"I fight as a soldier; Victorin fights as a captain. And has not that young captain of only twenty-two years already won five great battles against the Germans and the Franks?"
"His mother, well named Victoria, must have contributed with her counsel towards his victories. He confers with her upon his plans of campaign. But, anyhow, it is true, Victorin is a brave soldier and good captain."
"And is not his purse open to all, so long as there is anything in it? Do you know of any invalid who ever vainly applied to him?"
"Victorin is generous—that also is true."
"Is he not the friend and comrade of the soldiers? Is he ever haughty?"
"No, he is a good comrade, and always cheerful. Besides, what should he be proud about? Are not his father, his glorious mother and himself from the Gallic plebs, like the rest of us?"
"Do you not know, Douarnek, that often it happens that the proudest people are the very ones who have risen from the lowest ranks?"
"Victorin is not proud!"
"Does he not, during war, sleep unsheltered with his head upon the saddle of his horse, like the rest of us horsemen?"
"Brought up by so virile a mother as his, he was bound to grow up a rough soldier, as he is."
"Are you not aware that in council he displays a maturity of judgment that many men of our age do not possess? In short, is it not his bravery, his kindness, his good judgment, his rare military qualities as a soldier and captain that caused him to be acclaimed general by the army, and one of the two Chiefs of Gaul?"
"Yes, but in electing him, all of us knew that his mother Victoria would always be near him, guiding him, instructing him, schooling him in the art of governing men, without neglecting, worthy matron that she is, to sew her linen near the cradle of her grandson, as is her thrifty habit."
"No one knows better than I how precious the advices of Victoria to her son are to our country. But what is it, then, that has changed? Is she not always there, watching over Victorin and Gaul that she loves with equal and paternal devotion? Come, now, Douarnek, answer me with a soldier's frankness. Whence comes the hostility that, I fear, is ever spreading and deepening against Victorin, our young and brave general?"
"Listen, Schanvoch. I am, like yourself, a seasoned soldier. Your moustache, although younger than mine, begins to show grey streaks. Do you want to know the truth? Here it is: We are all aware that the life of the camp does not make people chaste and reserved like young girls who are brought up by our venerated female druids. We also know, because we have emptied many a cup, that our Gallic wines throw us into a merry and riotous humor. We know, furthermore, that when he is in a garrison, the young soldier who proudly carries a cockade on his casque and caresses his brown or blonde moustache, does not long preserve the friendship of fathers who have handsome daughters, or of husbands who have handsome wives. But, for all that, you will have to admit, Schanvoch, that a soldier who is habitually intoxicated like a brute, and takes cowardly advantage of women, would deserve to be treated to a hundred or more stripes laid on well upon his back, and to be ignominiously driven from camp. Is not that so?"
"That is all very true, but what connection has it with Victorin?"
"Listen, friend Schanvoch, and then answer me. If an obscure soldier deserves such treatment for his shameful conduct, what should be done to an army chief who disgraces himself in such fashion?"
"Do you venture to say that Victorin has offered violence to women and that he is daily drunk?" I cried indignantly. "I say that you lie, or those who carried such tales to you lied. So, these are the unworthy rumors that circulate in the camp against Victorin! And can you be credulous enough to attach faith to them?"
"Soldiers are not quite so credulous, friend Schanvoch, but they are aware of the old Gallic proverb—'The lost sheep are charged to the shepherd.' Now, for instance, you know Captain Marion, the old blacksmith?"
"Yes, I know the brave fellow to be one of the best officers in the army."
"The famous Captain Marion, who can carry an ox on his shoulders," put in one of the soldiers, "and who can knock down the same ox with a blow of his fist—his arm is as heavy as the iron mace of a butcher."
"And Captain Marion," added another oarsman, "is a good comrade, for all that, despite his strength and military renown. He took a simple soldier, a former fellow blacksmith, for his 'friend in war,' or, as they used to say in olden times, took the 'pledge of brotherhood' with him."
"I am aware of the bravery, modesty, good judgment and austerity of Captain Marion," I answered him, "but why do you now bring in his name?"
"Have a little patience, friend Schanvoch, I shall satisfy you in a minute. Did you see the two Bohemian girls enter Mayence a few days ago in a wagon drawn by mules covered with tinkling bells and led by a Negro lad?"
"I did not see the women, but have heard them mentioned. But I must insist upon it, what has all this got to do with Victorin?"
"I have reminded you of the proverb—'The lost sheep are charged to the shepherd.' It would be idle to attribute habits of drunkenness and incontinence to Captain Marion, would it not? Despite all his simpleness, the soldier would not believe a word of such slanders; not so? While, on the other hand, the soldier would be ready to believe any story of debauchery about the said Bohemian strollers, and he would trust the narrator of the tale, do you understand?"
"I understand you, Douarnek, and I shall be frank in turn. Yes, Victorin loves wine and indulges in it with some of his companions in arms. Yes, having been left a widower at the age of twenty, only a few months after his marriage, Victorin has occasionally yielded to the headlong impulses of youth. Often did his mother, as well as myself, regret that he was not endowed with greater austerity in morals, a virtue, however, that is extremely rare at his age. But, by the anger of the gods! I, who have never been from Victorin's side since his earliest childhood, deny that drunkenness is habitual with him; above all I deny that he ever was base enough to do violence to a woman!"
"Schanvoch, you defend the son of your foster-sister out of the goodness of your heart, although you know him to be guilty—unless you really are ignorant of what you deny—"
"What am I ignorant of?"
"An adventure that has raised a great scandal, and that everybody in camp knows."
"What adventure?"
"A short time ago Victorin and several officers of the army went to a tavern on one of the isles near the border of the Rhine to drink and make merry. In the evening, being by that time drunk as usual, Victorin violated the tavern-keeper's wife, who, in her despair, threw herself into the river and was drowned."
"The soldier who misdemeaned himself in that manner," remarked one of the oarsmen, "would speedily have his head cut off by a strict chief."
"And he would have deserved the punishment," added another oarsman. "As much as the next man, I would find pleasure in bantering with the tavern-keeper's wife. But to offer her violence, that is an act of savagery worthy only of those Frankish butchers, whose priestesses, veritable devil's cooks, boil their prisoners alive in their caldrons."
I was so stupefied by the accusation made against Victorin that I remained silent for a moment. But my voice soon came to me and I cried:
"Calumny! A calumny as infamous as the act would have been. Who is it dares accuse Victoria's son of such a crime?"
"A well informed man," Douarnek answered me.
"His name! Give me the liar's name!"
"His name is Morix. He was the secretary of one of Victoria's relatives. He came to the camp about a month ago to confer upon grave matters."
"The relative is Tetrik, the Governor of Gascony," I said with increased stupefaction. "The man is the incarnation of kindness and loyalty; he is one of Victoria's oldest and most faithful friends."
"All of which renders the man's testimony all the more reliable."
"What! He, Tetrik! Did Tetrik confirm what you have just said?"
"He communicated it to his secretary, and confirmed the occurrence, while deploring the shocking excesses of Victorin's dissoluteness."
"Calumny! Tetrik has only words of kindness and esteem for Victoria's son."
"Schanvoch, I have served in the army for the last twenty-five years. Ask my officers whether Douarnek is a liar."
"I believe you to be sincere; only you have been shamefully imposed upon."
"Morix, the secretary of Tetrik, narrated the occurrence not to me only but to other soldiers in the camp for whose wine he was paying. We all placed confidence in his words, because more than once did I myself and several others of my companions see Victorin and his friends heated with wine and indulging in crazy feats of arms."
"Does not the ardor of courage heat up young heads as much as wine?"
"Listen, Schanvoch, I have seen—with my own eyes—Victorin drive his steed into the Rhine saying that he would cross the river on horseback; and he would certainly have been drowned had not another soldier and I rushed into a boat and fished him half drunk out of the water, while the current carried his horse away. And do you know what Victorin then said to us? 'You should have let me drink; the white wine of Beziers runs in this stream.' What I am telling you now is no calumny, Schanvoch, I saw it with my own eyes, heard it with my own ears."
Despite my attachment to Victorin I could not but reply to the soldier's testimony, saying: "I knew him to be incapable of an act of cowardice and infamy; but I also knew him to be capable of certain acts of extravagance and hotheadedness."
"As to myself," replied another soldier, "more than once, as I mounted guard near Victorin's house which is separated from Victoria's by a little plot of flowers, have I seen veiled women leave his place at early dawn. They were of all colors and sizes, blondes and brunettes, tall and short, some robust and stout, others slender and thin. At least, that was the impression that the women left upon me, unless the gloaming deceived my sight, and it was always the same woman."
"I notice that you are too sincere to make any answer to that, friend Schanvoch," Douarnek said to me; indeed, I could raise no objection against the latter accusation. "You must, therefore, not feel surprised at our trust in the words of Tetrik's secretary. You must admit that the man who in a drunken fit takes the Rhine for a stream of Bezier's wine, and from whose house a procession of women is seen to issue in the morning, is quite capable, in a fit of inebriety, of doing violence to a tavern-keeper's wife."
"No!" I cried. "A man may be afflicted with the faults of his years in an aggravated degree, without therefore being an infamous fellow, a criminal!"
"See here, Schanvoch, you are the personal friend of our mother Victoria. You love Victorin as if he were your own son. Say to him—'The soldiers, even the grossest and most dissolute among them, do not like to see their own vices reproduced in the chief whom they have chosen. By your conduct, the army's affection is daily withdrawn more and more from you and is centering wholly upon Victoria.'"
"Yes," I answered thoughtfully, "and the process started since Tetrik, the Governor of Gascony, the relative and friend of Victoria, made his last visit to our camp. Until then our young chief was generally beloved, despite his little foibles."
"That is true. He is so good, so brave, so kind to all! He sat his horse so well! He had so bold a military bearing! We loved the young captain as an own child! We knew him as a babe, and rode him on our knees when still a little fellow, during the watches in the camp! Later we shut our eyes to his foibles, because parents are ever indulgent! But there can be no room for indulgence towards baseness!"
"And of this baseness," I replied, now more and more forcibly struck by the circumstance, which, recalling certain incidents to my mind, awakened a vague suspicion in me, "and of these acts of baseness there is no evidence other than the word of Tetrik's secretary?"
"The secretary repeated to us his own master's words."
During this conversation, to which I lent increasing attention, our bark, ever moving forward under the vigorous strokes of the four oarsmen, had traversed the Rhine and reached the opposite shore. The soldier's backs were turned to the bank on which we were about to land. I was so wholly absorbed in what I had just learned regarding the army's increasing disaffection towards Victorin, that I never once thought of casting my eyes upon the shore to which we were drawing near. Suddenly a sharp whizz struck our ears. I cried out: "Throw yourselves down flat upon your benches!"
It was too late. A volley of long arrows flew over our boat. One of the oarsmen was instantly killed, while Douarnek, whose back was still turned to the shore received one of the arrows in the back.
"This is the way the Franks receive parliamentarians during a truce," remarked the veteran without dropping his oar, and even without turning around. "This is the first time I have been hit in the back. An arrow in the back does not become a soldier. Pull it out quick, comrade," he added, addressing the oarsman who sat behind him.
But despite his intrepidity, Douarnek managed his oar with less vigor. Although the wound that he received was not serious, his face betrayed the pain that he felt; the blood flowed copiously.
"I told you so, Schanvoch," he proceeded to say. "I told you that your foliage of peace would prove a poor rampart against the treachery of the Frankish barbarians. Fall to, my lads! We must now row all the harder, seeing we are only three left. Our comrade yonder, who is bumping his nose against his bench, with his limbs stiffened, can no longer count as an oarsman!"
Douarnek had not finished his sentence before I dashed forward to the prow of the bark, and passing over the corpse of the soldier who lay dead across his bench seized one of the oak branches and waved it over my head as a signal of peace.
A second volley of arrows, that came flying from behind an embankment of the river, was the only answer to my appeal. One of the missiles grazed my arm, another broke off its point against my iron casque; but none of the soldiers was hit. We were then only a short distance from the shore. I threw myself into the water, swam a little distance, and as soon as my feet struck ground called out to Douarnek:
"Pull the bark safely beyond the reach of the arrows and drop anchor, then wait for me. If I am not back after sunset, return to camp and inform Victoria that I have either been made prisoner or killed by the Franks. She will take my wife Ellen and my son Alguen under her protection."
"I do not at all like the idea of leaving you alone in the hands of those barbarians, friend Schanvoch," answered Douarnek; "but to stay where we can be killed would be to deprive you of all possible means of return to our camp, should you be lucky enough to escape with your life. Courage, Schanvoch! We shall await the evening!"
And the bark pulled away, while I clambered up the embankment.
I had hardly reached the shore, always holding the green oak branch aloft, when I saw a large number of Franks, belonging to the hordes of their army, rush forward from behind the rocks where they had lain in ambush. They carried black bucklers and wore casques made of black calves' skin. Their arms, legs and faces were dyed black in order to escape detection when they march in the shadow of the forests or contemplate an attack in the night. Their appearance was rendered all the more hideous and strange, seeing that their chiefs were tattooed with a bright red on their foreheads, their cheeks and around their eyes. My long sojourn along the Rhine enabled me to speak the Frankish tongue with sufficient fluency.
The black warriors emitted savage yells, surrounded me from all sides and threatened me with their long knives, the blades of which also were blackened in the fire.
"A truce has been concluded, several days ago," I cried out to them; "I have come in the name of the chief of the Gallic army with a message to the chiefs of your hordes. Lead me to them. You surely will not kill an unarmed man?"
Saying this I drew my sword and threw it away. The barbarians immediately precipitated themselves upon me, redoubling their cries for my blood. Some of them unwound the cords of their bows, and, despite all my remonstrances, threw me to the ground and bound me fast.
"Let us flay him," said one. "We shall carry his skin to the chief Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle. It will serve him as a bandage to wrap his legs in."
I was well aware that the Franks often skinned their enemies alive with great dexterity, and that the chiefs of their hordes decked themselves triumphantly with such human spoils. The proposition that I be skinned alive was received with shouts of approval; those who held me down began to cast about for a convenient place to perform the operation; others started to sharpen their knives upon the pebbles.
At this juncture, the warrior in command of the band approached me. The man was horrible to behold. A bright red tattoo encircled his eyes and streaked his cheeks. The marks looked like bleeding wounds, standing off strongly against his blackened face. His hair, raised after the Frankish style over his forehead and tied in a knot on top of his head, fell back like the plume of a helmet over his shoulders, and was of a coppery yellow, due to the lime-water that those barbarians used in order to impart a warm bright color to their hair and beard.[1] Around his neck and his wrists he wore a necklace and bracelets of rough wrought tin. His raiment consisted of a casque of black calfskin; strips of black calfskin fastened with criss-cross bandelets, covered his thighs and lower extremities. A sword and a long knife hung from his belt. After fixedly looking at me for a moment, he raised his hand and letting it down on my shoulder said:
"I shall take and keep this Gaul for Elwig. He is my prisoner."
Muffled growls from several of the other black warriors greeted these words of their chief, who, raising his voice, proceeded to say:
"I, Riowag, will take this Gaul to the priestess Elwig. Elwig needs a prisoner for her auguries."
The chief's decision was acquiesced in by the majority of the black warriors; the growls ceased; and a mob of voices repeated in chorus:
"Yes, yes; the Gaul must be kept for Elwig!"
"He must be taken to Elwig!"
"It is many days since she consulted our tutelary deities!"
"And we," cried one of the black warriors who had bound me, "we object to having the prisoner delivered to Elwig. We want to flay him and present his skin in token of homage to the chief Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle; he will reward us with some present."
There is small choice between being skinned alive and being boiled in a brass caldron. I did not feel called upon to manifest my preferences, and took no part whatever in the debate. Already those who wished to flay me cast savage glances at those who insisted that I be boiled, and carried their hands to their knives, when one of the black warriors proposed a compromise to the chief:
"Riowag, do you want to deliver the Gaul to the priestess Elwig?"
"Yes," answered the chief; "yes, I want to, and it shall be done as I order!"
"And the rest of you," proceeded the conciliatory black warrior, "you wish to offer the Gaul's skin to the chief Neroweg?"
"That is what we propose to do!"
"Very well, you can be accommodated, both."
A profound silence fell all around at these conciliatory words. The black warrior proceeded:
"First, flay him alive, you will then have his skin; after that Elwig will boil his body in her caldron."
The compromise seemed at first to satisfy both parties, but Riowag, the captain of the band, objected:
"Do you not know that Elwig needs a living prisoner to render her auguries certain? You would be giving her only a corpse if you first flay the Gaul."
And he added in a terrific voice:
"Would you expose yourselves to the anger of the gods of the nether world by depriving them of a victim?"
At this threat a shudder ran through the surrounding black warriors, and the party that demanded my skin seemed about to yield to a superstitious terror.
The peacemaker, the warrior who had proposed that I be first flayed and then boiled, now spoke again:
"Some of you wish to present the Gaul as an offering to the great Neroweg, others of you wish to present him to the priestess Elwig. Now do you not see that to give to the one is to give to the other also? Is not Elwig Neroweg's sister?"
"And he would be the first to surrender the Gaul to the gods of the nether world, in order to render them propitious to our arms!" put in Riowag.
The captain of the black warriors pointed thereupon at me, and added imperiously:
"Take the Gaul on your shoulders and follow me!"
"We want to have his spoils," said one of the black warriors who were the first to seize me. "We want his casque, his cuirass, his blouse, his belt, his shirt. We want everything, down to his shoes!"
"The booty belongs to you," answered Riowag. "You will have it so soon as Elwig will have stripped the Gaul preparatorily to throwing him into her caldron."
"We shall go with you, Riowag," replied the black warriors who made the arrest, "otherwise others than ourselves will take possession of the plunder from the Gaul."
My perplexity was now at an end. I knew my fate. I was to be boiled alive. I would have gladly looked a useful or brave death in the face; but the death that awaited me seemed so barren and absurd, that I decided to make one more effort to save my life. Addressing the captain of the black warriors, I said:
"Your conduct is unjust. Frankish warriors have often come to the Gallic camp to solicit an exchange of prisoners. Those Franks have always been respected. A truce is now in force between us, during a truce only spies who furtively enter the camp are put to death. I have come in open daylight, with a green bough in my hand, and in the name of Victorin, the son of Victoria. I am the carrier of a message from them for the chiefs of the Frankish army. Take care! If you act without orders from them, they will be sorry for not having heard me, and they may make you pay dearly for your treachery towards a soldier, who comes unarmed, during a truce, and in broad daylight, with the bough of peace in his hand."
Riowag's answer to my words was a sign to his band. I was immediately raised up by four black warriors who placed me on their shoulders and carried me off in the tracks of their captain, who marched with a solemn air in the direction of the Frankish camp.
At the moment when the barbarians raised me on their shoulders, I overheard one of those who wished to flay me alive say to one of his companions in a mocking tone:
"Riowag is Elwig's lover; he wishes to make a present of the prisoner to his mistress."
These words enabled me to realize that Riowag, the captain of the band of black warriors, being the lover of the priestess Elwig, gallantly made her a present of my person, just as in our country bridegrooms offer a dove or a sheep to the young girl whom they love.
You will be astonished, my child, to find in this narrative that I have used words that sound almost droll in describing events that were so threatening to my life. Do not imagine that this is due to the circumstance that at the hour when I write these lines, I had escaped all danger. No. Even when the danger was most imminent—a danger from which I was almost miraculously delivered—I had full control of my spirit, and the old Gallic sense of humor, a thing so natural to our race, however long it lay torpid under the weight of the shame and the trials of slavery, revived in me as it did with so many others when we once more tasted the boon of freedom. The observations that you will encounter, and which I have reproduced as they occurred to me at times when death seemed inevitable, were sincere, they proceeded from my faith in that belief of our fathers that man never dies, that when he leaves this world he enters others in which he proceeds to live.
Carried upon the shoulders of the four black warriors, I traversed a section of the Frankish camp. The vast bivouac which was arranged without order, consisted of huts for the chiefs and tents for the soldiers. It was a sort of gigantic village of savages. Here and there lay their innumerable war chariots sheltered under rude sheds made of the trunks of trees. Their indefatigable small, lean, rough-coated and shaggy-maned horses, that they managed with a halter of cord for only bridle, were, as is the custom with these barbarians, tied to the wheels of the chariots or to the trunks of trees, the bark of which they gnawed at. The Franks themselves, barely clad in skins of animals, their hair and beard greasy with suet, presented an aspect that was repulsive, stupid and ferocious. Some of them were stretched out at full length in the warm rays of that sun that they started in search of from the depths of their dark northern forests. Others found amusement in the hunt for vermin over their hairy bodies; these barbarians lived in such filth that, although they were in the open air, their encampment exhaled a fetid odor.
At the sight of these undisciplined hordes, ill armed but innumerable, and whose forces were incessantly recruited by fresh migrations that poured down in mass from the glacial regions of the north to swoop upon the fertile and laughing fields of our Gaul as upon a prey, certain words of sinister omen that escaped the lips of Victoria came to my mind. Nevertheless supreme contempt speedily filled me for those barbarians, who, three or four times superior to our own armies in point of numbers, never had been able, despite many a bloody battle delivered for a number of years, to invade our soil, but found themselves every time driven back to the other side of the Rhine, our natural frontier.
While crossing a section of the encampment on the shoulders of the four black warriors who carried me, I was pursued by insults, threats and cries for my blood from the Franks who saw me pass. Several times was the escort that accompanied me obliged, upon orders from Riowag, to use their arms in order to prevent my being slain on the spot.
Thus we arrived at last near a thick wood. I observed in passing a large and more carefully constructed hut than the others, before which a yellow and red banner was planted. A large number of horsemen clad in bearskins, some in the saddle, others on foot near their mounts and leaning on their long lances, were posted around the habitation, thereby indicating clearly enough that it was occupied by one of the leading chiefs of their hordes. Again I sought to persuade Riowag, who now marched beside me, but still grave, silent and solemn, to conduct me first to that one of the chiefs whose banner I saw, after which, I said to him, they might kill me if they so pleased. My requests were vain. We entered the thick wood, and arrived at a large clearing, to the center of which I was taken. At a little distance I noticed a natural grotto, formed of large blocks of grey rock, from between which saplings and stately chestnut trees shot upwards. A stream of living water that trickled over the ledges of rock fell into a sort of natural basin. Not far from the cavern stood a brass pan, rather narrow and of about the length of a man. The opening or mouth of the infernal caldron was furnished with a net of iron chains. The latter was undoubtedly meant to keep the victim, who was thrown in to be boiled alive, from jumping out. Four large boulders supported the pan, under which a bundle of large logs of kindling wood lay ready. Human bones, bleached and strewn hither and thither over the ground, imparted to the spot the appearance of a charnel house. Finally, in the center of the clearing, rose a colossal statue; it was surmounted with three heads rudely carved with axes and adjusted to the enormous tree-trunk that, though shapeless, was intended to represent a gigantic body. The aspect of the statue was grotesque and repulsive.
Riowag made a sign to the four black warriors who carried me to stop and deposit me at the foot of the statue. He thereupon entered the grotto alone while the warriors of the escort called out aloud:
"Elwig! Elwig!"
"Elwig! Priestess of the underground gods!"
"Rejoice, Elwig, we bring you a prisoner for your caldron!"
"You will now be able to prophesy to us!"
I expected to see some hideous old hag; I was mistaken. Elwig was young, tall and endowed with savage beauty. Her grey eyes, shielded under a pair of naturally reddish eyebrows of the same color as her hair, glistened like the steel of the long knife that she was armed with. Her eagle-beaked nose and high forehead imparted to her an aspect at once savage and imposing. She was clad in a long tunic of a somber hue. Her bare neck and arms were heavily laden with copper necklaces and bracelets, that clinked upon one another as she walked, and upon which she cast coquettish glances as she approached me. On her thick reddish hair, that fell upon and parted on both sides of her shoulders, she wore a scarlet coif that was a ridiculous imitation of the charming headgear used by the women of Gaul. In short, I thought I noticed in the strange creature the evidence of that mixture of puerile pride and vanity so peculiar to barbarous peoples.
Standing a few paces from her, Riowag seemed to contemplate the priestess with profound admiration. Despite his black dye and the red tattoo under which his face disappeared, his features seemed to me to betoken a violent love, and his eyes sparkled with joy when, twice in succession, pointing at me, Elwig turned her face to her lover with a smile upon her lips, in token, no doubt, of thankfulness for the offering that he brought her. I also noticed on the bare arms of the infernal priestess two tattoo marks that brought back to my mind some reminiscences of the war we had been waging with the Franks.
One of the two marks represented two talons of a bird of prey; the other, a red serpent.
With her knife in her hand, Elwig again turned towards me and fastened her large grey eyes upon me with ferocious satisfaction, while the black warriors contemplated her with looks of fear and superstition.
"Woman," I said to the priestess, "I came here unarmed, an oak branch in my hand, and bearing a message of peace to the grand chiefs of your hordes.—I was fallen upon and bound fast.—I am in your power—you can kill me—if such be your pleasure—but before you do, have me presented to one of your chiefs.—The interview that I request is of as much importance to the Franks as to the Gauls. It is Victorin himself and his mother Victoria the Great who have sent me hither."
"You are sent by Victoria?" cried the priestess with a singular air. "Victoria, who is said to be so very beautiful?"
"Yes, I am sent by her who is called the Mother of the Camps."
Elwig reflected, and after a long silence she raised her hands over her head, brandished her knife, and pronounced some mysterious words in a voice that sounded at once threatening and inspired. Thereupon she motioned to the black warriors to retire.
They all obeyed, walking slowly back towards the thicket that surrounded the clearing.
Only Riowag remained a few steps from the priestess. Turning towards him she pointed with an imperious gesture towards the wood in which the other black warriors had disappeared. Seeing that the captain did not obey her summons, she raised her voice, and again pointed to the wood.
Riowag then obeyed and left in turn.
I remained alone with the priestess. I was left bound, lying at the foot of the statue of the under gods. Elwig squatted down upon her haunches near me and asked:
"You were sent by Victoria to speak with the Frankish chiefs?"
"I said so before."
"You are one of Victoria's officers?"
"I am one of her soldiers."
"Does she cherish you?"
"She is my foster-sister, I am as a brother to her."
These words seemed to cause Elwig to reflect anew. She remained silent for a while, and then resumed:
"Would Victoria weep over your death?"
"As one would weep over the death of a faithful servant."
"She surely would give much to save your life?"
"Is it ransom you want?"
Elwig again relapsed into silence, and resumed with a mixture of embarrassment and cunning that struck me forcibly:
"Let Victoria come and ask my brother for your life. He will grant it to her.—But listen, Victoria has a great reputation for beauty; handsome women love to deck themselves with the Gallic jewelry that is so celebrated.—Victoria must have superb ornaments, seeing she is the mother of the chief of your country.—Tell her to cover herself with her richest jewelry; it will please my brother's eyes.—He will be all the more gracious, and will grant your life to her."
I immediately surmised the snare that the priestess of hell was laying for me with the clumsy cunning natural to barbarians. Wishing to make certain, I observed without referring to her last words:
"It seems that your brother is a powerful chief."
"He is more than a chief," Elwig answered proudly; "he is a king."
"We also, in the days of our barbarism, had kings. What is your brother's name?"
"Neroweg, surnamed the Terrible Eagle."
"You carry on your arms two figures, one representing a red serpent, the other the talons of a bird of prey. What do those emblems mean?"
"The fathers of our fathers in our royal family have always worn these signs of valor and subtlety. The eagle's talons denote valor; the serpent subtlety. But let us drop my brother," added Elwig with somber impatience. My digression seemed to displease her. "Will you induce Victoria to come here?"
"One word more on your royal brother.—Does he not carry on his forehead the identical symbols that you carry on your arms?"
"Yes," she replied with increasing impatience. "Yes, my brother carries an eagle's talon over each eye-brow, and the red serpent on a head-band over his forehead. Kings wear a head-band. But we have spoken enough of Neroweg—quite enough—"
I thought I noticed on Elwig's features an ill dissembled sentiment of hatred when she pronounced his name. She proceeded:
"If you do not wish to die, write to Victoria to come to our camp ornamented with her most precious jewels. She shall repair alone to a place that I shall designate to you—a secluded spot that I know—I shall come for her and shall lead her to my brother to solicit your life from him—"
"Victoria to come alone to this camp?—I have come hither, relying upon the sacredness of the truce;—I carried the bough of peace in my hand, and yet one of my companions was killed, another was wounded, and to cap the climax of treachery, I am delivered to you bound hand and foot to be put to death—"
"Victoria may bring a small escort with her."
"Which would be unquestionably massacred by your men!—The scheme is too transparent!"
"You, then, wish to die!" cried the priestess gnashing her teeth in actual or simulated rage, and threatening me with her knife. "The fire will be shortly kindled under the caldron.—I shall have you plunged alive into the magic water, and you shall boil in it until you are dead.—Once more, and for the last time, make your choice.—Either you shall die in tortures, or you will write to Victoria to repair to our camp decked in her richest ornaments!—Choose!" she added with redoubled fury and again threatening me with her knife. "Choose—or you die!"
I knew there was no more thievish, covetous or vainglorious race than this breed of Franks. I noticed that Elwig's large grey eyes glistened with cupidity every time she mentioned the magnificent ornaments, that, as she imagined, the Mother of the Camps surely possessed. The ridiculous accoutrement of the priestess; the profusion of valueless gewgaws that she wore with a savage woman's coquetry, in order, no doubt, to appear pleasing to the eye of Riowag, the captain of the black warriors; above all, her persistence in demanding of me that Victoria come to the Frankish camp covered with rich jewels;—everything justified the conclusion that Elwig aimed at drawing my foster-sister into an ambush in order to slay her and rob her of her jewels. The clumsy scheme did not do credit to the ingenuity of the priestess of the nether regions. Nevertheless, her cupidity might be turned to my service. I answered her in a tone of indifference:
"Woman, you mean to kill me if I do not induce Victoria to come here? You are free to kill me—boil my flesh and bones—you will thereby lose more than you think for, seeing that you are the sister of Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle, one of the greatest kings of all your hordes!"
"What would I lose?—"
"Magnificent Gallic ornaments!"
"Ornaments!—What ornaments?" cried Elwig doubtfully, although her eyes snapped with greed.
"Do you imagine that, in sending her foster-brother to convey a message to the kings of the Franks, Victoria the Great did not prepare, as a pledge of truce, rich presents for the wives and sisters who accompany them, and for those whom they left behind in Germany?"
Elwig leaped to her feet with one bound, hurled her knife away, clapped her hands, and emitted loud peals of laughter that sounded like a crazy woman's transports. Thereupon she crouched down again beside me, and said in a voice broken with childish breathlessness:
"Presents? You bring presents with you?—Where are they?"
"Yes, I bring with me presents fit to dazzle an empress—gold necklaces studded with carbuncles, ear pendants of pearls and rubies, gold bracelets, belts and crowns that are so loaded with precious stones that they glitter in all the colors of the rainbow.—All these masterpieces of our most skilled Gallic goldsmiths I have brought with me for presents.—And seeing that your brother Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle, is the most powerful king of all your hordes, the bulk of all those riches—those bracelets, those necklaces and other jewels—would have fallen to you."
Elwig listened to me open-mouthed, her hands clasped together, without endeavoring to hide either the admiration or unbridled greed that the enumeration of such treasures kindled in her breast. Suddenly, however, her features assumed an expression of mingled doubt and anger. She rose, ran to her knife, and returning with it in her hands, raised it over me crying:
"You either lie, or you are mocking me!—Where are those treasures?"
"In a safe place.—I foresaw that I might be killed and plundered before I was able to fulfil the orders of Victoria and her son."
"Where did you put that treasure in safety?"
"It remained in the bark that brought me to this side of the river.—My companions rowed back from the shore and cast anchor beyond the reach of the arrows of your hordes."
"We also have barks moored at the other end of the camp. I shall order your companions to be pursued—I shall have the treasures!"
"You deceive yourself!—As soon as my companions see the enemy's barks approach from a distance, they will suspect foul play. Seeing that they have a long lead, they will be able to regain the opposite shore of the Rhine without any danger whatever.—Such will be the only fruit of the treachery practiced by your people upon me.—Come, woman! Have me boiled for your infernal auguries! Perhaps my bones, bleached in your caldron, may be transformed into magnificent ornaments!"
"I want the treasures!" replied Elwig struggling against her lingering suspicions. "Since you did not carry the jewels about you, when would you have given them to the kings of our hordes?"
"When I left the jewels in the bark I expected I would be received as an envoy of peace, and that as such I would be escorted back to the river bank. My companions would then have returned to the shore to receive me, and I would have taken the presents out of the bark and distributed them among the kings in the name of Victoria and her son."
The priestess looked upon me for a while with darkling eyes. She seemed to yield alternately to mistrust and to the promptings of cupidity. Finally, however, the latter sentiment evidently prevailed. She took a few steps away, and with a strong voice pronounced the bizarre name of a person who was not until then upon the scene.
Almost instantly a hideous old hag with grey hair and clad in a blood-bespattered robe issued from the cavern. She was, no doubt, the active priestess at the inhuman sacrifices. She exchanged a few words in a low voice with Elwig and forthwith vanished in the surrounding wood, in the direction that the black warriors had followed.
Again dropping on her haunches beside me, the priestess said in a low and muffled voice:
"Since you wish to speak with my brother, King Neroweg, I have sent for him.—He will soon be here—but you shall not mention a word to him concerning the jewels."
"Why keep him in the dark concerning them?"
"Because he would keep them to himself."
"What!—He!—Your own brother!—Would he not share the jewels with you, his sister?"
A bitter smile contracted Elwig's lips. She resumed:
"My brother came near cutting off my arm with a blow of his axe a few weeks ago, simply because I merely wished to touch part of his booty."
"Is that the way brothers and sisters behave towards one another among the Franks?"
"Among the Franks," Elwig answered with a face of deepening rancor, "the mother, sister and wives of a warrior are his first slaves."
"His wives!—Has he, then, several?"
"As many as he can capture and feed—the same as he has as many horses as he can buy."
"What! Does not a sacred and eternal union join the husband to the mother of his children, as with us Gauls?—What! Sisters, wives and mothers—all are slaves? Blessed of the gods is Gaul, my own country, where our mothers and wives, venerated by all, proudly take their seat in the nation's councils and where their advice, often wiser than that of their husbands and sons, not infrequently prevails."
Palpitating with cupidity, Elwig made no answer to me, and resumed the thread of her dominant thoughts.
"You will, accordingly, not mention the jewels to Neroweg. He would keep them all for himself. You will wait until it is dark to leave the camp. I shall accompany you. You will give me the jewels, all the presents—to me alone!"
And again bursting into almost insane peals of laughter, she added:
"Gold bracelets! Necklaces of pearls! Ear pendants studded with rubies! Diadems full of precious stones! I shall look grand as an empress! Oh, how beautiful I shall be in the eye of Riowag!"
Elwig thereupon cast disdainful glances at the copper bracelets that she rattled as she shook her arms, and repeated:
"I shall look very beautiful to Riowag!"
"Woman," I said to her, "your advice is prudent. We shall have to wait until it is night for us to leave the camp together and regain the river bank."
And, to the end of still further enlisting Elwig's confidence in me by seeming to take an interest in her vainglorious greed, I added:
"But if your brother sees you decked with such magnificent ornaments, will he not take them away from you?"
"No," she promptly answered with a strange and sinister look. "No, he will not take them!"
"If Neroweg the Terrible Eagle is of as violent a temperament as you claim, if he came near cutting off your arm for having wished merely to touch part of his booty," I suggested, surprised at her answer, and anxious to fathom her thoughts, "what will prevent your brother from seizing the jewels?"
Elwig held up to me her large knife with an expression of calm ferocity that made me shiver, as she answered:
"When I shall have the treasure—to-night, I shall enter my brother's hut—I shall share his bed, as usual—and when he is asleep I shall kill him—"
"Your own brother!" I cried with a shudder and hardly believing what I heard, although the insight that the priestess gave into the shocking immorality prevalent among the Franks was nothing new to me. "How! You share your own brother's bed?"
The priestess seemed no wise disconcerted by my question, and answered with a somber mien:
"I have shared my brother's bed since the day that he violated me. It is the fate of almost all the sisters of the Frankish kings who follow them in war. Did I not tell you that their wives, their sisters and their mothers are the first slaves of the warriors? What female slave is there who, willingly or unwillingly, does not share her master's bed?"
"Hold your tongue, woman!" I cried interrupting her. "Hold your tongue! Your monstrous words might draw a thunderbolt upon our heads!"
And without being able to add another word I contemplated the creature with horror. Such a mixture of debauchery, greed, barbarism and, withal, stupid frankness, seeing that Elwig unbosomed herself to me, a man whom she then saw for the first time in her life, upon her fratricidal intentions—that fratricide, preceded by incest, which this priestess of a sanguinary cult was subjected to and who shared her brother's bed while she at the same time surrendered herself to another man—all that filled me with horror, notwithstanding I had often heard accounts of the abominable morals of the barbarians beyond the Rhine.
Elwig seemed not to concern herself about the cause of my silence nor of the evident disgust that she filled me with. She mumbled some unintelligible words, and counted the copper bracelets that her arms were loaded with. She presently said to me pensively:
"Do you think I shall have nine fine bracelets studded with precious stones to replace these? Could they all go into a little bag that I shall keep concealed under my robe when I return to the hut of the king, my brother? Why do you not answer my questions?"
The cold, I should almost say naïve, ferocity of the woman redoubled the disgust that the monster inspired in me. Again I remained silent, and she cried aloud:
"Why do you not answer me? You promised me the jewels!"
But seeming to be suddenly struck by a new thought she added with terror:
"I told him all! Suppose he tells it all again to Neroweg! My brother would kill us both, me and Riowag! The thought of the treasure bereft me of my senses!"
And again she started to call, turning her face towards the cavern.
A second old hag, no less hideous than the first, hobbled out holding in her hand the bone of an ox from which hung a partly boiled shred of meat at which she gnawed with her toothless gums.
"Come quick to me," the priestess said to her, "and leave your bone there."
The old hag obeyed unwillingly, grumbling like a dog whose meat is taken away from him. She laid the bone on one of the projecting rocks at the entrance of the grotto, and drew near, wiping her lips.
"Gather some dry, good branches and roots of trees and kindle a fire with them under the brass caldron," the priestess said to the old woman.
The latter returned into the cavern, and brought out all the things that she was ordered. Soon a bright fire burned under the caldron.
"Now," Elwig said to the old woman, pointing her finger at me as I lay stretched out upon the earth at the feet of the statue of the subterranean deity, with my hands pinioned behind my back and my feet bound fast, "kneel down upon him."
I could make not the slightest motion. The old hag planted herself on her knees upon my breast-plate, and said to the priestess:
"What must I do next?"
"Make him put out his tongue."
I then understood that, carried away at first by her savage greed into making dangerous confidences to me, Elwig now reproached herself for having heedlessly mentioned her amours and her fratricidal intentions, and could think of no better way to compel my silence on these subjects towards her brother than to cut off my tongue. The project was more easily conceived than it could be executed. I clenched my teeth with all my might.
"Tighten your fingers on his throat!" Elwig commanded the hag. "He will then open his mouth and stick his tongue out. I shall then cut it off."
With her knees firmly planted upon my cuirass, the hag leaned forward so close to me that her hideous face almost touched mine. I shut my eyes with disgust. Presently I felt the crooked yet nervous fingers of the priestess' assistant tighten at my throat. For a while I struggled against suffocation and did not unlock my teeth; but, as Elwig had foreseen, I soon felt almost smothered and unconsciously opened my mouth. Elwig immediately thrust in her fingers in order to seize my tongue. I bit her so savagely that she withdrew her hand screaming with pain. At that moment I saw the black warriors and Riowag reissue from the wood whither they had withdrawn at the priestess' orders. Riowag approached on a run, but he stopped undecided what to do at the sight of a troop of Franks who arrived from the opposite side and stepped into the clearing. One of these called out in a hoarse and imperious voice:
"Elwig! Elwig!"
"The king, my brother!" gasped the priestess, who was on her knees beside me.
It seemed to me that she looked for the knife that she had dropped during her struggle with me.
"Fear not! I shall be dumb. You shall have the treasure all for yourself," I whispered to Elwig, fearing lest, in her terror, the woman plunge the knife into my throat. I sought to secure her support at all hazard, and to contrive a means of escape by inciting her cupidity.
Whether Elwig trusted my word, or whether her brother's presence stayed her hand, she cast a significant glance at me, and remained on her knees at my side, with her head drooping upon her chest as if absorbed in revery. The old hag having risen to her feet, my breast-plate was relieved of her weight; I could again breathe freely; and I saw the Terrible Eagle standing before me, escorted by several other Frankish kings, as the chiefs of those marauding hordes styled themselves.
The Frankish chief who stood before me was a man of colossal stature. Due to the use of lime-water, his beard as well as his greasy hair, that rose in a knot over his forehead, had turned coppery red. His hair, tied with a leather thong on the top of his head, fell behind his shoulders like the flowing crest of a casque. Above each of his bushy red eyebrows I saw an eagle's talon tattooed in blue, while another scarlet tattoo mark, representing the undulations of a serpent, spanned his forehead. His left cheek was also ornamented with a red and blue tattoo that consisted of transverse rays. On his right cheek, however, the savage ornament disappeared almost wholly in the cavity of a deep scar that began below the eye and was finally lost under his shaggy beard. Heavy and coarsely-wrought gold medals, that hung from and distended his ears, dropped upon his shoulders. A heavy silver chain, wound three times around his neck, reached down to his semi-bare breast. Above his cloth tunic he wore a jacket of some animal's hide. His hose, of the same quality and as soiled as his tunic, were fastened by a leather belt from which, on one side, hung a long sword, on the other an axe of sharp stone. Wide strips of tanned skin criss-crossed upward over his hose, from the ankle to the knees. He leaned upon a short pike that ended in a sharp point. The other kings who accompanied Neroweg were tattooed, clad and armed more or less after the same fashion. The features of all bore the stamp of savage gravity.
Elwig, who remained on her knees at my side, sought to conceal her face from Neroweg. He rudely touched his sister's shoulder with the point of his pike, and addressed her harshly:
"Why did you send for me before boiling the Gallic dog for your auguries? My flayers have promised me his skin."
"The hour is not favorable," answered the priestess abruptly with a mysterious air. "The hour of night—of dark night is preferable to sacrifice to the gods of the nether world. The Gaul, moreover, says, oh mighty king, that he has a message from Victoria and her son."
Neroweg drew nearer and looked at me. At first his mien was one of disdainful indifference; presently, however, as he examined me more attentively, his features assumed an expression of hatred and of triumphant rage; at last he cried as if he could not believe his own eyes:
"It is he! He is the horseman of the bay steed! It is himself!"
"Do you know him?" Elwig asked her brother. "Do you know this prisoner?"
"Off with you!" was Neroweg's brusque answer. "Get you gone!"
He then proceeded to contemplate me with renewed interest and repeated:
"Yes, it is he; the horseman of the bay steed!"
"Did you ever meet him in battle?" again asked Elwig. "Answer me. Do answer me!"
"Will you be gone!" repeated Neroweg now raising his pike over the head of the priestess. "I told you before, be gone!"
My eyes at that moment caught sight of the group of black warriors. I saw that their captain Riowag could hardly be restrained by his men from drawing his sword, and revenging the insult offered to Elwig by Neroweg.
But so far from obeying her brother, and no doubt fearing that in her absence I might reveal to the Terrible Eagle both her own fratricidal projects and the secret of Victoria's presents which she coveted, Elwig cried:
"No! No! I remain here! The prisoner belongs to me for my auguries. I shall not go away. I shall keep him—"
The only answer that Neroweg vouchsafed his sister were several blows with the handle of his pike, delivered over her back. He thereupon made a sign, and several of the warriors who accompanied him violently drove the priestess, together with the haggish old assistant, back into the cavern at the mouth of which they posted themselves on guard, sword in hand.
The black warriors who surrounded Riowag were put to their mettle in order to prevent their captain from precipitating himself with drawn sword upon the Terrible Eagle. The latter, thinking only of me, failed to notice the fury of his rival, and addressed me in a voice trembling with rage, while he kicked me with his feet:
"Do you recognize me, dog?"
"I recognize you, rapacious wolf."
"This wound," resumed Neroweg carrying his finger to the deep scar that furrowed his cheek, "do you know who made this wound?"
"Yes, it is my handiwork. I fought you as a soldier."
"You lie! You fought me like a coward! You were two against one!"
"You were making a furious onset on the son of Victoria the Great. He was wounded—his hand could hardly hold his sword—I dashed to his help—and struck in Gallic fashion."
"You marked my face with your Gallic sword—dog!"
Saying this Neroweg struck me repeatedly with the handle of his pike, to the great amusement of the other kings.
I remembered my ancestor Guilhern, chained like a slave and supporting with dignity the cruel treatment of the Romans after the battle of Vannes. I emulated his example. I merely said to Neroweg:
"You are striking an unarmed soldier who is bound fast and who, relying upon the truce, came to you on an errand of peace—that is a coward's act. You would not dare to raise your stick at me if I stood on my feet and sword in hand."
The Frankish chief laughed, struck me again and said:
"He is a fool who, able to kill his enemy disarmed, does not exterminate him. I would like to kill you twice over. You are doubly my enemy. I hate you because you are a Gaul, I hate you because your race holds Gaul, the country of sunshine, of good wine and beautiful women; then also I hate you because you marked my face with a wound that is my eternal shame. I shall therefore make you suffer so much that your pain will be equal to two deaths, a thousand deaths, if I only could—you Gallic dog!"
"The Gallic dog is a noble animal for war and for the hunt," I replied to him; "the Frankish wolf, however, is an animal of rapine and carnage. But it will not be long before the brave Gallic dogs will have chased from their frontiers this pack of voracious wolves that have come prowling from the northern forests. Be careful! If you refuse to listen to the message that I have for you from Victoria and her valiant son—be careful! Our army is numerous. It will be a war to the death that will be waged between the Gallic dog and the Frankish wolf—a war of extermination—and the Frankish wolf will be devoured by the Gallic dog."
Grinding his teeth with rage, Neroweg seized the axe that hung from his belt, and raising it in both hands was about to let it come crashing down upon my head. I believed my last hour had come, but two of the other kings held the arm of Elwig's brother, into whose ears they whispered a few words that seemed to calm him. He held a short conference with his companions and returned to me:
"What is the message that you bring from Victoria for the Frankish kings?"
"The messenger of Victorin and Victoria can only speak on his feet, unfettered, his head high—not stretched down on the ground, and bound fast like the ox that expects the butcher's knife. Order my bonds to be removed, and I shall speak—if not, not. You have heard me, brute that you are!"
"Speak on the spot—unconditionally, you Gallic dog!—or tremble before my anger!"
"No; I shall not speak!"