SISTER AGNES.
Shortly after the count's departure from the abbey, the reinforcement of
a hundred soldiers promised by him arrived at the place. Their captain
spent the night in preparing the fortifications for the defence. Under
the physical lash of their foreman, above all intimidated by the fear of
the fiery furnace of hell, the serfs and villeins transported to the
platform of the walls large stones, logs of wood and heavy beams,
intended to serve as projectiles against the expected assailants. They
were also made to carry heavy barrels of oil and pitch, which, boiled in
large caldrons, were held ready to be poured over the heads of the
enemy; besides a large number of bags full of chalk dust, whose
contents, dropped upon the besiegers, would serve to blind them.
During the night and part of the morning the cattle of the abbey's
domain were driven within its walls. Thither also a large number of the
abbey's serfs and villeins congregated, summoned by the abbot to its
defence. Many more, however, took to flight, determined to join the
Northmans the moment they disembarked and to glean whatever they could
in the wake of the invaders' tracks.
Many "Franks", as the free holders of little farms were styled, who
lived in the environs of St. Denis, bundled up their most valuable
havings and went for shelter behind the walls of the abbey. The
court-yards and galleries of the cloister became by the hour more
encumbered with a frightened crowd, whose baggage was piled up high
hither and thither, while cattle of every description were huddled close
together in the garden and on a spacious meadow that was enclosed within
the fortifications.
Finally, the abbot himself, helped by his canons who were armed with
spades and mattocks, was busily engaged in the work of hastily burying
under the ground of a little sequestered court all the rich
paraphernalia of the church--vases, reliquaries, chalices, monstrances,
statues, crosses, candelabra, chalice-covers, and other holy utensils
wrought in silver or solid gold, and enriched with costly
ornaments,--all proceeding from the toil and taxes of the serfs and
villeins. A small group of priests were upon their knees in the
basilica, imploring, amid moans, the assistance of heaven and invoking
all manner of maledictions upon the heads of the Northmans.
The larger part of the day had been spent in continual frights. The men
at the lookout, who kept watch on the ramparts above the gate, saw it
frequently open in order to give passage to belated serfs and herds of
cattle, or to wagons filled with the fodder needed for feeding the large
number of horses and other animals that had been crowded within the
walls. Two of these conveyances, loaded with hay, and each drawn by a
double yoke of oxen, were conducted by a man of sinister face and barely
dressed in rags. The man was well known in the abbey. So soon as he hove
in sight, a monk of large paunch, who was placed at the wicket of the
gate, cried:
"Blessings upon you and your load! We have so many cattle within that we
have been in fear of want of provender for them. Have you any tidings
of those pagan Northmans? Have their vessels been seen on the Seine? Are
they near or still far away?"
"They are said to be drawing nearer. But thanks to God, the abbey is
impregnable. Oh! A curse upon these Northmans!" answered the serf, whose
name was Savinien. As the man spoke, a strange smile flitted over his
careworn countenance; he cast a sly side-smile upon the load of hay that
was heaped up high on the wagons and added: "I have driven my oxen so
fast, in order to place myself at the order of our holy abbot, that, I
fear, the poor brutes are foundered.--See how heavy they breathe!"
"They will not have to blow long. They will be speedily killed to feed
the large number of noble Franks who have fled hither for refuge,"
replied the monk.
As the monk spoke, he began to remove, with the assistance of several
other brothers, the enormous iron bars and chains that reinforced the
massive gate from within. About to throw open the gate, however, he
heard, from a short distance without, mournful moans and canticles
rising from female voices. Such was the panic that the approach of the
Northmans threw the church people into, that the gate-monk, frightened
out of his senses by the feminine lamentations which were slowly drawing
nearer, did not venture, despite all insistence on the serfs part, to
open the gate of the abbey, and refused admittance even to Savinien's
welcome load. In the midst of the altercation between the monk and the
serf, there appeared from behind a clump of trees, that rose at a
distance from the abbey, a short procession of nuns distinguishable by
their black and white robes, as well as by the long veils that covered
their faces and that were intended to withdraw the saintly maids from
the gaze of the profane. Four of the nuns carried on a stretcher,
improvised of recently felled tree-branches, the inert body of one of
their companions. The pall-bearers, together with the other eight or ten
nuns who composed the funeral cortège, emitted incessant and
heart-rending lamentations. Another young nun, whose veil was partly
raised, preceded the body by a few steps, wringing her hands in despair,
and from time to time crying out distracted:
"Lord! Lord! Have mercy upon us! Our holy abbess is killed!"
Savinien, who, from the moment admission into the abbey was refused him,
had been casting increasingly anxious and uneasy looks at his load,
piously dropped down on his knees the moment he saw the mortuary
procession, led by the weepful nun, approach. Stepping more rapidly
ahead of her suite, the latter walked up to the gate of the abbey, and,
with a voice broken by sobs, cried through the wicket:
"My dear brothers, open this holy place of asylum to the poor lambs who
are fleeing before ravaging wolves. Already our venerable mother in God
has succumbed. We are carrying her mortal remains. Open the gate of the
sacred monastery!"
"Is that you, Sister Agnes?" inquired the big gate-monk through the
wicket "Are those Northman demons so near that they have invaded the
convent of St. Placida?"
"Alack, my dear brother! Last night, about a score of the accursed
pagans disembarked not far from our convent," answered the nun with an
outburst of sobs. "Awakened by the light of the flames that shot up from
the conflagration, and by the cries of terror of the serfs who occupied
the outside buildings, a few of us managed to throw on our clothes and
to flee in all haste with our holy abbess through a gate that opened on
the field. But alack! alack! so severe was the shock upon our venerable
mother, already enfeebled by disease, that after about a quarter of an
hour's march she fainted in our arms,--and immediately," proceeded
Sister Agnes after she had overcome a fresh fit of heart-rending sobs,
"immediately our venerable mother passed from the earth to heaven!--We
are bringing her body with us in order that the last rites may be
performed over her remains, and that they may be buried in consecrated
ground."
The gate-brother listened to the distressful tale, sobbing no less
loudly than Sister Agnes and smiting his chest. When she finished he
quickly opened the gate and sent one of his assistants to notify the
abbot of the misfortune. The body of the deceased mother-superior
entered the abbey, together with the nuns who accompanied it, and
followed by Savinien's two wagons of hay. The somber face of the serf
seemed to lighten up with a sinister joy, which he had no little
difficulty in suppressing, when at last he found himself within, and the
abbey gate closed behind him.
The fugitives who crowded the court-yard of the abbey dropped upon their
knees at the passage of the nuns. The latter, led by one of the monks,
marched to the parvis of the basilica, followed by the crowd who sang in
chorus the prayer that for fully a century had been repeated in all the
abbeys and all the castles of Gaul:
"Lord, have mercy upon us! Lord, deliver us from the Northmans! Lord,
exterminate the accursed pagans!"
The funeral cortège arrived at the entrance of the basilica and was
received by one of the deacons. The prelate had hastily donned his
sacerdotal robes. Priests bearing the cross aloft and carrying candles
stood behind the officiating prelate. They looked down-cast and pale,
and trembled. They repeated the funeral psalms with precipitation and
absent-mindedly. The evidence before them of the pirates' being nigh,
made them shudder. The first prayers being finished, the body, still
carried by the nuns upon the improvised stretcher of branches, was taken
to the choir and deposited upon the flagstones, not far from the
chanters' desk.
An indescribable disorder reigned in the interior of the vast church.
Monks, assisted by serfs, were in hot haste finishing the removal of the
precious ornaments of the splendid basilica. Ranged in the transepts, or
aisles, that extended to either side of the nave, were a number of
crypts, subterranean grooves, above which rose numerous mausoleums
erected to the memory of kings and queens of the stock of Clovis and of
Charles Martel. The frightened faces of the monks of St. Denis, the
lamentations that they uttered while at work removing the sacred
ornaments from the altars, the funeral chants that were sung in muffled
voices for the repose of the soul of the mother-superior, whose body had
just been carried into the church by the nuns, the moans of the noble
Franks and their families, who had taken refuge in the holy place--all
these lugubrious notes added fuel to the general feeling of dread.
Attracted, probably, more by curiosity than piety, the larger number of
the soldiers, who were sent by the Count of Paris for the defense of the
abbey, had followed the funeral procession into the church. These men of
war, savage, coarse and as impious as either the Northmans or the Arabs,
brusquely pushed their way forward as far as the choir where the body of
the mother-abbess lay surrounded by her nuns. Little affected by the
religious character of the ceremony or by the solemnity of the sacred
place, these soldiers fastened their licentious glances upon the
daughters of the Lord, whose faces they sought to discover across the
transparency of their lowered veils. On his knees beside one of these,
who, likewise on her knees and her forehead bowed down, seemed steeped
in prayer, Sigefred, a captain of the soldiers, made bold to touch the
elbow of the holy maid. The latter was for an instant startled, but
controlled herself, and remained silent. Encouraged by his success,
Sigefred quietly raised the veil which fell from the head of the nun
down to her waist, and carried his audacity to the point of sliding a
profane hand up to the collar of the maid's robe. No sooner had he
committed the indignity than he quickly withdrew his hand as if it had
touched a piece of burning coal.
"By the navel of the Pope!" growled Sigefred in an undertone, "This nun
has a skin of iron!"
The venturesome ruffian had no time for another word. He dropped dead,
stabbed with a dagger by the nun of the skin of iron. For an instant the
other soldiers remained dumb with stupefaction, seeking to explain how
the long and large sleeves of the saintly maid could conceal an arm and
hand whose epidermis seemed of metal.
"A miracle!" cried some of the witnesses of Sigefred's attempt. "A
miracle! The Lord protects the chastity of his virgins by covering them
with a tissue of steel mail!"
"Treason!" cried the less credulous warriors, drawing their swords.
"These nuns are soldiers dressed like women! Treason! To arms! To arms!
Revenge Sigefred! To the devil with miracles and maids!"
"_Skoldmoë!_" suddenly shouted with resonant voice the mother-abbess
whose funeral was being celebrated, and rising to her full length,
freeing herself from her long veil and dropping her black robe to her
feet, Shigne the Buckler Maiden stood there in her battle armor, with
her bold face framed in a hair-net of iron mail that replaced her usual
casque. "_Skoldmoë!_" she shouted again, repeating her war-cry. "Up, my
virgins! Mercy for the women! Exterminate the men! Kill them all, to the
last one!" and brandishing a double-edged axe, she bounded forward like
a panther and struck down one of the Frankish warriors who rushed upon
her.
"_Skoldmoë!_" cried back the other Buckler Maidens, likewise disengaging
themselves of their veils and their monastic robes, and like Shigne,
they forthwith charged upon the soldiers with their axes and swords.
The faithful, only a minute before absorbed in prayer, fled in dismay
towards the doors of the basilica; the monks hid themselves behind the
mausoleums over the royal crypts or embraced the altars--their last
refuge. The vault of the church resounded with cries of terror, with
hysterical moans, and with invocations to the Supreme Being, while above
the confused noise rose the din of the Northman virgins' battle-cry, the
thud of their heavy blows, the shrieks of the soldiers whom they smote.
Sister Agnes, who had introduced the pirate women into the abbey, was a
poor victim of sacerdotal authority. She had been compelled to enter the
convent of St. Placida. The previous night the Northman warrior maids
forced open the doors of the monastery. She saw her opportunity to
regain her freedom, and aided the Buckler Maidens in carrying out the
strategem which Shigne devised in order to capture the abbey of St.
Denis.
More numerous than the pirate women, the soldiers in the abbey strove to
break a passage through the frightened mass at the door and join their
comrades in the interior of the church in order to overpower their
assailants. But the prodigy of a combat with woman warriors, some of
whom were of surpassing beauty, struck the younger of the men with
amazement. Their arms were involuntarily stayed in the act of striking
the beautiful maids. These, on the contrary, fired by the example of
Shigne, who was making havoc among the soldiers with her battle-axe,
fought with matchless heroism. The older soldiers, being less
susceptible to the emotions of some of their younger companions at the
thought of a struggle to the death with young women, fell upon these
with fury. Several of Shigne's virgins were killed, others were wounded.
But the latter did not seem to feel their wounds, and only fought with
increased ardor.
The mêlée was still at its height when Fultrade arrived back at the
abbey from the mission that the Count of Paris had charged him with. The
noise of the battle in the church drew him thither. When he entered he
saw Shigne with her back against the mausoleum of Clovis battling with
intrepidity against two Frankish soldiers. The heroine whirled her
weapon with such agility and dexterity that every time her battle-axe
struck the swords of her two adversaries the sparks were made to fly by
the shock of the iron against the steel. During this struggle the sword
of one of the soldiers was broken. At the moment when Shigne was about
to let her axe descend upon his head and kill her disarmed adversary,
Fultrade, who had glided silently behind the mausoleum, seized her by
the legs. Thus taken by surprise, Shigne fell to the ground and dropped
her axe. The two Frankish soldiers threw themselves upon her and made
desperate efforts to keep her under their knees.
"_Skoldmoë!_--To me, my sisters!"
But the voice of the Buckler Maiden was drowned in the general clash of
arms and in the furious roars of the soldiers, mingled with the war-cry
of the other virgins who still continued the fray under the fretted
vaults of the basilica. In vain the heroine called to her companions.
Fultrade, who had knelt down beside her in order to assist the two
soldiers in keeping her on the floor, placed both his hands upon her
mouth, and yielding to his licentious instinct, whispered to the two men
at arms:
"Comrades, this witch is young and beautiful; let us drag her into the
crypt of this mausoleum; she shall be ours!"
The two Franks broke into a savage laugh of approval, and aided by
Fultrade dragged the Buckler Maiden, despite the superhuman resistance
that she offered, into a cavity that was dug under the mausoleum--an
underground nook perpetually lighted by a sepulchre lamp.