THE DRUIDESS.

A STORY FOR BOYS AND OTHERS.

BY

FLORENCE GAY.

London:

JOHN OUSELEY,

16, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]

PREFACE.

As this story touches upon history to a certain extent, perhaps too much licence has been taken with Ethelbert’s movements in bringing him as far west as the Severn Valley. The union between the Britons and Saxons was suggested by the historical league formed between the Britons and those Saxons who revolted against the detested Ceawlin, and, settling in the valley of the lower Severn, took the name of Hwiccan. The date of this league was 592—eleven years after the destruction of Uriconium which in the following story is placed about 578. Some liberty, also, has been taken with the date of Ethelbert’s marriage with Bertha, which took place in 584.

It seems hardly necessary to say that Banba and Fail are old bardic names for Ireland. And that the cities Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath were known in Roman days as Glevum, Corinium and Aque Sulio.

S. Kevin is known also as S. Coemgen.

The date of the Convocation at Druimceta is difficult to discover, but must have been during the reign of S. Columba’s friend, King Aedh, 572-599.

Dedicated to my Nephews and Nieces.

CONTENTS.

Chapter. | Page.
I. | From the Britons’ appeal to Aëtius—Commander of the Roman Armies, 446 A.D. | 11
II. | Gléand dé | 21
III. | From the Epistle of Gildas the most ancient British Author | 29
IV. | Many a branch of the race of Conn is in the land of Banba of smooth grass (Book of Lecan) | 37
V. | Why Ethne hates the Christians | 50
VI. | The Sacred Heart of Hibernia | 60
VII. | Into the Arms of Moloch | 69
VIII. | Ethne again as Leader | 79
IX. | To the North | 88
X. | Bards of Hibernia | 98
XI. | Saint Columba | 114
XII. | The Fair | 122
XIII. | Man and Woman | 134
XIV. | Leader of the Kymry | 149
XV. | The Black Horse | 158
XVI. | Ethelbert of Kent | 172
XVII. | Ethne’s Error | 181
XVIII. | England’s First Christian Queen | 189

THE DRUIDESS.

CHAPTER I.

“The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea drives us back to the barbarians; between them we are exposed to two sorts of death; we are either slain or drowned.”

(From the Britons’ appeal to Aëtius—Commander of the Roman armies 446 A.D.)

Upon a cold, spring morning in the year of Our Lord 577, the closing scenes of a battle were being fought out on the western shore of Britain; in that part of the country then called Damnonia; on a stretch of low-lying land, between the two rivers—the Yeo and the Axe.

On the winning side stood the Saxons with the whole breadth of vanquished Britain behind them—on the losing, the Britons with but a narrow strip of land between them and the sea; that narrow strip of flat sea-shore.

There were women on both sides. Brawny-limbed, red-skinned Saxons with floating ruddy hair—fighting with a strength and valour worthy of the men beside them; as much at home in that scene of blood-shed as they were by their hearths making the trews and baking the bread of their lords and his ceorls. British ladies reared in the refinement and luxury that the Romans had made common in Britain; satin-skinned and white-handed, strangers to the lightest toil—now forced, in dire necessity, on the battle-field; but, once there, waging war with the spirit of their ancestress, Boadicea; smaller and slighter than their foes and untutored in the art of weapons, they were gifted with a natural dexterity and passion that enabled them, in this hour of need, to be of service to their lords and brothers.

One, in particular, had been conspicuous in the long three days’ fight, on account of her activity and skill. A slight, dark woman, raven-haired and white-limbed, clad in robes of royal saffron-colour, flashing with gold and emeralds. Often by her side was a youth, who bore a strong likeness to her; and these two, woman and boy, commanded the retreating Britons.

The boy was mounted on a beautiful Hibernian stallion, of a pure jet-black, and on the banners still drooping, here and there, overhead was the emblem of a Black Horse in opposition to the White Horse of the Saxons.

No leader could have shown more courage and spirit than this youth. In this last agony of defeat his example still inspired his followers; he gave no sign of the almost mortal wounds with which his body was pierced; his garments were red with blood, and his horse was smeared with white, where the sweat had lathered into foam—but on that stricken field every valiant warrior showed battle stains, and every jaded steed was pale with foam.

Strapped on the shoulder of the boy-leader was a small image of the Virgin, and in the ranks, behind him, were numerous emblems of the Christian Faith.

This was not only a battle between Saxon and Briton, it was also a battle between Christian and Heathen; and yet the woman, on the Christian side, from time to time broke forth into the Druidical incantations of early British days; this she did in moments of savage passion as she stood upright in her car dealing forth death from the sheaf of arrows at her side.

In one corner of the battle-field the mist-cloud lifted wholly for a few minutes, and the sun shone on the thinned ranks of the Britons showing them woefully hindered in their movements by fallen warriors and horses; a mere sprinkling of young and strong remained; here and there a wounded man raised himself and still tried to use his bow. Old men and women fought on desperately. The war-dogs were still numerous—a veritable phalanx armed with spiked collars and goaded into savage rage, strangely horrible with their red, hanging tongues and bloodshot eyes.

In the sudden gleam of sunshine the boy saw that the woman leader was in extreme peril. She had driven her chariot so quickly over the grass—slippery with dew and blood—that her horse had fallen. The boy galloped over dead and dying to her side—as he rode he saw a javelin, aimed at the woman, pierce the side of the struggling horse.

At a sign from his friend, the youth, with rare dexterity, harnessed his own horse to her chariot, in place of hers. She pointed to a gap in the ranks of a small band of Saxons; and, mounting again on his steed, the boy galloped with her to the spot—the sharp knives of the chariots doing desperate work among a body of Saxon soldiers through which they ploughed.

It was the ancient method of warfare, which the woman by instinct had followed. At just such a gap in the ranks of the foe as she had chosen it was the custom to leap from the chariot and charge on foot; but now she remained standing in her car and, suddenly cutting the traces, set her companion free to charge furiously on the surprised enemy—whilst she aided him by a quick shower of arrows. Her artifice succeeded; the boy bounded forward causing such havoc among a little band of Saxons that they—taken off their guard—turned and fled.

In the panic of the moment the enemy did not see that the boy’s gallant horse had received his death-wound. With a last frantic attempt to obey his master’s onward signal, the animal raised itself on its hinder limbs, pawed wildly in the air, gave one long, whistling breath and, with throat and nostrils choked with blood, fell back dead—and, in falling, fell upon his master.

It was the last act of the long, stubborn, futile resistance. The hovering fog-cloud swept down again upon the field as a curtain drops at the end of a scene.

The woman stood—listening. She could hear the steps of the retreating Saxons—but, beyond that, was another indistinct and distant clamour; her quick sense of hearing was confused; she bent and laid her ear to the ground. She listened intently and learnt that the main body of the Saxon host was advancing towards them.

Flight alone remained. She looked towards the flat sea-shore; the water only revealed itself for a stone’s throw—all beyond was fog—the sea that was visible was sullen grey with furious, crested waves of dead-white foam. Even in that moment’s glance she saw fugitives from her own ranks, perish on the ocean—washed from the frail rafts they had hastily made and set forth upon.

What of the boy lying crushed under his war-horse—was he dead?

He still breathed—but not all the strength she could summon was sufficient to extricate him from his position, had not a larger and stronger woman come to her aid. From her appearance the newcomer was Saxon, rather than British; she had the same blue eyes and yellow hair, the same strong features and heavy frame as the enemy from whom they were fleeing! With the strength and haste of despair the two women dragged the dead horse from the boy’s body, and carried off the unconscious hero.

When they reached the shore they found a raft awaiting them; and in a few seconds they were being pushed off, through the surf, by a few remaining British slaves.

They were accompanied by two or three scores of their own countrymen; but of these the greater number were soon washed from their rafts and their drowned bodies cast back again upon the beach.

In a few minutes the approaching Saxons had reached the shore; some of the more blood-thirsty dashed through the water in pursuit, but they were either drowned or driven back by the waves.

Just as their bark had passed safely through the surf, the two women saw a dark form swimming swiftly towards them. The fair-haired girl gave a cry for joy, as she distinguished the head of a great war-hound above the water; the animal had been often by the side of the youth during the battle and now love of his master drew him, bruised and bleeding, through the waves. The smaller woman would have beaten him off with her oar; but the other prevented her and aided the animal as he scrambled on to the raft, and threw himself beside the boy. The quarrel over the animal was so violent that the bark was in danger of foundering; the dark woman showed as much fury against the girl as she had shown that day against the enemy.

CHAPTER II.
Gléand dé.

In the days when cells and churches sprang up like mushrooms throughout Hibernia, Saint Kevin had chosen as the site of one of his monasteries that point on the eastern shore of Leinster, where the coast is rendered dangerous by sand-banks.

The little band of monks who dwelt there added to their life of toil a special watch upon the sea; they made the rescue of fugitive Britons their peculiar care; feeling it a sacred duty to protect members of the Faith, who had been driven from their homes by the fire and sword of the heathen. Moreover, S. Kevin, as a child, had been under the guidance of Petroc, a Briton, and for this reason Britons were particularly dear to his followers.

Some days after the battle in Damnonia, the monks, keeping their ceaseless watch upon the sea, saw a raft among the wreckage that the waves were bringing to the shore. At the peril of their lives they dashed into the water and dragged the raft safely to the beach. On it were four unconscious beings. A fine young chieftain with his body sadly pierced and wounded—like a marble Antinous from loss of blood; bearing marks of royal birth in his person and in his princely garments. With his head upon the young prince’s feet was a great war-hound, hoary with age, his hair matted with brine and blood. A big fair girl lay with one arm round the hound’s neck and the other clasped to her heart a man’s sword and torques—of so rich and rare a pattern that only a great king could have possessed them. A little removed from these three beings was a small dark woman from whom the simple monks recoiled at first, saying she had the air of a sorceress; she was clothed royally, like the boy, and was fair, too, as women are accounted fair in Hibernia—having long fine hair of ebony blackness.

It needed much care and skill to bring the three human beings from the death-like trance to which exhaustion and exposure had brought them. But the monks knew their work well; many a homeless Briton had found warmth and comfort at their hands; indeed, the little monastery was already so thronged by castaways that it was thought better to carry the three poor refugees to Saint Kevin’s great monastery at Glendalough—where the sculptured saint may still be seen in the ancient ruin called Priest’s house; he is the central figure in the triangular pediment of the doorway, bearing on his head the crown of the early bishops of Ireland.

Crowned with gold, he is represented to the world; yet, in the life he led in the wilderness, it must have been seldom that crown or mitre adorned his head. His monastery at Glendalough was too luxurious for him, and, for years at a time, he would withdraw himself into the heart of the woods, sheltering in a hollow tree or bee-hive hut; without fire, and existing on herbs and water. In the long trances of prayer, into which he would fall, the beasts rambled fearlessly around him, the birds perched on his arms and shoulders singing and twittering about him. At such times, he said, the leaves and branches gave forth divine music to him. It was the state of spiritual ecstasy common to the early saints; who tested to the full the efficacy of prayer from which they drew the spiritual power that shed a greater influence than a life spent in ceaseless activity.

Glendalough, or Gléand dé, signified Valley of God; it seemed a fitting name, for there the tender-hearted monks laboured every day among the Britons whom they had rescued, sharing with them their own scanty food. Only a ragged hut of wattles with heather beds could be spared to the newcomers; but the monks brought cushions of down to spread upon the heather and begged, from the neighbouring chieftains, warm cloaks and skins of sheep and bear.

The women recovered before the boy.

When, at last they were able to sit up and look about them, their eyes—that had closed on scenes of bloodshed and storm—opened on green meadows dotted with apple-trees in full bloom and bordered by gardens filled with herbs and fruit-bearing plants. On a sunny slope stretched a vineyard, and in the distance were rows of bee-hives—bees and vines, sure sign of a monastery. Gentle-faced monks were at work on the soil, their songs mingling with the cheerful tinkle of carpenters and masons at their trades, for on the land around were being raised high, domed churches and beautiful carved crosses. On the breeze came the sound of silver bells.

When the wounded youth opened his eyes and saw this scene and heard its pleasant sound, he cried out that he was in Paradise.

“Tir Tairgirie!” he cried; the delirium of weakness was upon him. “The Saxons have slain body, but spirits have carried my soul hither to its resting place!”

He raved of Tir Tairgirie—the paradise of every Celt, the constant theme of their bards. Hidden from earthly vision by a cloud, full of lovely dwellings, grass and flowers; a place of unending day and perpetual fagless summer—abounding in meat and apples—free apples—free from disease or death.

As the young warrior slept the two women watched over him.

The rain—the frequent rain of Hibernia—came up on the wind, and beat through the wattles of the cote and on the arms and bosoms of the women. But they gave no heed to wind or rain so long as their warrior was protected—stripping their own bodies to add to the coverings the monks had begged for them from the chiefs around—purple cloaks, wrought with rich broidery by Fail’s fair daughters.

“Go!” said one woman to the other. “We need thee not—he and I.” The speaker had the cold, brilliant beauty of ebony and alabaster.

“No,” replied the other; “he woke with my name on his lips.”

“Ay!” said the first. “A dream cry—a wail of nightmare horror. Thou art his evil star. And with thy sobs, thy hoggish sighs and silly tears thou dost disturb his rest! Leave him to my care. I am sick of thy blunders.”

“Then will I wait on thee,” said the fair girl, bluntly. “Ay, though I hate thee, Ethne of the Raven Hair. I will put all within reach of thy hand that thou need’st. I will go and come at thy beck and call—for thou hast rare skill in sickness, that I see—and I will serve him through thee.”

Ethne watched the boy jealously. An early training among the Druids had given her great knowledge in Nature’s laws, and she knew that the loss of blood which was the warrior’s chief danger could be cured by rest and food and air. She did not leave him night or day. Yet, as she watched him, there was neither love nor tenderness in her gaze.

On the fourth day after their journey to Glendalough he opened his eyes and looked at her. She saw the fever had left him.

“There, there,” she said, softly. “Sleep on now, and take your rest—wounds need time to heal, and time now we have in plenty.”

The boy would have raised his head, but at the attempt pain closed, like a vice, on his temples; a white arm, laden with bracelets, held him back on his pillow of heather.

His eyes dwelt on the white arm; he recognised the royal saffron-scent of the drapery that fell over it. With a feeble movement he turned so that his cheek might rest against it.

“Where is she—the Saxon—Elgiva?” he asked after a time.

“She prays,” was the answer; the boy knew, without looking, that there was a smile of scorn in the dark eyes and on the sneering lips above him.

Through the openings of the wattled cote in which he lay he had seen that the day was dark and gloomy; the sky so purple with coming storm that the sprays of hawthorn aloft had a faint, pinkish tinge upon them. The day was as dark and tempestuous as his own sad soul.

“She prays,” continued the scornful voice, “and has she not need to pray—to offer up thanksgiving? The Saxons smote us on one cheek, then we offered the other—full and grievously have we been smitten on both. Therefore she may well be pleased at our performance of the Christians’ Duty!”

The woman paused, and when she spoke again there was rage as well as scorn in her tones.

“Never forget, boy, the fruit thy father’s Christian zeal has borne! In the shaping of thy future life, remember always, Cormac of Fail, that this mushroom faith has cost us our British possessions!”

CHAPTER III.

“... some to the mountains—others yielded to be slaves because of hunger—others to the seas—singing and sighing under the shadow of their sails.”

(From the Epistle of Gildas, the most ancient British author.)

“Prate to me no longer of marriage and giving in marriage. We love each other—that’s enough! Perchance we’ll love others, and a many, ere we die. Marriage, forsooth! And this new-fangled Christian craze—one man, one wife—’tis folly! Fit only for maids and striplings. Tush, boy! I have borne with thee, and humoured thee, because of thy hurt—but now I am weary of this madness!”

Cormac made no reply; only gazed with love-sick eyes at the speaker, Ethne of the Raven Hair.

She had brought him back from death to life; when he lay more helpless than a babe she had raised his head and put food between his lips; in hours of pain and weariness she had anticipated his least want. He had lost his father, his lands, his favourite horse—all that had meant the world to the boy—but Ethne remained, and he loved her.

“In a few more days,” she said, “you will mount your horse again.”

“My horse!” said the boy, bitterly. “I have not even the power to save his bones from the crows.”

“There are other horses in the world,” replied the woman impatiently. “You shall have another stallion, Cormac—blacker and more beautiful than the last. When you ride to battle again the banners shall bear the old device. The Black Horse is not vanquished—he is but worsted for a time—he will rise again victorious. The Black Horse, Cormac of Fail, the Black Horse against the White!”

The boy shook his head.

“I will never fight again,” he said, mournfully. “The world is lost to me—you are my world now, Ethne, and when you cease to love me I shall die.”

Again his thoughts wandered gloomily on the late events—the hideous defeat—the tempestuous sea—the days of agony and weakness.

They were sitting out of doors, at a short distance from the little wattled cote the monks had given them. The day was so warm that Ethne had unfastened the long gold brooch on her left shoulder and thrown off her brat, or shawl. Her white arms and bosom were bare, beautiful gold torques twined her arms; a gold crescent shone above her forehead. Her thick black hair fell about her to her knees—round her waist was a rich purple scarf, called a criss, fringed with gold and embroidery. Her saffron-coloured tunic was open at the bosom and showed an embroidered under garment called a lann. Her dress was that of a princess of Hibernia.

His words brought a smile to her face. Ethne’s beauty was gone when she smiled, for the turned back lips revealed a terrible defect—that her eye-teeth had grown double the length of the others and were sharp and jagged, like the fangs of a wild beast.

“Mere words!” she said, with the ugly smile growing stronger. “If you loved me, you would follow my wishes.”

“I will follow you to the end of the world,” he said. “Only try me.”

At his words the woman turned sharply and looked at him with glittering eyes.

“Do you mean this?”

“I do.”

Her nostrils grew large—her breath came loud and heavy. She raised her clenched hand upward. The boy’s spirit rose.

“Would you to battle again?” he asked. “Where—how?”

“Where!—how!” she screamed. “Here in Hibernia! Rally the men of Hibernia around you—and take your sword and strike at this Christianity that has cost us our home and country!”

She had risen in speaking. Now she sat down again and pressed her lips together; and she placed her hand upon her heart, trying to subdue her passion.

She looked at him narrowly, as though half fearing the effect of her words upon him. He trembled from head to foot.

“This is madness!” he said, in a low voice. “The madness of despair—and it is harder for you than for us, for you had not Elgiva’s cause at heart.”

“Elgiva!” she hissed. “Accursed Saxon name!”

Ethne leapt from her seat again; and, with her face and clenched hand thrown to the sky, let fall a hundred curses on her foes.

She had found a vent for her smothered wrath, and the boy forgot for the time her former words.

The fear and loathing of the Saxon were upon them both. They fell into each other’s arms sobbing and crying out that Rome had done this thing to them. Rome had deserted them in their hour of need.

“The Romans taught us to love ease and luxury,” cried the boy, “and to cry out for help when we were hurt! When we had learnt our lesson well, they sailed away and left us. Then that fool Vootigern did his pretty piece of work—he made room in the nest for the cuckoo who has kicked us out of fair Britain.”

“There is little left of fair Britain now,” cried Ethne. “They have made sword-land of half of it, the other grows smaller every day—this last defeat has cut it in two. Damnonia and Cornwall, with the precious fortress, Tintagil, is severed from the rest. Men say, too, towards Caledonia there is a weak spot, where the Angles of the North are pressing closer to the sea.”

The boy’s face grew sadder. It was monstrous—incredible! The fair isle of Britain over-run by barbarians; its gentle people made food for vultures, bound in hideous serfdom or hid like vermin in the crevices of the earth. Noble lords and tender ladies herding, like animals, in caves—and filling their starving bodies with oak-flittern and beech-mast of the forest! The boy folded his arms tightly over his heaving bosom. In all the bitterness and shame that his thoughts brought him—hardest of all was the knowledge that he had not died upon the battle-field. He had fled, he said to himself—unconsciously, indeed—but, nevertheless, he had fled! Flown before the Saxons like fire—as the heathen themselves were wont to describe it.

“It is late, Cormac,” said Ethne, suddenly, looking at the shadows of the trees. “Long past noon, and you have need of meat and milk. Soon, very soon, you will be well enough to fast one day and feast the next; but we have not finished yet our work of making flesh and blood!”

When they entered their dwelling, the little round building seemed all gloom and smoke. But a bright voice greeted them and, when they were seated, a young girl brought them bowls of broth. She had been standing over the smoky central fire, stirring the contents of an iron cauldron with a ladle of yew-wood. Her eyes were red from the smoke, and her hands black and scorched from handling some half-charred nuts she had been roasting in the ashes.

Ethne and Cormac seated themselves on some leathern cushions piled on a heap of dry heather; the girl drew a low stool of yew-wood before them, and laid their platters upon it. She threw herself down, at some little distance, and proceeded to eat the nuts she had taken from the fire. An old war-hound, blind in one eye and covered by half-healed scars, dragged himself towards her and lay down with his head resting against her knee. He had previously feasted well from the bones of the soup-pot; but now he took one or two of the roasted kernels she offered him and made a show of eating them, as though to please her. It was the same hound who had followed them on their flight from Britain, whose life the girl had saved and for whom she had received wounds from Ethne; he was a wonderful creature still, in spite of his age—all muscle and fire—of the breed the Romans had admired; so tall, his head reared itself to the height of a man’s shoulder; so strong he could bear a man over bog and boulder; his one great eye, set in a cavern, seemed lit as by a spark of fire; his lean form, clothed by shaggy hair, of a weird colour, resembling the hair-like growth of ancient pine-trees.

CHAPTER IV.

“Many a branch of the race of Conn is in the land of Banba of smooth grass.”

(Book of Lecan.)

The girl rose often and attended to the wants of her companions. Cormac’s eye fell on her and marked the difference between her and Ethne. The contrast was strong. The young Saxon wore a straight robe of sack-cloth, frayed here and there, and stained from labour in the field and at the fire-side; her feet were bare; she wore no ornaments; her hair, tangled and powdered with ashes, was badly plaited, tied with rushes and drawn round her neck. Her skin was red and rough, her movements awkward, her hands large and toil-worn. She was as broad and tall as a fully-developed woman, but she had the shapeless figure and raw limbs of a child, or an awkward boy.

Once when she stooped over Ethne, in filling her cup, the Celtic woman raised her hand and slapped her in the face.

“Ah, beast!” she cried. “Cub of a Saxon sire—I loathe thy very touch!”

When the meal was over, some water was required from the spring, and the girl ran to get it. The hound, who could not endure the Saxon out of his sight, followed her.

Ethne sneered as she glanced after the retreating figures.

“It will soon be time, Cormac of Fail,” she said, “for you to take the Saxon maid to wife. She will make a fitting bride for a king, in yon sack-cloth shift.”

Again she sneered—Cormac grew crimson.

“And thou can’st have none other. Remember that! One wife must suffice for a Christian. Ha, ha!”

Cormac pushed his platter from before him and rose.

“Ethne,” he said, “I cannot fulfil my father’s commands. I cannot wed the Saxon.”

He trembled from head to foot. He had left Ethne’s side and was gazing on the wall, where a golden crown, torques of gold, and a king’s sword were displayed, deeply stained with blood. They had been taken from his father’s body on the field of battle; Elgiva, the Saxon, had carried them away, and she had placed them on the wall of their dwelling.

The boy stooped forward and kissed the tokens, one by one. The tears streamed from his eyes.

Solemnly he knelt down and, clasping his hands together, looked upward as though in prayer.

“Father,” he cried, “forgive me, but I cannot fulfil thy commands—for marriage without love is no marriage—and I loathe the Saxon!”

The boy’s grief was touching. Ethne watched him with the ugly sneer lifting her lip and showing the fang beneath.

“Well done, boy!” she cried. “A good Pictish chieftain needs no Saxon among his wives.”

Both the speakers turned as a wooden pail was cast down on the ground. Elgiva stood before them.

“What work is this you are at now,” she cried. “Ethne of the Raven Hair?”

The girl’s broad chest, red from sun and wind, heaved under her sack-cloth. She frowned on both Ethne and Cormac.

“Why do you seek to turn the son against the father’s wishes?”

The dog, which had followed the girl, gave a low growl as he noticed her attitude, and pressed closer to her side. She threw her arm round the creature’s neck; his one eye, red as a coal, burned with hatred as he looked at Ethne.

“Child of a Saxon savage,” replied Ethne, haughtily, “do I render account to thee of my doings?”

The girl gave no heed to the taunt.

“Nay, but he shall wed me,” she cried, firmly, “and fulfil the commands of his father.”

Ethne burst into low laughter.

“Thou wilt have a rare bride, Cormac,” she cried. “She will mend thy trews like all true Saxon wives, and she will wear them, too!”

Cormac strode forward.

Every word the Saxon uttered angered him. He was full of shame and wounded vanity when he looked at her; she was so raw, ugly, and uncouth. Her eyes were still red from the smoke; her mouth, naturally large, was increased in size by half-healed scars.

Now, at Ethne’s mocking laughter, he fell into a fury.

“I will not marry thee,” he cried. “Great gaby! Ugly blear-eyed, red-legged girl!”

In his rage he lifted his hand and slapped her on the face. The old hound whimpered as though his master had struck him.

Elgiva was speechless with surprise. Cormac fell back to his old position beside Ethne.

Elgiva’s face smarted with pain; one of the half-healed wounds bled afresh. Cormac had struck her—just as in the days when they had been babes together! Moreover, he had said he would not marry her. Her eyes filled with tears; she did not care for the pain, or for Cormac’s unkindness to her—but the thought that he had turned so soon against his dead father’s wishes was anguish!

“It is your fault, Ethne,” she said. “You have persuaded him to say this. You are wicked and heartless! You did not love Griffith because he would not make you his wife. You hate me because, for my mother’s sake, Griffith warred upon the Saxons!”

She sat down on the floor and, burying her face in the hound’s neck, sobbed as though her heart would break. The animal licked her hair and shoulders. Cormac watched her uneasily. It was unlike Elgiva to give way to tears. The Saxon blood which flowed in her veins—loathed by herself as well as by her companions—had endowed her with a stoical calm in times of ordinary distress.

He began to feel ashamed of the blow he had given Elgiva. He had determined that he could not marry her, but the very fact that he was breaking his father’s commands made him more anxious to show kindness to one who had served that father with more than a daughter’s devotion.

He remembered how, on the battle-field, she had attempted to throw herself between him and his death-blow; and how she had waited on his dying moments under the swords of the enemy.

In the midst of her grief, a new and comforting idea came to Elgiva. She sat up suddenly, ceased sobbing, and looked inquiringly at Cormac.

“Perhaps,” she cried, “you have no mind to marry! You mean to follow the good Saint Kevin and become a monk!” If such were the case, Cormac’s treatment of her was explained. Had not the holy Kevin himself done more than Cormac when a girl had spoken to him of marriage? Had he not taken a great bunch of nettles and beaten her with them till she was sore? Elgiva’s warm heart filled with remorse at her unkind thoughts of Cormac. She knew the dead Griffith’s wishes too well to doubt that it would be more pleasing to him that Cormac should enter a monastery than that he should become her husband.

“To enter a monastery!” sneered Ethne. “To till the ground like a slave! To wear homespun and tend sick-beds! Bah! Cormac is a warrior, and the monks have not enough spirit to kill a slave!”

“Yet the monks drew our raft to shore at the risk of their lives—and restored us to life,” said Elgiva. She had risen in anger.

“But you do not love the monks any more than you love me,” she said.

“I hate ye all—Saxon virgin and toiling slaves!” returned Ethne. “Nor have I turned slave and ploughman after their example.”

The girl glanced down at her roughened hands and earth-stained dress.

“No,” she said, “you add to their work, instead of sharing it. Even for the saffron robes on your back you must give the good men trouble. You sent the poor monk, Patrick, many a weary mile with a heavy yew chest on his shoulders. And when the case was opened what was it you had sent him for? Nothing but silk and samite—gold torques and embroidered crisses!”

Cormac, meanwhile, had been gazing at Elgiva with a troubled face. He was thinking of his dying father on the battle-field, and of his anguish when their fight for his British kinswoman had been in vain.

Cormac went up to Elgiva and placed his hand roughly on her shoulder.

“Listen, girl,” he said. “I have told you I will not marry you, and it is true. But I tell you also that I will rescue your British mother, or die in the attempt.”

He turned to Ethne and embraced her.

“My Ethne! My spouse that will be,” he cried. “My madness is passed—I am thy warrior once more—thy warrior with wounds healed by thee. We will to battle again!”

“Ahoi!” she screamed, “Cormac of Fail—Cormac, the Black Horse. To warriors alone doth Ethne give her favours! Pict, I call thee and brother! Prince of Hibernia and twig from the tree of Tara! Cormac of Fail—sprung from the loins of gods and princesses!”

She parted her crowding locks and saluted him fiercely. She drew back and smiled at him, with the little tusks gleaming on either side of her mouth. Even with that ugly smile upon her lips the boy marvelled at her beauty—at her smooth white limbs, her blue-black hair, and her flashing purple eyes.

He fell back from the compass of her arms and drew his sword, flourishing it around his head.

“Pict do you call me!” he cried, in the same screaming voice. “Ay, Pict am I, and Pict art thou! And we will rally Pict and Scot around us! We will to Britain again and harass the Saxons, as in olden days we harassed the Britons! Scot am I and Scot art thou—and the Scots brought Lia Fail and the Ogham books to Hibernia!”

“Fire!” she returned, “and blood and plunder! Men we make white with fear. Our swords drink deep of blood of maids and babes. Ahoi—we will once more to Britain!”

She drew her lips over her savage fangs. Once more she pressed her hot, fierce mouth to the boy’s.—She also drew her sword and brandished it above her head.

“Blood!” she cried, “and fire and sacrifice! Come with me, boy, to the sacred heart of Hibernia and I will show thee warriors that will set the world on fire. Tell me, Cormac, wilt thou come?”

He was as fierce and hot as she, and he yelled out with bloodthirsty oaths that he would follow her to the world’s end.

Then—like all true Hibernians, in times of excitement, they fell to calling pedigrees.

“Hail, Cormac!” she cried, striking his shoulder with the flat of her sword, “Whelp of the lion, Tuathal!”

“Tuathal the Legitimate!” chanted Cormac, proudly. “Sib am I also to Cormac, son of Art, to Conn of the Hundred Battles, and Niall of the Nine Hostages!”

“Sib art thou also to me, Cormac of Fail!” screamed the woman. “Through the blood of an Ethne—Ethne the Terrible, princess and priestess! Mighty was she in life, treading in blood as a milk-maid in dew—and mighty was she in death, for white oxen drew wood and treasure to her pyre for nine days after her death. Myrrh and amber they brought—unguents and spices and gold. Beasts they slaughtered by the score, and all the earth was drenched with mead and blood.”

“Hail to our ancestress, Ethne!” called the boy, “wife of Oengus—Oengus the Christian, baptised by Saint Patrick!”

“Nay!” thundered Ethne, suddenly dropping the chanting tone in which they were speaking. “But the wife of Oengus—she of my race and my name, never lapsed into Christianity! Druidess she was, and druidess she remained—and in the battle in which she was slain her incantations struck awe into the hearts of all that heard them!”

Then again her voice grew high and shrill as a battle-cry.

“Blood and sacrifice!” she yelled “and the secrets told by fresh-slain men!”

Suddenly she made a thrust at Cormac with her sword, a mere feint—so dexterous that, though it drew blood, it was a mere scratch that might have been received from a sharp thorn. There was a light in her eyes, like that of a half-angry tigress playing with its whelp.

“Ha, cub!” she snarled, “thou hast been bred in the faith of a cur but if thou would’st have Ethne and Ethne’s aid thou must leave all and return with me to the ancient faith and to the Druids!”

The boy fell before her, as though he had received a mortal wound.

“I cannot understand,” he gasped. “Thou art a Christian, Ethne!”

She laughed and folded her arms.

“I am a Druidess! Learn that, ye two poor white-livered Christians.”

Her glittering eyes glanced from Cormac to Elgiva.

The distant chime of the monastery bells came softly to their ears; and closer at hand the chant of Saint Patrick’s hymn, the Feth Fiddha. The June sun shone warm through the chinks in the walls.

For a time Cormac was unable to speak. When he did so, his voice was hoarse and uncertain.

“It is a foul and horrible faith. Its rites are bloody and repulsive—there is human sacrifice—and the burning to death of men and women and little children! At its best it teaches neither love nor charity.”

She spat upon the ground.

“So much for your love and charity! I never heard such words till I lived amongst fools and Christians!”

“But thou art a Christian, Ethne!”

The woman again laughed impatiently.

“A Christian! ’Twas a slight thing that—to humour thy fond old father—when in return he gave me gold and lands!”

The boy’s eyes drooped proudly. He turned and left the hut, and the old hound slunk after him.

Two heavy hands seized Ethne’s shoulders—and the Saxon’s blue eyes flamed into the purple ones.

It was the age when primitive passions held sway—and this young girl, reared in the gentle faith of the Christians—now that her anger was roused, was every whit as fierce as Ethne.

Ethne seized her knife, but the Saxon wrenched it from her grasp and threw it to the farther end of the hut.

“Viper!” cried Elgiva. “Foul woman and false friend! Thou art un-chaste, un-loving! Thou hast stolen his heart, and now seek to defile him in thy Druid rites. He shall not sacrifice, I tell thee, he shall not sacrifice!”

Ethne was inarticulate with rage. The two women fought like animals. Ethne tore at the girl with her teeth, but Elgiva prevailed—and at length threw the Celt, bruised and bleeding to the ground.

Then she wept. Not from rage or anger; but from fear and the knowledge of her own weakness. For she knew with Cormac she was powerless.

CHAPTER V.
Why Ethne Hates the Christians.

Elgiva had spoken the truth when she had said that Ethne had no love for the dead Griffith, because he had not made her his wife.

As a child, Ethne had been told she should be one of the wives of the rich and famous chieftain, Griffith Finnfuathairt—King Griffith of Erin he was called, though his kingdom in Hibernia had been long ago cut up and divided; when his father, unable to resist the dangers and excitement of a pirate’s life, had joined in with some Picts and Scots who led a life of adventure on the shores of Britain. After a wildly spent youth, the pirate settled down with his wives and retainers in Damnonia; there he became the owner of a valuable lead-mine in the Mendip Hills and, when he died, his eldest son, Griffith, found he was possessed of enormous wealth and vast lands covering the greater part of Damnonia.

Ethne’s father, Brian O’Fhirgil, had been King Griffith’s bard—as the O’Fhirgil, had been bards in the family of Finnfuathairt for generations. Ethne had been sent, as a babe, to Hibernia; where she had been fostered, and where she had lived until she was twelve years of age. The family, who had fostered her, had been poor. On her arrival in Britain the wealth and splendour of Griffith’s lands and palaces impressed her in a way she had never forgotten. She was enraptured by the magnificence of the Roman villa where her mother dwelt with the baby prince, Cormac. From that day Ethne became a slave to wealth and luxury. When she was shown the villa destined for her, as Griffith’s wife, her delight knew no bounds; and it was arranged that when she was sixteen she should take her place in his household. It wanted but three months to that date, when Griffith, who had always been attracted by the faith, suddenly became a Christian.

In the case of a convert of his age, with several wives and numerous family ties—the wives were often retained. But Griffith, with true zeal, separated from all but the mother of Cormac; and the coming marriage with Ethne was, of course, annulled.

Ethne was furious at the disappointment. In her anger at Griffith’s decision she showed him so plainly her real motives and fell so low in his opinion that, when—after the death of Cormac’s mother—he could have given her the place she coveted, he declined to do so. This last slight she never forgave; although King Griffith made her the mistress of a handsome Roman villa on the Mendip Hills, and gave her much land and gold as well—this last she only looked upon as her due, for it was the duty of every chieftain to dower the daughters of his bard.

She felt all the misfortunes of her life had come to her through Christianity; which had robbed her, not only of her position as a king’s wife, but also of her lands and the luxury of Roman Britain.

In this last onslaught of the Saxons against the Britons, Ethne felt sure King Griffith would have escaped, had he not armed and attacked the enemy.

After conquering the three cities of Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath the West Saxons, under Ceawlin, had driven the Britons to the sea across a long stretch of coast, extending from the mouth of the Severn towards the northern bank of the river Axe. Griffith’s territory lay on the southern bank, was strongly defended, and the Saxons would not have been unwilling (so Ethne believed) to have formed an alliance with him. Alliances were not uncommon between Picts and Saxons—and Griffith’s father had been considered a Pict. It was in vain Ethne reasoned with Griffith; he deliberately crossed the Axe, and attacked the conquering Britons—and it was his zeal for the Christian faith that led him to take this step.

Many years before, in a Saxon raid upon Damnonia, a British woman had been carried off from Griffith’s territory. The woman shared the fate of many of her country-women—she was forced to wed a Saxon.

In this case the woman contrived, from time to time, to communicate with her friends; and with her kinswoman, Griffith’s wife. When her child, Elgiva, was but a few years of age, she found means to send her to Griffith; she braved the wrath of her husband, rather than the child should be bred after the manner of its savage and heathen father.

Griffith formed many plans to rescue the poor woman; and in this last fight with the Saxons he had hoped to succeed.

He knew she was with the Saxon army and close to the army frontier. Her husband was dead, but she was retained by his brother, Redwald, one of Ceawlin’s most powerful thanes; who not only kept his brother’s wife a prisoner, but had shown a desire to gain possession of Elgiva, also. The woman was able to communicate with the Britons, and aid them in their plans. Griffith believed that, in the tumult and excitement of the time he could carry her off, quickly and easily re-cross the Axe, and retire to his strong and impregnable castle of Brean Down. It has been shown how fatally he was mistaken; how he was slain, and his tribe driven from the shores of Britain.

“One reason have I to be thankful in the midst of all my loss,” said Ethne to herself a few days after her late interview with Elgiva, “and that is the death of Griffith!”

She was wandering by herself, beside the stream that watered the valley.

“Griffith checked me—restrained me—opposed me in all things. But Cormac—Cormac! I shall twist him to my purpose, as I twist my hair about my fingers.”

She was determined to link her fortunes with Cormac’s. He was necessary to her; at any rate for the present, because he was the last of a royal house—of an ancient name to which she trusted to rally followers. To connect herself with him would strengthen her own slight connection with his family. She felt that fortune had favoured her in the fact that both she and he had inherited a similar type of face and form—a type dear to Hibernians, combining blue eyes and blue-black hair.

It had given her much thought to decide the nature of the tie that should unite them in the eyes of the world. At first she had an idea of marrying the lad; but finally decided that it would further her interests to rely on the bond of fosterage that existed between them, and which was strengthened by the fact that their families were related to each other. The ancient system of fosterage was almost sacred in the eyes of Hibernians—she and Cormac should be known as brother and sister; children of the great Tuathal.

“Hibernia shall give me warriors to regain my lost possessions,” she cried. “And Cormac shall help me to my triumph! How soon I am rid of him after I care not!” She threw her arms towards the sky. “Why was I born a hanger-on of the house of Finnfuathairt? Why should he, and not I, be first of the royal line? Ye stars! Help me to power quickly for I am sick of clinging to the skirts of others! All my life long Griffith thwarted me—and yet I was forced to live on his bounty. Now must I have this cub ever at my side, fearful lest at any minute he should play me false and refuse to follow me!”

It grew late, but still she remained, wandering up and down the little glade in which she walked. The moon rose; and when it was fully risen she stole away, with a soft, cat-like tread, towards a little clump of oak trees that stood on the fringe of the neighbouring forest.

She had not long to wait. Soon her quick ear caught the sound of a footstep—light and cat-like as her own. A man muffled in a Druid’s cloak came quickly towards her.

They met in thick shadow—one or two patches of moonlight was all that found their way to them through the leaves, but they showed that the man, beneath his cloak, was clothed in shimmering white.

“It is over—you have done it! It was propitious?”

It was Ethne’s voice saying these words. She was breathless—quivering with excitement.

The man was breathless also, for he had been running.

“No—we were disturbed—”

“What! you have not divined?”

“Listen—we were disturbed—”

“You have not divined—you have not divined! What of your promises—did you not swear, last time we met, that you would not come again unless you had done it!” She tore at her flowing hair in her anger. “I tell you I must consult—I must know. There are a hundred things I want advice upon; you are all such dolts and thick-heads—”

“But I tell you—it is difficult—we were disturbed.”

“Disturbed! but you could wait and begin again!”

“We were afraid of discovery—we had to bury the body!”

“You had already killed him, then—it was a man!”

“Yes.”

“I believe now a woman is better. Disturbed! Fools and numb-skulls—then dig it up and begin once more.”

“You forget—the body must still be quivering with life, if we are to read aright!”

She stamped her foot in anger.

“How were you disturbed?”

“By the fool Kevin and his monks.”

Rage kept her silent for a minute—then she burst forth.

“These Christians! These accursed Christians! Everything I set my hand to they come and spoil! Oh, when I hold Hibernia in my hands, let them look to themselves! I will burn their monasteries over their heads as the Saxons burnt our palaces! I will thrust them to the sea—I will throw them to the bears! I will cut out their tongues and give them to my dogs. I will cut their legs from under them, when they stretch their hands in prayer, I will strike at them too! Footless and handless they shall crawl in the dust before me!” In her rage she ground her teeth. Then turned quickly to the man. “When will you try again?”

“I do not know! We must wait until Beltane. I told you that long ago. We shall have more chance then of a victim!”

“A victim—is that your word? I tell you if the ancient faith were as it should be, we should be selecting victims—not seeking them! What news have you in other quarters—are our people arming themselves?”

“Everywhere!”

“And the first attack is to be made at Druimceta?”

“Ay, and a fitting place, too, to strike at them—since it is there, instead of the ancient place at Tara, that King Aedh has chosen to assemble the princes.”

CHAPTER VI.
The Sacred Heart of Hibernia.

“To-morrow—at dawn!” said Ethne. “Be ready!”

Cormac was well and strong again; on the morrow he was setting forth to see the wild plains of Hibernia—and Ethne would be at his side.

He was once more her slave. At first he had said that he would part from her, would never look on her face again, if she belonged to that foul and horrible faith.

But it was in vain he strove against a boyish passion for a woman more than half-a-score of years his senior—the very fury of her outbursts fascinated him. So it came to pass that the old relations were established between them, and little reference made to the cause of their division.

Though he rose early on the following day, Ethne was before him; seated on a beautiful white horse and holding by the rein a magnificent black stallion.

The creature was a pure bred Hibernian race-horse. His trappings were mounted with gold; a magnificent purple cloak lay across the saddle, ready for Cormac’s use; it was lightly flecked with gold—Cormac saw at once it was one of the speckled cloaks so much in vogue amongst the Druids.

“I told you you should find a horse awaiting you,” said Ethne, “and that it would be of the true colour.”

“But you did not tell me it would be of the purest breed the world can show!” exclaimed Cormac, as he leapt to the saddle. The horse rose on its hind quarters and pranced; the colour mounted with joy to the boy’s face.

A stout hide shield was slung on Cormac’s arm, a short, Irish sword thrust in his belt; room was found on his horse trappings for a tough yew bow, a sheaf of arrows bristled at his side—some with poison lurking in their points, others tipped with stone and of a rude make like the arrows of ancient cave-dwelling people. A pike supplemented his short sword, and some half-javelins found their place at his saddle.

He turned to Ethne, and poured out warm thanks for the horse.

“The gift is not from me,” said Ethne, her long hair streaming in the wind as she rode beside him. “Nor do I know if the givers’ names will please you, my Christian brother.”

“Tell me!” said Cormac.

“Need you ask?” returned Ethne. “Where can you find such fire, such strength, and lightness, but in the horses of the Druids? The steed is a gift to you from my brother-Druids.”

Cormac made no reply.

“It is a love gift, too, Cormac—for their hearts are true to the children of Tuathal! Though they can no longer feast at Tara, they can pour out such poor treasures as they have at the feet of their future lord. They are not rich, boy—and they could have sold that horse for its weight in gold to the Eastern merchants who are ever seeking Hibernian racers—but they chose rather to starve than forego the joy of giving him to you.”

The boy breathed hard—deeply touched.

“They shall not find me ungrateful,” he said.

“They ask little at your hands,” said Ethne. “All they say is, Come and Try. Try our mysteries, and see if they do not yield more knowledge and certainty than the Christian faith.”

Cormac shook his head.

“Well, well, we will not talk of it now,” said Ethne, lightly raising her arm as a signal to her horse to go faster.

Ethne looked her best on horseback. She was as lithe and active as a boy; and could rival a man in all the feats common amongst the riders of the day. She could rise upon her feet when her horse was at full gallop—could jump from the saddle and mount again, without drawing rein; and, as she rode along, could bend lightly down and pick the wayside grass and flowers.

Cormac drew deep breaths of rapture as he rode by Ethne’s side. It was good to feel a horse under him once more, to feel the wind on his face and hear the saddle creak beneath him. It was pleasant, too, to ride beside Ethne whom he loved; to laugh and talk; to be sure his wounds and weakness were a thing of the past; to cherish wild hopes of future war and victory—that seemed near and possible on this bright summer morning. He was a man now, he told himself; he had left boyhood behind him; a man and a leader of men—with a woman at his side. They travelled quickly; the horses, of their own accord, broke into a gallop and carried them forward, mile after mile, in swift, easy motion.

After Cormac’s weeks of confinement, the long ride was bliss to him. The motion of his horse was like the flight of a bird, he thought—such a long, winged, untiring stroke, bearing him on through the scented summer air. He had no eyes for the country near at hand; his gaze was fixed on a gap in the hills before him where smooth and soft, stretched the waving grass of Hibernia. In the songs which Ethne sang to him there was so much about the wild grass of the great plains. How it waved up the slopes of the hills around, and clothed them to their summits. How it sprang, everywhere, even roofs of the little wattled cotes of the hamlets; how the bards would lie and sing their melodies into it, and all the tiny blades would carry the music from one to another—thus spreading their songs over all Hibernia. There were a thousand pretty fancies of a like kind in the old tales and songs. Cormac noticed how much greener and richer it was than the grass of Britain; unspoilt by frost, bright and fresh from constant showers.

In the deep, rich pasture hundreds of horses lived lives of joy—untouched by the hand of man. In their freedom a thousand times more beautiful and graceful than their brothers who knew bit and saddle. And here, in Hibernia, thought the boy to himself, he would find warriors as fresh and free as the creatures of the wilds. It was his constant wail that Rome had caused the ruin of Britain—here he felt the truth of his words. In the life struggle against Jute and Angle and Saxon only fierce, wild races could survive. Civilisation meant indeed destruction.

“Rome!” he said to himself. “Rome is no more!”

Ay, she had been gone for long—fallen prey to Goth and Hun, but for the first time in his life Cormac realised it; and in doing so a momentary weakness seized him for Roman civilisation had played its part in his life; it had drawn his grandfather from his fellows, the Picts and Scots, and made him Bret!

But here, thought Cormac, in Hibernia he would find the ancient spirit, unknown in poor, lost Britain. Back, then, once more to Pict and Scot! He leapt to his feet, on his horse’s back, as they rode along; and, brandishing his sword around his head, uttered the wild scream of a war-cry.

Ethne joined her voice to his; and, as they galloped by wattled hamlets, by dun and cabin, all eyes were turned on the two noble riders and on their black and white horses. The news spread fast that Cormac of Fail, of the race of Finnfuathairt, had returned from Britain. Men, women and children ran everywhere to salute them. A party soon formed around them, mounted on horseback. When they halted beautiful girls ran forward, offering mead and curd to refresh them. Old men tottered from sunny grianans to look upon the face of the last of the house of Finnfuathairt. Old women called down blessings upon them and children peeped at them shyly from hiding places. Slaves crept unperceived from quern and hoe to stare upon them, open-mouthed.

Everywhere Ethne proclaimed their lineage.

“We are the children of Tuathal the Legitimate! We trace our descent through the race of Finnfuathairt! Cormac of Fail, known in Britain as the Black Horse; and Ethne of the Raven Hair—foster sister to Cormac, and likewise descended from his family, through Ethne the Terrible!”

Her cry was taken up far and wide; for Hibernians never tired of reciting pedigrees. And, here and there, one would come forward who remembered her in childhood; and how she had been sent for from Britain when her mother fostered Cormac.

Every hour the crowd around them grew larger. From marsh and forest wild men came forth, clad in skins with red naked limbs; their beards and long hair plaited, strange devices tattooing their freckled skins. Even from the weans beneath the earth, short, long-armed men, dark and swarthy, scrambled out and ran, fleet-footed, in the rear—some, among them, leaping on the great Irish hounds, rode in this manner amongst the throng.

Thus riding on in triumph, they left the hills behind, and entered the great central plain of Hibernia.

The day drew near its close; but, as the shadows fell, Cormac thought that the crowd around him grew thicker. He had pictured these wide plains desolate and uninhabited; and now it seemed to him they swarmed with people and with flocks and herds—everywhere he looked he saw lights twinkling.

Ethne had chosen for their journey the time of the Beltane Festival.

“It is a fitting time to enter the sacred heart of Hibernia,” she had said to Cormac, in speaking of the two great Druidical festivals, Beltane and Santheine. “Therefore I have chosen it; it is our time of joy—so hallowed by custom that even some of the Christians share it with us.”

There was such excitement and fascination in these ancient festivals that the wild spirits of the Hibernians were unable to resist them; when, as Christians, they wished to do so. They entered often from mere love of excitement and danger; not realising—or realising too late—that they were offering homage to the sun-god of the Druids who was no other than Baal—the Baal of the Syrians, the Phœnicians, and the ancient Hebrews—the Bosheth, or shameful thing of the Jewish writings.

CHAPTER VII.
Into the Arms of Moloch!

“All hail! all hail! Son of the House of Tuathal! Twig from the tree of Tara!”

These words were cried in Cormac’s ear next evening; as he and Ethne gave their horses drink at a running stream.

The cry was followed by a shout of victory as a Druid—the horse beneath him wet with sweat—leapt across the stream; his beard and garments streamed in the wind as he disappeared in the smoke of a circle of fires.

“Behold! behold!” cried Ethne, leaning forward and pointing to the circle of fires. “You have seen the winner!”

With a wild cry, she struck her horse—the creature bounded forward and she disappeared after the Druid.

A great wave of excitement passed over Cormac. He knew enough of the rites of the Druids to realise what this meant to Ethne. He had seen the winner of the Snake’s Egg—the Anguineum; the most prized of all druidical charms; believed to be thrown in the air from the frothy striving of entangled serpents; and eagerly sought after by waiting Druids who stood around with outstretched cloaks ready to catch it as it fell. The lucky Druid who caught it would forthwith ride at full speed on a waiting horse to gain security by the placing of running water between himself and the pursuing serpents—for it was believed the vipers turned immediately in pursuit.

As far as Cormac could see, the country was dotted with wreaths of smoke. As the evening fell, innumerable fires twinkled under the smoke; tongues of fire leapt on every hill, on every peak and granite column; they lit up the tracks in the swale and heath before him. He knew that to the Druids they were sacred fires.

As he looked around it seemed to him that all Hibernia was ablaze. Again the same wave of excitement passed over him—a strange, savage thrill as of some unknown instinct awakening within him. As though he, like the world around him, had been set on fire.

Other wild spirits had taken fire, likewise. The sight of the leaping flames worked like mead on the Hibernians. Those who still professed the ancient faith plunged, intoxicated, into all the sacrificial rites of the Druids. Many who professed Christianity, threw it, for the time, aside—as they might have thrown aside a mask; or mingled the fierce and bloody orgies of Beltane with the rites and ceremonies of their own Easter.

Suddenly a band of Druids, in shimmering white robes, circled around Cormac; the setting sun sparkled on their golden harps and ornaments.

One of their number sprang forward with cries of praise and greeting. At his call the other members of the band grouped themselves around the young prince in attitudes of extravagant joy and homage.

“Cormac of Fail! Stealer of men’s hearts! Maker of ravens’ food—and shedder of blood! Hail, then, to Banba—great son of thy fathers!”

These words were cried in the monotonous chant of bards accustomed to attune their voices whenever occasion required it. They paused; then smote a full chorus from their harps.

“From sea to sea, in this circle of Tuathal’s carving, every heart is full with joy at thy return and with sorrow at thy losses. Ahoi!” The voices rose to a battle-cry. “Ahoi! for Tuathal of Tara’s hosts! Ahoi, for Tuathal—maker of Ravens’ food—Tuathal of war horses, foam-pale! Ahoi, ahoi! We have lost the Egg—we have missed the sacred thing—but we have found the child of Tuathal—Tuathal from Tara of Fail!”

The bards paused—the earth around Cormac was covered with white-robed Druids, prone before him. The blood mounted on the boy’s cheeks. Again they smote upon their golden harps.

“Welcome to Hibernia! Welcome—thrice welcome! Behold us at thy feet! We—the mouthpiece of thy country! We offer thee all—all that Fail hath to give! Her gold, her honey, her white-toothed daughters, her swift racers, her fair, spotted trout, her sloes, and apples and brown nuts—her blood for thy sword to drink. Take all, take all—only let us worship thee. For art not thou from Tuathal’s loins? Tuathal Teachmar? Who armed his hosts with spears—who placed his steward over Ceara and built wattled towers on the hill tops to protect the land! Tuathal from Tara of Fail!”

They rose to their feet; dropped their harps, and held out their arms to him, circling about him.

“Come back to us, for we love thee—come back to us! For art thou not of us, brother of Ethne? Brother of Ethne, Ethne, our Druidess!”

Again they broke into wild battle-cries. Some of them, leaping on their horses, galloped in a ring around Cormac, followed by their great barking hounds.

Darkness was falling on the land; but the lurid light of the myriad fires lit it in a strange, unearthly fashion. The noise, the glare, the mad movement of the circling horsemen confused Cormac.

The frenzy of their sacred rites was upon the Druids. Golden sickles flashed on high. A storm of song and shouting followed the battle-cries. Sharp chords came, crashing from fiercely smitten harps.

The band led Cormac, with horse and hound, towards one of the blazing fires; the horses shying and leaping, terrified at the blaze, and smoke, and moving shadows; the dogs showed their white teeth as they snarled with fear of the fires.

The clamour increased. Cormac’s heart beat harder; his face burned.

On the heights above the simple folk were driving their cattle through the fires—they received the stir and spirit of the movement; and, flocking forward, soon swelled Cormac’s little band to a frenzied host. They stripped themselves of their garments, and thrust them before the young man’s horse.

Every step of his advance added fresh satellites to the ring in which he moved; as they circled about him with wild faces and frenzied shouts, they sprang through fire and the mazes of sword-dances till their bodies were singed and bleeding.

Cormac was ascending one of the hills that dot here and there Ireland’s stretch of central plain. From far and wide the people were flocking to a long, sloping hill-side, leading to the great Dun of Tlachtga that his ancestor had erected near Athboy. It was the holy place of the Druids where, on all great festivals, the sacred fire was made from which all the hearths in Munster were lit.

On the hill-side the flocks and herds mingled with the people; driven through and through the smoke and between the fires, till half mad with fear. A thousand beast-eyes caught the red of the flames, and added to the glitter of the scene; the jagged horns of oxen bristled in the close masses; the wind from their nostrils played a full accompaniment to the babel of tongues. Night seemed lighter than day in the full glare of the fires—and the moving black shadows seemed full of points of light, in glittering pike and knife.

The masses of men, women, and beasts swayed and spread, like a sea, on the hill-side; and, above them, flashed like foam the white dress and limbs of Druid and Druidess—leaping and bounding on the stone monuments with which the hill was dotted.

Highest of all a band of chanting Druids was grouped, motionless, around a great white bull breathing his last on the stone of sacrifice—his blood staining their golden knives and white robes and his own white skin.

Suddenly, in the midst of a surging mass, a small hand, strong as iron, seized Cormac’s bridle and wild eyes flashed into his.

It was Ethne; her saffron garments torn and singed. The white fell of her stallion splashed with blood.

“Choose!” she cried. “Come to us, child of the sun, and worship with us, or depart to the saints! They will give you caves to fester in and cold stones to do penance on—mast and acorns for hermits’ food—go, Christian!”

The supreme contempt in her tones had little sting for Cormac. He hardly heard her words; with all his might he was struggling against the overwhelming desire to enter in upon this scene of fire and danger. The natural desire of a youth to join in the dancing, wrestling, and horse-racing; and joined to this was a fierce desire for further excitement and danger.

The horrible fascination was growing.

In a hush, in the storm, the voices of the chanting Druids came to his ears—silver sweet. He could see them raise their sacred symbols. The beatings of his heart grew faster.

“You have the Christians’ symbol!” he said. “The Cross!”

The Druid at his horse’s bridle borrowed the silver tone of the sacrificial chanters.

“We have their symbol,” he said, “because we have all symbols—the symbols of all eternity—reaching to the very limits of the darkness behind us, to the uttermost limit of the light before us. We are the sons of the Sacred Tree—and all knowledge is with us, and all desire, and all ecstasy!”

Beside them was a group of frenzied worshippers cutting their naked bodies with flints; their cries broke in upon the silver of the Druids’ voices in notes of brass.

The youth upon the saddle had closed his eyes; he swayed a little as though he had already drunk of the mead which the people were spilling and drinking.

“You are ours,” cried the voice of the Druid, “ours! But you reel and sicken at our incense as the bee, fresh from the cell, reels and sickens at a field of clover!”

The young warrior opened his eyes. His face was as white as the Druid robes around him. He leant forward in his saddle—his eyes were wide with hunger—the hunger of fierce, stifled excitement. With one sweeping glance he took in all the scene before him—the struggling hosts that seemed to circle to the far horizon—the smoke blending with the dark sky above—the stars blending with the distant fires—the distant fires that brought the dull glitter of far bog and quagmire into the play of universal flame. Burning flame that added crimson to the flowing blood—flesh to the glancing steel—gold to the poured-out mead—and snow to the naked limbs of the frenzied dancers.

His ears were deafened by savage yells, screams of pipes and cries of terror-stricken brutes.

Suddenly he leapt to his feet on his saddle—the flame danced on his brandished sword and on his eyes—fire seemed to fill his veins.

A battle-cry rang from his mouth. Something fiercer than love of battle came upon him—bloodshed, and steel, and mead, and women, and danger urged him forward into what looked like a whirlwind of fire and weapons.

He sprang with a savage cry to the arms of those awaiting him. He drained the horn of mead held to his lips. The jewelled fastenings of his robe were unclasped—and seizing sword and shield he flew, naked limbed and quivering, into the mazes of sword and fire.

CHAPTER VIII.
Ethne again as Leader.

Just at dawn he left them—after the human sacrifice had taken place.

He had not realised that the wild and terrible night would end in such a sacrifice. And it was only when it happened that the full horror of the festival burst upon him. Then—just as suddenly as he had entered upon the scene—he turned and left it.

He went forward blindly. Stumbling, sometimes, over the prostrate bodies of bacchantes—stupid with mead, half-dead from excess. The day had fully dawned, the fires were waning, the air was full of smoke.

Once he hurried forward surrounded by a bellowing herd of cattle; and once he narrowly escaped being gored to death by a maddened bull. The forests through which he passed swarmed with the sheep and oxen of Rath and Dun—herding with the forest swine, and deer, and bears. Weird creatures, whom he could scarcely term men, fled at his approach; they had been startled from their forest-lairs and were now returning—shaggy-haired, blink-eyed, stained with woad, and clad in skins of sheep and bear.

Once only he stopped in his wild flight; when he found a stag wounded fatally in an encounter with a fellow stag; he stayed to plunge his sword to its heart and end its sufferings. In doing so he shed tears to think of the sufferings and terror of the animals in the night just past.

His speed was terrific as he ran through marsh and forest, tearing his way through bracken and knee-holly. He fled as though pursued; and it was himself he fled from—his own flesh and mind degraded by the dread rites in which he had shared.

He threw himself upon a runaway horse and went on, and on, and on—with ever the scene of blood and fire before him.

A little child with a face like the morning, passed by, singing as it went, carrying flowers mixed with hawthorn leaves. All around lay cultivated fields, gardens, and rows of bee-hives; beasts were basking in the sun.

Such was the scene upon which Cormac opened his eyes. How long he had slept he did not know, but he found himself lying on a mass of dry moss beneath an oak tree. Someone had covered his half-naked body with a sheep-skin and he lay warm and comfortable. For a moment he thought he was back with S. Kevin’s monks and that the Beltane festival was a bad dream. Then full remembrance came, and he cowered down in the moss and covered his face with his hands. He, a Christian, had entered into the foul and bloody rites of the Druids.

To his ears came the soft chime of six-sided bells. After a time he sat up and looked about him. He was surprised to see the quantity of hawthorn that abounded everywhere. Every child that passed carried branches of it; there were fields of young hawthorn tenderly cared for by labourers; among the larger trees wood-men were busy cutting it and piling it in heaps—and others were busy carrying away the waiting piles upon their shoulders.

Cormac rose to his feet as he realised where he was. He knew he could not be far from the cell of his cousin, the Princess Brigit—the sweet girl-saint of Kildare; who was so full of the spirit of love and propitiation of early Christianity that she thought it no sin to keep one of the Druid’s sacred fires burning—consecrating it anew to the Christian Faith and hoping to win the Druids over likewise. The great fire was fed entirely on the hawthorn wood; in using such fuel Saint Brigit felt she gave a truly sacred and symbolic character to the fire, for she believed that Our Lord’s Crown of Thorns was made of hawthorn.

In all the land around him lay the feeling of home and peace for which Cormac’s smarting spirit longed—but he could not stay. In this sweet spot he felt himself unclean.

A kindly wood-cutter offered him some food, which he gratefully accepted. Then he turned westward and went on once more till he had left Kildare far behind him, and the wild plain spread itself before his eyes.

Around him waved the long grass, and he stretched himself at full length upon it, plucking it in handfuls; heaping it on his face; as though there were something cleansing in its cool touch—hot and sick still at the memory of his Baal madness.

He realised, too late, that the sun-god of the Druids was Baal. A flood of light was poured on some of Ethne’s wild assertions—that the Druids held the ancient faith from which the Hebrew prophets had led the Jews away. Ay, it was Baal, the Druids worshipped—at the temple of the sun in the Slieve Bloom mountains—at the place of sacred fire near Tara—everywhere, Baal. And in their worship the very depths of iniquity were reached; bloodshed and license went hand in hand.

He writhed anew at the thought of his shares in the festival. He could not rid himself of the memory of those twisting serpent dances, leading to scenes of bloodshed, excess, and fire.

As he lay in grief and shame upon the grass, a few hot tears dropped from his closed eyelid. Suddenly some strong instinct caused him to sit up and open his eyes. Before him was Ethne of the Raven Hair.

She had ridden noiselessly over the plain towards him, and had reined in her horse at a little distance; she sat motionless on her saddle looking at him with a smile of scorn on her face.

“You ran away!” she said.

She was again dressed in spotless saffron coloured robes, her long hair flowing, smooth and glossy, under her veil, the golden crescent glistening on her forehead; her adornments were richer than usual—besides her golden torques she wore emeralds and British pearls on the clasps of her robes; her fingers were almost covered with rings. She was mounted on the same white stallion on which she had made her journey to the plains; here and there he showed blood-stains, and some yellow patches where the flames had caught and singed him.

“And you have lost your horse,” she continued. “I cannot find him anywhere.”

The boy made no answer. He looked at her as he might have looked at an evil spirit.

Now that he faced her for the first time since the dreadful festival, he could not have said whether he hated her or not—all he knew was that his feelings towards her had changed. He could not forget the last dreadful scene in which he had seen her amongst the foremost of those who had offered the human sacrifice. When he had seen her lift her gory knife, uttering fierce incantations meanwhile, he had fled.

“What a fool you were, Cormac,” said Ethne, “to leave just before we divined.”

“Let me forget!” cried Cormac, striking his brow, as though in agony. “Let me forget—I will forget!”

The Druidess looked at him in amazement. His emotion was a further instance of the work of this strange faith, Christianity.

“Unclean!” he cried, and again with the same frenzy, “Unclean, unclean! Oh, Ethne, your religion is cruel—monstrous—devilish!”

“Cruel—monstrous—devilish?” she said, repeating his words slowly. “Why not? All we want is the secrets of the gods—the secrets that concern us.” She was speaking quietly and patiently, because she had found she could only manage him by patience. “Why should we not kill if it will help us to read the future? Is not Death the portal to the Beyond, and if you would have its secrets you must enter by the only door open. We believe that when Death has just descended upon a human being his heart and lungs and inward parts unfold the future to us! And ’tis better if every passion be excited first!”

Cormac shuddered.

He felt he must leave Ethne; never look again upon her face—he would return to the Christians. And then the dreadful thought came that he himself had offered unto Baal—he was unclean! He wished to leave Ethne, yet she still attracted him and there was a new and horrible tie between them.

Then weakly he began to excuse her to himself. If she believed, as she said, did it not make her crimes the less? Why should he think of fleeing from her presence—was he not worse than she? He, who called himself a Christian!

She had dismounted and had thrown her bridle over her arm. Almost unconsciously they moved forward on the marshy bridle-path before them.

“We have sinned,” said Cormac. “But my sin is greater than yours.”

The Druidess looked at him with the same expression of scorn and wonder that she had shown before. After a time she said:

“Some day—not now—I will tell you the message that the diviners unfolded to me.”

Cormac only answered by a gesture of horror.

“We have all our work to begin over again,” said Ethne. “You have lost your horse—and by your foolish flight you have scattered the warriors we had gathered about us! You are clad in sheepskin like a serf, or a Christian hermit!”

Cormac stood still.

“Ethne,” he cried, “I cannot go on—I cannot, and I will not, continue this unholy work!”

“What a craven thing you are!” cried Ethne. She was glad to see a flush of anger on the boy’s face. “And what of your promises to me—the Christians are always boasting that they keep their promises—have I not done my part, were you forced into anything against your will?”

“I do not blame you,” Cormac said proudly. “The fault was mine—but I will not continue.”

“I do not know what you mean by repeating you will not continue—you will not continue. I promised to rally warriors around you, so that you might rescue Elgiva’s mother—and I will do it. I promise you, if you wish it, that you shall not be led into any more of our festivals—since you cannot resist the joy of them!”

“Have no fear of my entering upon them again,” said Cormac.

“I hoped to make a man of you!” exclaimed Ethne.

“Then give me man’s work to do!” cried Cormac, fiercely, “and not the work of fiends and beasts. Give me warriors to lead into battle, and let me die at their head if need be!”

“You shall have them!” cried Ethne, with sparkling eyes.

“When?” he asked.

“When we go North—an army awaits us there. We will start to-morrow.”

For a time he wavered; then consented to go with her.

CHAPTER IX.
To the North.

They spent that night in the wattled cote of a wood-cutter. Tamed wolves and great hounds slept on the straw beside them, making the air so foul that they were glad to leave at the first streak of dawn.

A lowering sky—dark and thunderous—shadowed the frowning wastes before him. Patches of white bog-cotton sprang here and there—ghastly in the early light; brimming pools flashed like dull steel around; the stretches of furze and heath held a dull crimson in their hue like the spent blood on a battle-field.

A sighing hermit—from his cell in a roadside cavern—aided them in their search for a horse for Cormac’s use; pointing with a fleshless hand, to a clough in a line of low barren hills, where sluggish runlets gleamed silvery, in the dank soil of a peat valley.

“In that peat morass,” the hermit told them, “a hundred stallions have been driven—as spoil in a feud between two kings, that is laying waste the country side. A score of them have foundered in the bog—and, I doubt not, will fall easy prey to any passer-by.”

There, knee-deep in slough and peat, Cormac found a beautiful creature; tired and spent with struggling in the bog—the veins under its satin skin netting its body like cord; its eyes strained and blood-shot. An animal so black and glossy that beside it the black peat looked as grey as ashes.

They found it a long, hard task to draw it from the bog; and only to be done by harnessing Ethne’s stallion to the struggling creature, and thus dragging it forth.

Whilst the animal rested and recovered its full strength the woman and boy disputed over the road they should travel on.

“Come with me first to Tara,” Ethne said. “Come and see the place where our ancestors reigned as gods and kings. Come and see the halls where Tuathal held his feasts—where, every day, three hundred cup-bearers handed golden goblets to the royal guests—and every king in Hibernia came and paid homage to their over-king.”

“I will not go to Tara!” said Cormac, firmly. He felt that it was too near the late scene of horror. It was near the Druids’ sacred place of fire.

“You will not!” cried Ethne, angrily. Then a change came over her face, and she grew as pale as death. “No—you had better not. You are a Christian, and even Christians feel shame when they look on Tara. For was not the curse that it is under laid on it by one of your saints?” She dropped her voice to sad, moaning tones like the wind among the branches overhead. “Yes, the feasts are no more and the golden roof is falling—the wind is sweeping through the sacred halls! Tara is deserted! Tara is accursed—and the evil was wrought by the Christians!”

Then she raised her voice in a scream, and looked at him with glaring eyes.

“And you, Cormac of Fail, you—and I also, forgive me, Sun in heaven—fought for the faith that cursed the home of our ancestors!”

Cormac looked at her with a frown for a time. Ethne’s sudden transports of emotion had enchanted him. Now he felt he could never look at them without conjuring up that dreadful scene when she had helped in the human sacrifice.

She read his thoughts and her fury increased. She knew that the last few days marked an era in Cormac’s life; he had passed, like lightning, from boyhood to manhood; in doing so the tie between them had changed—she had no longer the same power.

He had slipt upon the black stallion’s back, without saddle and without bridle, one hand grasping the creature’s tangled mane, the other urging it forward. The horse bounded and leapt furiously, but Cormac sat firm—a picture of youthful skill and ease.

“To the North!” he said, glancing back at Ethne. “To the North—where you have promised me warriors!”

So they went on day by day—over rich loam and peat and chalky marl—towards the wilds of the North.

To the steep and savage hills and cliffs of Tir Conall’s coast, to Tir Conall’s broad and treeless waste of moor and bog—everywhere and always the wild sea thrusting fierce arms into the jagged land; till Cormac felt there was less of land than of water in his path; for the rains of autumn had commenced—tarn, river and mountain stream were brimming. Far North they went, until the Ultima Thule of Hibernia—Innistrahul—lay before them. And then they turned westward; where the troubled sea, beating under beetling cliffs, sprang higher in the air than the highest tower of Hibernia.

The bittern and the white stork—coot and heron—were thick in the marshy land around him; from moor and heath came the weird cries of curlews, and the fallows were strewn with their egg-shells.

Here he discovered tribes that were sib to him in the country off Tir Conall. When the two sons of his ancestor, Niall of the Nine Hostages, made sword-land of so much of Ulster they gave to the northern lands beyond the country of The Waters, the names of Tir Eogan and Tir Conall—that is to say Tir Eogan or the Country of Eogan, and Tir Conall, or Country of Conall.

He found a warm welcome and many followers amongst his kith and kin; the young warrior, on his matchless steed, took the Hibernian hearts by storm. Hoary chieftains, weary of warring on each other, came at the call of one who bore the ancient name; huntsmen left the chase and armed their great wolfhounds for war; youths from schools and monasteries left parchment and vellum and took up pike and battle-axe again. And Cormac found smiles and favour from the daughters of the land; as he passed they would run and offer him mead and milk and apples; many a king’s daughter, in her sunny grianan with her carved work-box before her, busied herself embroidering saffron coloured crisses for the black-haired youth; many a maiden of less degree offered him simpler love-tokens; but, if here and there he dallied, he was never drawn from the great object of his ride—to gather warriors to do his father’s bidding.

From Druid and from Christian alike the same tale met his ear:

“The greater part of the noble youth of Hibernia become missionaries and monks—wandering often to the very limits of the earth. Of those left behind, the idle and careless join the bards; the rest turn pirates—plundering their own people as well as the Britons and Saxons. We need such as thee, Cormac of Fail, to strike once more the ancient chords, and rally our men around thee!”

All agreed it was among the bards he was to find warriors—that great and numerous company, comprising two thirds of the men of Hibernia—could he but rouse them from the enervating spirit that pervaded them. Ethne smiled to herself, well pleased, for it was from the bards or Filid, she herself had decided they should find followers; for, although Druidism was not always openly avowed by them, she knew at heart they retained the ancient faith she trusted to revive in Hibernia.

Hibernia needed him, Ethne told him often; and her words encouraged the wild hopes he cherished. Hibernia—with her gold and her learning, her intellect, her enterprise, her high spirit—might she not be mistress of the world, could she but send forth warriors as she sent missionaries?

The Christian zeal Ireland showed was the wonder of the age. Daily, from her shores, she saw her children depart to spread the gospel in the world. Kings and scholars—ardent and dauntless—bare foot and clothed in sack-cloth going forth to spend their lives in wattled cote by barren sea-shore, or to freeze in Alpine heights, or in open boats on the ocean. Giving their lives up gladly, that they might spread the Light in a world of darkness. There were others, spending lives of prayer, fast-bound in gray stone walls—fasting and lying in cold stone—and others again spending lives of toil in the monasteries, making copies of the gospels and the pentateuch for the use of men; covering coarse Irish vellum with hand-writing of the greatest beauty.

The two faiths—Christian and Pagan—were strangely mingled in these northern lands. Monastery rose within sight of Druid circle—cromlech and cross side by side; the Christian crosses often owed their beauty to the druidical symbols with which they were wreathed. One night Cormac would lodge with a Druid in the shadow of an ancient tower—on the next he would crouch on the cold clay of a hermit’s cave. At Derry, or the Place of Oaks, he stayed with the monks who were building the great monastery Columba had founded—then he passed to the palace of the northern kings and joined in its revelry; in the day-time sitting and watching the feats of the juggling Druids—and at night listening to their tales as he sat with the hounds and men by the hall fire. The spirit of early Christianity was to work by degrees amongst the heathen; it was difficult to wean the people entirely from the ancient superstitions; often the priests were content, for the time, if they could but abolish the cruel and evil rites of the Druids.

And Cormac—with a boy’s hopeful outlook—began to trust Ethne was in a state of transition from the pagan to the Christian faith; for she ceased to speak to him of the Druids and their religion; no longer seemed desirous of turning him towards it.

Cormac and his followers rode on—through boundless forests, marshy wilds, and high-lying pasture-lands; through a land without cities; over broad, unbridged rivers that they crossed at fords and shallows on their swimming horses, or by the aid of stepping stones and hurdles; by unpaved roads and bridle-paths; galloping through scattered hamlets of wattle and wicker-work; scaring the cotter’s children at play among the marsh mallows; sometimes slackening their speed amid pastures gray with sheep. Now pausing to exchange a word with some half-crazed swineherd; now bursting into wild Hibernian songs; and for days meeting no living creature save red-deer, wild boar, and swine.

Upon a wet and windy afternoon they reached the Rath of Cormac’s great kinsman, King Aedh, son of Ainmire—the friend and anointed of Saint Columba; and, like Columba of the tribe of that Conall Gulban, who had given its name to the land of Tir Conall.

In the marchland that now stretched before them lay a large village of wicker cabins. Through these buildings and their accompanying midden-heaps, they threaded their way till they reached the dun of the chieftain—King Aedh; a collection of cabins surrounded by a double wall with a ditch between the two walls. These cabins, although considerably larger, were built after the same pattern as the other bee-hive shaped dwellings of the village—by interweaving wattles on either side of a clay wall and thatching the conical roofs with rushes. A rude church in the group had hewn oak mingled with the wattled walls. Just upon the rampart—to escape the shadow thrown by other buildings, the sun-chamber or Grianan of the chieftain’s wife, was always placed; formed of white wattles—often polished and sweet scented.

CHAPTER X.
Bards of Hibernia.

Cormac wished to present himself to King Aedh at once; but this he found impossible as the great chieftain lay sleeping in his hall; wearied out with a skirmish of the previous day upon a neighbouring king who had refused to pay him tribute.

The whole of Ireland was in a state of ferment over the boroim, or cow-tribute, which King Aedh insisted on exacting from his tributary kings. Cormac knew that in Leinster Saint Kevin had inveighed against it, and that the great Saint, Columba, was at present on a visit to Aedh endeavouring to arrange matters peaceably between him and his fellow-kings. And Cormac knew also, with a sense of pride, that Columba had another matter at heart—the welfare of the bards. It pleased the youth to think that the great man was so deeply interested in the men whom he hoped to make his followers. King Aedh had proposed to banish them, looking upon them as a set of swaggering idlers; but Columba was doing his utmost to prevent such a sentence being carried out.

As Cormac looked about him he saw he was in time to take part in the convocation which Columba had assembled in Druimceta to discuss these troublesome matters—for all around the country was littered with tents and hastily built wattled huts; the grass was bruised and broken by the feet of many herds, and scorched and charred by camp-fires lately quenched by the rain. In the distance he could hear the shout and din of a multitude.

With the greatest difficulty he found a shelter for the night for himself and his followers. He and his foster-sister were forced to enter an over-crowded house. There was scarcely room to move; the air was foul; the wattled walls black with smoke and filth, in place of being polished and sweet-smelling; on the stale straw beneath the hounds were eating the refuse of past days.

As he gazed about him from the crowded hearth, Cormac could see, by the great brewing-vat in a corner that he was in the hall of a Flaith or nobleman—noblemen alone having the right to brew. The chief himself was sleeping in the gloom of an alcove—and was doubtless an ally of King Aedh’s and had taken part in the same skirmish, for the space in front of the building was all littered by spoil the victorious warrior had taken from an enemy—vats of good malt, purple cloaks, horse-trappings, honeycomb, and hogs’ flesh.

A hush had fallen now on the great hall—after long feasting; but the steam and smell of flesh remained. Some of the feasters had fallen asleep with half filled platters beside them. The cauldron from which they had eaten still simmered over the central fire; in the great pot was thrust a long ladle of yew-wood—from which had been served the flesh of boar and deer stewed with leeks and hazel-nuts.

A flickering light aloft, strove with the gloom and smoke; the light fell from a molten pool of raw bee’s-wax held in a high vase or bowl of bronze and carved yew. The air was full of the long, deep breath of slumber; for on the floor around the bed of the sleeping chief lay his warriors, slaves, and hounds—sleeping also. Nearly all the hall slumbered except two or three bards playing chess before the fire, some wretched hostages in fetters, and two men of the chief’s or king’s bodyguard who stood with hand on upright pike, on either side of his great bed. The bed was all gloom except when the fitful light gave momentary flashes of the gold with which the limbs of the king were twined—and of the great torque that encircled his waist.

A look of disgust had passed over Ethne’s face when she entered the foul air of the great room. She sighed, more than ever, for the luxury and refinement of her Roman villa in Britain. She looked at the smouldering, central fire with its surrounding ashes and refuse of days long past; the earthen floor strewn with stale straw, gnawn bones, and spilt meal; the rough dressers laden with wooden platters, drinking horns, and vessels of yew and bronze; the gaping chests and cupboards which held meal, and clothes, and skins.

Yet there was a barbaric splendour in the great size of the circular room; in the horse-trappings and arms of the king upon the walls; in the row of suspended shields belonging to the warriors, slumbering around their chief.

Cormac was soon asleep stretched on a long leathern cushion covered by a sheep-skin. He was tired with his long day’s journey and glad to follow the example of the warriors around him.

He did not wake again until long after dawn—when he was roused by the noise and uproar about him. There was scarcely room to move, the hall was so filled with a medley of jesters, horse-boys, clowns, and bards.

A slave was busy at the fire baking oat-cake; trying, at the same time, to stir the soup-cauldron and keep the greedy hounds at his elbow in order. A bard, accompanying himself on a noisy timpan, was reciting a story; there was such a jangle of sounds that Cormac could scarcely hear his own voice or those of some jugglers at coarse conjuring tricks.

A piercing howl from one of the hounds suddenly silenced for the moment all other uproar. The distraught slave at the fire, wofully hindered in his work, had dealt an inquisitive beagle a sharp blow from a scalding ladle.

A general commotion at the hearth ensued.

The owner of the beagle had been lounging before the fire munching brook-lime and hazel-nuts; he now rose and seizing a besom of birch-twigs, dealt the slave a blow that laid him full length on the ground. In falling the slave was thrown against a couple of chess-players—upon whose play a party of idlers had been laying wagers; all of these turned savagely at the interruption of their pastime. The fall, also, disturbed some drunken revellers asleep on the floor; and they too started up with drawn swords. More than a score of dogs rushed forward and added their clamour to the uproar.

“And all this spoil-sport and foolery over a cursed hound!” cried one of the chess-players. “The cursed hound of a cursed bard!”

“Hound! Hound, sayest thou? And this to a bard—a Flaith, and son of a Flaith! Hound thyself—beguiled and doting tool of a king—and would thy tongue were slit for thy heresy towards us! Take thee, will I, by the apple of thy throat and cast thee forth!”

The owner of the beagle was a long-armed Hibernian Pict clad in bards’ dress; druidical symbols tattooed his naked arms and legs; his beard was plaited and his long hair confined at the back by a conical spiral of bronze and gold; his garments were ragged and filthy—from sloth and not from poverty, for he was verily covered with costly ornaments and amber beads. His mouth was still full of brook-lime and nuts—in his hand was a raw onion, which he had been about to eat.

“Ye cursed beggarly bards! Botch and blain of Hibernia! Paupers and panderers all! Parasites on our folly and vanity! Living by flattery, and eating us out of house and home in return! Take me, wilt thou, and cast me forth!”

The bard was too angry to reply. His gold ear-rings danced with the rage that shook him.

“But wait! A few more hours, and you and your stallions, your beagles and false tongues will be banished for ever! Take me, wilt thou, and cast me forth!”

The bard stuffed the waiting onion in his mouth and seizing the besom with both hands took up a threatening attitude.

“Peace!” said an old man, stepping forward. A sombre figure in his Irish monkish dress, cowled garment of brown frieze, book-wallet and leather-flask slung on shoulder, thick knotted stick as sole weapon.

“Is this the spirit you discuss grave matters we have followed Columba all the leagues from Iona to ponder and pray upon? It is not meet that ye brawl over such things as ye brawl over your chess and your horse-racing!” He turned sternly on the chess-player. “Know you not that Columba has taken the bards under his protection?”

“Ay, that do I know well; and I know better that our Christian spirit of forbearance is ill-suited to them—and I know too that some of them make a cloak of Christianity, when at heart they belong all to one faith—fire and blood! Fili they term themselves and half our men are turning Fili. And why not? ’Tis an easy life—for we must keep them and their mares and their stallions—their greyhounds and beagles! Grow barley for their winter fodder, and dower their daughters when they marry! Drones they are, and like rooks for flocking—ever in hordes—see how they crowd on us now winter is coming—swaggering to our firesides to idle and brag there all the winter and tell their idle tales!” The speaker paused, turned about and wildly waved his sword. “Away with them—away with them. Neither grist nor gold do they bring us! Greedy gules they be, swilling and guzzling all! And now, forsooth, must the Church—the Church—maintain their horses for them! Away with them, I say, away with them! I am aweary of warring against them with tongue and book—let us to work and settle the question with pick and knife!”

The quarrel spread like wild-fire in the hall, till everyone had taken his place on the two sides that were glaring at each other. It was a marvel how the scene had arisen from the simple accident. Cormac found himself in the angry ranks with his hand on his knife. There was a sudden rush to the open air to gain room for combat.

No sooner were they outside than they were driven back by a long line of galloping horsemen. There were shouts of “Back! Back!” and “Make room”; a great procession was passing through the village.

The heralds had already gone by; carrying trumpets twelve feet in length, with deep, vibrating notes like the roar of lions. Pipe, and harp, and clash of battle-axe accompanied the war-songs of the warriors as they rode past in the rain; prancing stallions often added their notes to the din. There was a continual glitter of sword, pike, and javelin; a glare of saffron robes and purple cloaks—woaded limbs and faces. Here and there bronze lance-heads and bronze axes showed themselves, mingled with primitive, leaf-shaped swords of bronze, stone hammers, and hide-covered shields of wicker. Horse and man bristled with tough yew-bows and sheaves of arrows; some of the darts had poison lurking in their tips and others were tipped with stone after the rude manner of their cave-dwelling forefathers. Many bronze shields could be seen; some were heirlooms—all bossy and gleaming with rich ornament. There was little order in the procession; it was a perpetual jostle between horse and woman and man; great Irish hounds slipped in and out among the crowd.

In one part of the procession a note of sombre colour and the sound of hushed music prevailed, where a thousand chanting monks from Iona followed their leader Saint Columba.

Suddenly the glare of saffron and purple streamed brighter, the clash of battle-axe grew sharper; King Aedh passed by, followed by the kings of Munster, of West Munster, of Leinster, and of Ossory; and many other kings, amongst whom was Aidan, son of Gabran, one of the kings of the Alban Picts.

Cormac found himself on his black stallion carried away in the fringe of the procession; down a steep hill-side to a barren stretch of moor, where a race-course had been mapped out, and race-horses by the score were being entered for a contest.

Ethne suddenly appeared beside him mounted on her white horse.

“You are ready Cormac, to fight for your bards—on the side of the saint, Columba?”

“Ready! Ay, more than ready!” cried Cormac, raising himself in his stirrups with a war-shout.

“So! Then—be wary, and wait till I give the signal!”

She left his side and passed, at full gallop, into the mazes of an ancient Druidical temple that adjoined the racecourse.

The savage hills around gave a wild setting to the temple or winding avenue of stone columns into which she passed. As she rode through the circle, in which the rude pillars were arranged, she uttered Druidical incantations in a low, piercing voice. The place was thronged with bards and their steeds and beagles—they were riding and walking through the two long avenues and the great central circle; a group in white robes were assembled around the stone of sacrifice—one of these ran to Ethne’s side as she reined in her horse.

“Fortune favours us!” she said, in a low impressive voice. “You fight for your liberty not only under Cormac of Fail, but under the protection of the saint, Columba! Remember!”

Cormac meanwhile, looking proudly around, saw the place was thronged with his followers. There were bards horse-racing and making wagers on horse and hound; bards as jugglers, sorcerers, and minstrels; bards at sword play, ball-tossing and serpent-playing.

Ethne, also, cast her eye over the assembled bards, as she looked out on the race-course from the temple. And she recognised them all as Druids—both those within the columns and without.

Chief among them was the bard who had quarrelled over the hound so short a time before; he was riding races on a swift white mare, and outstripping all who rode with him.

At the height of the revelry it was this man who headed the mead-drunk bards as they circled round Cormac—on their lips cries of “Ethne!” “Tara!” “Cormac of Fail!” “Cormac, The Horse—the Black Horse!”

They flocked around him on their matchless Hibernian horses—creatures all quivering from the race-courses, their bodies flecked with the foam and blood of their own rivalry. Some of the animals had been freshly driven in from the plains and wastes—roped with difficulty, and throwing one after another of their nimble riders. In the ranks about Cormac many startled, riderless creatures strove towards him, as though seeking his protection—this sight appealed to his followers, who renewed their cries of “The Horse—the Black Horse!”

The sight alone of those beautiful creatures, with their scarlet nostrils and flowing manes, was enough to quicken a young man’s blood. Cormac pressed forward, so proud and elated that he was scarcely aware of the words that were cried around him; only hearing shouts and battle-cries.

“Fire and Sword! Pict and Scot!” cried the bards, surging round him. “Men we make white with fear! Babes and women feed our swords. Ahoi! Come, Cormac, brother of Ethne! Ethne daughter of Druids! Come, Brother and Druids!”

They danced savage, prancing dances—rough, red limbs tossing and twirling. With broad, expanded nostrils they uttered screaming Pictish war-cries.

“Away with the Christians!” they yelled. “Away with cave-dwellers, fools, and fasters! Hibernia shall have men and warriors—not saints and hermits! Away with monks and virgins!”

Cormac dashed forward with Ethne by his side. Where he was going he did not know. He only knew that he was fighting for the liberty of his bards, and that Columba was on his side. Once the strange cry against the Christians came to his ear; that it concerned his own undertaking he did not, for one moment, realise—but it angered and puzzled him.

Then it seemed to him they were charging full upon the long procession that had passed through the village a few minutes before: But there was no time for thought or conjecture then; for, on a sudden, they were in the midst of their enemies and his men began to fall around him.

He was conscious that the attack he was leading was weak; that his followers fought badly; that Ethne, wildly and angrily, was calling upon them to do better—to be men, not cowards!

Then he knew that disaster had befallen them, because his men were fleeing.

Afterwards, in trying to recall the swift attack and defeat, he could remember nothing clearly, except the strange shock and tumult of the moment when he saw his bards put to flight by warriors in monkish dress!

Long afterwards, in his life, he was haunted by vague memories of that disastrous flight—that proof of his bards’ cowardice—that end of his hopes and dreams. For long it would suddenly come on him at times as a nightmare of shame.

The greater number of his Druid followers were taken prisoners; some were killed, a few escaped to the sea-shore.

Cormac fought on bravely, determined to die rather than yield.

A sword-gash across his temples filled his eyes with blood; he dashed his hand across them; and saw, before him, a tall figure mounted on one of the half-tamed Hibernian horses, so numerous everywhere. The animal had met its master now, for it tried in vain to unseat the man who rode without saddle and with only a rough bridle of hemp about the creature’s head; he urged it forward to meet Cormac; it advanced, rearing on its hindquarters.

Cormac saw the face of the rider towering above him—a beautiful face, pale as marble with large, flashing brown eyes.

Cormac advanced also holding his sword ready to strike. He had a sudden strange presentiment that his life was within the power of the man before him, who had the invincible air belonging to one of Nature’s own warriors.

Suddenly the untrained horse swerved to one side and bounded away. In an instant its rider had slipped from its back and advanced towards Cormac, a tall thin figure in the dress of a monk, with the front of the head shaven after the manner of the Hibernian tonsure. Then the blood from the young warrior’s wound came and blinded his eyes once more. All was darkness.

He felt sick and giddy from pain and confusion of thought—why was he fighting against the Ionian monks?

A hand closed on his like a vice of iron—a strong arm was thrown about him. He was dragged from his saddle and forced to render up his sword.

Someone wiped the blood from his eyes. He looked up and saw again the white, beautiful face and flashing eyes that had faced him on the battle field.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am Columba!”

CHAPTER XI.
Saint Columba.

“Treachery somewhere,” said Columba, when he had heard Cormac’s story. “Treachery that has brought bloodshed and loss upon them and well-nigh cost them their leader.”

The holy man had borne Cormac tenderly from the battlefield to the little wattled cote in which he preferred to live rather than in the great hall King Aedh had prepared for him. He had washed the wounds of the youth, and kept constant watch by his bedside.

It was now the afternoon of the second day after the fight. Cormac lay on his bed, and Columba sat at the open doorway.

The little circular dwelling was the simplest of its kind, without furniture, the earthen floor devoid of rushes. There was no convenience for either light or fire. In one corner was the bed of the saint—a stone flag with a smaller stone for a pillow; in another a cup of wood and a larger bowl of earthenware. Cormac lay, warm and comfortable, on a pile of heather covered by a bear-skin. The seat on which Columba sat was of stone; he wore a coarse cassock and hood of undyed homespun wool, drawn over an under-dress of linen; on his feet were sandals.

Cormac’s eyes were fixed on the saint’s face. He felt he could never tire of looking at the wonderful white face and the great brilliant eyes. Nights of prayer and days of fasting had given Columba a strange unearthly pallor and thrown purple shadows round eyes and mouth. The great eyes shone out all the more brilliantly for their dark setting. All that is beautiful in eyes seemed united in those of Columba—they were fearless and bright as a child’s, piercing as an eagle’s, soft as a dove’s; to gaze into them made it easier to understand how Columba could be—at the same time—saint, poet, warrior, and statesman; to gaze into them made Cormac’s difficult story an easy one to tell—he told it as a child would have told its parent, never doubting he would be understood and forgiven.

A favourite horse had come and lain its head on Columba’s shoulder; at his feet was a hound he had saved from a bear; beside the hound was a lamb. A tamed sea-gull nestled its head in the saint’s neck—it had been discovered by Columba, broken-winged on the seashore; he had bandaged the wing and cherished the little creature, and ever since the bird had hovered near him. From the half-closed hand lying on the sack-cloth robe the tiny head and bright eyes of a little wren were peeping. As Cormac gazed at the great man he realised what was meant when men said that Columba lived in a kingdom of love. Yet he was a wild and fearless warrior, too, gaining repute on the isles and mainland of savage Caledonia.

The saint suddenly addressed the young man.

“You are better, my son. Your wounds were slight, though they were many—you will soon be at the head of your bards again.”

Cormac frowned.

“Never again! I will lead men—not cowards and deceivers.”

Columba turned, so that he might face his guest; putting up his hand as he did so to soothe the fluttering bird at his neck.

He seemed about to speak when suddenly a change came over his face. He fell on his knees; his eyes closed—then opened again, with the rapt gaze of an ecstatic. Columba prayed. He prayed with his whole being—with that power of prayer peculiar to those Hibernian saints who did so much in spreading the Faith in Europe, and whose lives bear witness to it for all time. Passionate, almost involuntary, prayer; in which in their communings with their Maker their very souls seemed drawn from their bodies. A state in which prayer was as natural as thought, and from which Columba seemed to derive that almost supernatural power by which he confounded the tricks of the juggling Druids at the court of Brude, the Pictish king.

After a time he asked Cormac softly:

“Will you leave your work?”

“My work?” repeated Cormac.

“Ay, your work—you alone are able to work in that vineyard. Cormac of Fail, my warrior from over the seas, chosen redeemer of my bards, you have a noble work before you.”

“When they told me,” he continued slowly, “of Cormac of Fail, and how he was gathering my bards around him, I hardly dared to believe it. Such news was too good to be true! I had heard of your father—King of Damnonia we called him in the North—and I knew that the son of Griffith Finnfuathairt could lead warriors in a noble cause only—when I heard all this, I tell you that I felt the saviour of my bards had come.” He paused again. “My bards,” he murmured, in a tone of infinite tenderness. “My bards!”

The last words were said to himself, half unconsciously.

“I know the tales men tell of them—how they swagger, and idle, and brag by the firesides of their chiefs—and how bragging leads to brawling, and brawling to worse things. It is true! But it is not given to all men to lead lives of prayer—there are others who must go out into the world and fight; and if they cannot, they will stay and idle at home. All they want is a noble cause—and then we shall have noble warriors and noble men!”

Columba’s eyes flashed, and Cormac remembered the war-like deeds of the saint’s father, Feidilmid. He had come from a race of warriors, the Kings of Conall, bred in the dark wolf-haunted mountains of the North, where life meant perpetual warfare, with beast as well as man. At that time, and for centuries after, Hibernia rang with the exploits of the great Conall Gulban of the same race—he after whom the north-west of Hibernia was named, Tirconnall.

“My son, you have a noble work before you to redeem the youth of Hibernia!” The saint held out his hands in entreaty. “I ask you, I entreat you to give them a trial.”

Cormac’s cheek burnt with pride and shame that the great Columba should treat him as a friend and equal. It was even more surprising than that he, one of the greatest men of the day, and the ruler of forty churches, should live the life of a peasant.

Cormac had pictured him in robes of state in the great chair of a king, with the body guard of a king around him; and on his head the golden crown common to the bishops of Hibernia. Or, if indeed he had thought of him in sack-cloth, as was the custom amongst so many of the saints—he had imagined him as austere, and glorifying in his humility, with ashes on his head and his sack-cloth in rags.

“Take time,” said Columba, “and gather your men about you—then cross the sea to Gwynned—to North Wales, and you will find men there in plenty to unite against the heathen!”

Cormac was silent. A few hours ago he had felt the utmost fury against his late army. They had come that morning before the cote in which he lay and had sung a lament on the late event—a wild Hibernian wail telling of defeat and disaster, of the swift flight of horses pursuing and pursued, of the falling in trenches slippery with blood, of a black bog and hungry war-dogs, of showers of javelins and darts and the loss of gold and silver and fair women. The refrain ran:

“Mead we drank—yellow, sweet, ensnaring!
And under its bane fell prey to the foe—
Raining our red life-wine, in streams, in the valley!”

They sang with mock tears, artfully trembling voices. Cormac, under the care of the man against whom they had conspired, writhed in shame as he heard them.

After a time, under Columba’s pleading, he felt his heart soften to the bards. But, when he thought of Ethne, he grew like stone—for he knew hers was the treachery of which Columba had spoken.

He remained obdurate when, later on, she implored him to allow her to accompany him to Wales. She protested that she was innocent, that she also had been deceived by the bards; but Cormac remained firm in his refusal to allow her to accompany him; he could run no risks in this second undertaking.

He remained, for a time, in the little wattled cote; sharing the simple life of the saint who slept on a stone slab with a stone pillow beneath his head.

Columba helped him to gather soldiers around him; and, by his powerful aid, made all the necessary arrangements for transporting his men to Wales.

“Go, my son,” said the saint, as he gave him his blessing on his departure, “and God help you to restore the lost mother to the maid. But never think that, with the sword, the Saxons are to be conquered. The Cross, and not the Sword, will subdue them!”

They were the prophetic words of one who had spent his life in converting a people almost as savage and invincible—the Picts.

CHAPTER XII.
The Fair.

More than a year had gone by since his flight from Damnonia when Cormac found himself once more in Britain. Following the advice of S. Columba, he landed in Northern Wales; and, leaving the body of his warriors to follow, made haste to the great Fair on the banks of the Conway, in connection with the ancient assembly—the Gorsedd, from which arose, a little later, the Eisteddfod.

He was almost unattended. He wished to mix, as a stranger, with the crowd at the Fair, believing in this manner he would more easily become acquainted with the people from whom he wished to gather warriors.

Long before he arrived at the scene of the Fair he found the country scattered with the mares and stallions of the visitors, who had journeyed there before him. As he rode down a rich glade the clang and clash of barbaric music came to his ears, a quaint city rose in sight, backed by wild and glorious hills. The walls of the city were shaped into a triangle; they bristled with spear and pike-point, standard and pennon. The one and twenty towers, rising from the walls, were hung with quaint scrolls written with the weird characters of the Ogham language, bidding all the world make merry in the assembly that Aedd the Great had founded centuries before Julius Cæsar had landed in Britain.

The scent of mead came to Cormac’s nostrils as he entered the crowded labyrinths of the Fair. Great vats of it were piled just near the entrance; some of the vats had been broken open, the mead spilt upon the ground, its pungent sweetness filling the air—the famous Pictish mead brewed from heath honey, and so fragrant that Boetius believed it was brewed from flowers themselves. Beside the spilt mead some drunken Caledonian Picts were sleeping in the sunshine; their wares lay around them—brooms, brushes, and beds of heather, and soft bales of yellow heath-dyed wool, bound together by hempen ropes.

Passing through a place of barter Cormac found himself amongst booths and work-shops. On every side was a continuous crush of musicians, merchants, snake-charmers, bards, and law-givers. Spinners, potters, carpenters, workers in gold and silver cried their wares. Everything was offered to the passer-by, from an ingot of gold to roasted cow-flesh on spits. Now came a blinding flash from sun-lit metal, and a sword was thrust in Cormac’s face. Gold and silver-smiths were proclaiming their work. “An Excalibur! An Excalibur!” they chanted. “Without trouble of crossing the lake and suing unto Morgan le Fay! Young men and warriors! An Excalibur!”

Other marvels of their work they showed; delicate thread of pure gold as fine as hair, and sword handles of such miraculous workmanship that a square inch of mosaic held on its surface more than two thousand points of gold.

Cormac made his way, with care, through mazes of pottery—art brought from Rome. There was precious Samian ware; red, satin-glazed and wrought with fairy-like ornament—fit for daintiest lady, and so highly prized that when broken it was delicately mended with rivets of bronzed lead; plain biscuit ware, shaped into lamps, and other common vessels of black Roman pottery. He stopped and watched the play of the potter’s wheel—as hundreds have done before and after him—to see the clay, rising birdlike, to the potter’s hand; receiving there, as it were, his life and thought—created, not made. Poets sang of its dance of joy upon the wheel; bards symbolised its play in their music. Homer had compared the rhythm of its rise and fall under the potter’s hand to a dance.

Then he lingered, fascinated, before the work of the Gaulish bell-casters. Fair and noble ladies knelt before the furnace and cast therein their ornaments of gold and silver; a joy and penance—both—that they should add to the golden tongues that called the folk to prayer; some of the little four-sided bells bore upon them that mystic form of the cross—the Fylfot.

Sheltered by hempen awnings lay the book-stalls, with a large display of plain, waxed tablets, made of birch, elm, and the inner bark of ash; scribes were busy among them with reed and stylus. Towering above were some ancient papyrus rolls, fifteen cubits in length—reed-written with ink of gum-water and soot, and there were many plain boc-fell folios such as Cormac’s countrymen wrote on by day and night in tower and monastery, with red cinnabar and cuttle-fish ink. There were a few Hibernian bindings, splendid and massive, with clasps, hinges, and bosses upon them, that might have been used upon an abbey-door. But it was a poor collection after former days of Roman splendour—when bejewelled diptycha of gold and silver had been common—now people contented themselves with coarse birch, joined by common wire.

Leaving the book-stalls behind him, Cormac made his way through many cubics’ length of earth covered with basket work of every shape and size—the famous wicker-work of ancient Britain. Marvels, too, he saw of British wool—which the Romans had taught them to spin so finely it was likened to spiders’-webs.

At every point he was assailed by eager vendors. At length he sat down, tired, upon some felled trees where a group of diviners, with their dice and knuckle-bones were lounging; close to a booth where a fluttering pennon announced that a two-headed cow was on show within.

From his position on the fallen tree, Cormac caught glimpses of the stone chair of the Brehon or Judge, which was placed on the great burial mound around which the Fair centred. On his right-hand stretched the race-course and wrestling rings; on his left the sea gleamed in the distance.

It was not long before Cormac became aware that a woman formed one in the group of people around him. Although half-hidden by the foliage of the tree, she was quite close to him—so close that her flowing lenn almost brushed his knee, and the saffron fragrance of her robes was quite distinct to him.

It was a strange thing to see a fair and delicately-dressed woman amongst these rude jugglers. Cormac was full of wonder. He wished he could see the girl’s face. Every moment his wonder increased; was she some high-born Druidess, mated by caprice with one of these low serpent-charmers? No, the ring on her hand would never be worn by a Druidess; he could see her hand, plainly with the ring upon it—bearing the monogram of Our Lord, the bezel ornamented with a dove within an olive branch.

What power in the loosely-lying hand and arm! White and delicate, but of a strength to wield a battle-axe. And the wide sloping shoulders and snow-white column of her throat, gleaming like marble through the meshes of her yellow hair—such women, surely, stood before the southern sculptors when they chose their images to bear the weight of temple and palace!

Where had he seen such women? Not amid the nervous fiery creatures of his own race, not among the beautiful fragile ladies of Roman-Britain. A faint dislike, a sudden shuddering sense of disaster came upon him—he knew now where he had seen such great, fair, goddess-like women! But they had not been thus clothed in delicate raiment, glossy-haired, perfumed, and dainty—but dishevelled and gory with hair streaming in the fore-ranks of the Saxons.

Every moment his wish to see her face grew stronger.

He could see she made her replies unwillingly to the man at her side; and evidently wished to remain silent and unnoticed. Indeed, there were strong reasons why she should desire to escape notice, for at these great fairs men and women were kept apart under fear of death.

Cormac looked with rage at the girl’s persecutor. Every minute he was attracting attention to her; others besides Cormac had turned their eyes on the pair.

Cormac was powerless; to interfere was to attract more notice to the woman. Her persecutor was one of his own countrymen; of a low, juggling order with a Pictish accent of the coarsest kind—a snake-charmer with gold rings in his ears and a speckled cloak such as the Druids wore. He had ringed himself round with hissing serpents—on arm and ankle, round neck and trunk.

Cormac could see that the girl looked on the serpents with horror. The snake-charmer thrust his hands, out-spread, towards her and contemptuously cracked every finger-joint in her face. With a brutal movement he came a step nearer, so that the vipers thrust their tongues almost in her face—and then, with a dexterous movement slipped one of the serpents from his arm to hers. The girl had stood her ground bravely and uttered no sound; but at this outrage she sprang backward and came with some force against Cormac, who threw one arm around her; and, with the other, cast the serpent in the charmer’s face.

“Fool and meddler!” cried the snake-charmer, angrily. “Leave my business alone. You shall pay for this!”

He recovered the viper; and folding it together with its fellows, slipped them into his breast. There was an angry glitter in his eye, and he withdrew from the spot, muttering ominously.

Cormac feared for the girl’s safety. He looked around for some place of safety for her—there was none. All that could be done was to draw her into the shadow of the felled trees. He turned towards her, and for the first time saw her face.

It was Elgiva, the Saxon!

They stood gazing at each other. They must have remained in this position for some moments when they were startled by screams of wrath—that which Cormac had dreaded now happened.

An angry mob, headed by the snake-charmer, surrounded them—a murderous, screaming crowd which grew larger every moment; serfs drew their whittles and joined in—stragglers and rude horse-boys, armed with clubs and yew-staves, came at the call.

“A woman—a woman!” The angry cry spread like lightning “a woman—a woman in the Men’s Airecht! Deliver her to justice!”

Cormac planted himself in front of his companion; he had thrown his cloak around her, to hide her dress. Now he forced her into the leaves and twigs of the fallen tree.

“Ay, and a Saxon woman, too!” screamed the snake-charmer, “a Saxon, a Saxon!”

There was a further howl of wrath from the crowd; and Cormac’s body would have been hewn down instantly, but that the slaying of a man at a Fair meant not only death, but a curse after death on the spirit of the slayer.

Cormac was parrying blow after blow; men were climbing towards the woman along the trunk of the hewn tree, and some were trying to set on fire the dried leaves and twigs.

“A Saxon! a Saxon!” they yelled. “If a man do but enter the airecht of the women he must die—let her die also! Let her die the death!”

Their enemies pressed closer upon them—still kept at bay by Cormac’s sword. Some of the wildest in the mob took up stones and began to stone them. Cormac and the girl retreated more and more under the thick foliage. Suddenly their retreat was cut off—they touched upon a great rock against which the felled trees had been massed.

For a minute they were left in peace.

Then Cormac saw a flame of fire run along a withered branch towards them. A stone struck him on the shoulder.

“Cravens!” he said, “they will stone or burn us!”

Elgiva was examining the surface of the rock against which they stood; drawing her hand over it through its veil of thick leaves. She gave a little cry of joy as she entered a crevice in the stone, and drew Cormac after her. The passage was so narrow he was forced to leave his shield behind him. They pressed onward for a few feet, hand in hand, until they felt they were in the heart of the rock.

“On!” cried Cormac, “on!” and slipping his arm around the girl forced her forward—till the light behind them had disappeared and the rock on either side had given place to damp earth.

“This path leads to the cliffs!” exclaimed Elgiva. And then she gave a sudden cry.

“I slip! I fall!”

Their path descended with terrible rapidity, but she did not fall, for Cormac’s arm prevented her.

“On!” he cried, “on! Though escape lead us to a second death!”

They were almost running now; pitch-dark around them; a slippery and treacherous foothold beneath; thick about them a sudden swarm of startled bats.

Day seemed, in a strange manner, to be dawning from beneath them.

The quick movement, the strange flight, and weird surroundings brought cries and laughter both from Elgiva’s lips—the first sign of weakness she had shown.

“Ah me!” she cried, “we have flown from the pikes and knives of men to the awful dwellings of gnomes and mermen. I can stay my feet no longer—I faint, I fall!”

Full daylight flashed upon them; a rush of earth and stones accompanied them, as they slid, suddenly, into a shell-strewn cave.

They found themselves in the heart of a grotto; a ledge in the steep cliff-side with the wild sea below; inaccessible, save by the subterranean passage through which they had entered.

CHAPTER XIII.
Man and Woman.

Now that the danger was past and they felt themselves secure from attack, Cormac and Elgiva had no thought save for each other.

Their eyes met, and there was a long silence; neither spoke; then Elgiva turned, blushing, and tried to smooth into order the long, tangled masses of her golden hair; she shook the sand and dust from her dress and veil.

“You are changed, Elgiva!” said Cormac.

Throughout the excitement of the attack and the tumult of their escape, he had been conscious of the girl’s beauty.

“Changed!” said Elgiva. “In one short year—is that possible?”

Changed—of course she had changed. It was the same fair, blue-eyed face. But she was no longer ungainly and awkward. Her skin was smooth, her hair glossy; her dress as fragrant and dainty as Ethne’s. Now as she moved about the cave he saw that the frame had softened into curves of womanly beauty.

Cormac stood struggling with a thousand varied feelings.

“Changed—ay, changed! Thou art grown beautiful—a woman—but thou art Saxon!” Then, with one of the swift changes natural to him, he suddenly grew furious. “Curse thee, thou art as Saxon as any Saxon among them—and shall I wed a Saxon?”

The girl was startled by his sudden fury; she answered proudly.

“Have no fear of that, Cormac of Fail. Thou did’st refuse to do thy father’s bidding. The Saxon would have wed with thee to obey those commands, but now she will abide by thy words.”

“Ay, shall I harden my heart against thee—shall I hate thee, as never maid was hated before?” Suddenly his voice broke. “Shall I not hate thee because thou art Saxon? Ay, and in hating thee, love thee more—with a love that has smitten me, like the lightning smites the oak!” He had drawn near to her.

“Saxon, alas, I am,” said Elgiva, “and thou art true Celt, to talk of love and hate together.”

He looked at her softly.

“Yet I find in thee the old Elgiva, in spite of thy womanhood and beauty.”

Then he remembered, in some bewilderment, that he had not thought of Elgiva’s appearance, at all, in the years gone by. And when he had thought of her at times, in the last few months, he had a vision of her as he had last seen her—the swollen features, the smoke-bleared eyes and mouth surrounded by half-healed scars.

He remembered how he had struck her, and set those half-healed scars bleeding afresh. The remembrance came on him like a blow.

Elgiva’s thoughts, too, had gone back to that last scene. She remembered how she had blurted out that he must wed her, and that he should wed her. With the remembrance came the wish that she had bitten out her tongue before the words were said.

“Why are you in Britain?” he asked. “How did you come here?”

She had come with Ethne of the Raven Hair, she told him, and they had travelled purposely to the place of the Fair, as Ethne hoped to meet him there; and trusted he would join his army with one she had brought with her from Tara.

At this Cormac fell into a rage.

“Never!” he cried, immediately. “I will fight no longer with Ethne. I stand alone. I will not see her face.”

“But how came you—you two who hated each other—how came you here together?”

Elgiva’s colour rose.

“Because we love each other,” she said. “You tell me that I have changed—but I tell you that Ethne has greatly changed! She is not the same woman! It is a long story how she came back from Druimceta and lived and worked amongst us at Glendalough—she won all hearts. She has gathered many warriors around her to help towards the rescue of my mother. Ah!” The girl’s eyes softened. “We no longer hate each other, as you say we did once. She loves me and I love her!”

“Loves you!” exclaimed Cormac, looking at the girl pityingly. “No, no, poor fool, she deceives you!”

Tears came into the Saxon’s eyes.

“She does not deceive me—I am dear to her as a sister. She is never happy if I am out of her sight. She is a Christian.”

He laughed and tears came into her eyes.

“I hoped it would have pleased you that I had learnt to love her.”

Her bosom rose and fell with a long, quivering sigh. Cormac looked at her with a new light in his eyes. He came a step nearer to her.

“And do you wish to please me, Elgiva?” he asked.

“Why should I wish to please you?” she asked, pettishly. Then a quick blush swept over her face; knowing, as she did, that a wish to find favour in his eyes had been the desire of her life ever since they had parted. She had sobbed herself to sleep the night after he had struck her. And then, as the months passed by and womanhood began to dawn on her, she realised how uncouth and ugly she must have appeared in his eyes—and she had done all in her power to improve the comeliness that was really hers, but in her raw youth had hardly shown itself.

Cormac, in thought, had again gone back to their parting scene; he longed to ask for her forgiveness, but a strange shyness and restraint came upon him.

“And how did you get into the Men’s Airecht at the Fair?” he asked, after a time.

“I lost Gelert,” said Elgiva, with a new look of trouble in her eyes. “I missed him suddenly and ran at once to look for him. I could not find him, and when I came back to the place where I had left Ethne and our women, they were gone! I went about looking for them, and wandered in my confusion without noticing—into the Men’s Airecht.”

“Are you sure Ethne had left the place where you had last seen her?”

“I am certain, because it was marked with a wooden cross—the only wooden cross on the grounds. I could not be mistaken.”

“I know the place,” said Cormac, “and all the paths from there lead into the Men’s Airecht! You could scarcely fail to wander in——”

He considered for some minutes—then a strange bitter expression crossed his face.

“I see it all!” he exclaimed. “It was a design on her part—she left the place purposely. She knew, if you wandered about at all, you could not fail to wander in there—it was a trick to be rid of you, once and for all.”

The girl looked at him in horror.

“Cormac, we are Christians, and our Christian boast is Love and Charity. Yet you have not sufficient charity to grant the conversion of one poor soul. I tell you Ethne is changed—she is a Christian!”

Cormac was frowning, pacing up and down the cave, scarcely listening to his companion. He gave no thought to Ethne—all his thought was for Elgiva. He paused.

“You are beautiful, Elgiva—and you, I know, are as virtuous as only a Christian maid can be. I will not take you back to a woman, vile, infamous and treacherous as a serpent.”

“Then will I walk back alone—ay, through a thousand daggers!” exclaimed the Saxon. “Ethne is not vile and treacherous, and she is as a sister to me—as desirous as I myself of rescuing my mother. You are ungenerous, Cormac of Fail—unworthy the name of your father. Ah! I wish I had men and warriors—I wish I had an ancient name to which to rally followers—and that I might go and rescue my mother without your help.”

Cormac stared at her.

“Why—why did I leave Ethne’s side to-day, and why could not some other come and rescue me instead of you?”

It was seldom Elgiva gave way to tears. Now she threw herself down on a heap of stones and sobbed.

Cormac turned and walked up and down the cave with frowning, averted eyes. She disliked him, of course, and he deserved it, he said to himself—but he did not deserve this!

Elgiva soon controlled her sobs. Furious that she should behave like a child again on their first meeting—when she had determined to be a woman for Cormac’s sake.

She stole one or two glances towards him as he passed and re-passed her.

After the British manner his hair was parted in the middle and floating freely about his neck; it was as black as night with a gleam on it like steel, where the ends curled into rings, his blue-black eyes were deeply set and fringed with black lashes. Under the bronze of his skin his cheek was pale and thin, showing the lines of the muscles beneath. The alert carriage of the small head, the play of the mobile nostrils, reminded the Saxon irresistibly of some untamed mountain horse. When Cormac was a child these characteristics had been noticed by Griffith—in particular a certain movement by which he tossed back his black locks as a horse throws the mane from its eyes—and he had given the boy the title of The Black Horse. A horse had in generations past been the totem of Griffith’s family. The old chieftain had hoped to see the day when the Black Horse should be pitted against the White Horse of the Saxons—he had seen the day, and died!

Cormac had ceased to walk up and down the grotto. He approached Elgiva—threw himself down beside her.

“Oh, Elgiva,” he cried, “wife that will be—beautiful, adored! Forgive, forgive all—I mean at Glendalough. Come with me in safety from Ethne—at dawn the priest can unite us. Gift of my father to me—my beloved—my spouse!”

She had recovered from her passion and was quite calm.

“My wife, my spouse!” she repeated. “The last time I heard such words from your lips they were addressed to Ethne, not to me!”

“That evil woman!” he said. “Name her not with thyself!”

“She is my sister,” returned Elgiva. “And tell me, Cormac, have you no sin that you should thus cast stones at Ethne?”

His head drooped.

“I am not fit for thee,” he said. “I have sinned often; above all, at the place of Fire—but ’tis past—I repent!”

“Ay, yet you deny repentance to Ethne!”

“I speak not of Ethne now—only of thee. Come with me, my father’s darling, and I will soon teach thee to love me.” She hid her face. “Come with me and leave Ethne!”

“I will return to her. And when you have forgiven her you may speak of love to me.”

“That will never be,” said Cormac, rising. “Yet will I do as I am asked, and take thee back.”

The grotto filled with shadows. Evening was falling. Cormac suggested that it was a fitting time to escape from the cave and make their way to Ethne’s house. Elgiva thought that his voice sounded harsh and cold. She turned without a word to the steep ascent that led them to the open ground above.

The upward, winding tunnel was dark and difficult; but a few minutes’ climbing brought them to the top and to the scene of the tumult of the afternoon.

They stole, unperceived, from the shadow of the great Monolith that marked their exit, and found themselves in the stir of the multitude still assembled on the spot. All around them were horses and cattle with their accompanying horse-boys and cow-herds. On every side camp-fires twinkled. It was a fine night and the stars shone. A rich dim scene spread itself before their eyes—moving herd and glittering camp fires, long lines of tents and newly-built wattled cotes, ancient temples looming in the distance, and sumptuous Roman villas dotting the valley; a white Roman road gleamed in the darkness of the forest beyond, and close at hand was a light tapering minster that was being built by Greek workmen.

Mingled with the murmur of the sea and the tumult of the flocks, and their attendants, was the sound of monks’ chant, the clash of swords; and the shrieks and brawl of mead-drinkers and revellers.

On the way they paused in a little wood and bowed themselves at a mossy shrine, where a hermit filled the priestly office for some kneeling Christians.

Once, from a hollow oak-tree, the beautiful face of a girl-hermit looked at them; her white hands, clashed on a robe of sack-cloth, had bloody marks upon them, like the print of nails; she spoke to them, as she spoke to every passer-by, in a voice clear and pure and high like the final peal of a hymn of praise.

A little further on were masons working by torch-light at a wayside cross; twenty feet in height, and all wreathed with scroll work that was carved, not for money, but for love of God and beauty.

The banners of the festive town danced gaily as they entered the city walls. Cormac obtained directions from a watchman. Their road led them to a magnificent Roman villa; built almost on the walls, and overlooking the rushing stream that flowed from the surrounding mountains.

It was difficult to gain admittance even to the outer courts of the dwelling. They were obliged to wait, standing in a recess of a triangular bridge which formed part of the walls and spanned the torrent beneath. A deep dyke separated them from the forest; in whose depths they could plainly hear the gnarling of wolves and scream of swine. The forest grew from the very edge of the dyke and the trees, overhanging the stream, swept the side of the arch on which they stood. As they stood waiting a dark disordered mass came towards them along the river banks. The light broke on lance and javelin, and here and there, on the white face of a horse. A reckless party of jostling race-horses, crying beagles, and huge hounds came into view, and galloped towards them along the rough, pebbly path that skirted the torrent.

The leader of the party was bare-headed, his beard streaming in the wind; he flourished a mead-horn in his hand from which he drank repeatedly; at times he rose to his feet on the bare back of his stallion, and played at cup and ball as he rode along—by means of the end of his drinking horn and a handful of pebbles he had dexterously swept from the ground over which he galloped. As he drew nearer the light showed a gruesome object swung on the neck of his horse.

“A Druid, a juggling Druid!” cried Cormac, pointing with scorn and horror at the rider. “The sorcerers have been at their vile rites—they have slain their victim and have been divining by his entrails.”

The man and woman drew closer into the niche in which they stood—for the wild party, leaping a small creek, swept up the approach and on to the bridge. The great portals swung open. The wind from the horses’ nostrils, the clamour of men and hounds swept by them, and the whole party passed into the outer court.

Cormac thought he distinguished the light form of a woman on one of the foremost of the race-horses.

“Ethne!” he exclaimed in angry-excitement. “Ethne! She has gathered her horde around her even here!”

“Ethne—it was not Ethne!” exclaimed the Saxon. “And even so—because you see the body of a dead man carried on the saddle of a bard, why should you believe he has been the victim of unholy rites—are dead bodies so uncommon in these days? But it was not Ethne, I tell you!”

“It was Ethne!” returned Cormac.

“Then she has been searching for me,” cried Elgiva, in tones of conviction.

“Ah, poor fool, you will believe she loves you,” said Cormac, contemptuously. “As though Ethne loved anything in the world save her lost possessions in Damnonia.”

“You are a stone, Cormac. Ethne has told me how harsh and unforgiving you were to her at Druimceta,” said Elgiva. “Now you will not believe, though I tell you again and again, that Ethne loves me.”

“If Ethne loves you,” said Cormac, with the same contempt, “then indeed she hath changed, and my opinion may change also.”

At that moment admittance was given them to the vestibule of the mansion. Passing through the atrium they were ushered into a large court; with clustered pillars and frescoed walls—otherwise it resembled one of the ordinary halls of the Britons, for it was hung with wicker shields and rude pikes—a fire of yew-logs blazed in the centre. The big room was full of people; thronged with Bret and Pict and Scot—monks and warriors. There were minstrels, harpers, jesters, clowns with them, their accompanying creatures—beagle and hound and dancing bear; everywhere hopped tame wrens and, here and there, spreading their dark wings on the arms of soothsayers were talking ravens. The usual places of honour were being given to workers in gold and silver, to master-carpenters, and to the healers of mankind—the leeches.

The room was so full that the entrance of Cormac and Elgiva closely cloaked was unnoticed.

Upon a slightly raised platform they could see Ethne standing among her waiting women. They could see her plainly, and hear her voice distinctly. She had but just lately alighted from her horse. Her hair was dishevelled with the wind, and her purple riding cloak was still around her.

CHAPTER XIV.
Leader of the Kymry.

Cormac had never seen Ethne in anguish before; for anguish was the only word to express the condition in which he now beheld her.

Her grief and tears appeared to him so unnatural that for a few seconds he had looked and listened without comprehending the scene before him.

“I have lost her!” Ethne was saying. “I have searched everywhere and I cannot find her. Neither seer nor soothsayer can aid me—I have lost her whom I would not have lost for all the world!”

Her grief was quite unfeigned. Her limbs trembled so much that she could not stand. Her face was white as death.

Cormac’s heart beat fast. The remembrance of his words to Elgiva came back to him.

He saw Ethne wring her hands in despair. She gave one mournful cry, “Elgiva! Elgiva!” and fell fainting into the arms of her women.

Cormac had a strange, choking sensation. The old passionate admiration for Ethne stirred in his heart once more, mixed with a flood of remorse and shame and doubt.

Elgiva had flown from his side. She had torn her way through the crowd. He could see her kneeling beside Ethne, holding her in her arms and calling upon her by name. Ethne had recovered from her momentary faintness, but was still so weak that Elgiva was obliged to support her. The two women laughed and cried together. There was a wild scene between them—Elgiva explaining, Ethne expostulating. Cormac could see that Ethne’s present joy was as unfeigned as her past grief.

The Saxon helped Ethne to her seat, and then knelt at her feet, holding one of the small white hands in a tender grasp. At sight of the two women a murmur of applause came from the people assembled in the hall.

Cormac stole up quietly and stood behind Elgiva, his sparkling eyes fixed on Ethne’s face; her face looked soft and gentle with the traces of grief still upon it. She looked up at him, not surprised at his appearance—having just heard from Elgiva that he had rescued her.

Ethne held out her hand.

“You would not let me go with you,” she said, gently, “but I have followed you.”

He said nothing in reply; but bending down knelt on one knee before her and placed her hand upon his head.

It was the very scene to appeal to the hearts of the people. Cormac was recognised, in spite of his shrouding cloak. Cry after cry to his honour rang through the room. Weapons flashed, and clashed aloft.

“The Black Horse!” they cried, “Cormac of Fail! Cormac and Ethne! Children of Tuathal! Twigs from the tree of Tara! All hail! All hail!”

They were the same battle cries, in the same Hibernian voices, as those which had greeted him when he rode through Ireland with Ethne many months before.

Cormac stood upright and threw aside his cloak. One of Ethne’s slaves drew a scented saffron robe around him, another placed a golden hoop on his head.

The applause grew louder. Trumpets and timpans almost deafened the people. Cormac’s eye flashed, his cheek glowed.

He walked up and down the raised platform; smiling and responding to the people.

“The Black Horse! The Black Horse!” they cried. “The Black Horse against the White!”

Then an old man—so old men had forgotten the year of his birth—rose and asked for a few minutes’ silence, that he might be heard.

“I call on you all to witness this thing,” he piped, “that one has come among us from over the seas mightier than Hengist or Horsa. Here is the Avenger! Here is the Black Horse! And though Britain lies white with the cold ash of the White Horse she shall be blackened, in time, by the scorch of the Black!”

The tumult was so great, after this, that although Cormac was seen to speak, his voice could not be heard.

Again he walked up and down with the easy, spirited motion that reminded Elgiva so irresistibly of the fleet mountain steeds. Often had she seen such springing, quivering movements as she had watched them, eager for the race.

In the confusion of sounds, Cormac’s quick ear detected the first chords of a war-dance struck from the harps around him; and responding to the music, he leapt forward and broke into the first movement of the beloved sword-dance.

A half-halo of light glanced round him as he drew his sword like lightning from its sheath. A band of warriors immediately gathered about him and joined with him in the mazes of the dance.

Elgiva watched him with a beating heart. She realised now the truth of what Ethne had told her—that Cormac drew men around him as a flower gathers bees. Who could resist him, this darling of the people? He had the grace and fire of an untamed animal, as he responded, with voice and limb, to the music. More than mortal he seemed. His feet were winged, surely; they did not hurry, but went on ever, swift and light and even. To watch him—with a battle-song on his lips and sword and feet ever in time to the music—was to see the very personation of youth and fire.

Once, as he passed by her seat, he paused for an instant; then wove one of the figures of the dance around her. The spirit of mischief shone in his eyes. Bending towards her, as though in the measure of the dance, he whispered teasingly:

“Do you remember your words to me at Glendalough? Tell me, Elgiva, are you as ready now as then to wed me?”

The dance carried him away from her before she could reply. She flashed a look at him. A ripple of teasing laughter came to her ears in return.

Again when he passed her—his eyes challenged hers. It was new to her this wild assertive mood of his. She watched him with a vague wonder—this personification of her mother’s race who turned so easily from one note to another in the scale of human passion and played upon its gamut with the ease their fingers played upon the harp.

Who could resist him, she asked herself, this darling of the people?

Ethne watched him, well-pleased; knowing that, to these simple people—children of the soil—a stronger appeal could be made by dance than by speech.

“Ahoi! Ahoi!” came Cormac’s battle cry once more. He tossed his locks from his gleaming forehead; his thin nostril quivered; his sword shimmered constantly in a half-arc of light. Swifter and swifter flew his feet, as sword and shield gleamed in the warrior dance. He chanted as he sang:

“Dance on! dance on: let us dance on! Dance on for aye! Till sword, and foot, and tongue doth yield. The magic sense from rhythm born! Dance on: dance on: let us dance on!”

Warrior after warrior fell out and gave place to others in the charmed circle of the sword-dancers—either too fatigued or too confused and giddy to observe the figures of the dance. But still the light, swaying figure of the young chieftain flew on—till the eyes of the whole assembly filled with wonder at him.

All present were so intent upon him that, for a time, they were unconscious of uproar and confusion outside the hall.

Suddenly every entrance was flooded by a sea of white, agonized faces.

The faces, for the greater part were those of old men and women and children, but amongst them were warriors’, blanched with fear; they looked more ghastly because of the flaring torches they carried. A confused murmur accompanied them—not the voices of men, but rather the passionate sighs of those whom fear had turned to mutes.

The leader of the dance continued though all around the attention was falling from him, and men were gazing upon each other in growing excitement—knowing the tumult must mean battle—but not knowing the quarter from whence it came.

In the moment of suspense Bret and Pict and Scot were stirred to the very depths of the fount from which they drew their war-passion. Hands leapt to knife and pike and Roman blade as, with paling faces, they turned involuntarily towards each other. Shrill voices, at length, broke yelling into the assembly.

“The Heathen—the Saxons—are upon us! They close in upon us from either side!”

The leader of the sword-dance had halted—the flashing marvel of shield and sword and winged feet had stopped, statue-like, for a minute.

And then again he was leader of men—not of revellers.

Suddenly at the head of every warrior, every chief in the hall—as they banded themselves together in passionate devotion to him.

In a moment of time he became chief and leader of all about him. Not, as it were, of his own free will, but of some power that emanated from him—mysterious—intoxicating. All flocked towards him. The popular cries of Cunedda and Kymry were yoked with those of Cormac and The Black Horse. Men’s hearts kindled anew—Bret and Pict and Scot vowed brotherhood for aye! But when they went forth, it was to confront rumour of battle instead of battle itself!

The wild alarm that two bodies of Saxons were closing upon the Fair, had arisen at the news that two bands of men, in the darkness, were approaching on either side. Panic often seized the people, at the least cause, since that fearful day when the Saxons had burst on the southern plain like an angry sea; and, beating around the walls of Sarum, had at length overcome the mighty fortress.

The approaching men proved to be serfs and herdsmen of Celtic race; but they were the bearers of ill tidings.

From two directions came the grave news that the Roman city, Viriconium, had fallen into the hands of the Saxons, under the two dread brothers—Cutha and Ceawlin; that its inhabitants had been put to the sword, and its buildings to the flame.

The awful tidings seemed to inspire Cormac with new hope and courage.

“To the South!” he cried. “To the Saxons!”

CHAPTER XV.
The Black Horse.

Cutha was slain! The Saxons were defeated!

These were the magic words that men were repeating to each other.

Cutha was slain, the Saxons were defeated—these were the two first acts of the Black Horse—cried the followers of Cormac; the rest would follow, and Britain would soon be again in the hands of its own people.

Cormac’s great army settled down to rest and make merry in the peaceful valley of the Severn. His soldiers recked not that they were shut off from retreat by hill and forest; that they were dangerously easy of access to the West Saxons, and to those fierce Angles—the men of the Merce.

South-south-east they had journeyed. They had swept, triumphantly, across the land as though the victories they sang of were already behind them. Their leader, they said, was to take all before him and drive the Saxons from the shores. Revenge was to be taken at last on the Jutish conquerors who had been the first of the savage stock to set foot in Britain; the two brothers bearing the strange titles signifying the Horse and the Mare—Hengist and Horsa, who had left the emblem of the White Horse as a sign of conquest.

But it was the Black Horse now against the White. On all sides the emblem of a black steed was displayed—on samite, and on coarse flax, and hemp; this was to put utterly to shame, to destroy entirely, the dread sign of Hengist.

The popular cry of the Black Horse appealed to all men. On all sides chieftains had flocked forward to fight under the boy-leader—among them Brochmael, Prince of Powys, who had united with him in defeating the Saxons. And, just as on Southern slopes, the Saxons cut their white horse on the chalk soil—so Cormac’s hosts burnt their hostile symbol black on moss and heather.

The Severn valley was scorched in many places with the forms of sprawling monsters that bore no more resemblance to a horse than to any other quadruped. A huge banner, bearing the same device, flapped over Cormac’s tent on the left bank of the river.

The wreck of a princely Roman mansion had been hastily fitted for the reception of Ethne and her maidens. Ruined though it was, it was a fitting palace for the splendour-loving Ethne. Gilt bronze mingled with the oak shingles and stone of the roofs; and in the nobler portions of the house, were tiles of gilt bronze; the baths were of a size for royal use, and the walls were richly gilt, or lined with sheets of brilliant glass. Glass in place of mica or shell filled the windows, and brilliant glass was inlaid, jewel-like, in the walls and in the mosaic of the floors; the rich metal-work was by Byzantine workmen.

Ethne herself was clad, royally, in purple and ermine; bare arm and brow and neck clasped by Celtic torques. For ornaments she seldom wore the amber, rock-crystal and coloured glass with which most women were content, and now the long brooch that clasped her brat flashed with encrusted emeralds, set in by cunning Roman workmanship.

“Here let us winter,” she said, one brilliant autumn day as she sat in state on a carved golden chair. Above her, like a baldichino, hung an embroidered peplos of great worth and beauty—so old it had once decked the shrine of a temple to Apollo.

The marred walls about her had been hastily patched by fresh-hewn oak and beech from the surrounding forests; the gleaming trunks and red autumn leaves showed, side by side, with walls covered by sard and jasper and amethyst.

As protection from the wind skins of sheep and goats were hung around, mingled with tapestries that might, in their beauty, have been woven at the loom of Penelope; they were embroideries from Egypt—that country so lavish in her embroideries, that they worked on the sails of the galleys she sent to Tyre!

“Winter here? Not a doubt of it,” said Elgiva, bluntly. “And the crows will winter likewise. They will feast the winter long upon our flesh, and our blood will warm the winter rain.”

She was sitting on a low stool beside Ethne of the Raven Hair; with the old hound, Gelert, stretched at her feet. The creature scarcely left her side—night or day. He had never wavered in his devotion to her since the day she had saved his life. And just as much as he loved Elgiva, he detested Ethne; and though at Elgiva’s command he would try and curb his hatred, he would burst out into a low snarl if, by chance, Ethne touched him, or her draperies passed over him. Elgiva tried hard to break him of this habit and to teach him to love Ethne—but without avail; nor was he to be gained over by any advances that Ethne would make to him.

The affection between the two women seemed to increase each day; Ethne now professed Christianity, and declared she owed her conversion to Elgiva.

Cormac’s suspicions against Ethne had vanished; he took her advice on all points. It was upon her suggestion that he had chosen the Severn Valley as a camping-ground.

During the campaign Elgiva, with her more sober judgment, had opposed the descent into the plains. Nor could she see that it aided their plans—for Redwald and his men, it was believed, lay further to the south and the west.

She pointed gravely to the hills beyond.

“Forests and mountains stretch between us and our refuge,” she said. “We have crossed the barrier that earth herself has built between us and our enemies.”

“Fair mother-earth helped us in our need with hill and forest,” said Cormac. “Then were we the vanquished, now are we the victors. Is not Cutha slain and Ceawlin loathed and detested by the Saxons themselves?”

He was smiling and triumphant, as his eye swept the scene of the river-banks before him—the motley array of Kymry, who owned him for their leader. British legions, still manifesting the polish and discipline of Rome, woad-dyed savages, blue on the russet landscape; bands of Hibernian Fili—their sleek race-horses, slight and frail, beside the stout cavalry of the Romanised Brets; Picts from boundless Caledonia—the swing of their sheep-skin garments never ceasing in their restless masses; and warriors also from weems and caves with arrows tipped with stone, or bearing leaf-shaped swords as in days of old. Near at hand were workers inspecting and repairing the scythe-edged chariots of early days—ever the pride and stay of the Britons. From peak and wind-swept down came the hum and shriek of bagpipes. Above all, great swarms of kites hovered in the air—for the hosts of the great army yielded rich store for nest and maw.

On the hills beyond—sinister background for the reckless warriors—burnt black on ling and heather was the conquering symbol, the Black Horse. To Cormac’s ears came in uncouth, primitive verse a weird refrain, sung continuously in his honour, a battle song that had been in his family for unknown generations, descended from that dim past whence sprang the origin of his forefathers’ totem, the Horse. A vague, formless kind of verse, difficult of translation and, when translated, shaping itself into words akin to these:

“In days of Eld, when men choose birds and beasts around them,
To bear their name and race and station,
I sought and chose the swift, free horse!
Into his silken, mobile ear my lips have slipt their whisper.
Bear me away—away with the wind and the lightning and storm.”

“You say we have crossed the barrier between ourselves and our enemies,” said Ethne, in reply to the Saxon’s words. “But I tell you, my Elgiva, that we need no barrier against friends.”

“You speak in riddles,” said Elgiva, looking in wonder at the bright-eyed and smiling woman.

“I speak in riddles, say you? And I can show you a riddle, too, as well as speak one. Behold!”

At a sign from her some slaves drew apart two great pieces of tapestry that covered a gap in the ruined walls; they saw that a great feast was under preparation.

Not a flower-crowned banquet such as Ethne had loved to spread before her friends in her Roman villa in Damnonia—but a feast of the rudest fare. Rude in its fare and rude in its abundance—hogs and oxen, roasted whole, mingled with cakes of meal as big as shields; hogsheads of cheese and curds, and stacks of onions. Such a feast as would have gladdened the roughest of the Picts and Scots; or have laden the board of their enemies—the rude Saxons.

“Shall I aid you both to the reading of my riddle?” said the smiling Ethne, “when I tell you that to-morrow morning we feast not with our warriors but with our enemies—not indeed with our enemies, but with our allies? That side by side the servers lay wine-cup and bottomless drinking-horn!”

There was silence, whilst Cormac and Elgiva grasped the meaning of these words. And then a torrent of words from both assailed Ethne’s ears.

“We feast with the Saxons!” cried Elgiva. “Remember Vortigern, and how he feasted with them, and beware! How when Bret and Saxon were drinking side by side Hengist cried, ‘Draw your daggers!’ and each Saxon smote the Briton at his side and slew him.”

“We are allied with the Saxons!” cried Cormac. “Without my knowledge? How? When?”

“What matter if we knit our noose ourselves!” continued Elgiva, scornfully. “Better die meadful and feasting than in drought and famine on the battle-field. Curd and flesh to-day—cow-berry and toad-stool to-morrow!”

Ethne clapped her hands lightly to her ears.

“Listen! Listen!” she cried, smiling. “For I have wonderful news to tell you!”

“Great news, indeed!” exclaimed Cormac, with rising fury, “that we should be the allies of that villain, Ceawlin of Wessex! No, Ethne——”

“Ceawlin of Wessex—never!” cried Ethne, interrupting him. “But what do you say to Ethelbert of Kent?”

“Ethelbert of Kent!”

Cormac’s face changed. An alliance with the Kentish over-lord was entirely different, for it was said his wife was a Christian—Bertha, daughter of the Frankish king, Charibert.

“Yes, we are allied with him against Ceawlin!” cried Ethne, with sparkling eyes; while Cormac breathed hard, and gazed at her between friendly anger and admiration. “It is a thing of years ago, the feud between the two; since Ethelbert was woefully beaten at Wibbesben by Ceawlin. Ethelbert was but a stripling then, but he means now to have his revenge!”

She paused, smiling.

“I will show you,” she said, “the pathway there is to be cut among our enemies. There is discussion among them, and one Saxon wars upon another. Last night, and the night before, when you little dreamed of what I was doing, I had secret interviews with one of the most powerful of the Saxon thanes, and I soon learnt that Redwald is no longer with Ceawlin, but has left him and gone over to Ethelbert. That a thane should leave his chief is one of the most terrible things that can happen among the Saxons—but Ceawlin of Wessex, as these Saxon dogs have named this side of Cæsariensis, is hated by his own people as well as by his enemies, and some of our allies, the Hwiccan, are part of the West Saxons. Ethelbert, king of erstwhile Cantii, has come round by Mercia to join us here and has seized upon the moment to unite with the Hwiccan, as well as with us and the Mercians; he wishes to depose Ceawlin and place himself in power. To reward us for our support, he will——” She turned, with outstretched hands to Elgiva. “He will force Redwald to deliver up your mother to us!”

Elgiva fell, with a low sob, at Ethne’s knee, and placed her lips on the hands that held hers.

“He knows, then, where Redwald is?” said Cormac.

“Redwald is, at this moment, in Ethelbert’s camp. By this time to-morrow Elgiva and her mother will be together.”

Cormac stood before his foster-sister with bowed head, looking at her with soft, grave eyes. For a moment his gaze wandered to the great motley army, basking in the autumn sunlight, and then returned to her. For the time his wild hopes of dominion over the Saxons were nothing to him, before the fact that his father’s last injunctions were about to be fulfilled—and through Ethne!

He might have fought twenty battles and yet been as far as ever from the chief object of the campaign—here, at the very beginning, Ethne had accomplished it.

“Do you blame me now that I kept the thing secret from you?” asked Ethne, softly. “When so much depended on it, it seemed cruel to rouse your hopes until I was certain.”

For a time he could not answer; speech failed him as he remembered his words to Elgiva against Ethne.

At last he murmured in broken tones, as he knelt before her:

“I can never repay you, Ethne—I am unworthy even to thank you.”

He turned to Elgiva and said:

“It is finished, Elgiva—my father’s wishes are fulfilled. You remember, in the grotto, you said you wished you might owe your mother’s rescue to another rather than to me. You have your desire now.”

The girl made no reply.

“And yet—in spite of all my gratitude to Ethne, I should have liked you to have owed it all to me. It is sweet to fight for those—we love!”

A quick blush flamed on Elgiva’s face. Her eyes met Cormac’s. Her hands fell into his outstretched to her.

Ethne threw her arms round both.

“How say ye, my love-birds? Shall we have feast first and marriage after? Shall the priest at eve join ye two in wedlock?”

CHAPTER XVI.
Ethelbert of Kent.

The day of the feast had dawned. Ethne had long left her bed, and was now surrounded by her women at her toilet-table. She slipped the bronze case from her mirror and looked at herself attentively. The days of warfare and anxiety had left no impression upon her; the white skin was as fair as ever, the lips as red, the hair as glossy in its blue-blackness. Fresh from the bath, satin-like from delicate unguents, never had the fair and beautiful skin appeared to greater advantage—this she believed she owed to the elaborate system of bathing Roman Britain had taught her to love, and which she could now enjoy to the utmost; for she had put the baths of the villa into order after much trouble. In her bathing she was a true Sybarite—luxuriating in hot air and vapour, and in summer in sun-baths—spending much time in passing, by almost imperceptible degrees, from cold to the utmost degree of heat she was capable of enduring; after which she plunged into new milk, or was anointed with costly and perfumed oil. She could endure hardship and privation, but her love of luxury and wealth was a passion with her. The toilet table at which she sat was scattered with accessories of the most perfect kind. The silver unguent vases, filled with Celtic spikenard, were in the form of the sacred lotus-flower; the caskets and mirror-cases were ornamented with beautiful honeysuckle pattern, and her own portrait was supported by cupids of priceless workmanship.

Ethne’s magnificent toilette was almost completed—one woman was tying some dusky British pearls about the throat, and another was staining the fingers with henna when Gelert rushed into the room searching and sniffing into every corner and behind every hanging; whining piteously meanwhile. He pushed against the tiring-woman engaged on painting the fingers, and the vase of henna was thrown on Ethne’s robe.

Ethne flew into a rage immediately; she rose and kicked the creature so savagely that it became necessary to change her embroidered shoe as well as repair the damaged robe.

“Ah, brute!” she cried. “Always at hand to annoy me—why did you not follow your mistress?”

Contrary to his usual custom, the hound showed no ill-feeling to Ethne, in spite of her treatment of him; and stretched himself on the ground beside her, although she tried to beat him off. When she rose to leave the room he still hung about her; when her women would have driven him away he snarled and bit at them savagely.

He had been seeking for Elgiva and, unable to find her, was determined to remain by Ethne’s side, where he hoped his mistress would, sooner or later, return.

There was no time for delay; the candle-bearers stood waiting outside the door—for Ethne, doing all things in royal state, had ordered that a great candle, six feet in height, should precede her in the procession.

She knew that all was in readiness. The hall of the feast was swept, and garnished, and sprinkled with vervain-water; ivy wreaths to ward off the effects of drinking were ready for each feaster. The door opened, the great candle shed its rays on her, the procession waited—she rose and followed.

She glanced exulting over the scene as she sank into her seat of honour.

The leaders of the party, both Briton and Saxon, occupied an elevated position; the dishes and plates from which they ate were of pure gold; all fashioned, as Roman taste had demanded, from ancient and beautiful Greek models. The stage on which they sat had once been an upper chamber of the Roman villa, but its walls had suffered in the Saxon destruction, and it now stood open to the halls and courts below. From her position Ethne had a view of much of the great banquet she had prepared. The half-ruined mansion had lent itself readily to her purpose. In their ravages the heathen had thrown down so many of the walls that the lower rooms and halls formed, with the outer courts, an almost continuous apartment; in many places there was no roof at all, but this proved an advantage in the eyes of the rude chieftains on either side; in the open air they found greater space for the hounds and body-slaves it was their pleasure should attend them. Clad in skins of goat and sheep, hot with mead and gluttony, the warriors gave no thought to autumn gust and passing raindrop; and cared not that wasp and bee mingled with the viands before them.

Ethne’s eye travelled proudly over the scene before her. To her feet the throng of feasters swept; and on through broken courts and halls—branching off here and there to fill unseen side-aisles—and on again to the great opening arch where their figures showed clear against the distant dusk of the forest. A mighty feast even in those days. Where it overflowed into the outer air it gained a fringe of slaves, with here and there a favourite horse called by his master to partake of Roman pulse or oaten cake; to the uproar would be added the shrill neigh of some Hibernian racer, or the deep note of a Saxon war-horse.

But in the midst of her triumph Ethne was moved to disgust. In days gone by she had entertained her guests—polished Greeks and Romans—at flower-strewn tables to the music of singing maidens; the air sweet from perfumed fountains and the wine-flagons garlanded with roses. Now her guests fought with their food as animals with their prey; they scrambled together for the possession of tit-bits, and swallowed great junks of flesh with the ease and rapidity of the hounds at their feet; to the perpetual discord of dirk on platter there was a harsh, pervading accompaniment of men munching their food as animals munch their corn. Like animals, too, she thought they looked, clad wholly in sheep and goat-skins—even their trews of hide; their yellow hair swart from neglect, their fine skins chafed and roughened by sun and air; with grass and hay bound round their feet. And to these savages she must sue! Filthy, unwashed, barbarous—feasting in the ruins they had made.

“A goodly sight, O King!” she said, turning to the Anglo-Saxon in a seat of honour at her side. “These fine warriors are the admiration of the Britons, even on our only meeting-ground, the battle-field—therefore, a thousand times more at festival!”

“And yet I thought but just now, from your manner of looking at them, and from your nostrils’ twitching that you would sooner my warriors were at battle-distance than with you at cup and meat!”

Many of the Saxon thanes at the upper table had added a unique ornament to their appearance—the waving length of a peacock’s feather. For when the servers had entered bearing aloft these dainties with their gorgeous tails outspread—a wild scramble had ensued that each might obtain one of the feathers.

“Now, indeed, O King, you wrong me!” returned Ethne, in her sweetest manner, “and for your words you must needs at once pledge me in this loving-cup, and pledge me in the ale you love so well.”

From a beautiful slave she took a golden bowl that glittered with emeralds, and drinking from it first, held it herself to the lips of her companion.

But he took it coldly into his own hand, turning it with particular care that he might drink from the very spot which her lips had pressed. He returned it to the slave—spilling clumsily the remainder on Ethne’s sweeping robes.

A sound between a chuckle and a grunt escaped him.

“I drink from the same spot with you,” he said, “but I give you no fair words, but the truth, as my reason. You look at me so honey-sweet and mouth your words so smoothly—and I have heard full many tales of sweet words and poisoned cup!”

Ethne sighed audibly; she leaned towards him with seductive grace.

“Let us continue, then, as we have begun, O King Ethelbert! Give me the truth only, or what you deem the truth—and leave me to find the sweet words myself.” She smiled and her ugly tusks showed themselves.

He had seized upon a dish of rosy apples and was devouring them, shredding the floor and her dress with pip and core. His eyes, narrowed with the relish of the fruit, glanced sideways upon her—half-contemptuously, half-suspiciously. He knew it was through this woman, and not through her foster-brother, that the alliance with the Kymry had been formed. To his stern Saxon mind it seemed a meaningless prelude to the business in hand, thus to bandy what seemed to him baby speeches. Ethne’s beauty also was not altogether to his liking; her small and slender proportions, the blue-black of her hair, and the ivory pallor of her skin were far removed from his ideal of womanly beauty; and to him her delicate manner and bird-like appetite were unnatural. He glanced from her to the scene below, at the Saxon women—large, fair, and feasting bravely.

His Thor and Odin religion of terror supplied him with a host of elves and sprites—pale, dark-haired, bright-eyed—and he could not dissociate the thought of them from this small, dark woman at his side. Instinctively, he said a charm to himself, and muttered incantations between each mouthful.

As to Ethne, she was experiencing some disappointment in this meeting between herself and the great Ethelbert of Kent.

She looked on him with more favour than he on her. He had not yet grown coarse from overfeeding and drinking; and his figure had the majesty of the gods, to whom he traced his origin. His long hair and golden beard sparkled, almost as brightly as the massive crown upon his head. Much of his dress was of a splendour Ethne had seldom seen surpassed; but through the openings of his upper garments she could see that, under rich robes embroidered and jewelled, he wore the close-fitting dress of sheep-skin that was the garb of the meanest serf; the thongs, which bound the sandals together, were pointed with jewels and gold, and gold formed every fastening of his garments.

CHAPTER XVII.
Ethne’s Error.

Cormac’s seat at the banquet had been placed at some distance from Ethne. This he thought strange, for Ethne, so anxious to identify herself with him, generally insisted on sitting beside him; it was her custom to lavish attention upon him, but now she showed herself indifferent to his presence.

He could not overhear her conversation with Ethelbert, had he wished—he had no desire to do so. He trusted to her to make all necessary arrangements—his whole mind for the time was given to love and Elgiva. It had been a disappointment when Ethne, meeting him at the entrance to the hall, had told him that Elgiva would not appear at the feast. He marvelled greatly why she had absented herself and why the old hound Gelert had not stayed with her.

The time wore on slowly. The Anglo-Saxon minstrels broke into coarse, jigging tunes; their fellows feasted more heartily when thus accompanied; beating time with wagging heads and shouting between their mouthfuls to the jerky numbers. The Celtic pipers joined in—the wild Hibernians adding their piercing note; the hounds followed with dismal howls. The smell of sheep-skin clothing was strangely mingled with the steam of the coarse feast.

The great Bretwalda addressed Ethne suddenly.

“And your warriors lady, I hope are ready to march with me at this week’s end?”

In a moment she was upright, smiling.

“Ah!” said she, “it is time we spent a minute in these troublesome matters. Our aid is ready at any moment against this villain, Ceawlin of Wessex. And the conditions I ask will not, I think, be hard!”

The Bretwalda paused with his whittle in a mass of goats’ flesh.

“The conditions!” he repeated. “The conditions!”

“Yes, the conditions, my liege,” she said, still smiling. “Is it strange we ask aught in return?”

“Aught in return!” again he repeated her words, “aught in return!”—half in contempt, half in anger. What right, he wondered, had women to do anything but stitch trews and bake bread, and lend a hand occasionally in battle? He went on eating his goats’ flesh.

Ethne felt sick at heart. She took a draught of her favourite Greek wine. Then turned on him a smiling face.

“You remember, O King, my conditions?”

He said nothing—only looked, far off, through an arched opening past the dusk and blue of the low-lying forest to where the cattle strayed upon the hills; the hills that separated them from mountainous Cambria.

Then he pointed silently to the heights with one hand, and with the other grasped his long rune-covered sword.

“My lord?” she questioned, with paling lips but with an attempt at mirth. “Your gestures, I doubt not, are deemed most eloquent, but I would fain have speech as well!”

“Those hills, lady,” he said, looking at her steadfastly, “are the chain wherewith you and your warriors are bound to me—this sword is the fate that awaits those who refuse to ally with me against Ceawlin of Wessex!”

Ethne half rose to her feet. A fit of rage seized her which she could scarcely repress but she kept silent, although two vivid spots of colour suddenly showed on her white cheeks, and her eyes glittered strangely.

Ethelbert helped himself to some virgin-honey from the board; and as he ate it continued to gaze on Ethne.

With these strange glittering eyes the Celtic woman was dangerously akin to sprite and elf. The fear came upon him that she might beguile him. Such haunting fears were Ethelbert’s throughout his life—in his meeting with Saint Augustine he bargained that it should take place in the open air, for he believed the danger from incantation was greater within four walls. He recalled the scene in which he had seen her on the battle-field; in the din and heat of the fight with men falling like leaves around her, her charioteer had rushed upon the dying Cutha whilst she stood upright, uttering incantations in a piercing, unknown tongue.

Again Ethelbert muttered a charm; and this time, as a further precaution he made the sign of the cross, as he had seen his Christian Bertha do.

“I must remind you, noble Ethelbert,” said Ethne, with forced calmness, “of the terms of our agreement. To begin—it is not necessary to tell you of the value you set upon the services of Ceawlin’s former thane, Redwald; nor of Redwald’s great desire to obtain possession of my companion, the Saxon maid, Elgiva! And can you deny that the compact between you and me was that you should cede my former possessions in Damnonia to me for our services against Ceawlin, and the restoration of Elgiva to her Saxon kinsmen?”

Ethelbert turned with some dignity to his companion.

“You forget one thing, lady,” he said, “of great importance—and that is that your negotiations were not with me at all, but with Redwald. He is my best soldier, but I cannot recognise any wild promises he may have made to you even should Damnonia fall into my hands. I am willing enough that he should obtain the maid and thank you, queen, for your kindly gift to him.” Ethne here bit her lip until the blood appeared. “But it seemed to me you were over-anxious to part with the fair Saxon. So anxious that you could not wait for the reply of my emissaries. Ha, ha! Wit you have, in plenty, and fine speech—but you are hot and hasty like all Welsh—and heat and haste err oft!”

Ethne continued to control her wrath. She tried to smile.

“I cannot tell you all the difficulties that beset me,” she said, “but I ask you to think of me as less witless than I seem. My plans concerning the maid demanded the greatest secrecy even from my own councillors!”

“Tut, tut,” said the blunt Saxon. “What care I for your plans and your councillors—and I come not here to bandy words over maids and their quarrels with their kinsfolk! I come here to direct you, and yonder stripling-chieftain about our plans for our next week’s campaign!”

Ethne became as pale as death in her effort to control herself.

“You are over-sure of your claims upon us,” she said, in a slow, trembling voice. “What of Ceawlin? He may, perhaps, offer fairer conditions for our aid against you.”

Ethelbert laughed shortly, and swore scornfully.

“By Thor and Odin and the tail of the mare of Hengist—these Welsh outfool themselves. Know you not that I lie betwixt your host and Ceawlin?”

Ethne laughed also—a weak, forced laugh.

“A jest—a jest, Sir King! Pardonable, surely, at least and merry-making!”

“A jest!” repeated Ethelbert. “And if one be pardonable, likewise a second. What then of Ceawlin! He also might find my terms easier if I ask his aid against you.”

“Well said, King Ethelbert! Your jest hath given mine its death-blow. Men do belie you Saxons when they call you witless. A very subtle wit, indeed, you seem to me to have.”

She laughed—again the same forced laughter.

Then suddenly she broke down—she burst into one of her paroxysms of rage, as some women burst into tears. The pent-up wrath escaped.

“You Jutish churl!” she shrieked. “Do you treat us like slaves—to be used and then cast off like clouts? Fight we will—but against you, not with you. I will not rest till your bloody head be brought me and I have hacked out your sneering tongue myself.”

Her angry voice rang through the hall. She could be plainly seen, as she stood upright in her glittering robes. She drew her sword from her girdle and it flashed above her head.

She had feared a bloody break-up to the banquet—and now she herself had brought it about.

The brawl spread, quick as lightning. Within three minutes after Ethne’s voice had rung through the hall, ten men were slain and thirty wounded. The alarm was sounded on both sides—and within an hour a desperate battle between the Kymry and Saxons was in full course. Before nightfall Ethne and Cormac had been taken prisoners.

CHAPTER XVIII.
England’s First Christian Queen.

The foster-brother and sister were imprisoned in one of the rooms of the Roman villa, in which the feast had been held. They were not fettered, but were carefully watched by a strong body of soldiers. They were to be put to death upon the following day. Their great army had scattered in every direction; a great number of prisoners had been taken by the Saxons. The Black Horse had failed!

The man and woman sat as far from each other as the room would allow. Cormac sat with his face buried in his hands. Ethne crouched like a wild animal caught in its lair; her body still quivered with the war-passion of the evening before; her face was swollen from the blows she had received; her beautiful hair was matted with blood, and blood stained her white skin and her tattered finery.

Cormac could not bear to look at her. He knew now the part she had played with Redwald. During the long night she had told him everything—told it him fiercely—with wild, heathen oaths. In her despair and rage there was still some pleasure in letting him know of Elgiva’s fate.

In all the tumult and distress of Cormac’s mind Elgiva’s loss seemed scarcely harder to bear than that Ethne should prove so treacherous and vile.

“We shall die together,” said Cormac, taking his hands from his face and looking at Ethne solemnly. “It is fitting—that I who tied myself so blindly to you in life, should not be parted in death!”

Ethne made no reply.

“And yet,” he said, after a time, as though continuing some thought aloud, “I could have sworn at the Fair that you loved Elgiva and lamented her loss.”

“Lamented her loss!” repeated Ethne, gloomily. “Ay, her loss meant all lost in those days—long ago I promised you should hear what the diviners told me at the Beltane festival, and now you shall hear it. They told me I should gain my lost possessions in Damnonia, in exchange for a Saxon maid. Now you know why I brought the great, fawning wench with me to Britain.”

She started up, raging again.

“Did the stars tell me right? Did they divine aright? Ah!” she turned on Cormac, “it was your silly calf-love for the Saxon gawk that stood in the way! I feared to delay lest you should discover my plans and prevent them—then I acted too quickly, and lost everything. I should have kept her with me until I was certain that Ethelbert would do as I wished.”

Her rage was horrible to witness.

As she stormed up and down the chamber there was a rustle in one of the corners, and the hound, Gelert, ran into the room.

Ethne rushed upon him immediately—here was something on which to vent her fury. The creature crouched down in supplication before her—but she kicked and trampled him underfoot.

“Beast!” she roared. “You haunt me like an evil genius; why did you not go with your mistress? Ah! curses upon her—she is safer now than I!”

The animal shrank under her blows, with a strange moan that was almost a murmur of expostulation. After all he had gone through, and the battles in which he had fought, there was something almost human about the old hound.

It was strange how, in his grief and search for Elgiva, he seemed determined to control the deep resentment he had always nursed against Ethne. He endured all her ill-usage patiently in the hope that, by her means, he might yet find Elgiva. He whimpered now like a whipt child.

Cormac rose and thrust Ethne away from the creature. Gelert was now specially dear to him because of the lost Elgiva.

Ethne turned on her foster-brother. In her rage she was a mad-woman—forgetting that the Saxons had bereft her of her weapons she sprang backward, fumbling at her girdle for her dagger; her face horribly distorted, showed to their full her beast-like tusks.

The hound, looking on, understood the familiar action. He had lived too long among fighters not to know that she sought her sword; and that sword, he knew, was to be used against his master. He was an old warrior, well-trained in his work—many a man on the battle-field had received his death-wound from Gelert. With one spring his whole weight was hurled on Ethne; one short snap of his iron jaws and his old fangs had torn a fatal wound in her thin white throat.

The next moment all was tumult in the chamber. Several of the soldiers, who were on guard, rushed in on hearing Ethne’s death-cry. Cormac was seized by the soldiers, who believed he had been attacking the woman. Ethne was carried into an adjoining room.

Gelert gave a loud bark of joy, and rushed forward to meet two women who appeared at the door, accompanied by a Saxon who wore the dress of a priest.

To Cormac’s entire bewilderment, Elgiva stood before him.

“You, too!” he moaned. “Are you to suffer also for all this sin and treachery? Your life, I hoped, was safe.”

“And yours, too, Cormac,” she answered, solemnly. “You owe it to a fellow-Christian!”

Then, after a time, she told him what had happened to her after her departure from Ethne’s side on the preceding morning.

When Cormac had heard her story, he remembered the words of Saint Columba—the Cross and not the Sword will subdue the Saxons!

Elgiva said that at dawn on the day of the feast, Ethne awoke her saying that her mother was on her way to the British camp, and that Elgiva was to ride with some waiting Saxons to meet her. Elgiva set forth immediately, and rode some distance before she discovered Ethne’s treachery, and that she was being taken, as a prisoner, to Redwald. She endeavoured to escape, but found it useless. She then appealed to the men who accompanied her; and in her explanations and expostulations, she discovered that one of them had a wife who had lately adopted Christianity, and was now in the service of Queen Bertha. She persuaded this man to let her see his wife.

The interview she craved brought her more than she had dared to hope. Her mother’s story and long resistance to Paganism had already reached Queen Bertha’s ears; she now prevailed on Ethelbert to allow her to purchase the liberty of both women from Redwald—a difficult matter to arrange, even at the great price she offered; but Redwald was loath to refuse anything to the wife of the king to whom he had just vowed fealty.

“And so, Cormac,” said Elgiva, “I am sent back to you, and my mother with me, on the one condition that we depart to-morrow at dawn.”

Afterwards they looked down on the body of Ethne of the Raven Hair. The mother of Elgiva gently closed the staring eyes and said:

“Judge not, that ye be not judged! This woman was a Druidess, and a daughter of Druids, and they are reared in vice and cruelty. Their mothers are naught to them; when they marry it is not with one man, but with many; the children they bear are sent at once to the foster-mother. Love and honour are closed books to them.”

THE END.

William J. McKenzie, The Devonshire Press, Torquay.

Transcriber’s Notes

In a few cases, errors in punctuation have been corrected.

The word Chapter was added before VI.

Page 46: “Cond of the Hundred Battles” changed to “Conn of the Hundred Battles”

Page 82: “he gratefuly accepted” changed to “he gratefully accepted”

Page 95: “the hounds and man” changed to “the hounds and men”

Page 167: “Ceawlin and Wessex” changed to “Ceawlin of Wessex”

Page 178: “mouthe your words” changed to “mouth your words”