The Carlovingian Coins; Or, The Daughters of Charlemagne

So there was. Vortigern perceived in the center of a cluster of centenarian chestnut trees a hut constructed of thick layers of peat heaped upon one another. A narrow opening gave entrance to the bower, before which the remnants of some dry wood recently lighted were still seen smouldering. "It is one of the huts in which the woodcutter slaves take refuge during the day when it rains," explained Thetralde. "We shall be then under cover. Tie thy horse to a tree and help me alight."

At the bare thought of sharing the solitary retreat with the young girl, Vortigern felt his heart thump under his ribs. A flush of burning fever rose to his face while, nevertheless, he shivered. After a moment's hesitation, the lad complied with the orders of his companion. He tied his horse to a tree, and, in order to assist the young girl to alight from her mount, he extended to her his arms and received within them the supple and nimble body of Thetralde. So profound was the emotion experienced by Vortigern at the touch of the maid, that he was almost overcome. But the daughter of Charles, running towards the hut with pretty curiosity, cried out merrily:

"I see a moss-bank in the hut and a supply of dry wood. Let's light a fire. There are still some embers burning. Hurry. Hurry."

The lad hastened to join his companion and stumbled over a large log of wood that rolled at his feet. Stooping, he saw strewn about it a large number of burrs that had dropped down from the tall chestnut trees overhead. At once forgetting his embarrassment, he exclaimed with delight:

"A discovery! Chestnuts! Chestnuts!"

"What a find," responded Thetralde, no less delighted. "We shall roast the chestnuts. I shall pick them up while thou startest the fire."

The young Breton did as suggested by his girl companion, all the more readily seeing that he hoped to find in the sport a refuge from the vague, tumultuous and ardent thoughts, big at once with delight and anxiety, that he had been a prey to from the moment of his meeting with Thetralde. He entered the hut, took up several bunches of dry wood and rekindled the brasier into flame, while the daughter of Charles, running hither and thither, gathered a large supply of chestnuts which she brought into the hut in a fold of her dress. Letting herself down upon the moss-bank that lay at the further end of the hut, the interior of which was now brightly lighted by the glare of the fire which burned near the entrance, she said to Vortigern, motioning him to a seat near her:

"Sit down here, and help me shell these chestnuts."

The lad sat down near Thetralde and entered with her into a contest of swiftness in the shelling of chestnuts, during which, like herself, he more than once pricked his fingers in the effort to extract the ripe kernels from their burrs. Presently, looking into her face, he said archly:

"And here you have the daughter of the Emperor of the Franks; seated inside of a peat hut and shelling chestnuts like any woodchopper and slave's daughter."

"Vortigern," answered Thetralde, returning the look of her companion with a radiant face, "never was the daughter of the Emperor of the Franks more happy than at this moment."

"And I, Thetralde, I swear to you that since the day I left my mother, my sister and Brittany, I have never been more pleased than to-day, than now, near you."

"And if to-morrow should resemble to-day? and if it should be thus for a long time, a very long time – wouldst thou always be pleased?"

"And you, Thetralde?"

"Say 'thou' to me. We address one another with 'thou' in Germany. Say to me: 'And thou, Thetralde?'"

"But the respect – "

"I say 'thou' to you, and do not respect you the less for it," rejoined the maid laughing. "Say to me: 'And thou, Thetralde?'"

"And thou, Thetralde?"

"So thou wishest to know whether I would be happy at the thought of all our days resembling this one, and our living together?"

"Yes, my charming Princess!"

The young maid remained pensive, holding in her delicate fingers a half opened chestnut husk. Presently she raised her head and broke the silence with the question: "Vortigern, is it far from here to thy country?"

"It took us more than a month to come here from Brittany."

"Vortigern, what a beautiful journey that would make!"

"What sayest thou?"

Thetralde made a charming gesture commanding silence: "Hast thou any money about thee?"

And proceeding to detach from her belt a little embroidered purse, she emptied its contents into her lap. There were several heavy pieces of gold and a large number of smaller pieces of silver and copper. Two of the latter, one of silver and one of copper, and both of about the size of a denier, were pierced and tied together by a thread of gold. "This is all my treasure," the girl observed.

"Why are these two pieces tied together?" inquired Vortigern, with a look of curiosity.

"Oh, these two must never be spent. We must preserve them carefully. One of them, the copper one, was struck the year of my birth; the other, the silver one, was struck this year, when I shall be fifteen. Fabius, my father's astronomer, has engraved upon these pieces certain magical signs corresponding to planets of happy influence. The Bishop of Aix-la-Chapelle blessed them. They are a talisman."

"If it were not that they are a talisman, Thetralde, I would have requested these two little pieces from thee as a souvenir of this day."

"To what purpose wouldst thou keep a souvenir of this day rather than of the next days to follow? Dost thou not desire that all should resemble one another? If thou desirest these two little pieces, here, take them; I give them to thee. A talisman is a useful thing on a journey. Place them in the pocket of thy jacket."

Vortigern obeyed almost mechanically, while the young girl, after ingenuously counting up her little hoard, resumed, saying: "We here have five gold sous, eight silver deniers, and twelve copper deniers; besides my bracelets, my necklace and my earrings. With that we shall have money enough to journey as far as Brittany. Night is upon us; we shall spend it under the shelter of this hut. To-morrow we shall have the woodcutter slave lead us to Werstern, a little burg situated on the skirt of the forest, about two leagues from Aix-la-Chapelle. We shall buy some simple clothing for myself, a traveling cloak of cloth. To-morrow at daybreak we shall start on our route. Do not fear that I shall recoil before fatigue. I am neither as tall nor as strong as my sister Hildrude, and yet, if thou shouldst be tired or wounded, I am sure I could carry thee on my back, just as my sister Imma once carried her lover Eginhard on hers. But our chestnuts are now all shelled. Come and help me to put them under the hot ashes. We shall eat them when roasted."

Raising with one hand the fold of her robe in which lay the nuts, Thetralde ran to the brasier. Vortigern followed her. He felt as in a dream. At times his reason gave way under the spell of an ardent and intoxicating vertigo. He knelt down silently, disturbed in mind, beside Thetralde before the brasier, into which the girl, steeped in thought, was slowly throwing the chestnuts one by one. Without, the rain had stopped; but the mist, now thickened to a fog with the approach of night, rendered the darkness complete. The reflection of the brasier only lighted up the charming faces of the two children on their knees beside each other. When the last chestnut had followed the others under the cinders, Thetralde rose, and leaning with familiar candor on Vortigern's shoulders said to him, taking his hand:

"And now, while thy supper is cooking, let us go back and sit down upon the bench of moss for me to finish telling thee my prospects. I have thought over what we are to do."

The night became profound. The flickering, vacillating flame in the expiring brasier seemed to cry for fresh fuel. The chestnuts, that had been consigned to its warmth, snapped noisily from their hulls into the air, announcing that their toothsome pulp was ready to be partaken of. Without, the horse and the palfrey of Vortigern and Thetralde pawed the ground and neighed impatiently, as if calling for their provender. The fire finally went out. The chestnuts changed to charcoal. The neighings of the horses resounded ever louder in the midst of the nocturnal silence of the forest. Thetralde and Vortigern did not issue from the hut.

CHAPTER IX.

AT THE MORT

From the start of the hunt, the Emperor of the Franks had rushed headlong on the heels of the hounds. Amael, at first somewhat uneasy at the disappearance of his grandson in the midst of so large a concourse of cavaliers, was taken by accident towards that part of the forest whither the stag was leading the hounds from cover to cover. Amael even had the opportunity to assist, shortly before nightfall, at the killing of the stag, which, exhausted with fatigue after four hours of breathless running, turned at bay before the hounds when they had reached him at last, and strove to defend himself against them with the aid of the magnificent spread of antlers that crowned his head. The Emperor had not for a moment lost track of the hounds. He followed them speedily at the mort, together with a few others of the hunters. Jumping from his horse, he ran limping towards the animal at bay that already had gored several hounds with his sharp horns. Choosing with an experienced eye the opportune moment, Charles drew his hunting knife, and, rushing upon the desperate animal, plunged the weapon into the stag just above its shoulder, threw it down and then abandoned it to the hounds, that fiercely precipitated themselves upon the warm quarry and devoured it amidst the sonorous fanfare of the hunters' horns that thus announced the close of the chase and called their scattered fellows to reassemble. With his bloody knife in his hand, and after having contemplated with lively satisfaction the wild pack now red at their nozzles and contending with one another for the shreds of the stag's flesh, the Emperor's eyes fell upon Amael, to whom he called out gaily:

"Eh, seigneur Breton – am I not a bold hunter?"

"You will pardon my sincerity, but I find that at this moment the Emperor of the Franks, with his long knife in his hand, and his boots and coat spattered with blood, looks more like a butcher than like an illustrious monarch."

"I feel happy, nevertheless, and consequently inclined to be indulgent, seigneur Breton," replied the Emperor, laughing; then, lowering his voice, he observed to Amael: "Now, see how the clothes of the seigneurs of my court look."

In fact, most of the Emperor's seigneurs and officers, now hastening in on horseback to his presence from all sides of the thickets in response to the horns, presented an appearance that contrasted sadly with that which they had presented a few hours before. Magnificently attired at the start of the hunt, those seigneurs, who looked so resplendent in their rich tunics of silk, now presented a sight that was as ridiculous as it was pitiful. The embroideries on their tunics, at first so rich in color, were now frayed, soiled with mud, and torn by the branches of the trees and the thorns of the briars; the feathers that floated proudly from their caps, now drooped, wet, broken and draggled, resembling long, dislocated, and limp fish-bones; the boots of oriental leather had vanished under a thick coat of slush, and not a few of them, torn by the thorns, exposed their owners' hose, not infrequently also their skin itself. They shivered and looked distressed. Charles, on the contrary, simply and warmly dressed in his thick sheep-skin coat, which reached down over his boots of rough leather, and his head covered with his badger-skin bonnet, rubbed his hands with a cunning look of satisfaction in his eyes at the sight of his courtiers shivering with the cold and the wet. After contemplating the spectacle for a moment, Charles made a sign of intelligence to Amael and said to him in an undertone:

"Just before breaking ranks for the hunt, I recommended you to observe the magnificence of the costumes of these coxcombs, who are as vain as Asiatic peacocks, and even more devoid of brains than the bird whose spoils they wear. Look at them now – the fine fellows!" Amael smiled approvingly, while the Emperor, shrugging his shoulders, turned to the seigneurs with his squalling voice: "Oh, ye most foolish of people, which is at this moment the most precious and useful of all our raiment? Mine, which I bought with barely a sou? Or yours, which you have had to pay for through the nose?"

At this judicious raillery, the courtiers remained silent and confused, while the Emperor, placing both his hands on his spacious paunch, roared out aloud.

"Charles," Amael said to him unheard by the others, "I prefer to hear you speak with that sly wisdom than to see you disemboweling stags."

But the Emperor did not answer the aged Breton. He suddenly interrupted the discourse, extending his hand towards a group of nearby serfs, and crying out:

"Oh! Look at that pretty girl!"

Amael followed with his eyes the direction indicated by Charles and saw amid several of the woodcutter slaves of the forest who had been attracted by curiosity to see the hunt, a young girl barely covered in rags, but of remarkable beauty. A much younger child of about ten or eleven years held her by the hand. A poor old woman, as wretchedly clad as the girl, was in the company of the two. The Emperor of the Franks, whose large eyes glistened like carbuncles with the fire of lust, repeated, addressing Amael:

"By the cape of St. Martin! The girl is beautiful. Is it that your hundred years on your back render you insensible to the sight of such rare beauty, seigneur Breton? What a beautiful girl!"

"Charles, the misery of that creature strikes me more strongly than her beauty."

"You are very commiserate, seigneur Breton – so am I. Linen and silk should clothe so charming a figure. No doubt she is the daughter of some woodman slave. I can tell you, one runs at times across wonderfully beautiful girls in the forest. More than once I have dropped the chase in the middle of the heat to pursue another scent. But in honor to truth, I have never seen such a charmer before. It must be her good star that brought her across the path of Charles." Without removing his eyes from the young girl, Charles called to one of the seigneurs in his suite: "Eh! Burchard. Come here; I have orders for you."

The seigneur Burchard quickly alighted from his horse and hastened to obey the call of the Emperor. The latter, moving a few steps away from Amael, whispered a few words in the ear of the seigneur, who, showing himself greatly honored with the mission given him by his master, bowed respectfully, and, leading his horse by the bridle, approached the old woman and the two younger girls who stood by her, motioned to them to follow him, and vanished with his charge behind the group of hunters. A deep flush colored the cheeks of Amael; he puckered his brows, and his features became expressive of as much indignation as disgust. At that same instant Amael noticed that the Emperor was looking about him with a certain degree of uneasiness and calling out aloud:

"Where are my little girls? Can they have lost track of the hunt?"

"August Emperor," said one of the officers, "Richulff, who accompanied your august daughters, told me that when the rain began to fall some of them concluded to return to Aix-la-Chapelle, while the others decided to seek the shelter of the pavilion, where you ordered supper to be held ready."

"Think of the timorous bodies! I wager that my little Thetralde is not among the Amazons who are afraid of a drop of water, and who hastened back to the palace. As they are all safe, I shall not worry. Let us hasten to the pavilion ourselves, because I am ravenously hungry." And remounting his horse, the Emperor added: "We shall find at the pavilion the damsels who have preferred to sup with their father. The stout-hearted lasses shall be well feasted, and I shall bestow rich presents upon them."

Seeing that Charles was manifesting some slight uneasiness on the score of his daughters, Amael, in turn, began to feel preoccupied with regard to Vortigern, whom, for some time, he had been searching for with his eyes among the groups of the approaching knights. As his eyes fell upon Octave, who just then came running in at a gallop, the aged Breton inquired from him with no little anxiety:

"Octave, have you seen my grandson anywhere?"

"We parted company almost at the very start of the hunt."

"He is not with us," proceeded Amael with increasing uneasiness. "Night is here and he is not familiar with the paths of the forest."

"Oh! Oh! seigneur Breton," put in the Emperor of the Franks, who, immediately upon remounting his horse, had drawn near the aged man and overheard his question to the young Roman, "you seem to feel uneasy about your youngster. Well, what if he should have lost his way this evening? He will find it again to-morrow. Do you fear he will die of one night spent in the forest? Is not hunting the school of war? Come, come! Be at ease. Besides, who knows," added Charles with a roguish air. "Mayhap he encountered some pretty woodcutter's daughter in some of the huts of the forest. It is like his years. You surely do not mean to make a monk of him? Pretty lassies are meant for handsome lads."

CHAPTER X.

EMPEROR AND HOSTAGE

Led by the Emperor of the Franks, the cavalcade of hunters rode towards the pavilion where supper was to be partaken of before the return to Aix-la-Chapelle. Charles called Amael to his side, and noticing, as they rode, that the aged Breton continued preoccupied about Vortigern, the Emperor turned to the centenarian with a merry twinkle in his eye:

"What do you think of this day? Have you recovered from your prejudices against Charles the Fighter? Do you think me at all worthy to govern my Empire, a domain as vast as the old Empire of Rome? Do you deem me worthy of reigning over the population of Armorica?"

"Charles, in my youth your grandfather proposed to me that I be the jailer of the last descendant of Clovis, an ill-starred boy, then a prisoner in an abbey, and having barely one suit of clothes to cover himself with. That boy, when grown to man's estate, was, upon orders of Pepin, your father, tonsured and locked up in a monastery, where he died obscure and forgotten. Thus do royalties end. Such is the expiation, prompt or late, reserved for royal stocks that issue from conquest."

"Then the stock of Charles, whom the whole world calls the Great," rejoined the Emperor with an incredulous and proud smile, "is, according to your theory, destined to run out obscurely in some do-nothing king?"

"It is my firm conviction."

"I took you at first for a man of good judgment," replied the Emperor shrugging his shoulders; "I must now admit that I was mistaken."

"This very morning, in your Palatine school, you observed that the children of the poor studied with zeal, while the children of the rich are lazy. The reason is plain. The former feel the need of work to insure their well-being; the latter, being provided with and in possession of ample fortunes, make no effort to acquire knowledge. It is to them superfluous. Your ancestors, the stewards of the palace, have done like the children of the poor. Your descendants, however, being no longer in need of conquering a crown, will imitate the children of the rich."

"Despite a certain appearance of logic, your argument is false. My father usurped a crown, but he left to me at the most the Kingdom of Gaul. To-day Gaul is but one of the provinces of the immense empire that I have conquered. Obviously, I did not remain idle and torpid like the rich boys in your comparison."

"The Frankish Kings, together with their leudes, who later became great landed seigneurs, and the bishops, plundered Gaul, divided her territory among them, and reduced her people to slavery. But after a period, be it short or long, learn this, Oh, great Emperor, the people will rise in their strength, glorious, terrible, and they will know how to reconquer their patrimony and their independence!"

"Let us drop the future and the past. What think you of Charles?"

"I think that you are mistakenly proud of having almost reconstructed the administrative edifice of the Roman emperors, and of causing, like them, your will to weigh upon the whole domain, from one end to the other. Of all that, nothing will be left after you are gone! All the peoples that have been conquered and subjugated by your arms will rise in revolt. Your boundless empire, composed of kingdoms that no common bond of origin, of customs, or of language holds together, will fall to pieces; it will crumble together and will bury your descendants under its ruins."

"Do you mean to imply that Charles the Great will have passed over the world like a shadow without leaving behind him any lasting monument of his glory?"

"No, your life will not have been worthless. By ceaselessly warring against the Frisians, the Saxons and other peoples who wished to invade Gaul, you have checked, if not forever, at least for a long time, the maraudings of those hordes that ravaged the north and east of our unhappy country. But if you have barred the entrance of the barbarians into Gaul over land, the sea remains open to them. The Northman pirates almost every day make descents upon the coasts of your Empire, and their boldness increases to the point that ascending in their vessels the Meuse, the Gironde and the Loire, they threaten the very heart of your dominion."

"Oh, old man! This time, I fear me, your misgivings do not lead you astray. The Northmans are the only source of disquiet to my sleep! The bare thought of the invasions of those pagans causes me to be overcome with involuntary and unexplainable apprehensions. One day, during my sojourn at Narbonne, several vessels of those accursed people extended their piratical incursion into the very port. A sinister presentiment seized me; despite all I could do to restrain them, the tears rolled out of my eyes. One of my officers asked me the reason for my sudden fit of sadness. 'Do you wish to know, my faithful followers,' I answered, 'do you wish to know why I weep so bitterly? Certes, I do not fear that these Northmans may injure me with their piracies; but I feel profoundly afflicted at the thought that, in my very lifetime, they have the audacity of touching upon the borders of my Empire; and great is my grief because I have a presentiment of the sufferings that these Northmans will inflict upon my descendants and my peoples;'" and the Emperor remained for several minutes as if overpowered by the sinister premonition that he now recalled.

"Charles," Amael resumed with a grave voice, "all royalty that issues from conquest, or from violence, carries within itself the germ of death, for the reason that its principle is iniquitous. Perchance those Northman pirates may some day cause your stock to expiate the original iniquity of the royal sway that you hold from conquest."

Whether, absorbed in his own thoughts, the Emperor failed to hear the last words of the Gaul, or whether he could make no answer to them, he suddenly cried out:

"Let us forget the accursed Northmans. Speak to me of the good that I have done. Your words of praise are rare; I like them all the more for that."

"You are not cruel out of wilfulness, although you might be reproached for the massacre of more than four thousand Saxon prisoners."

"I remember the event perfectly," Charles said with emphasis. "I had to terrify those barbarians by a signal example. It was a fatal necessity!"

"Your heart is accessible to certain promptings of justice and humanity. In your capitularies you made an effort to improve the condition of the slaves and the colonists."

"It was my duty as a Christian, as a Catholic. All men are brothers."

"You are no more Christian than your friends, the bishops. You have simply yielded to an instinct of humanity, natural to man, whatever his religion may be. But still you are not a Christian."

"By the King of the Heavens! Perhaps I am a Jew?"

"Christ said, according to St. Luke the Evangelist: The Lord hath sent me to preach deliverance to the captives – to set at liberty them that are bruised. Now, then, your dominions are full of prisoners carried by conquest from their own homes; the estates of your bishops and your abbots are stocked with slaves. Accordingly, neither you nor your priests are Christians. A Christian, according to the words of the Christ, must never hold his fellowman in bondage. All men are equal."