Читать книгу The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 14

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The cantonment of Attila, which he called his capital, lay on a flat and exposed plain between the Danube and the Theiss, scorning to take advantage of the defensive value of river and hill. There had been two reasons for placing it here. The Huns fought best on horseback and so the openness of the space gave them a chance to take full advantage of their cavalry strength in the event of attack. This was a point of such importance that no heed had been paid to other dangers, to the fact that the crude and hastily built town lay wide open to the assault of the sun under which it baked uncomfortably in the summer, without a single tree to shade it. In winter the cold winds blew down between the two rivers and raged about the wooden walls of the town, relentless and bitter.

The second reason for the selection of this site was of equal importance. This was the land known as the Great March, where the Marcomanni had lived, the bold bordermen who had never been conquered by the Romans. The leader who was now throwing down the gage of battle to the city on the Tiber could not have selected a better place for his headquarters than this plain which had never known the tramp of the legions.

Although the armies which Attila was gathering were for the most part in tented camps farther west and along the river, the imminence of war had turned the cantonment into a teeming city. The wives of the emperor, watching over the walls of their enclosure, saw soldiers stalking the streets by the thousands: great golden-haired fellows in gaudy tunics who came from the north and whose size and coloring caused the dark eyes of the women, having so small a share each in one husband, to widen and smolder; mounted warriors from the Hun horde who kept together in camps to the south; dark little men from the east with white robes flapping against naked, hairy legs and their hands ever on the hilts of sickle-shaped swords. Thousands of horses were staked out on the plains in all directions and it often seemed to the people of the town itself that the feeding of the steeds on which Attila and his men would ride to the conquest of the world was more important than the keeping of adequate food supplies for them. They did not complain of this. It was in all their minds that very soon now they would share in the rape of the world. “Woman,” husbands would say to their wives, “you will sleep with me someday on a fine wide bed in which a drunken Roman emperor has lain.” They talked of the great jewels and fabrics they would have, of the golden goblets from which they would drink rich, cool wine, of the slaves they would have at their beck and call. “Someday soon,” Onegesius had once boasted, “the man who waits on me will be a Roman senator. I shall not spare the whip on his fat, white back.”

During the afternoon of the day when Attila ordered the execution of the disobedient rulers and then fell in love with the daughter of one of them, a blare of trumpets was heard at the outer gate of the wooden town. Three melodious and unmistakable notes had been sounded. Men and women dropped their work and ran in the direction of the gate, shouting exuberantly to one another. Well they might, for this familiar fanfare meant that Micca the Mede had arrived with his caravan.

Micca was a mystery, even to Attila and Onegesius, who had been seeking for a long time to find the truth about his antecedents. He was an old man, tall and rather gaunt, with a silky beard, a benevolent eye, and a flow of talk in which learning joined with blandishment. He smiled a great deal and he was generous with his presents. It followed that all over the known world men spoke well of Micca and welcomed his visits. After trading was finished for the day, people would gather about him or sit in circles at his feet, and he would tell them long stories. No weaver of tales in a market place was more a master of drama and suspense than Micca. He never failed to hold his audiences in fascinated silence.

He was the most successful trader of the day and men assumed that he was enormously wealthy. The caravan with which he traveled consisted of a string of pack horses and half a dozen carts with four wheels which were painted a bright vermilion. What goods did he deal in? Everything. He sold jewelry, cloth, and silks from the East, weapons of all kinds, medicines and charms, articles of toilet, even confectionery and dried fruit. There was nothing, seemingly, that anyone might want which could not be produced from inside one of the vermilion carts. He went everywhere, it seemed. Reports would have him in Constantinople, in Rome, in cities of the East such as Antioch and Aleppo and Jerusalem, and sometimes even from towns in Gaul and Spain. But there was regularity in all his wanderings. He came three times a year to Attila’s headquarters as faithfully and surely as a planet on its orbit. He was never early, he was never late. It was rumored that he owned caravans as well which plied back and forth in the Far East and that he had trading establishments in all cities.

The caravan did not enter through the gate, about which were grouped the buildings of the elaborate establishment of Onegesius. The vermilion carts were drawn up in a semicircle no more than a spit and a stride outside. Planks were produced and placed on trestles to form long tables. The goods were piled up high on the tables for the inspection of the people who came pouring out through the gate as soon as the three notes were sounded on the trumpets a second time.

The Huns no longer roved the plains and drove their flocks back and forth with the seasons. They had come into power and great affluence. But at heart they were still herdsmen. They had no skill in their fingers and no knowledge of handicrafts. In a very crude way they could fashion garments out of the skins of animals but if they wanted articles of cloth, linen, or silk they had to depend on barter. The coming of Micca was, therefore, both a pleasant interlude and an event of economic importance in their lives. They swarmed around his tables with hungry eyes, making their offers to his assistants with impatience and arrogance.

On this occasion Micca himself opened the proceedings with an exhibition for the benefit of the children. Calling them about him, he raised his hands to show that they were empty. Next he elevated them above his head until the sleeves dropped back to his armpits, proving that he had nothing concealed. Then, suddenly, there appeared in one of his hands a piece of elastic skin. This he blew up until it became a large head of Bilbil, the Wicked God, whose nose was as long as the snout of a wild boar and who had a forked tail. Tying up the end, he sent the little balloon floating out over the heads of the children. This he did half a dozen times until the young ones were running in all directions, waiting for the balloons to collapse and fall into their hands, crying excitedly, “Bilbil, come down!” and “Let me get hold of your tail, old wicked one.”

The people of the town watched Micca while he performed a few tricks for their amusement. Heads could be seen all along the wall of the Court of the Royal Wives. Attila’s little partridges were watching with a rather wistful interest; but not until Micca and his helpers had exhausted the possibilities of the town would they visit the Court. Trading there would not be very remunerative. Attila was close with his wives and they would have to pay for the few trinkets they bought out of their own meager savings.