferated wildly. Presently the door burst open and several pirates rushed in, dragging after them Guyrion the Plunger, his face bathed in blood.

"My son!" cried Eidiol running towards the lad. "My son is wounded!"

"And your mother – your sister – where are they?" added Rustic, rushing upon the heels of the old skipper. "Oh! I fear me a great misfortune has happened!"

"These bandits have killed my mother from whose arms they strove to drag my sister," answered Guyrion in despair. "I sought to defend them – these men struck me over the head with a saber and knocked me senseless!"

"My wife dead!" exclaimed the old man stupefied; and turning to the chieftain of the pirates, he cried out in a thundering voice: "Rolf! Justice! Justice! I demand vengeance!"

"Yes, Rolf, justice and vengeance!" cried several of the pirates who rushed in with Guyrion. "This dog whom we bring here to you has killed one of our companions. We want justice!"

Rolf, more and more under the influence of the heady wine, seeing that he continued to empty cup after cup, answered in a husky voice: "Yes, my champions; I shall order that justice be done. Only let me finish this flagon of wine."

At the same moment other pirates rushed in. They carried Anne the Sweet unconscious in their arms and deposited her at the feet of the Northman chieftain saying:

"Old Rolf, here is a beautiful girl that we have reserved for you. She belongs to your part of the booty."

Eidiol, Rustic, Guyrion and the other skippers in their company ran to the rescue of Anne, but they were violently repelled and held back by the pirates.

"My champions, I shall administer justice!" cried Rolf from his seat in a maudlin voice; and addressing himself to Guyrion the Plunger, who, forgetful of his wound that bathed his forehead in blood, looked alternately with despairing eyes from his father to his sister who lay prostrate in a swoon: "Who are you? Where do you come from? Answer, young man!"

"He is my son," answered Eidiol, choking with rage. "He is a skipper, like myself, and he came to join me at the abbey, where I was retained a prisoner."

"And as truly as I have managed the oar since my childhood," cried Rustic, "seeing that you, Rolf, and your men, ill-treat us poor people in such a manner, our Skippers' Guild will call the other guilds of Paris to arms against you."

Rolf received the threat with a loud roar of laughter. He rose, and trying to steady himself upon his feet answered in a voice frequently interrupted by hiccoughs:

"I pardon all these fellows; but I shall keep the girl. And now, you, Parisians, return to your city; you are free. I forbid my champions do you the least harm."

"Rolf!" cried Eidiol imploringly, "return my daughter to me! Allow us to carry away in our vessel the body of my wife!"

"My champions, cast these dogs out at the gate of the abbey, and let them hurry to announce to Charles the Simple that – I want – to marry his daughter Ghisèle – Yes, I want that maid for my wife."

"Yes, yes! You shall wed the princess!" cried the pirates, delighted at the whim of their chief; and dragging the Parisian skippers despite all the resistance that they offered, drove them out of the abbey of St. Denis at the point of their swords.