The Massacre Of The Innocents
Towards the hour of supper on Friday, the twenty-sixth day of the month
of December, a little shepherd lad came into Nazareth, crying bitterly.
Some peasants, who were drinking ale in the Blue Lion, opened the
shutters to look into the village orchard, and saw the child running
over the snow. They recognized him as the son of Korneliz, and called
from the window: "What is the matter? It's time you were abed!"
But, sobbing still and shaking with terror, the boy cried that the
Spaniards had come, that they had set fire to the farm, had hanged his
mother among the nut trees and bound his nine little sisters to the
trunk of a big tree. At this the peasants rushed out of the inn.
Surrounding the child, they stunned him with their questionings and
outcries. Between his sobs, he added that the soldiers were on horseback
and wore armor, that they had taken away the cattle of his uncle, Petrus
Krayer, and would soon be in the forest with the sheep and cows. All now
ran to the Golden Swan where, as they knew, Korneliz and his brother-in-
law were also drinking their mug of ale. The moment the innkeeper heard
these terrifying tidings, he hurried into the village, crying that the
Spaniards were at hand.
What a stir, what an uproar there was then in Nazareth! Women opened
windows, and peasants hurriedly left their houses carrying lights which
were put out when they reached the orchard, where, because of the snow
and the full moon, one could see as well as at midday.
Later, they gathered round Korneliz and Krayer, in the open space which
faced the inns. Several of them had brought pitchforks and rakes, and
consulted together, terror-stricken, under the trees.
But, as they did not know what to do, one of them ran to fetch the cure,
who owned Korneliz's farm. He came out of the house with the sacristan
carrying the keys of the church. All followed him into the churchyard,
whither his cry came to them from the top of the tower, that he beheld
nothing either in the fields, or by the forest, but that around the farm
he saw ominous red clouds, for all that the sky was of a deep blue and
agleam with stars over the rest of the plain.
After taking counsel for a long time in the churchyard, they decided to
hide in the wood through which the Spaniards must pass, and, if these
were not too numerous, to attack them and recover Petrus Krayer's cattle
and the plunder which had been taken from the farm.
Having armed themselves with pitchforks and spades, while the women
remained outside the church with the cure, they sought a suitable
ambuscade. Approaching a mill on a rising ground adjacent to the verge
of the forest, they saw the light of the burning farm flaming against
the stars. There they waited under enormous oaks, before a frozen mere.
A shepherd, known as Red Dwarf, climbed the hill to warn the miller, who
had stopped his mill when he saw the flames on the horizon. He bade the
peasant enter, and both men went to a window to stare out into the
night.
Before them the moon shone over the burning farmstead, and in its light
they saw a long procession winding athwart the snow. Having carefully
scrutinized it, the Dwarf descended where his comrades waited under the
trees, and now, they too gradually distinguished four men on horseback
behind a flock which moved grazing on the plain.
While the peasants in their blue breeches and red cloaks continued to
search about the margins of the mere and under the snowlit trees, the
sacristan pointed out to them a box-hedge, behind which they hid.
The Spaniards, driving before them the sheep and the cattle, advanced
upon the ice. When the sheep reached the hedge they began to nibble at
the green stuff, and now Korneliz broke from the shadows of the bushes,
followed by the others with their pitchforks. Then in the midst of the
huddled-up sheep and of the cows who stared affrighted, the savage
strife was fought out beneath the moon, and ended in a massacre.
When they had slain not only the Spaniards, but also their horses,
Korneliz rushed thence across the meadow in the direction of the flames,
while the others plundered and stripped the dead. Thereafter all
returned to the village with their flocks. The women, who were observing
the dark forest from behind the churchyard walls, saw them coming
through the trees and ran with the cure to meet them, and all returned
dancing joyously amid the laughter of the children and the barking of
the dogs.
But, while they made merry, under the pear trees of the orchard, where
the Red Dwarf had hung lanterns in honor of the kermesse, they anxiously
demanded of the cure what was to be done.
The outcome of this was the harnessing of a horse to a cart in order to
fetch the bodies of the woman and the nine little girls to the village.
The sisters and other relations of the dead woman got into the cart
along with the cure, who, being old and very fat, could not walk so far.
In silence they entered the forest, and emerged upon the moonlit plain.
There, in the white light, they descried the dead men, rigid and naked,
among the slain horses. Then they moved onward toward the farm, which
still burned in the midst of the plain.
When they came to the orchard of the flaming house, they stopped at the
gate of the garden, dumb before the overwhelming misfortune of the
peasant. For there, his wife hung, quite naked, on the branches of an
enormous nut tree, among which he himself was now mounting on a ladder,
and beneath which, on the frozen grass, lay his nine little daughters.
Korneliz had already, climbed along the vast boughs, when suddenly, by
the light of the snow, he saw the crowd who horror-struck watched his
every movement. With tears in his eyes, he made a sign to them to help
him, whereat the innkeepers of the Blue Lion and the Golden Sun, the
cure, with a lantern, and many others, climbed up in the moonshine amid
the snow-laden branches, to unfasten the dead. The women of the village
received the corpse in their arms at the foot of the tree; even as our
Lord Jesus Christ was received by the women at the foot of the Cross.
On the morrow they buried her, and for the week thereafter nothing
unusual happened in Nazareth.
But the following Sunday, hungry wolves ran through the village after
high mass, and it snowed until midday. Then, suddenly, the sun shone
brilliantly, and the peasants went to dine as was their wont, and
dressed for the benediction.
There was no one to be seen on the Place, for it froze bitterly. Only
the dogs and chickens roamed about under the trees, or the sheep nibbled
at a three-cornered bit of grass, while the cure's servant swept away
the snow from his garden.
At that moment a troop of armed men crossed the stone bridge at the end
of the village, and halted in the orchard. Peasants hurried from their
houses, but, recognizing the new-comers as Spaniards, they retreated
terrified, and went to the windows to see what would happen.
About thirty soldiers, in full armor, surrounded an old man with a white
beard. Behind them, on pillions, rode red and yellow lancers who jumped
down and ran over the snow to shake off their stiffness, while several
of the soldiers in armor dismounted likewise and fastened their horses
to the trees.
Then they moved in the direction of the Golden Sun, and knocked at the
door. It was opened reluctantly; the soldiers went in, warmed themselves
near the fire, and called for ale.
Presently they came out of the inn, carrying pots, jugs, and rye-bread
for their companions, who surrounded the man with the white beard, where
he waited behind the hedge of lances.
As the street remained deserted the commander sent some horsemen to the
back of the houses, to guard the village on the country side. He then
ordered the lancers to bring him all the children of two years old and
under, to be massacred, as is written in the Gospel of St. Matthew.
The soldiers first went to the little inn of the Green Cabbage, and to
the barber's cottage which stood side by side midway in the street.
One of them opened a sty and a litter of pigs wandered into the village.
The innkeeper and the barber came out, and humbly asked the men what
they wanted; but they did not understand Flemish, and went into the
houses to look for the children.
The innkeeper had one child, who, in its little shift, was screaming on
the table where they had just dined. A soldier took it in his arms, and
carried it away under the apple trees, while the father and mother
followed, crying.
Thereafter the lancers opened other stable doors,--those of the cooper,
the blacksmith, the cobbler,--and calves, cows, asses, pigs, goats, and
sheep roamed about the square. When they broke the carpenter's windows,
several of the oldest and richest inhabitants of the village assembled
in the street, and went to meet the Spaniards. Respectfully they took
off their caps and hats to the leader in the velvet mantle, and asked
him what he was going to do. He did not, understand their language; so
some one ran to fetch the cure.
The priest was putting on a gold chasuble in the vestry, in readiness
for the benediction. The peasant cried: "The Spaniards are in the
orchard!" Horrified, the cure ran to the door of the church, and the
choir-boys followed, carrying wax-tapers and censer.
As he stood there, he saw the animals from the pens and stables
wandering on the snow and on the grass; the horsemen in the village, the
soldiers before the doors, horses tied to trees all along the street;
men and women entreating the man who held the child in its little shift.
The cure hastened into the churchyard, and the peasants turned anxiously
towards him as he came through the pear trees, like the Divine Presence
itself robed in white and gold. They crowded about him where he
confronted the man with the white beard.
He spoke in Flemish and in Latin, but the commander merely shrugged his
shoulders to show that he did not understand.
The villagers asked their priest in a low voice: "What does he say? What
is he going to do?" Others, when they saw the cure in the orchard, came
cautiously from their cottages, women hurried up and whispered in
groups, while the soldiers, till that moment besieging an inn, ran back
at sight of the crowd in the square.
Then the man who held the innkeeper's child by the leg cut off its head
with his sword.
The people saw the head fall, and thereafter the body lie bleeding upon
the grass. The mother picked it up, and carried it away, but forgot the
head. She ran towards her home, but stumbling against a tree fell prone
on the snow, where she lay in a swoon, while the father struggled
between two soldiers.
Some young peasants cast stones and blocks of wood at the Spaniards, but
the horsemen all lowered their lances; the women fled and the cure with
his parishioners began to shriek with horror, amid the bleating of the
sheep, the cackling of the geese, and the barking of the dogs.
But as the soldiers moved away again into the street, the crowd stood
silent to see what would happen.
A troop entered the shop kept by the sacristan's sisters, but came out
quietly, without harming the seven women, who knelt on the threshold
praying.
From these they went to the inn of St. Nicholas, which belonged to the
Hunchback. Here, too, so as to appease them, the door was opened at
once; but, when the soldiers reappeared amid a great uproar, they
carried three children in their arms. The marauders were surrounded by
the Hunchback, his wife, and daughters, all, with clasped hands,
imploring for mercy.
When the soldiers came to their white-bearded leader, they placed the
children at the foot of an elm, where the little ones remained seated on
the snow in their Sunday clothes. But one of them, in a yellow frock,
got up and toddled unsteadily towards the sheep. A soldier followed,
with bare sword; and the child died with his face in the grass, while
the others were killed around the tree.
The peasants and the innkeeper's daughters all fled screaming, and shut
themselves up in their houses. The cure, who was left alone in the
orchard, threw himself on his knees, first before one horseman, then
another, and with crossed arms, supplicated the Spaniards piteously,
while the fathers and mothers seated on the snow beyond wept bitterly
for the dead children whom they held upon their knees.
As the lancers passed along the street, they noticed a big blue
farmstead. When they had tried, in vain, to force open the oaken door
studded with nails, they clambered atop of some tubs, which were frozen
over near the threshold, and by this means gained the house through the
upper windows.
There had been a kermesse in this farm. At sound of the broken window-
panes, the families who had assembled there to eat gaufres, custards,
and hams, crowded together behind the table on which still stood some
empty jugs and dishes. The soldiers entered the kitchen, and after
savage struggle in which many were wounded, they seized all the little
boys and girls; then, with these, and the servant who had bitten a
lancer's thumb, they left the house and fastened the door behind them in
such a way that the parents could not get out.
The villagers who had no children slowly left their houses, and followed
the soldiers at a distance. They saw them throw down their victims on
the grass before the old man, and callously kill them with lance and
sword. During this, men and women leaned out of all the windows of the
blue house, and out of the barn, blaspheming and flinging their hands to
heaven, when they saw the red, pink, and white frocks of their
motionless little ones on the grass between the trees. The soldiers next
hanged the farm servant at the sign of the Half Moon on the other side
of the street, and there was a long silence in the village.
The massacre now became general. Mothers fled from their houses, and
attempted to escape through the flower and vegetable gardens, and so
into the country beyond, but the horsemen pursued them and drove them
back into the street. Peasants with caps in their clasped hands knelt
before the men who dragged away their children, while amid the confusion
the dogs barked joyously. The cure, with hands upraised to heaven,
rushed up and down in front of the houses and under the trees, praying
desperately; here and there, soldiers, trembling with cold, blew on
their fingers as they moved about the road, or waited with hands in
their breeches pockets, and swords under their arms, before the windows
of the houses which were being scaled.
Everywhere, as in small bands of twos and threes, they moved along the
streets, where these scenes were being enacted, and entered the houses,
they beheld the piteous grief of the peasants. The wife of a market-
gardener, who occupied a red brick cottage near the church, pursued with
a wooden stool the two men who carried off her children in a
wheelbarrow. When she saw them die, a horrible sickness came upon her,
and they thrust her down on the stool under a tree by the roadside.
Other soldiers swarmed up the lime trees in front of a farmstead with
its blank walls tinted mauve, and entered the house by removing the
tiles. When they came back on to the roof, the father and mother, with
outstretched arms, tried to follow them through the opening, but the
soldiers repeatedly pushed them back, and had at last to strike them on
the head with their swords, before they could disengage themselves and
regain the street.
One family shut up in the cellar of a large cottage lamented near the
grating, through which the father wildly brandished a pitchfork. Outside
on a heap of manure, a bald old man sobbed all alone; in the square, a
woman in a yellow dress had swooned, and her weeping husband now
supported her under the arms, against a pear tree; another woman in red
fondled her little girl, bereft of her hands, and lifted now one tiny
arm, now the other, to see if the child would not move. Yet another
woman fled towards the country; but the soldiers pursued her among the
hayricks, which stood out in black relief against the fields of snow.
Beneath the inn of the Four Sons of Aymon a surging tumult reigned. The
inhabitants had formed a barricade, and the soldiers went round and
round the house without being able to enter. Then they were attempting
to climb up to the signboard by the creepers, when they noticed a ladder
behind the garden door. This they raised against the wall, and went up
it in file. But the innkeeper and all his family hurled tables, stools,
plates, and cradles down upon them from the windows; the ladder was
overturned, and the soldiers fell.
In a wooden hut at the end of the village, another band found a peasant
woman washing her children in a tub near the fire. Being old and very
deaf, she did not hear them enter. Two men took the tub and carried it
away, and the stupefied woman followed with the clothes in which she was
about to dress the children. But when she saw traces of blood everywhere
in the village, swords in the orchards, cradles overturned in the
street, women on their knees, others who wrung their hands over the
dead, she began to scream and beat the soldiers, who put down the tub to
defend themselves. The cure hastened up also, and with hands clasped
over his chasuble, entreated the Spaniards before the naked little ones
howling in the water. Some soldiers came up, tied the mad peasant to a
tree, and carried off the children.
The butcher, who had hidden his little girl, leaned against his shop,
and looked on callously. A lancer and one of the men in armor entered
the house and found the child in a copper boiler. Then the butcher in
despair took one of his knives and rushed after them into the street,
but soldiers who were passing disarmed him and hanged him by the hands
to the hooks in the wall--there, among the flayed animals, he kicked and
struggled, blaspheming, until the evening.
Near the churchyard, there was a great gathering before a long, low
house, painted green. The owner, standing on his threshold, shed bitter
tears; as he was very fat and jovial looking, he excited the pity of
some soldiers who were seated in the sun against the wall, patting a
dog. The one, too, who dragged away his child by the hand, gesticulated
as if to say: "What can I do? It's not my fault!"
A peasant who was pursued, jumped into a boat, moored near the stone
bridge, and with his wife and children moved away across the unfrozen
part of the narrow lagoon. Not daring to follow, the soldiers strode
furiously through the reeds. They climbed up into the willows on the
banks to try to reach the fugitives with their lances--as they did not
succeed, they continued for a long time to threaten the terrified family
adrift upon the black water.
The orchard was still full of people, for it was there, in front of the
white-bearded man who directed the massacre, that most of the children
were killed. Little dots who could just walk alone stood side by side
munching their slices of bread and jam, and stared curiously at the
slaying of their helpless playmates, or collected round the village fool
who played his flute on the grass.
Then suddenly there was a uniform movement in the village. The peasants
ran towards the castle which stood on the brown rising ground, at the
end of the street. They had seen their seigneur leaning on the
battlements of his tower and watching the massacre. Men, women, old
people, with hands outstretched, supplicated to him, in his velvet
mantle and his gold cap, as to a king in heaven. But he raised his arms
and shrugged his shoulders to show his helplessness, and when they
implored him more and more persistently, kneeling in the snow, with
bared heads, and uttering piteous cries, he turned slowly into the tower
and the peasants' last hope was gone.
When all the children were slain, the tired soldiers wiped their swords
on the grass, and supped under the pear trees. Then they mounted one
behind the other, and rode out of Nazareth across the stone bridge, by
which they had come.
The setting of the sun behind the forest made the woods aflame, and dyed
the village blood-red. Exhausted with running and entreating, the cure
had thrown himself upon the snow, in front of the church, and his
servant stood near him. They stared upon the street and the orchard,
both thronged with the peasants in their best clothes. Before many
thresholds, parents with dead children on their knees bewailed with ever
fresh amaze their bitter grief. Others still lamented over the children
where they had died, near a barrel, under a barrow, or at the edge of a
pool. Others carried away the dead in silence. There were some who began
to wash the benches, the stools, the tables, the blood-stained shifts,
and to pick up the cradles which had been thrown into the street. Mother
by mother moaned under the trees over the dead bodies which lay upon the
grass, little mutilated bodies which they recognized by their woollen
frocks. Those who were childless moved aimlessly through the square,
stopping at times in front of the bereaved, who wailed and sobbed in
their sorrow. The men, who no longer wept, sullenly pursued their
strayed animals, around which the barking dogs coursed; or, in silence,
repaired so far their broken windows and rifled roofs. As the moon
solemnly rose through the quietudes of the sky, deep silence as of sleep
descended upon the village, where now not the shadow of a living thing
stirred.
-THE END-
Maurice Maeterlinck's short story: The Massacre Of The Innocents
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