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

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СКАЧАТЬ and one of the high dignitaries of the Church. Hold your tongue, brainless boy!"

      "Martha, let the fool talk!" replied the monk disdainfully, walking to the door. "The true Christian preaches humility. I am not ashamed of having kept a tap-room. The end justifies the means. All that is done in the temple of the Lord is sanctified."

      "What, Father Fultrade!" exclaimed Rustic the Gay, "Is everything sanctified? – even debauchery?"

      The monk left the house shrugging his shoulders and without uttering a word. But Martha, angered at the lad's language, addressed him with bitterness in her tone:

      "Rustic, if all you come here for is to humiliate our good Father Fultrade, you may dispense with putting your feet over our threshold. Shame upon speakers of evil!"

      "Come, come, dear wife," said Eidiol, "calm yourself. After all, the lad has only said the truth. Is it not a fact that the lower clergy traffic in wine and food, even in pretty girls?"

      "Thanks be to the Lord!" answered Martha. "At least what is drunk and what is eaten on the premises of holy places is sanctified, as the venerable Father Fultrade has just said. Is it not better to go and drink there than in the taverns where Satan spreads his nets?"

      "Adieu, good wife! I do not care to discuss such subjects. Nevertheless it does seem strange to me, despite the general custom, to see the house of the Lord turned into a tavern."

      "Oh, my God! My poor husband!" exclaimed Martha, sighing and painfully affected by the obduracy of her husband. "Is the custom not general? In all the chapels there is feasting done."

      "It is the custom; I admit it; I said so before, dear wife. Let us not quarrel over it. But where is Anne? She has not returned from above;" and stepping towards the staircase, the old man twice called out his daughter's name.

      "Here I am, father," answered the blonde girl with her sweet voice, and she descended with her father's and brother's great coats on her arm.

      The preparations for departure were soon ended by Eidiol, his son, and Rustic the Gay, all the quicker and more cheerful for the hand that Anne took in them. A large hamper was filled with provisions and the men took leave of the women folks.

      "Adieu, dear wife; adieu, dear daughter, till to-morrow. Forget not to lock the street door well to-night. Penitent marauders are dangerous fellows. There is no worse breed of thieves."

      "The Lord will watch over us," answered Martha, dropping her eyes before her husband.

      "Adieu, good mother," said Guyrion, in turn. "I regret to have caused you the fright of this forenoon. My father was right. I was too quick with my hook against the lances of the Franks."

      "Thanks to God, my son," replied Martha with unction, "our good Father Fultrade happened along, like an angel sent by God to save you. Blessed be he for his intervention!"

      "If the angels look like him, what a devil of a face must not the demons have!" murmured Rustic the Gay, taking charge of the hamper, while Guyrion threw two spare oars and his redoubtable hook over his shoulder.

      At the moment when, following last upon the steps of Eidiol and his son, Rustic the Gay was leaving the house, Anne the Sweet approached the young man and said to him in a low voice:

      "Rustic, keep good watch over my father and my brother. Mother and myself will pray to God for you three."

      "Anne," answered the young skipper in his usual merry voice and yet in a penetrating tone: "I love your father like my own; Guyrion like a brother; I have a stout heart and equally stout arms; I would die for all of you. I can tell you no more."

      Rustic exchanged a last parting look with the young girl, whose face turned cherry-red with joy and girlish embarrassment. He ran to catch up with Eidiol and Guyrion, and all three disappeared at the next turning of the street from the lingering looks of Martha and Anne, who lovingly followed them with their eyes and called after them: "A pleasant voyage!"

      CHAPTER III

      GAELO AND SHIGNE

      On the very day when Master Eidiol, bound for the small port of St. Audoin, descended the Seine on board his trading vessel, two other craft, proceeding from the opposite direction, were ascending the river with forceful strokes of oars. Both these craft were of unusual shape – they were narrow, about thirty feet long, and rose only slightly above the water's line. They resembled sea-serpents. Their prows, shaped like their poops, enabled them to advance or retreat without the necessity of turning about, but by merely placing the rudders forward or aft, according as the maritime maneuver demanded. These craft, supplied with a single mast and square sail, the latter of which was now clawed fast to the cross beam, there being only little wind, manned with twelve oarsmen, a steersman and a captain – the two "holkers" as these craft were called by the Northmans, were so light that the pirates could carry them on their shoulders for a long distance and set them floating again. Although the two holkers were of equal build and swiftness they resembled each other only in the sense that a robust man may be said to resemble a lissome lass. One of them, painted black, had for its prow ornament a sea eagle painted red; its beak and talons were of polished iron. On the top of the mast a weather vane, or, as they called it, "eire-wire," also representing a sea eagle engraved on a metal sheet, turned at the slightest breeze, the direction of which was indicated by the fluttering of a light red streamer placed on the starboard side of the holker and carrying the same sea bird embroidered in black. Just below the rail, which was pierced with the holes necessary for the operation of the oars, a row of iron bucklers glistened in the rays of the setting sun, which also played upon the pirates' polished armor, that consisted of little iron scales, which, covering them from head to foot, imparted to the wearers the appearance of gigantic fishes.

      Fierce people were these pirates! Sailing over the main from the shores of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, they arrived only after some days' journey at the coasts of Gaul. They boasted in their "sagas," or popular songs, of "never having slept under a board roof, or having emptied their cups near a sheltered fireplace." Pillaging churches, castles and abbeys, turning chapels into stables, cutting shirts and breeches for themselves out of altar-cloths, ravaging everything that they encountered – in this style, as they expressed themselves, they "sang the mass of the lances, beginning at dawn with the matins and closing at dusk with the vespers." To conduct his vessel as a skilful knight manages his horse, to be able to run over its oars while in motion, and to be able to hurl three successive javelins at the plate on the top of the mast, receive them back in his own hands and hurl them up again without once missing his aim – such were some of the essential accomplishments for an able pirate.

      "Let us then

      Defy the weather,"

      so ran their sea song,

      "For the tempest

      Is our servant,

      Helps our oars and

      Fills our sails,

      Wafts us where we

      Wish to go.

      "Where we land we

      Eat the repast

      There prepared for

      Us by others;

      Slay our host and

      Fire his dwelling,

      And resume the

      Azure swan route."

      These Northmans had for their divinity Odin, the God of the North, who promised to the brave, killed in battle, a home in Walhalla, the brilliant residence of the celestial heroes. Nevertheless, relying more on their own СКАЧАТЬ