"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.
CHAPTER IV.
IN SIGHT OF THE ABBEY.
Upon leaving the convent of St. Saturnine, Berthoald took with his men the road to the abbey of Meriadek. The march of the troop was delayed by the condition in which they found two of the bridges on their route; the roads, moreover, were in such a state that the carts containing the booty of the warriors, together with the Arabian and Gallic women whom they had captured in the environs of Narbonne, frequently sank to the axles of the wheels in the mud.
Two days after Broute-Saule had been delivered to the claws and beak of the sparrow-hawk, Berthoald and his men arrived near Nantes. The sun was going down, night was near. The young chief on horseback rode a few paces ahead of his companions, among whom were several fresh recruits raised by Charles from the other side of the Rhine—men as savage and fierce as the first soldiers of Clovis, and, like them, dressed in skins and wearing their hair tied at the top of their heads—just as, more than two centuries before, Neroweg, one of the leudes of the Frankish king, had worn his. The other warriors were casqued and cuirassed. Berthoald was reserved, almost haughty towards the men of his band. They grumbled at his coolness and general bearing towards them. But the ascendency of his courage, his redoubtable physical strength, his rare dexterity in arms, the promptitude of his war expedients, finally, the high favor that he enjoyed with Charles held the savage men of war in control. Accordingly, Berthoald rode alone at the head of his troop. Often, since his departure from the abbey of St. Saturnine, he had dropped into a reverie at the thought of the charming Septimine. He was thinking of the young girl when Richulf, one of his men, rode up to his chief and said to him:
"According to the information that we gathered on the way, our abbey must lie hereabouts. If you will, let us interrogate the slaves that we see on the fields."
Awakening from his reverie, Berthoald made an affirmative sign with his head, and the two hastened the pace of their horses.