The Iron Trevet; or, Jocelyn the Champion: A Tale of the Jacquerie

The underground retreat whither the inhabitants of Cramoisy and several other villages of the seigniory of Nointel took refuge consists of a long vault, at the extremity and to the right and left of which are several other galleries in which cattle, goats and sheep are crowded. A well, used for a drinking trough, is dug in the center of the principal gallery. Above, an opening, partially masked with stones and underbrush, admits some light and air to the dark and icy asylum that oozes with the moisture of the earth. There, more than a thousand people crowded together – men, women and children who fled from their homes. The milk of the cattle, a few handfuls of rye or wheat pounded between two stones entertain rather than appease the tortures of hunger. A steaming, suffocating and nauseous heat, produced by the agglomeration of people and cattle, pervades the gloomy place. Now plaintive wails are heard, then the outbursts of violent quarrels, such as are certain to break out among semi-savages whom suffering exasperates. Wan and half naked children, who, however, preserve the carelessness of their age, played at this moment at the edge of the well which just happened to be lighted by a ray of sunlight that filtered through the rocks and underbrush which concealed the only air-hole of the vault. That sun ray also lighted a group of three persons, huddled together in a dug-out near the well. The three persons were Aveline, Alison and Mazurec.

When the little village of Nointel was pillaged by the troupe of Captain Griffith, the handsome tavern-keeper succeeded in saving what moneys she had and fled to Cramoisy where she joined Aveline. Learning there that the English were still ravaging the neighborhood, she joined the peasants in their flight to the underground retreat.

Aveline, now far advanced in pregnancy, expected every day to be delivered of the child of her disgrace and the fruit of the iniquity perpetrated upon her by her seigneur. Barely covered in a few rags, she lay on the cold and bare earth. Ever sympathetic, Alison held upon her knees the languishing and pale head of the young girl, whose thinness had now become shocking. Her hollow cheeks imparted monstrous size to her eyes, which she attached beseechingly upon Mazurec, engaged at the moment in sharpening upon a stone the teeth of a pitch-fork while muttering to himself: "William is long in returning from Paris; we are waiting for him so as to start the massacre … sacred reprisals!"

Thus muttering to himself, Mazurec continued sharpening his fork. He had become a hideous sight. Having lost his right eye since the judicial combat with the knight of Chaumontel, the now hollow, quivering and half closed eyelids on that side of his face exposed a blood-clotted cavity. His crushed nose is a mass of scars, purplish like his torn-up upper lip which exposes his broken teeth. His long matted hair falls upon the ragged goat-skin jacket which he wears and from which protrude his nervy, but now haggard arms. Attaching upon her husband a beseeching look, Aveline said to him in a weak and sad voice: "Mazurec, if I give birth to a child before dying … promise me not to kill it!.. Answer me … I beseech you in God's name… Have mercy on the innocent creature."

"I promise nothing," answered the vassal in a hollow voice without stopping from his work; "we shall see what's to be done."

"He will kill the innocent child, Dame Alison!" cried Aveline weeping and hiding her head.

"Keep still!" replied Mazurec with the mien of a tiger that rendered his face still more frightful; "Keep still, or I may believe you are proud of having a child of your seigneur."

Aveline answered with a hysterical sob, while Alison cried indignantly: "Wretch, you will yet be the cause of your wife's death!"

"I had as lief she was dead as alive … as to the child she now carries … he shall not live … I shall smother the noble whelp."

"Well, then, why don't you kill both mother and child. That would be less cruel than to kill Aveline by little and little as you are doing!" And looking at Mazurec with eyes of angry reproach, Alison added: "Oh, Mazurec the Lambkin, the unfortunate girl whose death you now wish, once made your heart bound with joy when you passed the door at which she used to spin!"

At these words which recalled to Mazurec the spring-tide of his love, days that were sweet even to the wretched serf, the young man broke down in tears, threw the fork aside, and closely embracing his wife, whose pale face he covered with kisses, he said: "Pardon me, my poor Aveline!.. Oh, my blood has turned to gall … I have suffered so much… I still suffer so much… Pardon me, my dear wife!"

Mazurec was uttering these words when suddenly the species of air-hole above the well was almost wholly obstructed with large stones that were being rolled about by the men of the bailiff of Nointel, and the bailiff himself, applying his mouth as closely as he could to the little opening that was left, shouted down into the cavity: "All of you, vassals of the parish of Cramoisy and neighboring villages, you are taxed, as your quota of the ransom of our very noble, very high, very dear and very powerful seigneur, the sum of one thousand florins; the other parishes of the seigniory shall be similarly taxed. Rummage around your purses quickly so that you meet the sum demanded. You have hiding places where you bury your valuables. Choose quickly between death and your money. If within the time it shall take me to utter a 'pater'5 and an 'ave,'6 one of you does not come out with the money, you will all be smoked to death like so many foxes in their burrow, after which the corpses will be rifled."

The bailiff stopped; the air-hole was tightly closed with clods of earth; and the cavern was plunged into utter darkness.

"Oh, my God! What's going to happen? Leave me not Mazurec," cried Aveline in a tremor and throwing her arms around her husband who jumped up the better to hear the announcement made by the bailiff, and which, repeated from mouth to mouth by the vassals, left them steeped in gloomy silence. The unhappy serfs clung all the more tightly to their little coin, their last resource, the only fruits left to them of their crushing labors and homicidal privations, seeing that they had succeeded in saving it from the rapacity of their seigneurs only by dint of untold privations and nameless devices, often struggling against the torture itself that was frequently inflicted upon them in the hope of wringing from them the disclosure of the hiding places where they kept their little treasure buried. The first shock being over, cries of indignation and revolt resounded in the cavern. The noise increased more and more.

"We leave our homes to live in holes like wild beasts, and we are hunted down even here!"

"To be pillaged by the English, and be forced besides to pay for the ransom of our seigneurs!"

"No! No! Let them choke us with smoke, let them burn us, let them massacre us… They shall get not one denier from us!"

"We shall throw our few remaining sous into the well, sooner than deliver them to our butcher!"

It did not take the bailiff long to say his "pater" and "ave." Seeing none of the serfs coming out of the cavern to bring him the sum demanded, he ordered the burrow of Jacques Bonhomme to be smoked. The work was easily done. The cavern was entered by a narrow and steep passage cut into the rock. The Englishmen of Captain Griffith and the retinue brought by the bailiff heaped up at the mouth of the entrance a mass of dry leaves and branches, set fire to the same, and with the aid of their long lances shoved on the brasier a heap of green branches the thick and acrid smoke of which soon filled the interior of the cavern, the only opening that could have allowed the smoke to escape having been tightly closed in advance.

Ghastly was the scene that ensued. Suffocated and blinded by the black and pungent smoke, the vassals were a prey to distracting pain. The cattle, submitted to the identical trial, became furious, broke their ropes and rolled in the darkness amid the crowd whom they trampled under foot or gored with their horns. The wails of women and children, the imprecations of men, the lowing of the cattle made an infernal concert. Several of the serfs succeeded in groping their way to the well and threw themselves in to escape prolonged torture; others threw themselves headlong towards the mouth of the cavern, but smothered by the thick smoke and the flames that entered the passage and that now converted the entrance into a furnace, dropped down into the middle of the flames and were consumed; others again threw themselves down flat upon the ground, scratched the earth with their nails and, burying their faces in the earth imagined in their wild delirium they could thus take breath; lastly not a few were the mothers who, wishing to spare their children a long agony, strangled them quickly to death.

Mazurec held Aveline tightly in his arms while he shuddered at the thought of the horrible death that awaited her. The tender sentiments of their happier days took possession of his heart and mind and he racked his brain for a means of escape. It was in vain. Long worn out by misery and sorrow, the young woman was not equal to so rude an additional strain. In her death agony she fastened her lips to Mazurec's as though, wishing to escape suffocation, she strove to inhale her husband's breath.

By degrees her hold on him was relaxed, with one convulsive effort she embraced her husband and then her arms dropped by her side.

"Dead!" shrieked the serf; "dead and unavenged, my dearly beloved Aveline!"

"You can still revenge her and save us both and many more of these unfortunates," came panting from Alison, who still preserved her senses and energy. "Let us hasten!" continued the tavern-keeper with an ever more oppressed voice. "Let us endeavor to get out of here; … I shall give the bailiff three hundred florins that I have sewn in my clothes; … he will allow us to escape; … if he does not, kill him; … take your pitch-fork; … it lies there… Let's flee!.."

Mazurec emitted a cry of savage joy. The imminence of danger and the hope of revenge increased his strength tenfold. He seized the fork with his right hand, with his left he dragged Alison after him, and guided by the ruddy glow at the mouth of the cavern, the vassal plied his fork so as to clear a passage through the crowd that ran about delirious. Some he threw down, others he walked over. Finally he reached the approaches of the burning pile near which a number of corpses lay strewn. Dropping the hand of Alison and hitting upon a plan that had occurred to none during the general panic, Mazurec thrust his pitch-fork into the midst of the burning pile, scattered it, threw some of it behind him, opened a passage to himself, cleared the space which was covered with burning embers, and after a few bounds found himself at the issue of the cavern. For a moment Mazurec stood still inhaling the free air; his strength returned speedily; and making one last effort he rushed out. At the unexpected sight of Mazurec, foaming at the mouth with rage and brandishing his fork, both the Englishmen and the bailiff's men drew back in terror. Mazurec lost no time; he rushed upon the bailiff, buried the fork in the bowels of his seigneur's menial, threw him down, and, maddened with rage, trampled him under foot while he again and again thrust his pitch-fork into the bailiff's breast, his face and every part of his body that he could reach, uttering at every thrust: "This is for your having dragged Aveline to your master's bed!.. This is for your having now smothered Aveline to death!"

At the sight of the terrific spectacle Captain Griffith broke out in a loud guffaw saying: "I take this expert poker under my protection. I admire his dexterity in the use of his pitch-fork!" In the midst of these exclamations Captain Griffith suddenly remained silent, then clapping his hands he proceeded in new ecstacy: "By the devil! Here are my two beautiful black eyes and plump ankles! Oh, this time you will not escape me, my belle! Mine be your treasures!"

The English captain uttered these cries at the sight of Alison, who now appeared at the entrance of the cavern, pale, with disheveled hair, her clothes half burnt, breathing fast and so feeble that she was unable to walk except supporting herself by the rocks that lay near by. Captain Griffith, without being moved at the lamentable aspect of the woman, and listening only to his own amorous suggestions, made one bound at his prey, took her in his arms and cried: "This time I hold you! Now you are mine!"

"Mercy!" cried Alison, struggling to free herself. "I shall give you all the money I have… Mercy!"

"Love first, money afterwards!" was the answer of Norfolk's bastard carrying Alison off.

"Help, Mazurec! Help!" cried the tavern-keeper as loudly as her weak voice allowed her. But Mazurec, exasperated with suffering and now drunk with bloodshed and the transports of revenge, continued to hack with his pitch-fork the corpse of the bailiff, and heard not the appeal of Alison.

Suddenly, stepping out of a thick bush and appearing on the top of a rocky eminence, Jocelyn the Champion precipitated himself upon the ravisher, followed by Adam the Devil, William Caillet, Rufin the Tankard-smasher and several serfs armed with axes, forks and scythes. This small troop, attracted by the cries of Alison, had rushed forward ahead of a large number of revolted peasants, who, crossing a denser part of the forest, marched slowlier.

"Here I am, my charming hostess!" cried Jocelyn, leaping from rock to rock, sword in hand; "here I am … ready to defend you!"

"My Hercules of the castle of Beaumont!" exclaimed Captain Griffith, drawing his sword at the sight of Jocelyn whom he immediately recognized; and relinquishing Alison he rushed, sword in hand, at Jocelyn, saying: "Only to-day I requested but two things from Satan: to embrace that belle and to find you again a little fattened, my sturdy boy! Let's commence with you; the belle shall have her turn!"

"I have not yet gathered much meat on my bones," responded the champion, intrepidly attacking the bastard of Norfolk, "but you shall not be long in admitting that my wrist has not yet lost any of its strength."

A mad combat was immediately engaged in between the champion and the Captain, while Caillet, Adam the Devil, Rufin and several of the serfs who accompanied them, threw themselves furiously upon Captain Griffith's Chaplain and the archers who had come with him when he left the gross of his troop near the skirt of the forest, as the bailiff had advised.

"Kill, kill the English!.. Death to the English!"

Overpowered and crushed by numbers, cut to pieces with the scythes, disemboweled with the forks, knocked down with the hatchets, not one of Captain Griffith's men escaped the carnage. After heroically defending himself against Adam the Devil, who was armed with a short scythe and against Rufin who wielded a long sword, the Chaplain fell under their blows. His attention being now drawn again from his frenzy against the corpse of the bailiff by the arrival of the peasants who came with Caillet, Mazurec turned to them and brandishing his fork first joined their side of the combat; but struck with a sudden thought, he climbed the hillock where the air-hole had been contrived over the cavern, and which had recently been closed by the orders of the bailiff of Nointel. With the assistance of his fork he rolled off the stones from the aperture, and the smoke, now finding an issue, escaped therefrom in thick and black puffs. Climbing down, Mazurec disappeared within the cavern.

At that moment, though wounded in the arm, Jocelyn was holding Captain Griffith to the ground with both his knees pressing on the Englishman's chest, and was looking for the dagger at his belt to bury it in his throat saying: "You shall die, English dog, who do not respect even dying women!"

"As true as you are the best blade that I have yet met in this country, my only regret is that I leave that belle behind!"

Such were the last words of the bastard of Norfolk. At the same moment Mazurec issued from the cavern with the corpse of Aveline in his arms, saying:

"William Caillet, here is your daughter and my wife. All of you who have wives, children, parents or friends step into that cavern. Look for them among the dead and dying. Our seigneur, the Sire of Nointel, had us smoked in our refuge because we refused to contribute money towards his ransom!"

At this announcement a large number of peasants ran into the cavern, while Caillet approached Mazurec, who still held his wife's body in his arms, and calmly said: "Lay her down on the grass… We shall dig her grave." But the words were hardly uttered by the old man than throwing himself down beside the lifeless body of his daughter, he broke out in convulsive sobs while kissing her cold face.

"I have cried so much that I have no tears left," said Mazurec contemplating the spectacle with a dry and fiery eye, while Adam the Devil silently dug Aveline's grave with the aid of his short scythe.

A clump of roots and trees had until now concealed the sad spectacle from Jocelyn, who, not having noticed his brother in the heat of the combat, sat down on the grass supported by Rufin, and left his arm to be attended by Alison. Always brave and helpful, despite the different emotions that stormed through her heart, the tavern-keeper had ripped up her neck-cloth, and kneeling down beside Jocelyn, looked upon him with tenderness while staunching his wound.

"When we first met, you won my case; to-day I owe to you life and honor. How can I ever repay such a debt. Oh, I know too well how you contemn money to offer you three hundred franks that I have sewed in my skirt."

"Do you wish, dear and good hostess, to repay your debt? Go to Paris. When you arrive there, ask where Master Marcel lives. Everybody will show you the place. Tell his wife that I have been slightly wounded and that there is no danger. That will assure Dame Marcel and also her niece … my betrothed."

"Oh, you are betrothed, Sir!" exclaimed Alison with some confusion, and gulping down a sigh, she added in an unsteady voice: "May God protect your love! I shall do as you say. I shall go to Paris … I shall calm the anxieties of the girl you love. In her place I would be happy, indeed… Oh, so happy to be reassured regarding him whom I love," saying which Alison lowered her head to conceal a furtive tear that shone on her beautiful black eyes.

"Oh, Jocelyn!" Rufin said in a low voice, charmed with the grace and kindness of Alison, "a comely and honest body like that is worth a hundred Margots."

"Dear hostess!" resumed Jocelyn after a moment's reflection, "Will you allow me to give you advice? In times like these, a woman who travels alone runs great dangers. Take this friend of mine, Rufin, for your escort."

"Jocelyn," said the student with a lively movement, "I wish to remain with you to fight the nobility."

"You fought bravely despite the wound that you received only day before yesterday, and which still gives you much pain. You can render our cause a great service by returning and notifying Marcel that the peasants are in arms in this province and that William Caillet has given the signal for the uprising. Marcel awaits this news to act… And if he has any confidential message for me, he will send it through you. You will then rejoin me in Beauvoisis. You will be easily able to learn the whereabouts of Caillet's troops, which I shall not leave"; and seeing that the student was about to yield, Jocelyn added in a low voice: "Despite the indiscretions of your youth, you are an upright fellow; promise me that you will guard Alison as you would your own sister."

"I promise, Jocelyn; and you can trust my word! I shall be a good guardian to Alison."

Suddenly a tremor ran over Jocelyn. He had just noticed Mazurec and Caillet carrying the body of Aveline. He understood what had happened, profound sorrow depicted itself upon his face, and kneeling down he said: "Kneel, Rufin … kneel, my good hostess … I shall have to wait till after this funeral to inform Mazurec that I am his brother."

Adam the Devil had finished digging the grave of Aveline. Caillet and Mazurec, holding the body by the shoulders and feet, laid it down in the tomb. The peasants who witnessed the ceremony fell upon their knees. The funeral of the poor female serf piously performed under the vault of the forest in the midst of the heaped-up rocks at the mouth of the cavern – the immense tomb of so many other victims – was a spectacle of mournful grandeur. Everything contributed to render the scene terrible and imposing. There lay the mutilated and bloody members of the bailiff, the pitiless executer of the Sire of Nointel's orders; yonder were strewn the corpses of the English, no less execrated than the seigneurs by the people of the fields; further at a distance was the kneeling crowd of serfs, bare-headed, clad in rags, holding strange and murderous weapons in their hands, and hardly able to restrain their fury; finally there were the father and the husband laying with their own hands into her grave her who should have been the solace of the former's old age and the joy and love of the latter's youth!

As soon as the body of the dead girl was laid in the fosse, Adam the Devil began filling it up with earth, while William Caillet standing at the head of his daughter's sepulchre and holding Mazurec to his breast cried out in a voice that pulled at the heart-strings of all present:

"Adieu, my daughter! Adieu, my poor Aveline! You who never lied! You who never did wrong! Adieu! For evermore adieu!" and raising his trembling hands heavenward, the old peasant proceeded solemnly: "I swear here by the body of my child whom I have buried with my own hands! By the bones of our friends and our relatives whose grave is that cavern! By the sufferings that we endure! By the blood and the sweat of our forefathers! I shall revenge my daughter! I shall revenge our fathers! I shall revenge our race for the tortures it has endured! War upon the castles, without let or mercy!"

Carried away by these words, the surrounding serfs rose to their feet, and brandishing their staves, their scythes, their forks and their axes, all responded in chorus with a voice that the echoes of the forest answered back: "Vengeance!" "Justice!"

In the meantime the peasants who had run into the cavern were coming back with terror marked on their faces: "Dead… They are all dead or dying! Women and children, old and young … all are dead!"

"All dead!" Caillet repeated in a terrific voice, "the little children! The women! The old men and the young! All dead! Up, Jacques Bonhomme! Up, my Jacques! Let the Jacquerie commence!"

"It shall commence with the castle of Chivry," cried Adam the Devil. "Our seigneur is to be this very day at the castle of Chivry to wed the gorgeous Gloriande … on the day of the tourney she laughed at Mazurec!.. It will now be your turn to laugh at the haughty damosel… Up, my Jacques, let the Jacquerie commence!"

"Ha! Ha! The belle Gloriande!" Mazurec repeated with a ferocious and semi-delirious laughter. "I shall appear before her with one eye knocked out and my nose crushed! Oh! The gorgeous Gloriande!.. What a fright she'll have!.. Her husband took my bride… Up, up, my Jacques! The Jacquerie commences!.. War upon the castles!"

The revolted peasants tumultuously followed Caillet, Adam the Devil and Mazurec across the forest crying: "To Chivry… Up, Jacques… The Jacquerie commences!"

"Good-bye, hostess!" said Jocelyn rising and preparing to follow Mazurec. "Good-bye, Rufin. Guard with the solicitude of a brother this worthy woman who confides herself to your protection."

"I trust your friend," answered Alison, "because you told me to trust him."

"I swear," put in the student deeply moved, "that you can trust me as fully as you would Jocelyn himself, pretty hostess."

"Good-bye, Rufin; I shall join my brother, disclose to him the bonds that unite us, and battle at his side. Once more, good-bye, Alison. Say to Dame Marcel and to Denise, my betrothed, that if I do not see them again, my last thoughts will have been to them. As to you, Rufin, say to Marcel that the peasants of this province are at work exterminating the seigneurs."

"Good-bye, Jocelyn," Rufin answered sadly, extending his hand to his friend. "If Master Marcel should have any message for you I shall ask him to commission me to bring it to you!"