The Poniard's Hilt Part 19

"What chant was that?"

"Oh! It is old, very, very old--my mother used to tell me. It has been sung in Gaul for over five or six hundred years."

"And what is its name?"

"The chant of Hena, the Virgin of the Isle of Sen."

"The chant of Hena!" cried the Vagre and the hermit simultaneously with a tremor of delight.

Both grew immediately silent, while Odille, astonished at their visible emotion, looked from the one to the other, and asked:

"You also seem to know the chant of Hena?"

"Sing it, my child," answered Ronan in a tremulous voice.

More and more astonished, little Odille was hardly able to recognize her friend. The dare-devil and merry Vagre had become pensive and grave.

"Yes, yes, my child! Recite that chant to us with your sweet voice of fifteen years," put in the hermit. "But not here--the dance and yonder wild carousal, although far enough away, would drown your voice--"

"The hermit is right. Come with us, little Odille, to yonder large oak.

It will be far enough away from the dancers. It is surrounded by a soft moss carpet. You will be able to sleep there. I shall cover you up with my cloak to protect you from the damp."

From the foot of the oak tree where the girl took her seat between Ronan and the hermit, only the dim noise was heard of the giddy dance and songs of Ronan's companions, the Vagres and Vagresses. The moon, now on her decline, shed her silvery rays under the somber verdure of the leaves and lighted the hermit, Ronan and the young slave as if the sun shone through the trees. The child-like voice of Odille was soon heard striking up the first couplet of the chant:

"She was young, she was fair, and holy was she; Hena her name, Hena the maid of the Island of Sen."

At these words both the hermit and the Vagre lowered their heads, and without noticing the tears that the other was shedding, both wept.

Odille sang the second couplet, but broken with the fatigue of the last twenty-four hours, and yielding to the influence of the chant's melancholy rhythm, that so often had lulled and rocked her to sleep on her mother's knees, the little slave's voice became fainter and fainter, while, at the distance the Vagres suddenly struck up in chorus and with resonant voices the refrain of another ancient chant of Gaul. These latter accents sent a new thrill through the frames of Ronan and the hermit. Without wholly drowning Odille's voice, the words reached their ears:

"Flow, flow, thou blood of the captive! Drop, drop, thou dew of gore!

Germinate, sprout up, thou avenging harvest!"

The two men seemed struck with the singular coincidence: at a distance, the chant of revolt, of war and blood; close to them, the girl's angelic voice, singing the praises of Hena, one of the sweetest glories of Armorican Gaul. Presently, however, as Odille yielded more and more to the gentle pressure of slumber, her voice was heard ever fainter until from a murmur, it became hardly audible. The girl's head drooped on her breast, and with her back sustained by the trunk of the tree she fell into profound sleep.

"Poor child!" said Ronan as he covered her with his cloak. "She is overcome with fatigue. May her sleep give her rest and strength!"

"Ronan," observed the hermit fastening a penetrating look upon the Vagre, "the chant of Hena made you weep--"

"It is true, good hermit."

"What is the reason of such emotion?"

"A family remembrance--if a Vagre, a 'Wand'ring Man,' a 'Wolf,' a 'Wolf's-Head' can be at all said to have a family--"

"And what is that family remembrance?"

"The sweet Hena, to whom the chant refers, was one of my ancestresses."

"How do you know that?"

"My father often told me so; in my childhood he used to relate to me the histories of olden days, of centuries ago."

"Where is your father now?"

"I do not know. He used to run the Bagaudy, perhaps he now runs the Vagrery, unless he has died the brave death of a brave man. I do not expect to be enlightened upon that until he and I meet again elsewhere--"

"Where?"

"In those mysterious worlds that none knows and that we shall all know--seeing that we shall all continue to live there--"

"You have, then, preserved the faith of our ancestors?"

"My father taught me that to die was to change vestments, because we leave this world to be re-born in yonder ones. Death is but a transformation."

"Is it long since you were separated from your father?"

"Let us drop that subject--it is a sad one. I prefer to keep up a cheerful mood. And yet, I feel drawn towards you, although you are not cheerful--"

"We live in days when, in order to be cheerful, one's soul must be either very weak or very strong."

"Do you think me weak?"

"I think you are both strong and weak. But as to your father--what has become of him?"

"Well, my father was a Bagauder in his youth; later, after the Franks christened us 'Vagres,' he became a Vagre. The name was changed, the pursuit remained the same."

"And your mother?"

"In Vagrery one knows but little of his mother. I never knew mine. The furthest back that I can carry my memory, I must have been seven or eight years old. I then accompanied my father in his raids, now in Provence, and now here in Auvergne. If I was tired of foot, either my father or one of his companions carried me on his back. It is thus that I grew up. We often had days of enforced rest. Sometimes the Frankish counts were so exasperated at us that they gathered their leudes and hunted us. Informed of their movements by the poor folks of the fields who loved us dearly, we would then retire to our inaccessible fastnesses, and there lie low for several days while the Franks beat the field without encountering even the shadow of a Vagre. At such intervals of rest in the seclusion of some solitary retreat, my father used to narrate to me, as I told you, the histories of olden days. Thus I learned that our family originated in Britanny, where the main stock lived and perhaps still lives to this very hour, free and in peace, seeing that the Franks have never yet been able to place their yoke upon that rugged province--its granite rocks are too hard, and its Bretons are like the granite of its rocks."

"I know the saying: 'He is intractable as an Armorican.'"

"My father often used the saying."

"But what induced him to leave that peaceful province, that still enjoys the boon of freedom, thanks to the indomitable bravery that continues to uphold the druid faith, which the evangelical morality of the young master of Nazareth has regenerated?"

"My father was about seventeen years of age when one day his family extended hospitality to a peddler during a stormy night. The peddler's trade took him all over Gaul; he knew and he told them of the country's trials; he also spoke of the life of adventure led by the Bagauders. My father was tired of the life of the fields; his heart was warm, and from his cradle he had drunk in the hatred for the Franks. Struck by the peddler's account, he considered the opportunity good for waging war upon the barbarians by joining the Bagauders. He left the paternal roof and joined the peddler by appointment about a league away. After a few days' march the two reached Anjou and met a troop of Bagauders. Young, robust and daring, my father was an acceptable recruit. He joined the band, and--long live the Bagaudy! Raiding from province to province, he came as far as Auvergne, which he never left. The country was favorable for his pursuit--forests, mountains, rocks, caverns, torrents, extinct volcanos! It is the paradise of the Bagaudy, the promised land of the Vagrery!"

"How came you to be separated from your father?"

"It was about three years ago--agents of the king, they were called _antrustions_, collected the revenues of the royal domain. They were numerous, well armed, and traveled only by day. We were waiting for the end of their reaping to gather in our harvest. One night they halted at Sifour, a little unprotected village. The opportunity tempted my father.

We sallied forth believing that we would take the Franks by surprise.

They were on their guard. After a b.l.o.o.d.y encounter we had to flee before the Frankish lances that followed us in hot pursuit. I was separated from my father during that midnight affray. Was he killed or was he merely wounded and taken prisoner I do not know. All my efforts to ascertain his fate have been vain. Since then my companions elected me their chief. You wanted to know my history--I have told it to you. You now know it."

"You have told me more than you think for. Your father's name was Karadeucq."

"How do you know that?"

"The name of your father's father was Jocelyn. If he still lives in Britanny with his elder son Kervan and his daughter Roselyk, he must be inhabiting a house near the sacred stones of Karnak--"