by Eugène Sue
“Hesus! Hesus!” exclaimed Meroë. Then, hiding her face in the bosom of her husband who was kneeling near her, “You spoke truly. The sacred orb of Gaul has given the signal for the sacrifice. It is fulfilled.”
“Oh, liberty!” cried Albinik, “Holy liberty! — —”
He could not finish. His voice was smothered in tears, and he drew his weeping wife close in his arms.
Meroë did not leave her face hidden in her husband’s breast any longer than it would take a mother to kiss the forehead, mouth, and eyes, of her new born babe, but when she again raised her head and dared to look abroad, it was no longer only one house, one village, one hamlet, one town in that long succession of valleys at their feet that was disappearing in billows of black smoke, streaked with red gleams. It was all the houses, all the villages, all the hamlets, all the towns in the laps of all those valleys, that the conflagration was devouring. From North to South, from East to West, all was afire. The rivers themselves seemed to roll in flame under their grain and forage-laden barges, which in turn took fire, and sank in the waters.
The heavens were alternately obscured by immense clouds of smoke, or reddened with innumerable columns of fire. From one end to the other, the panorama was soon nothing but a furnace, an ocean of flame.
Nor were the houses, hamlets, and towns of only these valleys given over to the flames. It was the same in all the regions which Albinik and Meroë had traversed in one night and day of travel, on their way from Vannes to the mouth of the Loire, where was pitched the camp of Caesar.
All this territory had been burned by its inhabitants, and they abandoned the smoking ruins to join the Gallic army, assembled in the environs of Vannes. Thus the voice of the Chief of the Hundred Valleys had been obeyed — the command repeated from place to place, from village to village, from city to city:
“In three nights, at the hour when the moon, the sacred orb of Gaul shall rise, let all the countryside, from Vannes to the Loire, be set on fire. Let Caesar and his army find in their passage neither men nor houses, nor provisions, nor forage, but everywhere, everywhere cinders, famine, desolation, and death.”
It was done as the druids and the Chief of the Hundred Valleys had ordered.
The two travelers, who witnessed this heroic devotion of each and all to the safety of the fatherland, had thus seen a sight no one had ever seen in the past; a sight which perhaps none will ever see in the future.
Thus were expiated those fatal dissensions, those rivalries between province and province, which for too long a time, and to the triumph of their enemies, had divided the people of Gaul.
CHAPTER II.
IN THE LION’S DEN.
THE NIGHT PASSED. When the next day drew to its close Albinik and Meroë had traversed all the burnt country, from Vannes to the mouth of the Loire, which they were now approaching. At sunset they came to a fork in the road.
“Of these two ways, which shall we take?” mused Albinik. “One ought to take us toward the camp of Caesar, the other away from it.”
Reflecting an instant, the young woman answered:
“Climb yonder oak. The camp fires will show us our route.”
“True,” said the mariner, and confident in his agility he was about to clamber up the tree. But stopping, he added: “I forgot that I have but one hand left. I cannot climb.”
The face of the young woman saddened as she replied:
“You are suffering, Albinik? Alas, you, thus mutilated!”
“Is the sea-wolf caught without a lure?”
“No.”
“Let the fishing be good,” answered Albinik, “and I shall not regret having given my hand for bait.”
The young woman sighed, and after looking at the tree a minute, said to her husband:
“Come, then, put your back to the trunk. I’ll step in the hollow of your hand, then onto your shoulder, and from your shoulder I can reach that large branch overhead.”
“Fearless and devoted! You are always the dear wife of my heart, true as my sister Hena is a saint,” tenderly answered Albinik, and steadying himself against the tree, he took in his hand the little foot of his companion. With his good arm he supported his wife while she placed her foot on his shoulder. Thence she reached the first large bough. Then, mounting from branch to branch, she gained the top of the oak. Arrived there, Meroë cast her eyes abroad, and saw towards the south, under a group of seven stars, the gleam of several fires. She descended, nimble as a bird, and at last, putting her feet on the mariner’s shoulder, was on the ground with one bound, saying:
“We must go towards the south, in the direction of those seven stars. That way lie the fires of Caesar’s camp.”
“Let us take that road, then,” returned the sailor, indicating the narrower of the two ways, and the two travelers pursued their journey. After a few steps, the young woman halted. She seemed to be searching in her garments.
“What is the matter, Meroë?”
“In climbing the tree, I’ve let my poniard drop. It must have worked out of the belt I was carrying it in, under my blouse.”
“By Hesus; we must get that poniard back,” said Albinik, retracing his steps toward the tree. “You have need of a weapon, and this one my brother Mikael forged and tempered himself. It will pierce a sheet of copper.”
“Oh; I shall find it, Albinik. In that well-tempered little blade of steel one has an answer for all, and in all languages.”
After some search up the foot of the oak, Meroë found her poniard. It was cased in a sheath hardly as long as a hen’s feather, and not much thicker. Meroë fastened it anew under her blouse, and started again on the road with her husband. After some little travel along deserted paths, the two arrived at a plain. They heard far in the distance the great roar of the sea. On a hill they saw the lights of many fires.
“There, at last, is the camp of Caesar,” said Albinik, stopping short, “the den of the lion.”
“The den of the scourge of Gaul. Come, come, the evening is slipping away.”
“Meroë, the moment has come.”
“Do you hesitate now?”
“It is too late. But I would prefer a fair fight under the open heavens, vessel to vessel, soldier to soldier, sword to sword. Ah, Meroë, for us, Gauls, who despise ambuscade or cowardice, and hang brass bells on the iron of our lances to warn the enemy of our approach, to come here — traitorously!”
“Traitorously!” exclaimed the young woman. “And to oppress a free people — is that loyalty? To reduce the inhabitants to slavery, to exile them by herds with iron collars on their necks — is that loyalty? To massacre old men and children, to deliver the women and virgins to the lust of soldiers — is that loyalty? And now, you would hesitate, after having marched a whole day and night by the lights of the conflagration, through the midst of those smoking ruins which were caused by the horror of Roman oppression? No! No! to exterminate savage beasts, all means are good, the trap as well as the boar-spear. Hesitate? Hesitate? Answer, Albinik. Without mentioning your voluntary mutilation, without mentioning the dangers which we brave in entering this camp — shall we not be, if Hesus aids our project, the first victims of that great sacrifice which we are going to make to the Gods? Come, believe me; he who gives his life has nothing to blush for. By the love which I bear you, by the virgin blood of your sister Hena, I have at this moment, I swear to you, the consciousness of fulfilling a holy duty. Come, come, the evening is passing.”
“What Meroë, the just and valiant, finds to be just and valiant, must be so,” said Albinik, pressing his companion to his breast.
“Yes, yes, to exterminate savage beasts all means are good, the trap as well as the spear. Who gives his life has no cause to blush. Come!”
The couple hastened their pace toward the lights of the camp of Caesar. After a few moments, they heard close at hand, resounding on the earth, the measured tread of several soldiers, and the clashing of their swords on their iron armor. Presently they distinguished the invaders�
� red crested helmets glittering in the moonlight.
“They are the soldiers of the guard, who keep vigil around the camp,” said Albinik. “Let us go to them.”
Soon the travelers reached the Roman soldiers, by whom they were immediately surrounded. Albinik, who had learned in the Roman tongue these only words: “We are Breton Gauls; we would speak with Caesar,” addressed them to his captors; but these, learning from Albinik’s own admission that he and his companion were of the provinces that had risen in arms, forthwith took them prisoners, and treated them as such. They bound them, and conducted them to the camp.
Albinik and Meroë were first taken to one of the gates of the entrenchment. Beside the gate, they saw, a cruel warning, five large wooden crosses. On each one of these a Gallic seaman was crucified, his clothes stained with blood. The light of the moon illuminated the corpses.
“They have not deceived us,” said Albinik in a low voice to his companion. “The pilots have been crucified after having undergone frightful tortures, rather than pilot the fleet of Caesar along the coast of Brittany.”
“To make them undergo torture, and death on the cross,” flashed back Meroë, “is that loyalty! Would you still hesitate? Will you still speak of ‘treachery’?”
Albinik answered not a word, but in the dark he pressed his companion’s hand. Brought before the officer who commanded the post, the mariner repeated the only words which he knew in the Roman tongue:
“We are Breton Gauls; we would speak with Caesar.” In these times of war, the Romans would often seize or detain travelers, for the purpose of learning from them what was passing in the revolted provinces. Caesar had given orders for all prisoners and fugitives who could throw light on the movements of the Gauls to be brought before him.
The husband and wife were accordingly not surprised to see themselves, in fulfillment of their secret hope, conducted across the camp to Caesar’s tent, which was guarded by the flower of his Spanish veterans, charged with watching over his person.
Arrived within the tent of Caesar, the scourge of Gaul, Albinik and Meroë were freed of their bonds. Despite their souls’ being stirred with hatred for the invader of their country, they looked about them with a somber curiosity.
The tent of the Roman general, covered on the outside with thick pelts, like all the other tents of the camp, was decorated within with a purple-colored material embroidered with gold and white silk. The beaten earth was buried from sight under a carpet of tiger skins. Caesar was finishing supper, reclining on a camp bed which was concealed under a great lion-skin, decorated with gold claws and eyes of carbuncles. Within his reach, on a low table, the couple saw large vases of gold and silver, richly chased, and cups ornamented with precious stones. Humbly seated at the foot of Caesar’s couch, Meroë saw a young and beautiful female slave, an African without doubt, for her white garments threw out all the stronger the copper colored hue of her face. Slowly she raised her large, shining back eyes to the two strangers, all the while petting a large greyhound which was stretched out at her side. She seemed to be as timid as the dog.
The generals, the officers, the secretaries, the handsome looking young freedmen of Caesar’s suite, were standing about his camp bed, while black Abyssinian slaves, wearing coral ornaments at their necks, wrists and ankles, and motionless as statues, held in their hands torches of scented wax, whose gleam caused the splendid armor of the Romans to glitter.
Caesar, before whom Albinik and Meroë cast down their eyes for fear of betraying their hatred, had exchanged his armor for a long robe of richly broidered silk. His head was bare, nothing covered his large bald forehead, on each side of which his brown hair was closely trimmed. The warmth of the Gallic wine which it was his habit to drink to excess at night, caused his eyes to shine, and colored his pale cheeks. His face was imperious, his laugh mocking and cruel. He was leaning on one elbow, holding in one hand, thinned with debauchery, a wide gold cup, enriched with pearls. He looked at it leisurely and fitfully, still fixing his piercing gaze on the two prisoners, who were placed in such a manner that Albinik almost entirely hid Meroë.
Caesar said a few words in Latin to his officers, who had been preparing to retire. One of them went up to the couple, brusquely shoved Albinik back, and took Meroë by the hand. Thus he forced her to advance a few steps, clearly for the purpose of permitting Caesar to look at her with greater ease. He did so, while at the same time and without turning around, reaching his empty cup to one of his young cup-bearers.
Albinik knew how to control himself. He remained quiet while he saw his chaste wife blush under the bold looks of Caesar. After gazing at her for a moment, the Roman general beckoned to one of his interpreters. The two exchanged a few words, whereupon the interpreter drew close to Meroë, and said to her in the Gallic tongue:
“Caesar asks whether you are a youth or a maiden!”
“My companion and I have fled the Gallic camp,” responded Meroë ingenuously. “Whether I am a youth or a maiden matters little to Caesar.”
At these words, translated by the interpreter to Caesar, the Roman laughed cynically, while his officers partook of the gaiety of their general. Caesar continued to empty cup after cup, fixing his eyes more and more ardently on Albinik’s wife. He said a few words to the interpreter, who commenced to question the two prisoners, conveying as he proceeded, their answers to the general, who would then prompt new questions.
“Who are you!” said the interpreter, “Whence come you!”
“We are Bretons,” answered Albinik. “We come from the Gallic camp, which is established under the walls of Vannes, two days’ march from here.”
“Why have you deserted the Gallic camp!”
Albinik answered not a word, but unwrapped the bloody bandage in which his arm was swathed. The Romans then saw that his left hand was cut off. The interpreter resumed:
“Who has thus mutilated you?”
“The Gauls.”
“But you are a Gaul yourself?”
“Little does that matter to the Chief of the Hundred Valleys.”
At the name of the Chief of the Hundred Valleys, Caesar knit his brows, and his face was filled with envy and hatred.
The interpreter resumed, addressing Albinik: “Explain yourself.”
“I am a sailor, and command a merchant vessel. Several other captains and I received the order to transport some armed men by sea, and to disembark them in the harbor of Vannes, by the bay of Morbihan. I obeyed. A gust of wind carried away one of my masts; my vessel arrived the last of all. Then — the Chief of the Hundred Valleys inflicted upon me the penalty for laggards. But he was generous. He let me off with my life, and gave me the choice between, the loss of my nose, my ears, or one hand. I have been mutilated, but not for having lacked courage or willingness. That would have been just, I would have undergone it according to the laws of my country, without complaint.”
“But this wrongful torture,” joined in Meroë, “Albinik underwent because the sea wind came up against him. As well punish with death him who cannot see clear in the pitchy night — him who cannot darken the light of the sun.”
“And this mutilation covers me for ever with shame!” exclaimed Albinik. “Everywhere it is said: ‘That fellow’s a coward!’ I have never known hatred; now my heart is filled with it. Perish that Fatherland where I cannot live but in dishonor! Perish its liberty! Perish the liberty of my people, provided only that I be avenged upon the Chief of the Hundred Valleys! For that I would gladly give the other hand which he has left me. That is why I have come here with my companion. Sharing my shame, she shares my hatred. That hatred we offer to Caesar; let him use it as he wills; let him try us. Our lives answer for our sincerity. As to recompense, we want none.”
“Vengeance — that is what we must have,” interjected Meroë.
“In what can you serve Caesar against the Chief of the Hundred Valleys?” queried the interpreter.
“I offer Caesar my service as a mariner, as a soldier, as a
guide, as a spy even, if he wishes it.”
“Why did you not seek to kill the Chief of the Hundred Valleys, being able to approach him in the Gallic camp?” suggested the interpreter. “You would have been revenged.”
“Immediately after the mutilation of my husband,” answered Meroë, “we were driven from the camp. We could not return.”
The interpreter again conversed with the Roman general, who, while listening, did not cease to empty his cup and to follow Meroë with brazen looks.
“You are a mariner, you say!” resumed the interpreter. “You used to command a merchantman?”
“Yes.”
“And — are you a good seaman?”
“I am five and twenty years old. From the age of twelve I have traveled on the sea; for four years I have commanded a vessel.”
“Do you know well the coast between Vannes and the channel which separates Great Britain from Gaul?”
“I am from the port of Vannes, near the forest of Karnak. For more than sixteen years I have sailed these coasts continuously.”
“Would you make a good pilot?”
“May I lose all the limbs which the Chief of the Hundred Valleys has left me, if there is a bay, a cape, an islet, a rock, a sand-bank, or a breaker, which I do not know from the Gulf of Aquitaine to Dunkirk.”
“You are vaunting your skill as a pilot. How can you prove it?”
“We are near the shore. For him who is not a good and fearless sailor, nothing is more dangerous than the navigation of the mouth of the Loire, going up towards the north.”
“That is true,” answered the interpreter. “Even yesterday a Roman galley ran aground on a sand-bank and was lost.”
“Who pilots a boat well,” observed Albinik, “pilots well a galley, I think.”
“Yes.”
“To-morrow conduct us to the shore. I know the fisher boats of the country; my wife and I will suffice to handle one. From the top of the bank Caesar will see us skim around the rocks and breakers, and play with them as the sea raven plays with the wave it skims. Then Caesar will believe me capable of safely piloting a galley on the coasts of Brittany.”
