Читать книгу Attila and His Conquerors - Elizabeth Rundle Charles - Страница 11

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To Baithene’s surprise and pleasure, he found himself, as he followed his purchaser through the lanes and streets of the little Armorican seaport at the mouth of the Loire, frequently catching words and sounds familiar to him. The people were Celts, Bretons, and though their dialect differed from that of the O’Neills, he understood enough to know what they were talking about. In the course of the morning’s walk he was able to be of much use to his master by interpreting for him in the bargains which he was always endeavouring to make for skins, garments, gold and silver vessels and ornaments, or viands for the table, always apparently himself on the verge of bankruptcy, yet always contriving by some means to secure the best to be had.

Baithene did not enjoy this haggling, and not seldom threw in a word in aid of the seller, but nevertheless his pleasant face and frank good-humour assisted the old man, so that they became quite confidential and friendly.

In the course of these commercial arrangements which absorbed his companion, Baithene became gradually aware of a weight of terror and apprehension brooding like a thunder-cloud over the town.

“Let the old fellow have it for what he will,” one of the sellers grumbled, as he took the coin for a splendid purple-bordered mantle which must have belonged to some Roman of rank, “coin is easier to carry than raiment, and we are all on the march. Who knows how soon these savage Huns will be upon us!”

“At all events,” muttered another dressed like a peasant, “Roman purple will not be worth anything much longer here. It is better to be dashed about by these wild Huns, than to be ground down steadily under the heavy chariot-wheels of the Roman tax-gatherers. We, ‘the Bagaudæ,’[1] the mob, as the proud patricians call us, shall have our revenge at last.”

“What do you say?” replied an armed Goth, angrily. “Do you mean that the reports are true that the Bagaudæ, the rebel peasants, called in the Huns?”

“How do I know?” was the reply. “Eudoxius, the good Roman physician, certainly had pity on our wrongs, and went, it is said, to Attila’s camp. And Attila is here.”

“Here!” was the retort; “scarcely here yet, nor likely to be, if Aetius the great General, and Theodoric the Ostrogoth, make up their quarrel and fight the Huns.”

“I know little,” was the sullen answer; “but what does it matter to us? Whoever wins, in all the battles we are still the mob, to die and starve, and be driven and beaten. One thing, however,” he concluded, “we will not do; we will not fight for any of them.”

And the peasant turned away among his companions. But the merchant was deep in an especially keen bit of bargaining, so that Baithene had leisure to continue listening to what these Celtic peasants of his own race were saying to each other. And in all their talk two names were perpetually recurring, entirely new to him—“the Huns” and “Attila.” The Huns were spoken of as a fierce horde of savages, to whom all the other barbarians were as men to wild beasts; fierce heathen all of them, although more bent on plunder than on persecution; however, they had occasionally proved their heathenism by burning alive in a mass those who refused to worship their idols. Moreover, they were said to be ugly as monkeys, with small, deep-set, piercing eyes, wide mouths, and flattened snub noses; short of stature and hunch-backed; from infancy accustomed to be on horseback, till they became a kind of monstrous centaurs. In short, they were thought by many not to be men at all, not descended from Adam, or Odin, but from demons and witches. With no houses or homes, they were a nation of vagabonds, a horde of warriors, always travelling on horseback or in wagons, men, women, and children, making and building nothing, only ravaging and destroying. This was the multitude which was rushing like a sand-storm over all the land. And now this wild mob had been organized into a terrible machine of destruction in the hands of a king whose name was uttered in a terrified whisper, as if he could hear everywhere and see every one, as the name of a mighty demon, or dark god of the under-world: Attila, king of the Huns.

He had laid waste the Belgic land and Northern Gaul, ravaged the fertile fields into a desert, taken what food he needed for his hosts, and then destroyed the rest; taken what plunder he could from the cities, and then massacred the people and burned the towns to the ground. From Worms, Cologne, Trèves, Metz, Cambrai, Rheims, came the cry of ruin. The fugitives crowded all the old Roman roads, and hid in the forests. And now it was rumoured that he was sweeping on to their own river, the Loire, and threatening to destroy Orleans.

It became evident to Baithene that he and Ethne were not the only wronged and plundered creatures in the world. The whole world seemed a chaos, no one safe, no one at rest, none trusting or helping another.

When the merchant’s last bargain was accomplished, Baithene returned to Ethne with a heart full of wonder and horror, and yet with a kind of sustaining sense of being rather a soldier on a universal battle-field than a solitary fugitive, hunted homeless through a world of homes.

There was much to tell Ethne when they were once more alone together on their couches of heather and hay, in their own little sleeping-chamber.

“The heather is sweet,” said Ethne, always finding something pleasant to speak of. “It smells like our Ireland, like home.”

“There is no home,” sighed Baithene; “there are no homes in the world. It is all a desert, a ruin, a wreck.”

“Patrick’s people always told us we were only on a journey here on earth,” Ethne replied. “‘Pilgrims’ they called us; but that must mean that we are travelling to a temple, that there is a home somewhere.”

Baithene unfolded to her all his tidings of the miseries of the world; of the exacting Roman tax-gatherers; the oppressed rebel peasants; of Attila and the Huns. “And,” he concluded, “we are to be hunted about through it all as the slaves of an old miser, who would bargain for a crust with a starving beggar in a burning city.”

But Ethne had seen the world and the old man and woman from a very different point of view that day, and was full of pity and hope.

She must have found her Latin vocabulary more extensive than she thought, or the hostess must have had some secret stock of Celtic,—she had lived amongst well-nigh every tribe and kindred and nation, and there were Celts, she said, in Asia,—for by some means these two had come to a marvellous amount of comprehension of each other’s histories and characters.

“He is not only a miser, Baithene,” she replied, in refutation of his dark apprehensions, “he was of a princely house like our own, even more ancient it would almost seem, if that could be,” she added, with a loyal faith in her Irish pedigree; “for,” she concluded in a low voice, “I have found out who they are. You remember Patrick always called the sacred books ‘the Testaments of God.’ There are two Testaments of God. There is the Old, and there is the New, which has much better and more glorious things in it because it has the Christ. But these people belong to the Old, which is also from God, and has also certainly excellent things in it; it was this they were reading yesterday in the great roll with the black letters. I remember Patrick’s people told us that our Lord Christ Himself read wonderful things out of it, about healing the broken-hearted, and setting at liberty those that were bound. Perhaps, brother,” she exclaimed, with a sudden flash as of discovery, “it was that they were reading! Certainly my heart was rather broken, and she has been very healing to me. His name is Eleazar; her name is Mariam, or Miriam, like the very best name of all, the name of the Blessed Mother. Perhaps it is the very same,” and her voice lowered, “for they are indeed of a very ancient and honourable race; perhaps, if that were possible, more honourable as well as more ancient than our own. They are of the very nation and people of the Lord Christ Himself.”

“The people of the Lord Christ crucified Him!” replied Baithene, not easily able to believe much good of his bargaining host, “and one of them betrayed and sold Him.”

“Patrick said it was the Romans who crucified Him,” said Ethne.

“Perhaps,” he replied; “but His own people sold Him to the Romans, that they might crucify Him, which was baser still, and just what this Eleazar might have done—sold Him for thirty pieces of silver. I can fancy now how Judas counted them out, and rang them on the floor to be sure it was good money.”

“Ah, but, Baithene,” she said, “I know much more about Eleazar. He did not always love money best. They had one dear little girl; Miriam says I remind her of the child. Her eyes were dark, but she says, though mine are grey, they look at her with a look just like her Rachel’s. She was very young when she was taken from them, only twelve years old.”

“But what has that to do with Eleazar’s love of money?” asked Baithene. “If their only child is dead, what is the good of money to these two?”

“That is the point of the whole,” replied Ethne. “Rachel is not dead. That is to say, they are quite sure she is not dead, they have prayed so much for her, that they may meet her again on earth. And Miriam has had visions and dreams of seeing her, has felt the child’s kiss on her lips, and been waked by it more than once. There was a massacre of their people at some city far away in Asia, and Rachel was torn from them and sold into bondage, like ourselves, brother. And they are always travelling all over the world to try and find her. And they are quite sure they will one day, and it is this that makes Miriam so kind to captive maidens, especially to me.”

“But why, after all, does this make Eleazar so fond of money?” said Baithene.

“Oh, don’t you see? he is always heaping it up for his Rachel; that when they find her they may ransom her at any price, and give her dainties and clothes and jewels, and every good thing in the world, to make up to her for all she must have suffered.”

“Poor dear people!” said Baithene, touched to pity at last. “But what a dream and a delusion! how can they ever find her in this great wilderness of a world? or how would they know her if they did, after all these years, or she them? And, besides, what possible use could all this money be to her, or to any one in the midst of all this ruin, and wreck, and battle? The more possessions the more peril. If the Huns knew of all the treasure, they would be sure to torture Eleazar and Miriam till they gave it up, and then to kill them lest they should bargain any of it back again.”

“I know,” replied Ethne gravely, “and so does Miriam, but it would be cruel to undeceive the old man. This money-grubbing and money-heaping is his one link to life and love. It is country to him, and home, and child, and hope.”

Baithene sighed and smiled.

“Little sister,” he exclaimed tenderly, “I believe you would find an excuse for Judas and his thirty pieces of silver!”

She crossed herself.

“There is always the Blessed Lord’s excuse for every one,” she said; “they know not what they do. Perhaps even Judas did not quite.”

“Certainly this poor, mad Eleazar does not,” Baithene replied, with a kind of grim pity, “and you need not fear that I shall try to open his eyes, or to open any one’s eyes to his possessing the treasure.”

“It is hidden away very safely, Miriam says; not even she knows where. Most of it probably in Rome, or some safe place, away from the Huns, where we are going.”

“Is Rome safe from the Huns?” he said doubtfully.

“I do not know about the Huns,” she replied, “that is all so new. The Goths and the Celts seem to be leaving Rome alone just now.”

There was a pause. They were becoming sleepy. But before they settled to slumber Baithene said—

“Do they know anything of the other Testament of God? Do they believe in Christ our Lord?”

“I am afraid not,” she replied sorrowfully, “at all events not Eleazar. You see, it was the Christians who robbed him of his child.”

“But Miriam?” he asked.

“When I spoke to her of Him,” Ethne replied, “she said He seemed to have been very good, not like most Christians. She did even say hesitatingly and timidly, looking round as if she were afraid her husband might hear, that she sometimes wished their people could have understood how good He was, and what He was, in time; it might, she thought, have made everything different; but now it seemed too late for them.”

“It is never too late, in this life, at least. You remember Patrick says so in that letter we heard in the cave; not even for apostate Christians, he said; not even for Coroticus and those wicked pirates, who slew or kidnapped Patrick’s newly-baptized sons and daughters, and us among them.”

“Let us say the Lord’s Prayer together,” said Ethne, “and try to put Coroticus and Eleazar and their trespasses into it, with all the rest.”

They rose and knelt hand in hand, and prayed, and then lay down again and fell asleep.