The Infant's Skull Part 7

Yvon rested a few moments; he then bound the hind legs of the buck with a flexible twig and dragging his booty, not without considerable effort by reason of its weight, he arrived with it at his hut near the Fountain of the Hinds. His family was now for a long time protected from hunger.

The buck could not yield less than three hundred pounds of meat, which carefully prepared and smoked after the fas.h.i.+on of foresters, could be preserved for many months.

Two days after these two fateful nights, Yvon learned from a woodsman serf, that one of his fellows, a forester of the woods of Compiegne like himself, having discovered the next morning the body of Gregory the Hollow-bellied pierced with an arrow that remained in the wound, and having identified the weapon as Yvon's by the peculiar manner in which it was feathered, had denounced him as the murderer. The bailiff of the domain of Compiegne detested Yvon. Although the latter's crime delivered the neighborhood of a monster who slaughtered the travelers in order to gorge himself upon them, the bailiff ordered his arrest. Thus notified in time, Yvon the Forester resolved to flee, leaving his son and family behind. But Den-Brao as well as his wife insisted upon accompanying him with their children.

The whole family decided to take the road and place their fate in the hands of Providence. The smoked buck's meat would suffice to sustain them through a long journey. They knew that whichever way they took, serfdom awaited them. It was a change of serfdom for serfdom; but they found consolation in the knowledge that the change from the horrors they had undergone could not but improve their misery. The famine, although general, was not, according to reports, equally severe everywhere.

The hut near the Fountain of the Hinds was, accordingly, abandoned.

Den-Brao and his wife carried the little Jeannette by turns on their backs. The other child, Nominoe, being older, marched besides his grandfather. They reached and crossed the borders of the royal domain, and Yvon felt safe. A few days later the travelers learned from some pilgrims that Anjou suffered less of the famine than did any other region. Thither they directed their steps, induced thereto by the further consideration that Anjou bordered on Britanny, the cradle of the family. Yvon wished eventually to return thither in the hope of finding some of his relatives in Armorica.

The journey to Anjou was made during the first months of the year 1034 and across a thousand vicissitudes, almost always accompanied by some pilgrims, or by beggars and vagabonds. Everywhere on their pa.s.sage the traces were met of the horrible famine and not much less horrible ravages caused by the private feuds of the seigneurs. Little Jeannette perished on the road.

EPILOGUE.

The narrative of my father, Yvon the Forester, breaks off here. He could not finish it. He was soon after taken sick and died. Before expiring he made to me the following confession which he desired inserted in the family's annals:

"I have a horrible confession to make. Near by the grave to which I took the body of Julyan, lay a large heap of wood that was to be reduced to coal by the woodsmen. My family was starving in the hut. I saw no way of prolonging their existence. The thought then occurred to me: 'Last night the abominable food that I carried to my family from Gregory's human charnel house kept them from dying in the agonies of starvation. My grandson is dead. What should I do? Bury the body of little Julyan or have it serve to prolong the life of those who gave him life?'

"After long hesitating before such frightful alternatives, the thought of the agonies that my family were enduring decided me. I lighted the heap of dried wood. I laid upon it the flesh of my grandson, and by the light cast from the pyre I buried his bones, except a fragment of his skull, which I preserved as a sad and solemn relic of those accursed days, and on which I engraved these fateful words in the Gallic tongue: _Fin-al-bred_--The End of the World. I then took the broiled pieces of meat to my expiring family!... You all ate in the dark.... You knew not what you ate.... The ghastly meal saved your lives!"

My father then delivered to me the parchment that contained his narrative, accompanied with the lettered bone from the skull of my poor little Julyan, and also the iron arrow-head which accompanied the narrative left by our ancestor Eidiol, the skipper of Paris. Some day, perhaps, these two narratives may be joined to the chronicle of our family, no doubt held by those of our relatives who must still be living in Britanny.

My father Yvon died on the 9th of September, 1034.

This is how our journey ended: Following my father's wishes and also with the purpose of drawing near Britanny, we marched towards Anjou, where we arrived on the territory of the seigneur Guiscard, Count of the region and castle of Mont-Ferrier. All travelers who pa.s.sed over his territory had to pay tribute to his toll-gatherers. Poor people, unable to pay, were, according to the whim of the seigneur's men, put through some disagreeable, or humiliating, or ridiculous performance: they were either whipped, or made to walk on their hands, or to turn somersaults, or kiss the bolts of the toll-gatherer's gate. As to the women, they were subjected to revolting obscenities. Many other people as penniless as ourselves were thus subjected to indignity and brutality. Desirous of sparing my father and my wife the disgrace, I said to the bailiff of the seigniory who happened to be there: "The castle I see yonder looks to me weak in many ways. I am a skillful mason; I have built a large number of fortified donjons; employ me and I shall work to the satisfaction of your seigneur. All I ask of you is not to allow my father, wife and children to be maltreated, and to furnish us with shelter and bread while the work lasts." The bailiff accepted my offer gladly, seeing that the mason, who was killed during the last war against the castle of Mont-Ferrier, had not yet been replaced, and besides I furnished ample evidence of knowing how to build. The bailiff a.s.signed us to a hut where we were to receive a serf's pittance. My father was to cultivate a little garden attached to our hovel, while Nominoe, then old enough to be of a.s.sistance, was to help me at my work which would last until winter. We contemplated a journey to Britanny after that. We had lived here five months when, three days ago, I lost my father.

To-day the eleventh day of the month of June, of the year 1035, I, Den-Brao add this post-script to the above lines that I appended to my father's narrative. I have to record a sad event. The work on the castle of Mont-Ferrier not being concluded before the winter of 1034, the bailiff of the seigneur, shortly after my father's death proposed to me to resume work in the spring. I accepted. I love my trade. Moreover, my family felt less wretched here than in Compiegne, and I was not as anxious as my father to return to Britanny where, after all, there may be no member of our family left. I accepted the bailiff's offer, and continued to work upon the buildings, that are now completed. The last piece of work I did was to finish up a secret issue that leads outside of the castle. Yesterday the bailiff came to me and said: "One of the allies of the seigneur of Mont-Ferrier, who is just now on a visit at the castle, expressed great admiration for the work that you did, and as he is thinking of improving the fortifications of his own manor, he offered the count our master to exchange you for a serf who is a skillful armorer, and whom we need. The matter was settled between them."

"But I am not a serf of the seigneur of Mont-Ferrier," I interposed; "I agreed to work here of my own free will."

The bailiff shrugged his shoulders and replied: "The law says--_every man who is not a Frank, and who lives a year and a day upon the land of a seigneur, becomes a serf and the property of the said seigneur, and as such is subject to taille at will and mercy_. You have lived here since the tenth day of June of the year 1034; we are now at the eleventh day of June of the year 1035; you have lived a year and a day on the land of the seigneur of Mont-Ferrier; you are now his serf; you belong to him, and he has the right to exchange you for a serf of the seigneur of Plouernel. Drop all thought of resisting our master's will. Should you kick up your heels, Neroweg IV, seigneur and count of Plouernel, will order you tied to the tail of his horse, and drag you in that way as far as his castle."

I would have resigned myself to my new condition without much grief, but for one circ.u.mstance. For forty years I lived a serf on the domain of Compiegne, and it mattered little to me whether I exercised my trade of masonry in one seigniory or another. But I remember that my father told me that he had it from his grandfather Guyrion how an old family of the name of Neroweg, established in Gaul since the conquest of Clovis, had ever been fatal to our own. I felt a sort of terror at the thought of finding myself the serf of a descendant of the Terrible Eagle--that first of the Nerowegs that crossed our path.

May heaven ordain it so that my forebodings prove unfounded! May heaven ordain, my dear son Nominoe, that you shall not have to register on this parchment aught but the date of my death and these few words:

"My father Den-Brao ended peaceably his industrious life of a mason serf."

(THE END.)