"A Jewess!" repeated the Duke of Aquitaine with eyes fixed, his brow bathed in perspiration, and seeming neither to hear nor to see his companions in arms. Perceiving the legate of the Pope, William threw himself on his knees at the feet of the prelate: "Holy father, have pity upon me! I am damned! While I was chatting with the queen of the wenches, Azenor entered the chamber where we were and, holding out this parchment, said to me she was a Jewess, and that the parchment, written in Hebrew, furnished the proof. I have been a miserable sinner. Holy father, have pity upon me! I am damned! Mercy for my soul! Upon my knees I ask you for absolution!"
CHAPTER V.
THE KING OF THE VAGABONDS.
At dawn, the sun rose over the plain that surrounds the city of Marhala, surprised at night by the Saracens and defended by the Crusaders. The infidels, relying more on their audacity than on their numbers, perished almost to a man in the assault. Only a small number of prisoners were taken. The approaches of the breech in the ramparts, not far from the gate of Agra, through which the Saracens sought to surprise the city, disappeared under a heap of corpses. Clouds of vultures hovered over that abundant quarry, but dared not yet let themselves down on it. Men of prey were ahead of the birds.
These men, wholly naked, red and dripping blood, and hideous to behold, went and came like geniuses of death in the midst of that field of carnage. They would seize the body of a Saracen, strip it of its clothes, roll that in a bundle, and then, kneeling over the naked corpse, they pried open its jaws, rigid in death, carefully felt about in its mouth and under its tongue; finally, with the aid of long knives, they would cut open the corpse's gullet, chest and bowels, whose intestines they then pulled out and examined. Their faces, hands and members streaming blood, these demons were under the command of a chief. He gave orders and directed their sacrilegious profanations. They called him their king. It was Corentin the Gibbet-cheater, become chief of the vagabonds. His seneschal, one-time serf of the seigniory of Plouernel, was the identical Bacon-cutter, who, with a blow of his pitchfork had thrown Garin the Serf-eater from his horse just before the latter was butchered by the villagers.
The King of the Vagabonds and his seneschal gave token of rare dexterity in their shocking trade. The two had just seized, one by the head the other by the feet, the corpse of a young Saracen. His face, his rich raiment, hacked by sabre blows, the bodies of several Crusaders stretched on either side of him—all bespoke the fierce resistance the warrior must have offered. "Oh, oh!" said the King of the Vagabonds, "that dog must have been some chieftain, it can be seen by his embroidered green caftan. Great pity that his dress is so slashed to pieces; it might have served as a mantle for Perrette."
"You still think of the Ribald?" asked the Bacon-cutter, helping Corentin to strip the Saracen of his clothes; "your Perrette is in the Paradise of the wenches, on the crupper of some canon, or in the harem of some emir."
"Seneschal, Perrette would leave Paradise, an emir or a canon if the Gibbet-cheater told her to. Come. Our corpse is now naked. Make a bundle of the clothes. They will find purchasers in the market-place of Marhala. Now that we have taken the peel from this Syrian fruit," he added, pointing to the dead body, "let's open it. It is inside that the precious almonds must be looked for, such as besans of gold and precious stones. Give me your knife. I wish to sharpen it against mine. The blade of mine has been dulled on the gullet of that old Saracen yonder with the white beard. The devil! His cartilage was as tough as that of an old goat," and while his seneschal was bundling up some clothes, the King of the Vagabonds sharpened his knife, casting upon the corpses strewn around him looks of satisfied covetousness, and remarked: "That's what it means to get up early in the morning. After their night's fight, the Crusaders have gone to sleep. When they will come to plunder the dead, we shall be at the dice!"
"Great King! It is an easy matter to rise early if one has not gone to bed. We arrived in time to gather the harvest on this field of carnage."
"Will you, vagabonds, still reproach me for having induced you to leave the fortress of the Marquis of Jaffa?" replied the king, continuing to sharpen his knife. "Think of lying in a stronghold in order to play the brigand in Palestine! It was folly!"
"And yet, many of those new seigneurs who have left themselves down in the Holy Land as dukes, marquises, counts and barons, begin everywhere, just as they used to in Gaul, to ply the trade of highwaymen on the mainroads."