Part 9 (1/2)
added Eidiol, again embracing Anne the Sweet.
”The young chief Gaelo 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?” Gaelo'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 Gaelo.
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 Gaelo 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 s.h.i.+gne, 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 cuira.s.s, 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 s.h.i.+rt and, under his s.h.i.+rt, a chest as hirsute as that of the bears of the northern sea. The pirate chieftain was just finis.h.i.+ng 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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+gne, and at ease concerning her recovery, Gaelo 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 Ghisele. 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 Ghisele, 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, rus.h.i.+ng upon the heels of the old skipper. ”Oh! I fear me a great misfortune has happened!”