Название: The Pilgrim's Shell; Or, Fergan the Quarryman: A Tale from the Feudal Times
Автор: Эжен Сю
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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"What became of them?"
"Neroweg IV, fearing they might reveal the secret issue constructed by themselves, had them locked up in the subterraneous place, that I stated to you. It is there that my grandfather, together with his fellow workingmen, twenty-seven in number, perished, a prey to the tortures of hunger."
"That's horrible! What barbarity!"
"Yes, it is horrible! My father, kept at home by his injuries, alone escaped this fearful death, overlooked, no doubt, by the seigneur of Plouernel. Trying to fathom the mystery of my grandfather's disappearance, my father recalled the information he had received from his father on the plan of the donjon and its secret issue. One night, accordingly, my father betook himself to that secluded spot, and succeeded in discovering an airhole concealed amid brushwood. He slid down this opening, and after walking long in a narrow gallery, he was arrested by an enormous iron grating. Seeking to break it, he passed his arm through the bars. His hand touched a mass of bones – human bones and skulls – "
"Good God! Poor victims!"
"It was the bones of the serfs, who, locked up in this subterraneous passage with my grandfather, had died of hunger. My father did not try to penetrate further. Certain of the fate of my grandfather, but lacking the energy to avenge him, he made to me this revelation on his death-bed. I went – it is a long time ago – to inspect the rocks. I discovered the subterraneous issue. Through it, to-night, will I enter the donjon and look for our child."
"Fergan, I shall not try to oppose your plan," observed Joan after a moment of silence and suppressing her apprehensions; "but how will you clear that grating which prevented your father from entering the underground passage? Is it not above your strength?"
"That grating has been fastened in the rock, it can be unfastened with my iron pick and hammer. I have the requisite strength for that job."
"Once in the passage, what will you do?"
"Last evening I took from the wooden casket, hidden yonder under the rubbish, a few strips of the parchment where Den-Brao had traced the plan of the buildings; I have posted myself on the localities. The secret gallery, in its ascent towards the castle, comes out, on the other side of the donjon, upon a secret staircase built in the thick of the wall. That leads, from the lowest of the three rows of subterranean dungeons, up to the turret that rises to the north of the platform."
"The turret," queried Joan, growing pale, "the turret, whence occasionally strange lights issue at night?"
"It is there that Azenor the Pale, the sorceress of Neroweg, carries on her witchcraft," answered the quarryman in a hollow voice. "It is in that turret that Colombaik must be, provided he still lives. It is there I shall go in search of our child."
"Oh, my poor man," murmured Joan, "I faint at the thought of the perils you are about to face!"
"Joan," suddenly interjected the serf, raising his hands towards the starry sky, visible through rifts in the roof, "before an hour the moon will have set; I must go now."
The quarryman's wife, after making a superhuman effort to overcome her terror, said in a voice that was almost firm: "I do not ask to accompany you, Fergan; I might be an encumbrance in this enterprise. But I believe, as you do, that at all costs we must try to save our child. If in three days you are not back – "
"It will mean that I have encountered death in the castle of Plouernel."
"I shall not be behind you a day, my dear husband. Have you weapons to defend yourself?"
"I have my iron pick and my hammer."
"And bread? You must have some provisions."
"I have still a big piece of bread in my wallet; you will fill my gourd with water; that will suffice me."
While his wife was attending to these charges, the serf provided himself with a long rope which he wound around him; he also placed a tinder-box in his wallet, a piece of punk, and a wick, steeped in resin, of the kind that quarrymen use to light their underground passages. These preparations being ended, Fergan silently stretched his arms towards his wife. The brave and sweet creature threw herself into them. The couple prolonged this painful embrace a few moments, as if it were a last adieu. The serf then, swinging his heavy hammer on his shoulder and taking up his iron pick, started towards the rocks where the secret issue of the seigniorial manor ran out.
CHAPTER III.
AT THE CROSS-ROAD
The day after Fergan the Quarryman decided to penetrate into the castle of Plouernel, a considerable troop of travelers, men of all conditions, who had left Nantes the day before, were journeying towards the frontier of Anjou. Among them were found pilgrims, distinguishable by the cockle-shell attached to their clothes, vagabonds, beggars, peddlers loaded with their bundles of goods. Among the latter a man of tall stature, with light blonde hair and beard, carried on his back a bundle surmounted with a cross and covered with coarse pictures representing human bones, such as skulls, thighs, arms, and fingers. This man, named Harold the Norman, devoted himself, like many other descendants of the pirates of old Rolf,2 to the trade of relics, selling to the faithful the bones which they stole at night from the seigniorial gibbets. By the sides of Harold marched two monks, who called each other Simon and Jeronimo. The cowl of the frock of Simon was pulled over his head and completely concealed his face; but that of Jeronimo, thrown back over his shoulder, exposed the monk's dark and lean visage, whose thick eye-brows, as black as his beard, imparted to it a savage hardness.
A few steps behind these priests, mounted on a fine white mule, of well-fed form and skin sleek and shining like silver, came a merchant of Nantes, named from his great wealth, Bezenecq the Rich. Still in the vigor of years, of open, intelligent and affable mien, he wore a hood of black felt, a robe of fine blue cloth, gathered around his waist by a leathern belt, from which hung an embroidered purse. Behind him, and on a part of the saddle contrived for such service, rode his daughter Isoline, a lass of about eighteen years, with blue eyes, brown hair, white teeth and a face like a rose of May, as pretty as she was attractive. Isoline's long pearl-grey robe hid her little feet; her traveling cloak, made of a soft green fabric, enveloped her elegant and supple waist; under the hood of the mantle, lined in red, her fresh visage was partially seen. The feelings of tender solicitude between father and daughter could be divined by the looks and smiles of affection that they often exchanged, as well as by the little attentions that they frequently bestowed upon each other. The serenity of unalloyed happiness, the sweet pleasures of the heart, could be read upon their visages, which bore the impress of radiant bliss. A well-clad servant, alert and vigorous, led on foot a second mule, loaded with the baggage of the merchant. On either side of the saddle hung a sword in its scabbard. In those days, one never traveled unarmed. Bezenecq the Rich had conformed to the usage, although that good and worthy townsman was of a nature little given to strife.
The travelers had arrived at a cross-road where the highway of Nantes to Angers forked off. At the juncture of the two roads there rose a seigniorial gibbet, symbol and speaking proof of the supreme jurisdiction exercised by the lords in their domains. That massive pile of stones bore at its top four iron forks fastened at right angles, gibbet-shaped. From the gibbet that rose over the western branch of the road three СКАЧАТЬ
A Norse chieftain who led a piratical invasion of France in the eighth century, and was pacified with the fief of Normandy where he and his followers in arms settled.