Chapter III: The Death of Brunhild

Three days had elapsed since Brunhild fell into the power of Clotaire II. The sun had crossed the zenith. A man with a long white beard, clad in a hooded brown robe, and mounted upon a mule was following the road, upon which, escorted by the armed men of her mortal foe, and leading behind her a mob that rent the air with execrations, Brunhild had shortly before ridden to the village of Ryonne. The venerable old man was Loysik. He had escaped death by reason of the Queen's precipitate departure from the castle. One of the young brothers of the community accompanied the old monk on foot, guiding his mule by the bridle. From the opposite direction, a warrior, armed cap-a-pie, was climbing on horseback the rough road that Loysik was at the same time slowly descending with his mule. When the Frank had come within a few paces of the old man, the latter opened up a conversation with him:

"Are you of King Clotaire's suite?"

"Yes, holy man."

"Is he still at the village of Ryonne?"

"Yes; he will be there till this evening.--I am to ride ahead and prepare his lodgings on the route."

"Is Duke Roccon among the seigneurs who accompany the King?"

"Yes, monk; Duke Roccon is with the King."

"Is it true, as I hear, that Queen Brunhild has been taken prisoner and carried to King Clotaire, who has also captured her grandchildren?"

"That is all old news. Where do you come from that you do not know what has happened?"

"I come from Chalon.--What did the King do with his prisoner and her grandchildren?"

"The steep ascent has taken the wind out of my horse and he needs a little rest. So I shall tell you what has happened--all the more willingly, seeing that it is a good augury to meet a priest, especially a monk, at the start of a journey."

"Do let me know, I beg you; what has been done with Brunhild and her grandchildren?"

"There were only three of the children captured on the banks of the Saone. The fourth, Childebert, could be found nowhere.--Was he killed in the melee?--Did he escape?--No one can tell.--"

"And the other three?"

"The eldest and the second one were killed."

"In the battle?"

"No--no.--They were killed in the village--yonder. The King had them killed under his own eyes, in order to be certain of their death; he wanted to obviate having them turn up some day, and demand their kingdom back from him. But it is said that the King granted his life to the third.--I think he was wrong in that.--But what ails you, holy father; you seem to shiver. To be sure, the morning is rather chilly."

"And what became of Queen Brunhild?"

"She arrived at the village with a magnificent escort! A veritable triumphal march! Dung for incense, and hootings for acclamation!"

"I suppose the King ordered her to be put to death immediately upon her arrival?"

"No; she is still alive."

"Did Clotaire have mercy upon her?"

"Clotaire--have mercy upon Brunhild!--Holy man, you must come from far away to talk as you do! Brunhild was taken three days ago to that village that you see yonder; she was taken to the house where her grandchildren were killed. Two expert executioners and four assistants, equipped with all manner of instruments, were locked up with the old Queen; that was three days ago, and she is not yet dead. I must add that she was not tortured at night; the nights were left to her to recover strength. Moreover, seeing that she undertook to starve herself, food was forced down her throat--spiced wines and flour soaked in milk. That has kept her sufficiently alive.--But what makes you shiver so? It is not so chilly!"

"Yes; the morning is chilly.--And did Clotaire witness the tortures that were inflicted upon the Queen during those three days?"

"The door of the house was locked and guarded by sentinels. But there is a little window through which one can look inside. Through that opening, the King, the dukes, the leudes, the Bishop of Troyes and a few other preferred personages went from time to time to contemplate the victim in her agony. Being a connoisseur, Clotaire never took a look inside when Brunhild was screaming; at times the woman screamed loud enough to be heard clean across the village; he never went to see her at such times; but the moment she began to moan, he walked to the window and peeped in; it is said the sufferings of victims in the torture are intenser when they moan than when they scream out aloud. It was a protracted holiday for the whole village. Like the generous King that he is, Clotaire allowed a large number of people, who followed Brunhild to the village, to remain to the end of the tortures, and had provisions distributed among them. Oh, holy man, you should have heard how they kept time with their hootings to the screams of the Queen.--But I see my horse has regained his wind--adieu, holy man. If you wish to witness a spectacle that you never saw and never will see again you would better hurry. They say there are yet to be some extraordinary incidents to wind up the torture. The King has sent for one of the camels that carry his baggage. What he purposes to do with the camel is still a secret. Adieu, give me your blessing."

"I wish you a happy journey."

"Thank you, holy man; but you had better hurry, because as I was leaving the village they went for the camel and took him out of his stable."

Pricking his horse with his spurs, the rider rode off at a brisk pace. Shortly afterwards, Loysik arrived at the entrance of the village of Ryonne. The aged monk alighted from his mule and asked the young brother to wait for him. A leude, from whom Loysik inquired after Duke Roccon, took him to the tent of the Frankish seigneur, contiguous to that of the King. Almost immediately afterwards the monk was taken to the duke, who said to him in a tone of respectful deference:

"You here, my good father in Christ?"

"I come with a just petition to you."

"If it is at all in my power, the matter is granted."

"Are you a friend of King Clotaire? Have you any influence with him?"

"If you have any favor to prefer to him, you could hardly arrive at a better time."

"I come for no favors from the King--I come for justice. Here is a charter given by his grandfather Clotaire I. As a matter of law, it requires no confirmation, seeing that the concession is absolute. But the Bishop of Chalon is giving us trouble. He is laying claims upon the goods of the monastery, upon those of the inhabitants of the Valley, and, as a consequence, upon their freedom, notwithstanding both their goods and their freedom are guaranteed by this charter.--Would you be willing to request Clotaire, who is now the King of Burgundy, to attach his seal to the charter issued by his grandfather, in order to insure its enforcement?"

"Is that all you wish to ask of the King?--The King honors the memory of his glorious grandfather too highly to fail to confirm a charter issued by that great Prince. Clotaire must now be in his tent. Wait for me here, my father in Christ. I shall be back soon."

During the short absence of the Frankish seigneur, Loysik could hear the uproar of the impatient crowd and warriors calling aloud for Brunhild. Duke Roccon returned quickly with the old charter of Clotaire I, to which Clotaire II had attached his seal under the following freshly written words:

"We will it, and we so order all our leudes, dukes, counts and
bishops, that the above charter, signed by our glorious grandfather
Clotaire, be upheld in force and respected in all its provisions in
the present and in the future, and we do so in the belief that we
thereby do honor to our glorious ancestor. And those who are to
succeed me will uphold this donation inviolate, if they wish to
share the life everlasting, and if they wish to be saved from the
everlasting flames. Whoever in any manner does violence to this
donation, may the gateman of heaven diminish his share of heaven;
whoever may add to the donation, may the gateman of heaven add
something unto him."

The aged monk inquired from the duke who it was that wrote the last words to the charter, and was not a little surprised to hear that it was the Bishop of Troyes.

"You must, then, have said nothing to the King concerning the pretensions of the Bishop of Chalon--"

"I did not consider that necessary. I said to Clotaire: 'I request you to confirm this charter, which your grandfather granted to a holy man of God.' 'I can refuse nothing to my loyal servitors,' he answered, and he charged the bishop to write what was proper. That being done, the King attached his royal seal under the writing."

"Roccon," said the venerable monk, "I thank you--adieu--"

But recollecting himself, Loysik added:

"You told me that the moment was favorable to obtain favors from the King--promise me that you will ask him to enfranchise a few slaves of the royal fisc, and to send them to me to the monastery of the Valley of Charolles."

"Ah, my father in Christ! I knew full well that our conversation would not be done without your making some demand of enfranchisement."

"Roccon, you have a wife and children--the accidents of war are changeable. Brunhild is now vanquished and a prisoner; but, if that implacable Queen, who has emerged so often victorious from the field of battle, had not been betrayed by her own army and her auxiliaries--had she, on the contrary, vanquished Clotaire, what would your lot have been, what the lot of all the seigneurs of Burgundy, who took the side of the King? What would have become of your wife, of your daughters?"

"Brunhild would have ordered my head cut off; she would have delivered my wife and daughters to the savage tribes of the other side of the Rhine as slaves!--Malediction! My two daughters Bathilde and Hermangarde, slaves!--The perspiration gathers on my temples at the bare thought of such a thing--let us not speak of it!"

"On the contrary, do let us speak of it! Who knows but that among those unknown slaves, whose freedom I am asking, there may be some with daughters whom they love as much as you love yours.--Judge of the joy that their deliverance would give them by the joy that you and your children would feel if, having become slaves, you were to be set free. Roccon, it is in your power to afford such ineffable joy to some captives.--Keep your dear daughters in mind."

"Very well my dear father in Christ, I promise you ten slaves. Clotaire will not refuse them to me as my share of the booty of this war."

"Seigneur duke," said a servant who hurried into the tent, "the promenade of the camel is about to begin."

"Oh! Oh! It is to be one of the best spectacles of the feast.--Come, my father in Christ!"

"Oh!" cried the aged man horrified. "I do not wish to stay an instant longer in this horrible place.--Adieu, Roccon!"

"Adieu, good father, you will pray to God for me, in order that I may have a good part of paradise."

"Man finds paradise in his own heart when he acts justly: the priests who promise heaven are knaves. I shall pray to God that He may inspire you to perform charitable deeds.--Adieu."

Loysik left the duke's tent expecting to be able to leave the village instantly. His hope was not verified. As he walked away he found himself in a narrow street that divided two rows of huts and was cut at right angles by a wide highroad. Loysik was walking thither in order to rejoin the young brother who guarded his mule, when suddenly the uproar of voices, that had before smitten his ears several times, broke out louder and nearer. Immediately thereupon, a crowd of the people who had followed Brunhild to the village in order to enjoy the sight of her death, broke forth like an eruption out of the highway, poured over the narrow street, and despite Loysik's efforts to disengage himself, carried him away like a straw by the torrent. The flood of people consisted of men, women and children; they were all in rags; they were slaves and were of the Gallic race. All cried at the top of their voices:

"Brunhild is coming out of the camp! She will pass this way!"

Loysik made no further efforts to contend against the crowd; he found himself pushed forward until further progress was barred at the sort of square in the center of which rose the tent of Clotaire II. A strong cordon of warriors drawn around the place, prevented the mob from entering it. As he stood there, in the very front ranks of the surging crowd Loysik witnessed the following spectacle:

Before him extended a rather wide avenue, now completely deserted of people; to his left the entrance to the royal tent; before the tent, Clotaire II, surrounded by the seigneurs of his suite, among whom was the Bishop of Troyes. Two slaves on foot brought and kept before the King a spirited stallion, which they were hardly able to curb by means of two thongs attached to his bit; the animal reared violently although his hind legs were hoppled. With blood-shot eyes and dilated nostrils, the powerful beast made such frantic efforts to tear himself from the two slaves that his deep black coat streamed with sweat on his flanks and chest. The animal carried no saddle; his long mane floated to the breeze, or fell down over and almost completely covered his savage head. Despite all, the slaves succeeded in leading the stallion to Clotaire's tent. The King made a sign. Immediately, at the imminent risk of being trampled to pieces, the unhappy slaves crawled down upon their hands and knees, and slipped a rope with a running knot over each of the animal's hind legs; other slaves thereupon kept the horse in sufficient control to allow the removal of his hopples. During this perilous process, the stallion became so furious that he reared and struck one of the slaves on the head with his front hoofs; the luckless fellow fell bleeding under the feet of the animal that then stooped, bit him ferociously, and crushed his bones with the trample of his hoofs. The corpse was removed, and two other slaves received orders to join those who, in order to control the stallion, clung with all their might to the thongs from his bit. Again cries were heard, first from a distance, but drawing nearer and nearer. The highroad, deserted but a moment before and running into the square in front of Loysik, was suddenly filled with a dense mass of foot soldiers, and presently a camel that towered by the full height of its body over the armed multitude, hove in sight of the aged monk. The troop of Frankish soldiers rent the air with their clamor:

"Brunhild! Brunhild! Triumph to Brunhild--Queen, look down upon your good people of Burgundy who are at your feet!"

Although in a dying state, although broken down by the tortures that she had undergone during the last three days, still the old Queen, recalled from her stupor by the loudness of the yells that broke out all around her, found strength enough to raise herself for a last time upon the back of the camel, astride of whose back she had been placed and firmly bound. She was only a few steps from where Loysik stood. What the venerable monk then saw--Oh, what he saw is nameless, like the crimes of Brunhild herself. Her long, white, tangled, blood-clotted hair was the only--the only cover to the nakedness of the old Queen. The woman's legs; her thighs, her shoulders, her bosom, in short her every limb was no longer of human shape; it was but a heap of palpitating wounds and swollen, blackened, bleeding burns; two of her toe-nails, that had been pulled out, still hung dangling from reddening pellicules at her great toes; in the other toes of her feet and in her fingers, long iron needles were seen inserted between the nail and the flesh. Only her face had been spared. Despite its cadaverous paleness; despite the traces of the unheard-of superhuman sufferings that it registered, left there by the tortures inflicted during the three consecutive days;--despite all, her face still bore the stamp of pride; a frightful smile curled the Queen's purplish lips; a flash of savage haughtiness illumined from time to time her breaking eyes. And, oh, fatality, those eyes alighted accidentally upon Loysik at the moment that Brunhild passed before him. At the sight of the monk, whose robe, long white beard and tall stature had attracted the dying Queen's eyes, her body seemed thrilled by a sudden emotion; she straightened in her seat; and gathering the little strength that still remained to her, she cried in a voice of despair, that sounded almost repentant:

"Monk, your speech was soothe--there is a justice in heaven! At this hour I am thinking, I am thinking--I am thinking of the death of Victoria."

The furious hootings of the crowd drowned Brunhild's voice; her last effort, put forth in raising herself and speaking to Loysik exhausted her failing strength. She fell over backward, and her inert body jolted up and down over the camel's crupper. Loysik had long struggled against the horror of the shocking spectacle. Hardly had Brunhild's voice ceased to be heard than he felt his head swim and his knees sink under him. But for two poor women, who, struck with compassion for his old age, supported him, the monk would have fallen to the ground and been trampled to death.

Loysik remained for a long time deprived of consciousness. When he recovered, night had come. He found himself lying in a hut upon a bed of straw. Beside him sat the young brother, who had succeeded in finding him. The two poor slave women had transported Loysik to their miserable hut. The first words pronounced by the monk, whose mind still labored under the effect of the horrible scene that he had witnessed, was the name of Brunhild.

"Good father," said one of the women, "the hated Queen was taken down from the camel; she was then only a corpse; she was fastened with ropes by the hands to the tail of a fiery horse, and the animal was then let loose; but that part of the execution did not last long; at the very first bound given by the horse it shattered Brunhild's head; her skull broke like the shell of a nut, and her brains were scattered in all directions."

Suddenly the young monk laborer said to Loysik, pointing in the direction of the glimmer that must have been produced by the reflection of a great but distant fire:

"Do you hear those distant yells? Do you see that light?"

"That light, my son, is the light cast by the pyre that Clotaire II ordered raised," said one of the two old women; "those yells are the yells of the people dancing around the fire."

"What pyre?" asked Loysik with a shudder. "Of what pyre are you speaking?"

"After the wild horse broke the head of Brunhild, the people who came to the village in order to see her die besought the King to have the accursed remains of the old she-wolf placed upon a pyre; the King gave his consent before his departure; he departed soon afterwards. The pyre was raised yonder at the square, and the light reaches us."

The evening breeze carried to Loysik's ears the cries of frantic joy, uttered by the crowd, wild with the intoxication of vengeance:

"Burn, burn, old bones of Brunhild, the accursed! Burn, burn, old accursed bones!"

As Loysik caught these words he cried:

"Oh, formidable contrast, formidable like the voice of history! The pyre of Brunhild--the pyre of Victoria!"