"That's right," returned the Chaplain. "Let's march! His skin answers for our lives."
"March!" ordered Captain Griffith, and guided by the bailiff, who had been rejoined by his men, the troop left the village of Cramoisy and wended its way towards a forest, the skirt of which drew its length along the horizon.
CHAPTER II.
THE FOX'S BURROW.
About two leagues from the village of Cramoisy, and in the thickest of the seigniorial forest of Nointel, is a vast subterranean grotto, cut into the chalky rock that offers little resistance to the pick and the mattock. The cavern dates from the far-back troubled days when the Norman pirates were in the habit of rowing up the Somme, the Seine and the Oise and raiding the surrounding lands. Such of the serfs whose dire misery did not reach the pitch of constraining them to join the Normans, and who sought to escape the flood of pillage and massacre, had dug the underground place of refuge. Carrying thither their little havings, and even cattle, they remained hidden until the pirates left the country. Similar places were in later years contrived in almost all parts of Gaul by the vassals of the nobility for the purpose of escaping the brigandage of the English, of the robber bands and of the bands of mercenaries who devastated the provinces, finally also to escape the extortions of the seigneurs that now became intolerable, seeing that Jacques Bonhomme was forced to pay the ransom of their masters who had been taken prisoners at the battle of Poitiers. In other regions of Gaul the peasants withdrew with their families upon rafts which they anchored midstreams of rivers, and which frequently were either submerged or carried away by the floods to be finally swamped with the wretched mass of humanity that they bore. Never before had desolation and panic reached such a pitch in the unfortunate country; the huts were almost all abandoned, the fields uncultivated and a famine was apprehended similar to that which desolated Gaul in the year 1000.
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.