Nicanor - Teller of Tales Part 42

"Love thou hast never known, O Chloris," he said gently. "In all thy long life of wanton ease, thy long life in which children might have leaned upon thy knees and children's voices might have called thee blessed, love thou hast never known. Who could not pity this? Or thy name would not be upon the lips of men in the market-place. When men love, think you they make common talk of what they love? When women love, keep they not themselves pure for love's pure sake? Ay, truly I could pity thee, because some day thou wilt so pity thyself, in spite of thy riches beyond mine imaginings. That is all."

"Thou art over strange," said Chloris. "And I would I had not spoken with thee. After all, what doth it matter? There is always the end, when darkness comes and the wax is wiped clean."

"Is there?" said Nicanor. "Is there an end to anything upon the earth?"

"Now thou art foolish," said Chloris. Her eyes were unchanged, but her voice was angry. "In truth there is an end, and the end is--death." She spoke with the deep-rooted and universal distaste of all Romans to the direct reference to death. "Must not all things be gathered to the shades? And is not that the end of them?"

"Believe it, then, for so long as thou canst, for thou wilt be the happier for believing," said Nicanor. "And if some day it come to pa.s.s that thou dost believe differently, remember then what others have found, that only love can save thee--the love which thou hast never known. Were it not wise, O Chloris, to seek it while yet there may be time?" He paused, and his eyes forgot her. "I am seeking now," he said below his breath, and turned away from her into the crowd.

Chloris looked after him a moment with lids half dropped over her changeless eyes.

"The breath of the G.o.ds hath breathed upon him, and he understands. Oh, ay! he understands." She laughed, a silver tinkle which was not wholly mirth. "Will it ever come to pa.s.s that Chloris, the greatly loving, will rejoice to know that there is one who pities her? We shall see!"

But meanwhile affairs had changed on Thorney, even during the moments of Nicanor's speech with Chloris. The throng upon the beach, no longer orderly, was heaving with excitement. The Saxons, spreading in all directions to search for their prisoner, were in no mood to care what offence they gave. They plucked brands from the fire, using them as torches, and started for the village, while men and women retreated before them, not knowing how far trouble might ensue. But before they reached the village, a body of militarii, hastily summoned, came forth from between the houses to meet them. The officer commanding them sprang upon a pile of lumber, shouting to the Saxons, who halted, as it were irresolute.

"While ye remain in this province it is right that ye should obey its laws! If this Roman whom ye have taken hath committed crime against your laws or ours, let him be tried by these laws. Otherwise will we not give him up to you. He is a freeborn Roman, and is not to be done away with as a slave. If ye make oath to grant him trial, we will deliver him unto you."

Ceawlin, the hot-headed young chieftain, pulled his long sword from its bronze sheath, pointing with it to the figure upon the lumber-pile. His face flamed with red rage; he shook his sword and shouted to his men behind him. There was a rush; before the Romans could prevent, a score of Saxons had leaped upon the pile, dragging down him who spoke; and the first blood on Thorney had been shed. It was the signal; like warring currents of the sea the two forces clashed. The beach was alive with figures, struggling, shouting, or swaying in deadly silence in each other's grip. Light flickered snakelike along uplifted blades which shot above the sea of heads. It was a fight hand to hand, primitive, blind with insensate rage, ever-smouldering, which wanted but the spark of excuse to flame into the full flare of battle. The resistance of the militarii was speedily overcome; outnumbered, lacking their leader, they broke and fled. The Saxons, with shouts of triumph, gave chase over the stony beach into the streets of the island, bent on the recapture of their prisoner, and on wreaking vengeance upon those who had dared oppose them.

IX

That night, in the house of Juncina the fish-wife, kneeled Eldris at the window of the loft where she slept, looking out upon the house-tops with her shoulders gleaming white through her loosened hair. Through the window moonlight drifted, showing the squalor of the loft, and the bed where Sosia, the daughter of Juncina, lay asleep.

Into the night she murmured love-words, happy in her dreaming, calling to her love across the darkness.

"Is he in the wine-shop of Nicodemus, or is he in the moonlight by the fords, telling his tales to those who crowd around him? Doth he think of me, whose thoughts are all of him? Or have I angered him over-deeply?--for never have I seen him since that day I said him nay.

Ah, Nicanor, was it love that said thee nay? This hour might I have been lying in his arms, Love's happy handmaid--so happy! What if I had yielded? I so want his love! What would G.o.d care? Mary, Mother, keep me from these thoughts! I would that I could see him now--this same moon doth s.h.i.+ne upon him somewhere. Thou old moon, how many maids hast thou looked down on since the beginning of the world, who have kneeled at windows, and thought of a man, and been foolish?"

Sosia, in the bed, awoke, turned on her back, and raised herself upon an elbow, showing her flat and heavy face above the blanket pulled to her chin. She spoke drowsily, in a voice thick with sleep:

"Hath the moon bewitched thee quite? In truth I think thee off thy wits with love. All these nights hast thou been foolish, and waked me from my sleep. Wilt not come to bed, thou cruel girl?"

Reluctantly Eldris undressed and got into bed beside Sosia, who slept again, heavily, with stertorous breathings. The night breeze blew freshly in the window; from the village dogs barked, and the distant voices of men reached her. Somewhere in that press was he, in the midst of the tide of hurrying life; and her heart went out to him.

So she slept, deeply. Once or twice she tried to waken, as one strives to rouse from dreams; but the black swoon of sleep held her fast; body and soul she was drowned in the soundless depths of oblivion. But suddenly she was awake, startled, and somewhat dazed. Her first thought was wonder as to what had waked her; her next, that it was not so late as she had thought, for the noise at the ford still continued. More, it seemed increased. And even in the first moment of full consciousness which followed her waking daze, a sound grew out of all the noises of the village; a long mellow note, like the note of a deep-toned hunting-horn, vibrant yet steady, filling every cranny of the air. At once she knew it was this that had awakened her. It hung a moment, sweet, unearthly, haunting; and dropped back into an outburst of fierce clamor that leaped at it as hounds leap at a stag. Eldris put out her hand and shook Sosia.

"Sosia--waken! Dost hear that strange sound? What is it? Never have I heard such a sound before."

She scrambled out of bed and went to the window, her feet s.h.i.+ning white on the rough floor. She saw other faces appear at other windows and at doorways of dim hovels; there came black figures of men from lanes between the houses, running from the river-ford. The sharp clatter of the feet of a galloping horse clashed for a moment through other sounds.

"It is but a drunken brawl," said Sosia, sitting on the bed, a blanket about her bare shoulders. Her tone was indifferent; drunken brawls were no new things on Thorney. "Come back to bed."

"I think that something hath happened," said Eldris, and started to dress. "Dress thyself quickly, Sosia, and let us go out to see. It is not so late--the moon hath not left the window." This was true, although the wide pool of light upon the floor had narrowed to a silver bar.

But the room was lighted suddenly by a ruddy glare which leaped into it from without; a gust of voices swept beneath the window like the rising of a wind; there came the sound of many feet, as though a crowd had gathered before the house; cries, and the rattle of weapons. Again Eldris ran to the window. She cried over her shoulder in a frightened voice:

"Oh, blessed Peter! there be armed men entering all the houses in the lane! Haste thee, Sosia--let them not find thee naked here. I will go down and see--"

Below, the voice of Juncina cried:

"We harbor no fugitive here, I tell thee! Here be none but I and my two maids!"

Eldris, climbing down the ladder with hasty feet, saw that the room, fogged with gray smoke, was filled with half a score of men; saw Juncina struggling in a corner, held by two; saw others overturning the scanty furniture, slas.h.i.+ng with their swords at fish-nets and bedding, thrusting their torches into every nook and corner. She would have stumbled up the ladder again out of their sight, but a shout told her that she was seen. A great fellow seized her, dragging her from the ladder; in his grasp she fluttered like a rag caught in a briar. Another pulled her from him; she was in the midst of mail-clad forms that towered over her, drink-flushed faces, brutal with greed, that leered down upon her, hairy hands that grasped at her. Her captor she eluded, and another, her breath coming in dry sobs of terror; at her desperate doublings, like a frightened hare, their shouts of laughter told that the sport was very well to their liking. The doorway, close at hand, broken open and unguarded, offered a chance. She darted through it into the night, into another world of terror, in which sinister sounds met her on every side.

In a blind panic of fright she ran, thinking at every step to feel a heavy hand upon her; in the narrow lane she ran, jostled by those who fled beside her. Flames from burning houses threw their glare over fights which occurred in every street and lane, in which wounded men and dying crawled from beneath the feet of combatants into the shelter of black doorways. A band of hors.e.m.e.n galloped up the lane, overriding those who crossed their path, with shouts of "Death to Britons!"

Eldris saw them coming; saw the mouth of an alley black on one side, a slit between houses scarce wide enough for a horseman to ride through.

She dived into it, stumbling now and again into the gutter which channelled it. She began to sob with fright and exhaustion as she ran.

"Lord, let me find him, or I die of fear! He will save me--with him shall I be safe. Take me to him--let me find him, for my love is stronger than am I." Fear swept her from all the rationalities to which she had clung; out of the tumult and the terror in which she struggled, love rose like a wave and claimed her--the pa.s.sion which was stronger than she. G.o.d was very strong, without doubt; but without doubt also He had many souls to guard that night, and it was the strength of a man's arm she wanted.

So she reached the end of the alley where it opened into the street of the fords, and crouched behind the elbow of a rambling wall, looking out warily, a hunted thing, to see if further faring might be safe.

The broad paved street was lighted by flames from a house blazing fiercely opposite her; and figures ran to and fro before it like imps gone mad. Other figures there were also, which lay very still upon the roadway in the crimson light, with their black shadows crouched behind them. There was a rending crackle from the heart of the fire, and shrieks and shouting from those around it; and under it all the dull roar from all Thorney which never ceased. And quite suddenly Eldris knew that she was listening to a sound that came out of the din around her, the sound of men's voices, singing in unison. In that hour and place it was to her more dreadful, more a thing of terror, than even the cries which it was drowning. The voices came nearer; and at that in them, for all her fear, the blood thrilled through her to her finger-tips.

For in them was the very spirit of the fight, of l.u.s.t and blood and fierce exultant triumph; barbaric and pagan, they were reckless with a pitiless pride which feared neither G.o.ds nor men nor devils. Eldris crouched closer against the sheltering wall as though it had been a sentient thing to aid her. So she saw a line of men, on foot, approaching; and the line reached from side to side of the wide street.

Each man walked with arms across his fellows' shoulders; and their song kept time with their swift marching feet. The red light of the burning houses fell upon them, on their reckless faces, and glinted on their s.h.i.+rts of link-mail which clashed as they moved, on their crested caps of metal, and on the weapons which hung at their sides. They swept all before them as they came; plunderers left their work of outrage and slaughter and fell in with them, taking up their song. The first line pa.s.sed; and Eldris saw the reason of their triumph. For those in the rear dragged with them a prisoner, a small man, battered and b.l.o.o.d.y, with one arm hanging in a torn sling. She could not see his face, but her heart turned to water within her. The song sickened her with an overpowering sense of her own weakness against all that it signified of brutal male strength; it dominated her, and before it she shrank and s.h.i.+vered. But now her terror was not all for herself alone, but for that one who might be also in their hands, prisoner to them even as was this poor puppet prisoner. She started up, with a cry which was drowned in the rhythm of the terrible song as ever the cries of women have been drowned in the song of the fighting, and fell back in a huddle against the wall, with her face hidden on her knees, sobbing:

"Christ--oh, Christ, save him! Mary, save him, or let me die with him!"

When she found her way back to life, Thorney was wrapped in silence and illimitable gloom. The light of the burning houses had died; the shouts of men and shrieks of women and the fierce song of the Saxons had ceased. Yet there were other sounds which grew out of the darkness as she listened; a thin far wailing, like the ghost of grief, and close at hand a man's deep voice, very low, broken by sobbing.

"Soul of my heart, where art thou! All the night I have searched and cannot find thee, dead nor living. The curse of all evil be upon these Saxon swine! They have slain her--my woman!--and she is dead! No more will she lie beside me when the dark swims in the hut.--O light of my life, could I but hear thee call me once again thy great ugly bear! Eh, thy bear is a sad bear this night, my lamb!"

Eldris stumbled to her feet, covering her ears with her hands. She also was seeking and could not find. She started running from the dreadful sobbing voice, picking her way as best she might in the wreck and ruin of the Saxons' trail.

Long she searched, and everywhere met others, also seeking, and yet others who had found what they had lost. Torches flashed in and out like fireflies among the darkened lanes; from houses left unscathed came the wailing of women who had brought home their dead. The air was heavy with smoke, so that the eyes smarted and the throat stung.

Into the face of every man who pa.s.sed her she looked with eager eyes of hope. Every man's body that lay in street or lane she hovered over with caught breath and eyes of fear, nerving herself to stoop, to turn the dead weight that settled sullenly into itself as her hands left it; to scan the face by the light of her flaring torch. And the light showed her as ghastly as what she looked on; black hair streaming like smoke behind her, eyes wide with fear, pinched face glimmering pallid. No joyful handmaiden of Love looked she, going to love's embraces, rather a wild thing, terror-ridden, possessed wholly by the frenzy of her love.

Strange faces she looked on in her search among the living and the dead; bearded faces, boyish faces, but never that face she sought.

To a dead man's side she flitted, like a spirit of the night; and on her knees, holding her torch to a face with light staring eyes and open jaws that seemed still to shriek a last despairing curse at her, she caught her breath with a stifled scream. For the shock of thick hair, cut below the ears, was black and coa.r.s.e; and the half-naked body, from which the tunic had been stripped, was long and lean. The torchlight cast quick shadows upon the fearful face; and sometimes to her eyes it was the face of her love, who had died terribly, and sometimes it was the face of a stranger. She began to shake.

"I cannot tell--oh, G.o.d, I cannot tell!" she wailed. "Is my mind gone, that I should not know thee? I must know--how can I go further until I know?"

With wild eyes she looked about her. She was in the open s.p.a.ce of the market-place,--alone, save for the thing at her feet, and for other things huddled here and there around her,--a silent battleground from which the hosts had departed. The carca.s.s of a horse lay near, and her torch struck points of light from the metal of its trappings. A dog ran by her on padding feet, its fangs dripping, its tail between its legs.

Eldris thrust the torch into the earth, that it might stand erect. She knelt beside that silent screaming figure, and the light flashed from the white bared teeth of the open mouth, and showed dark smears of blood upon the face. She laid her hand on the shoulder, and the clammy cold of the dead flesh sent a spasm of sickness through her.

"If it is thou I will kiss thee," she moaned. "I will lie upon thy breast and put my mouth to that mouth of thine. And I must find out--what if I should pa.s.s and leave thee here? G.o.d give me strength--I must find out! Whose own mother could know him so?"

She wiped blood from the face with the skirt of her tunic; she forced the stiffened jaws together, so that the horror took again the likeness to a human face; while her breath whistled in sobbing gasps and her flesh crept and crawled with horror. She bent and peered into the poor face that no longer seemed to scream at her, holding the jaws shut with tense and shaking hands. And then she sat back upon her heels with a strangled sob of relief and nerves far overwrought, wiping her hands furiously upon her skirt and crying:

"It is not thou! Dear Christ in heaven! it is not thou! How thou wilt laugh when I tell thee, beloved--when I tell thee that a dead man screamed at me and I thought him thee! How thou wilt laugh--and I shall laugh with thee!"

Sobbing, she began to laugh, a laughter strange and cracked like the laugh of a very old woman, that mounted high and higher, welling from her throat as blood wells from a wound; and rocked herself to and fro and stared into the face of the dead stranger with wide eyes of unreason....

She took her torch and fled on, and the face that she had left behind seemed to scream its mockery with open jaws through the darkness after her.