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.