VI
VI
In the late afternoon, when gray shadows were stealing westward over the quiet hills, came Eldris along the road toward Thorney, with an empty basket on her arm. She looked younger, rounder, better fed; her eyes were darkly blue and full of light, her skin as white as milk. Coming up a slight rise of ground, she saw the long figure lying against the hillside but a short distance away, and recognized it and stopped short, turning white, with a hand against her heart, all unprepared for what she had yearned to see. She went to him swiftly, and knelt beside him as he slept.
"Thank God! He hath returned—he is alive and well!" she whispered. "I had feared—oh, I know not what I feared! How hath he escaped? Ay me, but he is changed! There is that in his face which was not there before, and there is something gone from it. So thin he is—sure he hath been ill."
She hung over him in rapt absorption of tenderness; she listened to his slow and heavy breathing; she longed to draw his rough black head into her arms. Yet she dared scarcely touch him, since even in sleep he wasstill too much his own; rosy and shy she leaned above him, her face transfigured. They were alone in the world, with gray empty skies above them and gray silent hills rolling upon either hand.
With one finger she touched a lock of his hair, rough and matted, and dearer to her than all silken tresses; and he lay as one dead, very far from her. She whispered his name, but not for him to hear; at the deepness of his slumber she became emboldened. She stroked the hair from his forehead with mother-tender hands; her eyes brooded over him. He was her god; out of his strength he had saved her when she was helpless, so she murmured, ready, womanlike, to glorify; now he lay broken at her feet, with lean lithe limbs relaxed, with lids down-dropped over the gray sombre eyes which never had looked love into her eyes, with lips still grim and set even in the unconsciousness of sleep. She bent her head and with her lips touched the hair that she had smoothed. He stirred, and she started, a guilty thing, crimsoned with shame; but he did not wake. Her ears caught a word, as though in sleep he had felt a warm presence near him.
"Beloved!"
And for a name she listened hungrily, but none came. Who had found a place in that deep stern heart of his?—so she asked herself with a small inward twinge of an emotion new and strange. For whom had his keen eyes softened? Who had listened thralled to the silver speech which was all his? Who had known the strength of his arms? Who had found the spell which would soothe his savage moods to stillness and unloose the flood-gates of his magic? Whose was the name so sacred that even in sleep his lips could guard it?
"That is what he wants," she murmured; "some one to love him, to understand and comfort when he is so black and bitter, and I think it is what he hath never found. Ah, pray God he may find that one!"
Because she loved, it was given her to understand. And, understanding, she caught a glimpse of the tragedy of the loneliness in which those souls must wander whose world is not the world of everyday life and love and death. Quick tears dimmed her eyes, of pity because she understood; and one fell warm on the quiet face at her knee.
Nicanor opened his eyes, without moving, but Eldris saw, and sat stiffened with fear, self-betrayed in her swift flush. He raised himself on an elbow and looked at her, smiling slightly.
"Thou?" he said, with no surprise in his voice, as though he had thought of nothing but to find her there. "I thought Nicodemus said thou hadst not come."
"I did not go to him," said Eldris. "I was at another house a little while. Now I am taken care of by the priests of Saint Peter's."
Nicanor nodded. His eyes had not left her face.
"Perhaps that is best. Why dost thou weep?"
Eldris flushed again. But his gray eyes were inexorable; they dragged truth from her in spite of all her will.
"I—thou wert sleeping, and I thought thee ill, and I—was sorry."
"I am not ill," he answered, and his voice was gentle. "But let us speak of thee. Now I have come, not so soon as I had thought to come. It was not mine to say what I should do."
"You mean—?" Eldris said quickly. "Tell me of it. Tell me all of it, I pray you!"
Nicanor's eyes changed with the quick sweet smile which at rare times had power to lighten his face as a shaft of sunshine lights a thundercloud.
"All?" he repeated indulgently. "So, then, this is the tale."
He sat rocking gently back and forth, hands clasped about his knees, looking not at her at all, but away over the billowing hills.
"When thou hadst slipped away from the door of that torture room, I and Hito amused ourselves. And when our game was ended, he had no thought of thee nor thy escape; me it was upon whom all his loving care was centred. So it was commanded that I be taken to the lowest dungeon cell, there to meditate upon the sins which were mine.... I think that in all the world no man knows darkness as do I. Night is not dark; it hath the silver stars above it, and in the world the red earth-stars of men. But I was in darkness which was the darkness of the grave made manifest; it pressed upon mine eyes like leaden weights, and numbed my brain, and was a cloak which smothered me. What hours rolled on I knew not. I was fed or I starved; all was one. There was no time, there was no life, there was no death; there was but a naked soul sitting in still darkness. Five paces is my cell from wall to wall; shoulder high above the floor is a jutting stone. I doubt not that it is red with blood, since each time I passed, it scored me if I had not care."
Her shiver brought his glance back to her; with a smile he woke to recollection of her presence.
"I cry not thy sympathy, sweet sister; for there were times, and these were many, when the door of that dungeon opened wide, and Hito himself could not take from me my freedom. When I was back upon the moors with shepherds, who listened while I spoke; when I was by the camp-fires of Thorney in the Fords and men left their business at my word; and there was no darkness then in all the world. Back on the hills, where the clouds sweep free and the wind calls; back in the press of life, amid the crowding feet of men; back in the Garden of Lost Dreams, where flowers bloomed and grass was green and tender, and brown birds sang of love and life and freedom. And Hito, fond fool, rubbed his hands and thought he held me caged!"
"The sight burst upon him in all its hideousness,--where had been the stately mansion of his lord.""The sight burst upon him in all its hideousness,—where had been the stately mansion of his lord."
He was very far from her again, in his own strange world; and she sat and watched him, her soul in her shining eyes, if he had but seen it, and knew she could not enter with him. He spoke more quickly; his voice fell to a deeper note, and in it was a mystery at which Eldris caught her breath.
"And out of the darkness there came a Tale to me, and thereafter there was light. And the tale is not yet ended—but it grows, it grows! Night and day it rings within my head; always it is with me, mine and mine only. But there is that in it which eludes me, which I seek and cannot find. And until I find it, the tale is not yet done. And it is of a Child, a Babe who lay within his mother's arms and smiled at all the world."
Eldris started, and her eyes, fixed upon his face, widened and filled with light. And again at her motion Nicanor came back to her. He looked at her, and his own eyes were as she had seen them once before, whenupon a day she had told him that the name men called him was the silver-tongued.
"Once thou didst tell that tale to me," he said, "and day or night it hath never left me since. When it is ended, and I have found this thing I seek, then I'll tell it thee."
He took up his speech again, and she hung upon his words, unafraid to watch him since his eyes were turned from her.
"So there was a gray rat within this my dungeon cell; and at such times when the light faded and I was back therein, I coaxed and fed him, and taught him how to fight. Eh, he was a gallant beast, and his scar is yet upon my hand. He, my gaunt gray rat, and this little Christ of thine were all that kept my brain from madness those days when I sat in darkness. And in time, I, with others, was sent off to the mines, and there we labored until word came that men were needed to help our lord, who was attacked in his household by barbarians. But I was left behind when these were started, wounded by one with whom I had a quarrel about this same gray rat. When I reached our lord's house, it was empty, sacked and spoiled, and stationarii patrolled it. So I came onward to Londinium and here again was I left behind. Our lord hath left the country, and we are free to live or die as we may. I had no plan for thee when I bade thee to come hither, for there was no time for planning with Hito's jaws agape for thee." He rose to his feet and stood looking down upon her. "Now we be both alone, and there is but one thing for it that I can see. Thou must come with me. I cannot promise thee ease nor even safety, but what I have, thou shalt have also."
"With thee!" Eldris repeated below her breath, and turned her face from him. It flushed and was radiant; love brimmed over in her eyes. Was she the one who might find her place in that stern, deep heart of his,—she who might learn the spell which would soothe those bitter moods of his to stillness? Her eyes glowed and drooped. And then, slowly, across her face there fell a shadow, and the shadow was of the cross. She knew nothing of evasion; as her heart, so her lips spoke.
"With thee!" she breathed again. A sob caught her throat. In her turn she rose and faced him. "Ah, I would so gladly—so gladly! But—I can go with thee in but one way, and that way as thy wife."
Nicanor looked at her.
"Why, thou knowest that may not be," he said gently, yet with some surprise. "I am a slave, and a slave hath no rights before the law, nor to lawful marriage. It is the law. But come thou!"
Eldris turned white.
"I am Christian!" she said painfully, "and that thing I may not do. Father Ambrose teacheth that Christ hath forbidden."
"I did not make the law," said Nicanor. "Could I do so, I'd give thee gladly the name of wife. But even thus, more of honor I could not give thee. It is not what I wish to do, but what I must do." He took her face between his hands. "Child, the law is made, not by man, but by men; and it is not for man only, but for men. Were it not found good by men, it could not be. And the law, in its wisdom, saith that a slave is a beast, a thing without rights; and I am a slave. There is no lawwhich could marry me to thee.... I cannot give thee marriage,—I, a slave."
"And I, a Christian, cannot go without," said Eldris, very low. Two tears rolled from beneath her wan closed lids. Nicanor bent his tall head and kissed them away, with what tenderness a brother might give a sister dearly loved. But with sudden wild sobbing Eldris flung up her arms and clasped his neck, and hid her face against him.
"Oh, I would go with thee!" she wept. "Heart of my heart, I would follow to the world's end, wherever thy path might lead me. I love thee, Nicanor, oh, my man of the silver tongue! and I shall love thee even till I die. But go with thee I may not—I dare not! Is this right? Were thy law and my religion made for this, to wreak such woe upon those who follow them? It is cruel,—it is more cruel than death, and I would to God that I were dead!"
Nicanor stood a moment silent, stroking her dark hair gently.
"No man would hold thee less worthy, since the case is as it must be. Never have I heard of slaves who took thy view of this. All thy life shalt thou have honor and protection. Were it in my power to mend matters, and I did not, the fault would then lie with me. As it is, it is no man's fault, and we have the right to make the best we may of it."
She shook her head, struggling with her tears. His tone changed; it deepened and thrilled until she thrilled with it; in it she heard the concentration of all loneliness and all bitterness.
"Come to me, Eldris, for I need thee sorely! All mylife have I gone chained, desiring what I could not win, longing for what lay beyond me. Must it be so again? Once one said: 'Seek thou the sanctuary while yet there may be time; and when thou art entered in all else shall be as nothing, for there thou shalt have peace.' Then I did not understand; now know I too well. That is what all my life I have never found, though I have sought in many places, and for a weary while. Therefore pray your God to pity me and all who are as I, for I am ridden by ten thousand devils—a flame consumes me which I cannot quench. An ambition is not all a blessing to him who hath it! Oh, the dreams that were mine, which the high gods gave to me, and which are gone,—gone as the smoke goes and shall never come again! The glimpse I have had of a world that should be mine and never can be mine hath shown me all that I have lost. I beat my hands against the bars, and what doth it avail? I am a slave—a slave was I born and a slave shall I die. There is beauty in the world, and I may not see it; there is knowledge in the world, and I may not share it; and my soul is sick with longing for what all men may have but I. There is a thing within me which cries panting for release, and rends me because I know not how to set it free. It is agony and delight, pain and joy beyond all naming; and once I thought it only joy. Thus ever hath it been: what I have thought would bring me peace hath brought me pain, and pain that I know not what I have done to deserve. It was not thus when I lived a brute's life among the brutes in far, gray, northern hills; there was I content, not knowing that I wanted something more. Now have I stretched my hands out to a star, and found it so far beyond my reach that for me its light islost in darkness which will never lift. Yet the star is shining,—but not for me."
The torrent of his speech checked. His voice dropped from the strain of its hoarse passion. He gathered her two hands closer on his breast.
"We be two outcasts, thou and I!—thou shunning, I shunned. Yet we still have each the other. Now do I come seeking the sanctuary of thy love, thy balm and healing for the hands and heart I have beaten against my bars. Wilt thou deny? Must I be turned away? Eldris, come!"
"Oh!" cried Eldris, her heart in her stricken voice. Long she looked at him, with eyes drowned in tears and lips quivering, all her struggle in her torn face. But suddenly she drew her hands from his, and slipped to her knees before him, and hid her face in shaking fingers.
"Oh, God!" she prayed,—and once Nicanor had heard words babbling so from a man upon the rack who never knew that he had talked aloud,—"keep me from going with him! I want to so—oh, I want to so! Make me strong—never let me yield to what is sin! Keep me from going with him! I love him so that I would sin for him! Dear Jesus Lord, keep me from doing that! But make me strong very quickly, or I must go—how can I stay when he so sorely needs me? Oh, God, God, God, I could comfort him so well! We cannot help it, neither he nor I. Nay, I will not weaken,—I will be strong, quite strong,—but in pity Thou must help a little too! I love Thee and the little Jesus, but I love him more—oh, nay—not more! I did not mean it!" She raised her streaming face, turning at the last from thePower whence no help came, to the human strength beside her. "Oh, beloved, help me, for I cannot fight alone!"
So, at the need of one soul, into the world another soul was born, and the long travail of spirit rending flesh was ended.
"Dear heart, be strong!—thy will shall be my will. If it be sin to thee, thou shalt not sin through me!" Nicanor said, and knelt beside her.
Nerveless and shaken with strangling sobs, she crept into the shelter of his arms, trusting him wholly now that his word was hers, pleading unconsciously that he save her from herself and from him. He lifted her to her feet, soothing her with touch and voice, forgetting himself in her distress. Her religious scruples he could not comprehend; the gods of religion were to be invoked when one wanted material benefits from them, not held as mentors to dictate one's course in life. But since she had such scruples, and since he was learning new, strange tolerance for and sympathy with others, it was not his to blame her for them; rather to remember that though they might be nothing to him, they were all to her, and were therefore not to be held lightly. So, because he was slowly gaining the strength to think of others before himself,—and of strength this is the surest test,—and because the tenderness of a strong man is greater than all the tenderness of a woman, he soothed her and brought her peace; and, it may be, in bringing it he found a measure of it himself. She was very dear to him,—dear as one might be who was not enshrined above all her kind forever. Heart and soul he was another's, for all time and all eternity; yet life was his to live and to make thebest of it, even though there was a locked and guarded chamber in it of which the key was lost....
Hand in hand they walked homeward in the faint twilight glow. He left her at the church gate, and himself turned away, back toward the house of Nicodemus, walking with bent head and broad shoulders bowed. But his face was not all sombre; something of the courage he had given her remained to him, and his eyes were softened with the new tenderness which still lived. For it is one of the compensations as well as of the penalties of life, that what one gives, one shall get again.
At the threshold sudden distaste seized him; after what he had been through, the thought of the well-meaning, brutish chatter of Nicodemus and his wife was not to be endured. He turned back again and went as far from them as he could get, down to the river-ford. Here he sat upon the beach, away from the passing of the people; and the waters rippled at his feet. The west had cleared; overhead the faint rose of the sky was paling, but across the broad river was splashed a pastel of orange and blue and crimson; and the red, misty ball of the sun was dipping below the world's dark rim.
"This is love also," Nicanor said aloud, as though one had been by to hear him. "As she loveth me, so I love. There is love of a man for a maid, and of husband for wife; and there is love of sire for child, and of a friend for a friend, and of these all are different. Yet it is all one love, touching life on every side.... Why, then, it takes in all the world!"
His voice changed and rang with quick and startled exultation.
"Gods of my fathers! I have found it—I have foundthat thing I sought! It is love, not fear, nor wrath, nor power, that gave that little Child his power! And because it takes in all the world, this little One of whom men tell hath this love, then, for all the world. Now this is strange! Oh, Little Brother, I have found my tale, and it shall be greater than any tale that I have made before!"
His eyes deepened and flashed to the quick surge of power which shook him; now well and truly should all men name him Nicanor of the silver tongue. He was a slave, yet men should bow before him. No iron bars might longer hold him down; Fate, that mocking Fate of his, could no longer keep him chained. But over all the triumph in his face there grew also the old awe as in those days of boyhood, long ago, when first he knew himself for but the tool with which the work was wrought. His face changed and grew longing; his keen eyes dimmed. Quite suddenly he rose to his knees, kneeling as he had seen Eldris kneel, and clasped his hands as Eldris had clasped hers.
"Oh, Little Brother of the World, if thou lovest all men, love me also, for I have no one else. When I have sought love, it hath ever turned from me, prospering nothing. But since it seemeth that all men must love something, woman, or fame, or gold, it may be that it is not for me to love one woman only, but all men. If it be that I must choose, I will lose love of woman, and love of friend, and love of child; I will live alone to the end of my days, if but this soul of mine, which singeth in my loneliness, may return to me and my lips be no longer dumb. Love hath chained them; let now love set them free. And this my tale shall be strong as the wind that calls across the hills, and pure as flame,and great as love which takes in all the world, to the end that it may be worthy. Mine it is, and mine only; I made it, and it is blood of my blood and flesh of my flesh, and none may take it from me. Yet it is all, and I am naught but the voice which speaks."
His voice sank. He sat in silence, looking beyond the sunset, his hands about his knees.
So slowly the waters closed over the sun, and the day died, and the shadow of night descended upon Thorney.
VII
VII
Old oaks caught the sunlight in their reaching hands and dropped it down to earth in flakes of gold; beech and larch and linden reared their tall heads above the road, and vines clung to them in woven tapestries of living green. There opened from this road dim forest aisles, veiled in dusk in which sunbeams quivered, paths of mystery, winding toward strange twilight worlds where wild wood-creatures wandered. Warm earth-scents drenched the air; soft sibilant whisperings stirred overhead, and hidden birds chattered in the leafage.
Here Nicanor sat in the dusk and gold of the forest's afternoon, his back against a gray tree-trunk, his hands about his knees. Hither every day he wandered, drinking new life from Earth's brown bosom, with idle hands and weaving brain. Here, where he had lost his vision, he was drawn back as by enchantment. He wished to dream again; to conjure forth the flying figure from the void into which it had vanished. To him it was more real than reality; for want of the substance he strove to keep the shadow in his heart.
In the spirit he roamed world-wide, with the narrow life of Thorney, its petty din and traffic, fallen away from him and forgotten utterly. Always his wandering ended in a garden, whose every path of dusky green he knew by heart, where one waited for him in the still evening light. In the flesh he lived with Nicodemus and Myleia, letting himself be waited on, worried over, caressed, to their affectionate hearts' content. No mood of his was too wayward for their sympathy; when at nightfall, after long hours of brooding, he would chant strange tales by some crowded camp-fire, than theirs were no voices quicker in wonder and applause. That they understood not half of what he said mattered nothing to their fondness; yet to Nicanor it was this one thing which mattered all. Nor were they the only ones who listened and loved his words. Many a fretting soul he lulled to quiet by his magic; to many he gave pleasure whose pleasures were all too few. Once he had scorned them, these simple children of plain and forest, whose emotions he could mould as a potter moulds his clay; in his high pride he had thought that these were not the worlds he was born to conquer. Now he loved them; to bring a moment's brightness into some gray life, a moment's forgetfulness of pain to one who suffered—this it was his to do. For, as once he had thought to move the hearts of kings with his power, so now he knew that a king's heart is no more than man's heart, and only he may move the one who can move the other. And every heart that he won he laid in spirit at the feet of his lost lady, who had taught him the Master-word of the tongue of men and angels, without which faith and hope can profit nothing, nor can any heart be won.
A thicket of briars and underbrush hid him from the road. For drowsy hours he had looked through his tangled lattice upon the life that went up and down the highway, himself unseen,—a pedler, bent under the weight of the pack upon his shoulders, making wry faces at his blistered feet; a farmer, mounted on his clumsy two-wheeled cart, returning from the markets of Londinium; a chariot, gay with paint and gilding, with two young nobles arguing over the races at Uriconium; and between all these, long intervals of sun-steeped stillness, when the world drowsed and insects shrilled in the untrod grasses.
Later there came northward toward Londinium a funeral train, on the way to the cemeteries that lined the road outside the town, weaving in and out among the checkered shadows, stately and slow and solemn in its pomp of death. There was a bier, draped with a pall of sable velvet, and drawn by four white horses, pacing slow. Slaves and clients went on foot before and behind it; and beside it there walked a man, tall and of lordly bearing. His hand rested on the bier's edge; his face, bowed upon his breast, was scored with sorrow. There was dust upon the richness of his mourning cloak; and dust also on the plumed trappings of the horses, and the garments and the sandals of the slaves. This pilgrimage of love and sorrow had been no easy one, nor short. Nicanor, peering through the brambles at the sombre train, read the story in the man's face, where tragedy sat frozen. At once his mind's eyes saw, beneath the embroidered pall, a fair dead face, great eyes closed, and lashes drooping on a marble cheek, two hands folded on a pulseless breast. In a heart-beat it was as though aveil had lifted, and he probed the depths of one phase of the world's tragedy; through one man's sorrow he looked into the sorrows of all men. By his own pain he felt himself made kin to all those thousands of the earth who knew pain also. The feeling lasted but a moment, and was gone, leaving him with hushed breath and shining eyes.
"Here have I found another chord of life to play on," he said softly. "And when it is touched there is no human heart but must answer. So thou also hast lost her, O friend! And yet, perhaps, after all, thou art happier than I. There are things worse than death, as I have found. At least ... she is all thine!"
When the turn of the afternoon had come, and while he lay watching gnats dancing in a shaft of golden light that fell athwart the trees, his ears caught voices from the road, and the click of a horse's feet against a stone. A woman laughed; and again he parted the brambles and looked out. The road was splashed with sunshine and shadowed by the trees which arched above it and hid the sky. Down it, with faces turned from Thorney, two came toward him,—a girl, sitting sideways on a great bay horse, leaning to the man who walked beside it. She was fair, with long hair lying in a golden sheen upon her crimson mantle. She rode steadying herself to the horse's stride with a hand upon the man's shoulder. He, tall, fair also of hair and skin, with blue eyes laughing under flaxen brows, in a brown leathern jacket and brazen cap which caught the sun in small sliding gleams of light, led the horse by its bridle and looked up at her as she talked. Down the green forest way they came in the mellow shade and sunshine, fair as gods, radiant in theiryouth and life and happiness, with eyes for nothing, ears for nothing, save each other.
"It is Wardo!" said Nicanor, in surprise. "Sure I had thought him on the way to Gaul."
He pressed through the thicket and stepped into the road. Wardo saw him, and dropped the bridle with an exclamation, and ran forward.
"Thou!" he cried, and fell upon Nicanor in a storm of joy. "Thou great rascal, I had thought thee dead. Where hast been that thou didst not seek me? When didst leave the mines? Hast heard of what befell our lord? Oh, I have hungered for thee, to tell thee the good fortune which is mine!"
The horse came up to them, with the girl in the crimson mantle sitting stately on its back. Her eyes were blue and shining; her cheeks were flushed with the rose of life. Nicanor smiled at her and at his friend.
"So, Sada?" he said, with a note in his voice which neither caught. "All is then as it should be?"
"Ay, promise you that!" said Wardo, a hand on the girl's knee. She smiled down into his eyes. "She is mine now. This day did I take the gold to Chloris, and the cage-door opened, and my bird was free. My bird now, and no other man's."
"Thine!" she murmured, radiant.
"When our lord departed for Gaul, I was left behind in the confusion." So Wardo told his tale. "Well, perhaps I need not have been, had not the gods willed it so. Therefore I was my own man, and could not be held to account for it, since my lord ran away from me, not I from him. So I joined those East Saxons who are moving down upon us from the Fens, and henceforth my lotis cast with them. For some of these I repaired swords, bucklers, what not, since my old trade is not lost to me, and for my work they gave me gold—ay, much gold. And with the gold I bought Sada. Now we go forth to seek our nest; where, we care not. She is mine, and I am free. Ye holy gods, but it is fine for a man to own himself and call none other lord! No man ever more shall hold me slave to him. Henceforth we be rovers, this star of my life and I. Come thou with us, friend! If thou stay here, thou'lt be held no better thanerro, a landless, masterless wanderer, who is fair game for the law and for all men. Had my lord stayed, thou knowest that I too should have remained faithful. He being gone, we must fend for ourselves as best we may."
Nicanor shook his head.
"Nay, I stay here. Go thou thy way, and may thy faring prosper. Now tell of our lord and his escape."
Wardo laughed.
"Ho, there was work which thou shouldst have seen!" He told of Wulf, and of the fighting which was done within the villa; of the flight from the house, the long ride by cart-track and highway to Calleva, with his lady crouched in front of him and her hair blowing over his hands. And here Nicanor broke in.
"Thou there with her, and I—Tell me, man, was she hurt or frightened? Did she swoon or weep?"
"How could I see?" said Wardo. "I stood, and she kneeled before me. And little did I care whether she wept or swooned, when the grays were plunging like to tear my arms from my body, and it was all I could do to keep upon two wheels. There went my lord ahead, andhere pounded I after, and alongside rode my lord Marius, watching his wife and itching to be back and have it out with those reavers. I saw it in his eye. Eh, that was a wild night. We made the Bibracte road, and doubled back eastward, and so rode for Londinium. But at the second miliarium from Bibracte the grays gave out. So my lord Marius took my lady upon his saddle, and they all went on, bidding me follow as soon as might be. But by the grace of the gods, I was too late. When I reached the port, my lord and his people had set sail for Gaul. Well, then, if thou wilt not come with us, when things be settled, and a man may know better what to look for, I shall come and seek thee, and we will have a talk over old days together, and spill a drop or so to Bacchus. Until then, comrade o' mine, farewell."
They grasped hands, and Sada smiled a farewell at Nicanor. The two went on, then, and left him standing there, and he watched them pass away into the glinting light and shade until Sada's crimson mantle was lost in the green gloom of trees. He took his slow way back toward Thorney, musing as he walked.
"This day mine eyes have looked on life and death, and all that death mourns and life clamors is Love, Love, and again Love. Strange that something all men must love, who cannot live for themselves alone, no matter how they try."
He came down from his dreams at the stepping-stones of the marsh-ford, to find himself all but overrunning a child who stood upon the bank and wept because he feared to cross—a small atom of a man, with little tunic torn and puckered face of woe. At sight of Nicanor he ran, and flung himself against his legs, with the sureconfidence of babyhood in all the new, strange world, and clamored to be taken home.
Nicanor stooped to him with a laugh, recognizing him as the son of one Julius the Tungrian, a field-hand belonging to the farmer Medor, whose estate lay between the hills a half-mile from Thorney.
"How now, manling? Why these tears at thy first venture into the world? How didst stray so far from mother's skirts? Dost wish to go home?"
"Ay, home!" wept young Julius. "Thou wilt take me home!"
"Come, then," said Nicanor, and swung him to his shoulder, and turned back from the ford to the road again.
It came upon him then that this was the first time that ever he had held a child in his arms. Always before had children run from him, learning, like their elders, to shun him: now he knew why. The softness of the round little body thrilled him oddly; the touch of the clinging hands, the baby weight upon his shoulder, called into life emotions such as he had never thought to know. A child, a little living child, her child and his.... The thought stirred him suddenly to his soul; and with the thought a fresh bit of the Scroll of Life unrolled before his eyes,—that Scroll which slowly he was learning how to read. His heart caught another phase of the old experience of the world, the high pride and joy of fatherhood. Again, as once before, he got a flash of new, strange light into the hearts and minds of all the world of men, as with the parting of a veil; found a new chord under his hand to be struck into pulsing life. All unaware that on a day his lady had said, "His son could I love, and be proud thathe was mine," he marvelled at himself and at his feeling, and still more at the little one that had such power to wake it.
He reached the farm of Medor, and stopped at the cabin of Julius, whom he knew, which stood at the edge of the estate. Through the open doorway he could see, in the obscurity of the one poor room within, a woman's figure, bending to rub her man's back, bruised and raw from the harness of the plough, with ointment of herbs—a nightly proceeding regular as the evening meal. When she had done, he would take his turn in rubbing her; since it was not enough for women to be the bearers of children, but also they must be hewers of wood and drawers of water as well. She rose to straighten herself from her task, and saw the tall figure coming doorward, with the little one crowing upon his shoulder. At her exclamation, Julius, rugged and mossed as a sturdy hemlock, came to the threshold to look over her shoulder, stripped to the waist, his neck and arms shining with the grease.
"Here is thy son, O Kalia!" said Nicanor, halting. "He was by Thorney, weeping because the world was not large enough for his adventure."
The mother received her son with tender welcome, but he held his arms out to Nicanor, whimpering to be taken back.
"He runs away to play with boys while I am in the field, the wicked one!" she said.
Julius looked down at her and at his boy with proud eyes. When he was drunk he would beat his wife, but she loved him because he loved their child. Nicanor looked at the three.
"He is worth having," he said, very soberly, nor thought that his words might sound strange to them. He smiled at the boy, and left them, with the mother's thanks following him.
And Julius, watching him across the field toward the road, said:
"Mark you how the boy hath taken to him? Dost remember, before he went away from Thorney, how children ran from him, and even folk feared him and his gall-tipped tongue?"
"I remember," Kalia answered. "Even I have punished the child by saying, 'The black man Nicanor will get thee if thou stop not thy crying,' until for very fear he ceased. Never have I seen one so changed as he. Juncina, the fish-wife, with whom I spoke but yesterday on Thorney, saith that each day he goeth to lame Gallus, the blacksmith's son, who is dying of a fever, and telleth him tales until the little one sleeps. And when folk give him money for his tales, he will take it, though he never asketh it, and of it he will give half to those three old men whom each day he tendeth. It is not so long since he hath been back on Thorney, yet even so all men wonder at the change in him. Verily, I think that he must be in love."
"That is ever all you women think of!" Julius grumbled. "Were you to have your way of it, it would be love that worketh all the miracles, cureth all the illnesses, taketh the place of all the gods. Now come and rub; I am sore in every joint and sinew."
Nicanor went home in a brown study, seeing never Kalia's broad, homely face, untidy wisps of hair, brown bosom covered by her coarse gray kerchief, but that face,young and fair and tender, which in his dreams had become mingled with that Other Woman's face with holy eyes, who was the Virgin Mother of all love. When he thought of this one, it was to think of the other, no longer woman merely, but idealized and uplifted into all that he could imagine of purity, a something too fine for earth. In place of humble Kalia, he pictured that fair patrician face as his soul's eyes saw it, glorified with the mother-love upon it, brooding over a round little head in the hollow of her breast. Holy gods, the maddening, sweet mockery of it! He shook himself as one who throws off a weight upon him, and turned in at the house of Nicodemus, whistling, with aching throat and sombre eyes of pain.
It was later than he had thought, and the evening meal was over. This troubled him not at all, for in that house he was sovereign lord, and knew his power. Myleia and her ursine spouse served him quite as though they had been his slaves. A roasted pigeon hot from the coals, beans cooked in oil with garlic, a cake of barley-bread baked in the ashes, honey, and a pitcher of wine—no lord could have fared better than their idol.
Nicodemus carried an empty platter to Myleia in the kitchen, showing it to her with immense pride.
"He hath eaten all!" he rumbled in a rasping whisper. "The first time these three weeks. Come! that is doing better. We'll have him around yet, my girl—this spoiled baby of ours."
"Who spoileth him?" she retorted, pinching his ear gently. "Thou art worse over him than a mother whose babe hath cut its first tooth. Thou art foolish in thine old age, my great ugly bear."
"Soul of my heart, a man must find something to be foolish over!" he declared, vastly pleased. "And it is high time I left off being foolish over thee. Eh, sweeting, what sayest thou?"
He ruffled her hair with his great hand. Nicanor looked in upon them from the threshold.
"At it again, thou old lion and his mate? Thou also!" he said, and smiled at them. "I go down to the ford—there be a party of men riding over the hill. Wilt come, Nico?"
The two went forth into the evening, leaving Myleia to watch them with fond eyes of pride from the low doorway.
Along the street people had begun to gather, with more of curiosity to see what might be seen than of apprehension. Woodmen with bundles of fagots on their shoulders, fishermen with strings of fish, itinerant wine-sellers rattling strings of horn cups, with skins of cheap red wine, vendors of the black sticky sweetmeats made of the blood of beeves mixed with rice and honey,—all these ceased to cry custom for their evening trade in interest at the arrival of the strangers. It was long since such a crowd had descended upon Thorney; trade might be improving. Women, ragged, with more ragged children clinging to their skirts, came from the fisher-huts upon the beach to gaze across the marsh.
And across the ford, on the crest of the long gentle rise of hill over which the straight road ran, came riding a troop of horsemen, carelessly, without order, in a tangle of waving spears and gleaming helmets. No merchants or townsfolk were these; and a tingle went through the crowd at the sight of weapons. Those were days whennone knew what to expect from hour to hour. The on-comers cantered down the hill and into the waters of the marsh-ford; and it could be seen that they were for the most part fair-skinned, and every man bore a round buckler of bullock's hide upon his arm. At once a whisper flew from end to end of Thorney:
"These be Saxons!"
The name had become a word with which to conjure. The crowd upon the beach increased. Nicanor and Nicodemus stood in the forefront of it and watched.
The leaders of the party—an old man with white drifting beard and hot blue eyes, and a young one, with tanned face and brown, curling hair—rode out upon the shingle with stern faces set straight ahead. Those behind them were more free and easy as to bearing; a man leaned from his saddle to scoop up water in his hand; there was joking in low tones, and deep-throated laughter. As they drew nearer to the people, waiting silent, it could be seen that they had with them a prisoner in their midst, bound upon his horse and wounded; and at sight of him a murmur fluttered through the crowd. For he went in the dress of a Roman noble, torn and stained with blood, his head sunk forward on his breast, his right arm in a sling—a pitiful object, were there those to pity.
With the crowd Nicanor and Nicodemus followed the Saxons as they rode along the main street. Questions flew from mouth to mouth:
"Who is this lord, their prisoner? Whither take they him? How did they capture him? For what come they here?" But to these no man could give an answer.
VIII
VIII
Thereafter Fate, the grim, smiling goddess, took into her own hand the shuttle of Destiny and sent it flying fast rough the warp and woof of Life. For when they came to the river's brink, the tide was in, and the waters of Tamesis, too deep to ford with safety since the moon was full, swirled past them in their swift rush from the sea.
The Saxons halted on the beach, dismounting, while the leaders conferred, and the prisoner drooped pallid in their midst; and the men of Thorney seized upon their chance for trade. An hundred mouths to feed was a boon not to be despised in those lean days. There sprang up a horde of wine-sellers, men with poultry, with produce, and with meats. The two leaders rode away to seek an inn, each attended by a servant. A fire was kindled on the beach, where in other days so many fires had blazed; for a brief while Thorney took on a semblance of its former thriving self. Mingled with the sounds of trade and barter there was heard the dry, thin rattle of a sistrum from a temple of Isis where priests and worshippers were gathered for hidden rites; the voices of men singing, the neighing of horses.
Here, on the river side of Thorney, the beach was wider than upon the marsh side. The houses grouped themselves in black, irregular masses behind this beach; and to the west, a short distance from the water's edge, rose the low stone wall which bounded the land of the Christian church. Fishermen's huts were crowded at the foot of this wall; and along the sand were strewn rotting spars and timbers, and there were boats drawn out of reach of the tide. Old houses, wrecked by fire and time, leaned their tottering walls above the alleys at strange angles, settling slowly into the ruin of age. The round moon hung stately, low in the eastern sky, drowning in radiance the garish glare of flames; houses stood out sharp-cut against its light, and strange shadows flung across the crooked cobbled streets. A broad path of silver glinted on the inky waters of the river. The smell of fish and tar rose strong above all other scents.
The Saxons, hungry and weary from their march, ate hugely and drank deep. Horns of mead and beer were drained and filled; white wine was as good as red. They talked with the men of Thorney, in strange Latin, with much gesticulation and interpolation of Saxon words. Among the many figures on the beach, black in the mingled light of moon and flame, was ceaseless motion, kaleidoscopic and bewildering. Thorney woke to a lusty gayety, born of deep drinking; of recklessness, even, such as she had known rarely since the old days of the legions. Laughter became louder; quarrels, short and fierce, arose as hot blood mounted with the fumes of wine. Into the air there crept a tension, the intangible effluvium of excitement which precedes the arousing of the crowd. Quite suddenly the spiritsof people were raised to fever pitch; the boisterous vigor of the Saxons was infectious.
Nicanor soon lost sight of Nicodemus. He stood among the people, regarding the scene with eyes of detachment. As always in a crowd, an odd sense of impersonality possessed him, of aloofness; in it he was forgetful of his own presence, of his own corporeality; became as a Mind seeking out its own. Here and there he was recalled by a man's greeting; here and there also a woman spoke. Everywhere he was hailed cheerily, as one comrade by another. Jests were passed to him, for which he gave as good as he got. There was that in their intercourse with him which proved him one of themselves, an intimate sharer in their pleasures, their sorrows, their lives. Yet he was the man who not so many years before had in this place been baited as men bait a bear—the surlier, the better sport.
A red-lipped flower-girl, on the way home from her day's business in Londinium with her basket of remaining blossoms, was pressed against his shoulder in the outer edge of the crowd that watched the Saxons feed, as boys gather to see the wild beasts of the arena tear their meat. She turned, saw him, and laughed with gay raillery.
"Couldst even thou, O Silver-tongued, make of these great guzzling cattle a tale?"
He looked at her with quick artist joy in the vivid color and effect of her,—red lips, cheeks as brilliant as her roses, black eyes, midnight hair in which a crimson flower was tangled. In her laughing glance, her care-free joyous innocence, he caught a hint, gone as swiftly as it come, of that Other who held his soul. Now heunderstood the heart and inmost meaning of it; it was the all-compelling Womanhood, the sacred spark, guarded and precious, which set men's hearts aflame; and for him, henceforth, because of that one, it made all women sacred. He answered her, banter for banter.
"What would the world be without cattle, O Flower-maiden? And why not a tale? There is a tale in all things, if one but look to find it—in every bud and leaf and flower—in these Saxons—in thee, little sister to the rose!"
"That is pretty," she cried, dimpling. "Here is a bloom in payment; once it was as fragrant as thy words. May they never lose sweetness like a flower which fadeth!"
Reaching up, she thrust a flower behind his ear, as a young fop of the nobility would wear it, and sprang away into the crowd laughing.
"The wish of innocence should be good omen; the gods grant it!" said Nicanor. He pushed onward through the press to get a nearer view of the Saxons; and heard as he came a great voice shouting a rhythmic chant.
Over the shoulders of those in front he could see a ring of Saxons surrounding the man who sang. As they listened they drank, and as they drank grew more emphatic in applause. The singer was a bull-chested fellow, purple-faced with his exertions. He swung his sword, he roared, he heaved himself upon his toes; and Nicanor, fellow-craftsman and maker of words, eyed him and smiled a smile of pity.
The shouting ceased; the man cast himself upon the ground and called for wine. Nicanor touched upon theshoulder one whose face showed that he understood the words.
"Friend, who is this dainty warbler, and what the burden of his song?"
"Who he is I know not," said the man, with a grunt of laughter. "What he sang was the greatness of his people, and their skill in war. Tell thou them a tale, Nicanor; these Saxons will listen all day to tales, and give good silver to the teller."
Nicanor shook his head.
"Nay; perhaps they understand not Latin over well, and I had rather that they understood than that they gave me silver. Now what are they going to do?"
Two men dragged the prisoner forward into the circle of the firelight. He was afoot, but the hand free of the sling was bound to his body. That the poor wretch knew what they would do with him was plain; he cringed, and cast hunted glances around the ring of fire-lit, curious faces.
"I am Felix of Anderida, a Roman lord!" he cried in a high voice, his pale eyes wide with fear. "If there be any Roman among ye who will free me from these Saxon wolves, I will give him gold as much as his back may carry!"
A Saxon raised his hand and smote the lord upon the mouth, so that blood began to trickle down his chin.
"Cease thy bleating, thou white-eyed sheep!" he growled in Latin.
"That is not right, to strike a man unarmed and bound," said the man beside Nicanor. "I think our backs could carry a goodly sum of gold, eh, friend? These fellows be half drunken; it should not be difficultto get him free of them, and after, make him pay. I am of the collegium of smiths in Londinium, and I see many of my fellows here who would stand with me. Also, we could summon the militarii unto us and let them settle the matter; it is not lawful that these Saxons make away with a Roman after this fashion."
"I can hold them, if thou canst summon thy fellows quickly," said Nicanor. His tone was quite assured. "But it must be done at once, before they have worked themselves up to mischief over him."
"Do thou so then, and I will shake a staff aloft when he is safe," said the man, and slipped away among the people.
Before Nicanor could make his way through to confront the Saxons, who were preparing for brutal sport with their prisoner, the horses of the two chieftains broke through the ring and the riders dismounted in the open space. The lord Felix twisted away from those who held him and ran to the younger chief.
"Call thy fellows from me!" he cried. "Each time when thou art not by they seek to torture me for their sport."
The brown-haired leader folded his arms across his chest and looked down upon his prisoner. He spoke, in Latin sufficiently fluent.
"Hast thou forgotten that I am Ceawlin, son of that Evor whom thou hast slain, and that my foot is upon thy neck and thy blood shall be let out in payment for my sire his blood? How then shouldst thou say what may or may not be done with thee, thou little toad?"
It was then that Nicanor came into the torchlit ring, walking carelessly, a song upon his lips. He stoppedwhere the light fell fullest on him, facing the chieftains, shapely as a young pagan god in the strength and flower of his manhood, the red rose behind his ear. The speech of Ceawlin broke and stopped; his gaze fastened upon the intruder with the swift recognition of one strong man for another.
"Who is this man?" he said sharply. None answered; his own people did not know, and no one else seemed ready to stand sponsor. Ceawlin spoke again. "Who art thou, fellow? Art thou also of the Welsh?"
For as Briton was the Roman word, so Welsh, or wælisc, a foreigner, was the Saxon word, meaning merely one who was not of Teuton race, and given to those nations which spoke the Latin tongue.
"I am a Briton," said Nicanor. "Men call me the teller of tales, and I am come to buy from thee thy prisoner. What price wilt thou put upon him, O son of Evor?"
"How knowest thou me?" Ceawlin asked doubtfully. His voice became angered. "What price, quotha! No price that thou canst pay, sir teller of tales!"
"So? Didst ever hear of that ancient sea-king who put too high a price upon his spoils?" said Nicanor, with a laugh, choosing simple words that all might understand. Before Ceawlin had time to speak he swung around upon the listening men, standing tall in the ruddy light, his head thrown back to shake the hair from his eyes. "Listen, O friends, for it is a good tale, such as ye know how to love. Five black ships, dragon-prowed, rode out of the night, upon the black seas, upon the foam. Long were they, and lean, and swift as the vertragus, the hound that outspeeds the hart. Winds roared behind them; great birds swooped through the storm across their way;great waves rushed under them as they rode with rocking spars. Spray swept across the faces of those who manned them, as the hair of a woman sweeps across her lover's face; crashing they reeled through lifting seas, and swam to the crests of curling billows rimmed with pale fire, and the thunder of their going outroared the clamoring storm. Know ye the yell of the wind in the straining cordage, the heave and fall of the plunging deck beneath your feet? Know ye the sting of brine upon your lips, and the savor of the salt winds in your lungs, O ye sons of Evor?"
A deep breath went through the circle, as though a breath from the outer seas had filled men's nostrils. Ceawlin licked his lips as though he had thought to find them stiff with salt.
"Ay—we know!" he said deeply, his eyes alight. "Hast thou then been also upon the seas?"
Nicanor laughed low.
"Nay, never I!" he said. "But I see that ye do know."
"Go on!" spoke a voice, impatient, from the circle.
They were his, every man, and he knew it. In his first words he had struck the chord which answered true in them, these lawless sea-rovers; they were his to play upon as a musician on his lyre. The sure instinct of his art taught him to tell of those things which they themselves knew best, which were nearest to them, to their own lives. The ring held silent, awaiting his next word, bearded men who leaned upon their spears and iron swords, and listened. They had eyes for none other than he, this tall youth with the black hair and the eyes of steel, who stood before them in his careless pose of triumph, with his red rose thrust behind his ear; whoknew what they knew, felt what they had felt, made them see what he saw, and held them in the hollow of his hand. Caught up in his swift imagery, even they forgot their prisoner, who, it seemed, was further to one side, less in evidence among his guards. By now the Romans had drawn closer to the ring of Saxons, so that there was one dense crowd about the open space—much narrowed now—where the chieftains and Nicanor stood.
Not for nothing had he listened to the talk of the deep-sea fishermen and the whalers who frequented Thorney, and stored in his memory all that they could give him. In his tale was the clamor of the wild north wind, the scream of wheeling gulls, the groan of straining timbers, the rush of bubbling foam beneath sharp prows. He told of swift battle fought over heaving waters, whose jaws yawned for their dead; and men hung upon his words. He told of the red medley of the fight; of the heavy fall and sullen splash of bodies into the grave which waited; of ships that grappled in their death-throes like wrestling men and sank locked in their grim embrace; of defeat and triumph, of high courage of men who lost, and the higher courage of mercy of men who won; and men's faces grew eager, who themselves had lived through scenes such as these, and themselves had watched the death of gallant ships.
Nicanor glanced over the ring and saw that the prisoner had disappeared, leaving not a ripple in the crowd to mark his trail. The absorbed faces of his hearers, and the sense of what was being done behind their backs, seized him, and he smothered a laugh. His voice flowed on, deep-toned, vibrant, working his magic upon them, talking against time.
Somewhere in the outskirts of the crowd a horse neighed loudly; there was a flurry among those people nearest the sound, and high over men's heads a staff was shaken. Nicanor's speech broke midway; this was the signal, and he no longer cared whether or not he held them. In that instant the spell was snapped; men stirred and whispered. And suddenly a shout of warning and anger went up—
"The prisoner! The prisoner hath gone!"
Forgotten were the tale and its teller; the inner group of Saxons surged into commotion and uproar. There was a rising storm of assertion and denial. Ceawlin strode to Nicanor, his link armor clashing softly as he moved.
"Now do I believe that thou hast had to do with this!" he cried in ready anger.
Nicanor laughed.
"Perhaps after all it had been better if thou hadst paid the price, lord Saxon!"
Swift words sprang to Ceawlin's lips, but the elder leader ran to them, shouting something in his own tongue. Ceawlin turned to answer, and Nicanor slipped away.
Face to face he came with a woman seldom seen beyond her jealous doors; a fat and shapeless bunch of garments topped by thin hair streaked with ruddy dye, a high white marble brow, an old face deeply lined. The woman was looking at him keenly, with boring vulture eyes. She spoke swiftly, in a voice clear-toned and silvery as a bell.
"I heard thee speak.... Once, long years ago, stood I in this place and heard a boy speak, an elfin, wolf-eyed child, who came out of the night and spoke with an un-childish tongue. Often since have I thought of him andthe power within him, for though I was young in years yet was I old in knowledge, and I knew that never had I seen one like him. Into his hand I put a piece of silver, and I think it was the first that ever he had touched. Art thou that child?"
"Ay," said Nicanor. "That child was I. So it was thou who first didst teach me that silver could pay for souls." He thrust a hand into the pouch that hung at his belt and drew forth a broad piece of silver, holding it to her. "But I think it must be clean silver that pays for mine, O Chloris."
The woman flinched oddly. Both had forgotten the rising tide of excitement around them.
"Nay," she said. "I will not have it back. Canst not leave me the thought that there was one gift which I gave honestly—or is it with thee as ever with stony-hearted youth, swift to condemn, slow to understand?"
"Why should I condemn thee?" said Nicanor. "That is not mine to do until in me is nothing to condemn. Nay, rather could I pity thee."
The heavy lids opened slightly over Chloris's eyes.
"And wherefore?" she asked with a hard note in her flute-like voice. "If I pity not myself, why shouldst thou pity? Am I not loved, and have I not loved greatly? Have I not riches beyond thine imaginings?"
Nicanor laughed low and softly, his keen eyes on the old face.
"Love thou hast never known, O Chloris," he said gently. "In all thy long life of wanton ease, thy long life in which children might have leaned upon thy knees and children's voices might have called thee blessed, love thou hast never known. Who could not pity this? Orthy name would not be upon the lips of men in the market-place. When men love, think you they make common talk of what they love? When women love, keep they not themselves pure for love's pure sake? Ay, truly I could pity thee, because some day thou wilt so pity thyself, in spite of thy riches beyond mine imaginings. That is all."
"Thou art over strange," said Chloris. "And I would I had not spoken with thee. After all, what doth it matter? There is always the end, when darkness comes and the wax is wiped clean."
"Is there?" said Nicanor. "Is there an end to anything upon the earth?"
"Now thou art foolish," said Chloris. Her eyes were unchanged, but her voice was angry. "In truth there is an end, and the end is—death." She spoke with the deep-rooted and universal distaste of all Romans to the direct reference to death. "Must not all things be gathered to the shades? And is not that the end of them?"
"Believe it, then, for so long as thou canst, for thou wilt be the happier for believing," said Nicanor. "And if some day it come to pass that thou dost believe differently, remember then what others have found, that only love can save thee—the love which thou hast never known. Were it not wise, O Chloris, to seek it while yet there may be time?" He paused, and his eyes forgot her. "I am seeking now," he said below his breath, and turned away from her into the crowd.
Chloris looked after him a moment with lids half dropped over her changeless eyes.
"The breath of the gods hath breathed upon him, and he understands. Oh, ay! he understands." She laughed,a silver tinkle which was not wholly mirth. "Will it ever come to pass that Chloris, the greatly loving, will rejoice to know that there is one who pities her? We shall see!"
But meanwhile affairs had changed on Thorney, even during the moments of Nicanor's speech with Chloris. The throng upon the beach, no longer orderly, was heaving with excitement. The Saxons, spreading in all directions to search for their prisoner, were in no mood to care what offence they gave. They plucked brands from the fire, using them as torches, and started for the village, while men and women retreated before them, not knowing how far trouble might ensue. But before they reached the village, a body of militarii, hastily summoned, came forth from between the houses to meet them. The officer commanding them sprang upon a pile of lumber, shouting to the Saxons, who halted, as it were irresolute.
"While ye remain in this province it is right that ye should obey its laws! If this Roman whom ye have taken hath committed crime against your laws or ours, let him be tried by these laws. Otherwise will we not give him up to you. He is a freeborn Roman, and is not to be done away with as a slave. If ye make oath to grant him trial, we will deliver him unto you."
Ceawlin, the hot-headed young chieftain, pulled his long sword from its bronze sheath, pointing with it to the figure upon the lumber-pile. His face flamed with red rage; he shook his sword and shouted to his men behind him. There was a rush; before the Romans could prevent, a score of Saxons had leaped upon the pile, dragging down him who spoke; and the first blood on Thorney had been shed. It was the signal; like warringcurrents of the sea the two forces clashed. The beach was alive with figures, struggling, shouting, or swaying in deadly silence in each other's grip. Light flickered snakelike along uplifted blades which shot above the sea of heads. It was a fight hand to hand, primitive, blind with insensate rage, ever-smouldering, which wanted but the spark of excuse to flame into the full flare of battle. The resistance of the militarii was speedily overcome; outnumbered, lacking their leader, they broke and fled. The Saxons, with shouts of triumph, gave chase over the stony beach into the streets of the island, bent on the recapture of their prisoner, and on wreaking vengeance upon those who had dared oppose them.