CHAPTER III.

THE ABBESS MEROFLEDE.

Upon leaving the workshop, the intendant Ricarik, followed by the old goldsmith, proceeded to a vast shed located outside of the abbey. Almost all the slaves and colonists who had ground-rent to pay to the monastery were gathered at the place. There were four days in the year set aside for the payment of major rents. At these periods, the products of the land that was cultivated, and with so much labor, by the Gauls, flowed in a strong and steady stream into the abbey. Thus abundance and leisure reigned within the holy precincts of this, the same as of all the other monasteries, while the enslaved populations, barely sheltered in thatched hovels, lived in perpetual and atrocious misery, borne down by all manner of exactions. Few sights could be imagined, more lively and yet so sad, than those presented at the payment of the ground-rent. The peasants, barely clad, whether slaves outright or only colonists, whose leanness told of their trials, arrived carrying on their shoulders or pushing in carts provisions and products of all sorts. To the tumultuous noise of the crowd was added the bleating of sheep and calves, the grunting of pigs, the lowing of cattle, the cackling of poultry--animals that the rent payers had to bring alive. Some of the men bent under the weight of large baskets filled with eggs, cheese, butter and honeycombs; others rolled barrels of wine that were taken to the abbey's gate on a sort of sled; yonder, wagons were unloaded of their heavy bags of wheat, of barley, of spelt, of oats or of mustard grain; here, hay and straw were being heaped up in high piles; further away, kindling wood or building material, such as beams, planks, boards, vine poles, stakes; forester slaves brought in bucks, wild boars and venison to be smoked; colonists led by the leash hunting dogs that they had to train, or carried in cages falcons and sparrow-hawks that they had taken from their nests for falconry; others, taxed in a certain quantity of iron and lead, necessary articles in the construction of the buildings of the abbey, carried these metals, while others brought rolls of cloth and of linen, bales of wool or of hemp for spinning, large pieces of woven serge, packages of cured hides, ready for use. There were also tenants whose rent consisted in certain quantities of wax, of oil, of soap and even resinous torches; baskets, osier, twisted rope, hatchets, hoes, spades and other agricultural implements. Finally, others had to pay with articles of furniture, and household utensils.

Ricarik sat down at one of the corners of the shed near a table to receive the money tax of the colonists who were in arrears, while several turning-box sisters of the convent, dressed in their long black robes and white veils, went from group to group with a parchment scroll on which they entered the rent in kind. The old goldsmith stood behind Ricarik and examined one after another the sous and the silver and copper deniers that were being paid in. He approved them all. The venerable old man feared to expose the poor people to bad treatment if he rejected any coin, seeing the intendant was merciless. The colonists who were unable to pay on that day made a considerable group, and anxiously awaited their names to be called. Many of them were accompanied by their wives and children. Those who had the money to pay having acquitted themselves, Ricarik called in a loud voice: "Sebastian!" The colonist advanced all in a tremble with his wife and two children at his side, all of them as miserably dressed as himself.

"Not only have you not paid your rent of twenty-six sous," said the intendant, "but last week you refused to cart to the abbey the woolen and linen goods that the abbess sent to Rennes. A bad payer, a detestable servant."

"Alack, seigneur! If I have not paid my rent it is because shortly before harvest time the storm destroyed my ripe wheat. I might still have saved something if I could have attended to the crop immediately, but the slaves who work the field with me were requisitioned away five out of seven days in order to work at the enclosures of the new park of the abbey and in draining one of the ponds. Left alone, I could not take in the remnants of the harvest; then came the heavy rains; the wheat rotted on the ground and the whole harvest was lost. All I had left was one field of spelt; it had not been badly treated by the storm; but the field is contiguous to the forest of the abbey, and the deer ravaged the crops as they did the year before."

Ricarik shrugged his shoulders and proceeded: "You owe besides, six cart-loads of hay; you did not fetch them in, yet the meadows that you cultivate are excellent. With the surplus of six cart-loads you could easily get money and fulfill your engagements."

"Alack, seigneur! I never get to see the first cut of those meadows. The herds of the abbey come to pasture on my lands from early spring. If I set slaves to keep them off, a fight breaks out between my slaves and those of the abbey; one day mine are beaten, the next mine beat the others. But however it be, I am deprived of the help of their arms. Besides, seigneur, almost every day has its special duties; one day we have to prune the vines of the abbey, another we have to plow, harrow and plant its fields; yet another, we have its crops to cart away; another day it is the fences that have to be repaired. We have lately also had ditches to dig when the abbess feared that the convent was to be attacked by some bands of marauders. At that time we also had to mount guard.... If out of three nights one is compelled to spend two on his feet, and then to work from early dawn, strength fails and the work is neglected."

"What about the cartage that you refused?"

"No, seigneur, I did not refuse to make the cartage. But one of my horses was foundered with too heavy a load and too long a stretch for the abbey. It was not possible to execute your orders for the last cartage."

"If you have only one foundered horse, how do you expect to cultivate your fields? How will you pay your back rent and the rent of next year?"

"Alack, seigneur! I am in a cruel fix. I have brought with me my wife and children. Here they are. They join me in beseeching you to remit what I owe. Perhaps in the future I shall not meet so many disasters one after another."

At a sign from the unhappy Gaul, his wife and children threw themselves at the feet of the intendant and with tears in their eyes implored him to remit the debt. Ricarik answered the colonist: "You have done wisely in bringing your wife and children with you; you have saved me the trouble of sending for them. I know of a certain Jew of Nantes called Mordecai, who loans money on bodily security. He will advance at least ten gold sous on your wife and two children, both of whom are old enough to work. You will be able to invest the money in the purchase of a horse to replace the one that was foundered. Later, after you shall have reimbursed the Jew his loan, he will return you your wife and children."

The colonist and his family heard with stupor the words of the intendant, and broke out into sobs and prayers. "Seigneur," said the Gaul, "sell me if you like as a slave; my condition will not be worse than it is now; but do not separate me from my wife and children.... I never shall be able to pay my back rent and reimburse the Jew; I prefer slavery to my present life as a colonist. Have pity upon us!"

"That will do!" said Ricarik. "You have too numerous a family to feed; that is what is ruining you.... When you will have only your own needs to attend to, you will be able to pay your rent, and with Mordecai's loan you will be enabled to continue to work." Turning thereupon to one of his men: "Take the wife and children of Sebastian to the Jew Mordecai, he happens to be here now."

Bonaik sought to mollify the Frank, but in vain, and Ricarik proceeded to call up by their names other colonists who were in arrears with their rent. The intendant was at this work when a lad of from seventeen to eighteen was dragged before him. The lad offered violent resistance to his captors and cried: "Let me go! I have brought three falcons and two goshawks for the abbess' perch as my father's rent.... I took them from their nests at the risk of breaking my bones.... What is it you want?"

"Ricarik," said one of the slaves of the abbey who was dragging the lad, "we were near the fence of the abbey's perch when we saw a sparrow-hawk, still hooded, that had escaped from the falconer's hand. The bird flew only a little distance. Being impeded by its hood, it fell down close to the fence. This lad immediately threw his cap upon the bird and put it into his bag. We caught the thief in the act. Here is the bag. The sparrow-hawk is inside with its hood still on."

"What have you to say?" asked Ricarik of the young lad who remained somber and silent. "Do you know how the law punishes the theft of a sparrow-hawk? It condemns the thief to pay three silver sous or to allow the bird to eat six ounces of flesh from his breast. I have a good mind to apply the law to you as a salutary example to other hawk thieves.... What have you to say?"

"If our abbess," the lad answered boldly, "gives our flesh for pasture to her hunting birds, as true as my name is Broute-Saule, sooner or later I shall have my revenge on her and you!"

"Seize him!" cried Ricarik. "Let him be tied down to a bench outside of the shed so that his punishment be public.... Let the flesh on his breast be offered to the sparrow-hawk for pasture!"

"Butcher!" cried the lad. "If I ever catch you or your abbess of the devil alone, you will make the acquaintance of my knife!"

The crowd of slaves who witnessed the scene broke out into violent shouts against Broute-Saule, who was impious enough to express himself in such terms on the abbess Meroflede, and the wretches crowded each other in their curiosity to witness the punishment. The young Gaul was stripped of his clothes to the waist and tied down, face up, to a stout bench that stood outside of the shed. Ricarik then made a slight incision on the right breast of the lad so as to whet the hawk's appetite. Attracted by the blood, the bird pounced upon the breast of Broute-Saule, into whose flesh it stuck its beak.

At this moment the tramp of several horses was heard, and immediately the slaves and colonists who stood near the bench on which Broute-Saule lay, and with a greedy gap watched his punishment, fell upon their knees. The abbess Meroflede had ridden in among them, mounted upon a vigorous grey stallion. Curious to ascertain the cause of the excited crowd that stood outside of the shed, the abbess reined in her horse with a sudden tug at the reins. Meroflede was dressed in a long black robe; a white veil, fastened under her chin, framed in her face. Clasped at the height of her neck, a sort of caped red cloak floated in the breeze over her monastic garb. Slender, tall and graceful, the woman was about thirty years of age. Her features would have been handsome but for their combined expression that was alternately sensuous, haughty or savage. Her face, wan from excess, rivaled by its pallor the whiteness of the veil that surrounded it, the same as the color of her cloak vied with her red and lascivious lips that were shaded by a light moustache of reddish gold. Her hooked nose terminated in palpitating and inflated nostrils. Her large eyes of sea-green color glistened under thick and reddish eyebrows. Meroflede reined in her horse near the crowd, which knelt down, and in doing so discovered to her sight the half-naked youth, whose breast the sparrow-hawk had begun to peg into. Broute-Saule turned towards her his face that nestled in his black and wavy hair, and despite the pain that the bird's beak gave him, the young Gaul, whose features were expressive of involuntary admiration, cried: "How beautiful she is!"

Motionless, with the gloved hand that held her whip reclining upon her thigh, Meroflede looked steadily upon the slave whose flesh the hawk was eating up; on the other hand, insensible to his own pain, Broute-Saule contemplated the abbess and repeated in a low voice as if in a rapture: "How beautiful she is! Oh, madam, the Queen Mary and mother of God is not more beautiful!"

For a few seconds Meroflede contemplated the spectacle; she then called Ricarik, leaned down over her saddle, whispered a few words to him, and casting a last look at Broute-Saule she departed at a gallop without bestowing upon the kneeling slaves and colonists the benediction that the poor wretches expected from their abbess.