Читать книгу The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 15

Table of Contents

Attila’s palace, although it stood behind high wooden walls, was not large. To the eyes of his followers it seemed imposing, for it had gates with captured standards floating high up in the air, as well as the Hun royal standard with its crude symbol of the Gray Turul. The materials which had gone into the building of it had been planed and molded and even carved. Inside it consisted of a long room where the Great Tanjou dined with his staff. At one end was a raised platform with curtains screening it off from the rest of the room, and here Attila slept on a huge square bed which had come into the possession of his uncle Rugilas in the looting of a Byzantine city and had been brought all the way here on a wheeled platform with six horses dragging it. Beneath the dais were a number of small rooms, one of which served the great ruler when he immersed himself in the details of governing his loose-jointed empire.

It was in this corner, which was no more than ten feet square, that Attila now sat in a low chair behind a marble table which had once been a source of pride in some Grecian palace. He was so busily engaged that he grunted impatiently when Giso parted the curtains and entered.

“He has come,” announced the attendant, in a cautious tone. “He is out there, looking at the bed. I think he is wondering if all your wives sleep in it at once.”

“Who do you mean?”

“Who do I mean? Who else could I mean but that gentle-speaking old ewe-neck who has just arrived.” Giso’s tone changed to a grating whisper. “I mean that ferret in the guise of a harmless mole, that grasping offspring of a father with no legal heirs. I mean Micca the Mede.”

Attila said without looking up, “Have him come in.”

Giso seemed to resent the whole proceeding. “There is someone else with him. The new one is to come in first.”

“If it is so desired.”

Giso was unwilling to leave the matter there. “If you saw a woman wearing a spiked helmet, you would not believe her a Roman soldier. This other one is wearing Micca’s livery but you can tell at a glance that he does not belong. Then who is he? And what does he want?”

“Bring him to me and I will soon find out,” said Attila, sharply.

The man who was ushered in immediately thereafter was small and shrunken in frame like a pod which has withered on the vine. He wore the coarse linen tunic with broad red stripes around the neck and hem which constituted the livery of Micca but it was obvious that he did not belong with the men of bulky thews and horny hands who labored in the pay of the itinerant merchant. He was more like an official in some governmental department or a public scrivener, albeit he carried himself with considerable dignity.

“My name, O Great and All-Powerful Attila, is Hyacinthus,” said the little man, in a voice which seemed to confirm this identification. “I am a servant—I may say a trusted one, or I would not be here on this mission—of the Princess Honoria.”

Attila raised his head at this and gave his visitor a long and steady look. “The Princess Honoria? Do you mean the sister of my royal brother, the emperor of Rome?”

“Yes, O Mighty King. I am the bearer of a letter for you.” Hyacinthus produced the letter from a receptacle hidden under his belt. He placed it on the table before the Hun ruler and then laid beside it a gold ring. “The ring is from my mistress, the princess. A mark of her respect and a proof that the letter is in her own hand.”

Attila lifted the ring and gave it a quick examination. It was a plain circlet of gold, inscribed with the royal insignia. He recognized the markings and so nodded his head in acceptance of the authenticity of the letter. His mind was filled with speculations. Why should the Princess Honoria write to him? Was this just another effort to dissuade him from the invasion he was planning while the whole world watched and trembled? He tried to recall a story he had heard years before about the Princess Honoria but it eluded him.

“If the Great One does not read Latin——” began the envoy.

“I do not!” declared Attila, with a brusqueness of tone which placed the language of Rome far beneath his notice.

“Then may I read it to you, O King of Kings? The message it contains is most confidential and important. As you must be aware, the princess, my mistress, has been held in confinement for a number of years because of an episode which caused offense to her mother and to her brother, the august emperor.”

The episode in question came back into Attila’s mind. The princess had been indiscreet. She had taken as a lover a steward in her household. The fellow’s name had been Eugenius and he had been a poor kind of lover for a princess of the Theodosian line. The man, quite properly, had been executed and nothing more had been heard of the princess except that she was being held in some kind of honorable but strict confinement. Attila’s interest in the nature of the message from this lady of indiscretions began to mount rapidly.

Hyacinthus proceeded to read the missive in precise, clipped tones. It was in effect an offer of the hand of Honoria in marriage if he, Attila, Mighty Lord of the East, would rescue her from the irksome life to which she had been condemned and restore to her the estates and honors of which she had been deprived. Having completed the reading of the note, which was commendably brief, the envoy proceeded to explain that his mistress was watched so closely that it had been very difficult to get the letter out of the household. He, Hyacinthus, had found it necessary to don the disguise of a trader in the train of Micca in order to bring it to the mighty ruler for whose eyes alone it was intended. It would be wise, he added, with a shake of his close-cropped head, if the Lord Attila would keep the letter from all other eyes.

“I expect to die for the part I have played in bringing this to you, O King of Kings,” declared Hyacinthus, with a dignity of resignation which raised him at once in the respect of his royal listener. “I will be well reconciled to my fate if I can be sure that the secret of my mistress’ design does not become known because of any slip or mistake on my part.”

Attila had by now recalled the whole story. His impression at the time had been that Honoria was no better than a royal wanton, allowing full rein to the degenerate strain which flowed in her blood. She had been young and beautiful when she behaved with such rashness; at least she had been credited with a dark and vivid charm.... When his armies reached Rome, he said to himself, he would not need her consent, which she now tendered with a hint of condescension. He would make her one of his wives if he so desired. It was more likely that he would apportion her to one of his generals, for she was beyond the age where he found women interesting. While these thoughts crossed his mind, however, he was aware that in the back of his mind there was a feeling of pride that a Roman princess was willing to marry him of her own wish and accord.

Fearing that this sense of gratification, of which he was ashamed but which he could not suppress, would show in his manner or in the tone of his voice, Attila answered in a voice which he kept sharp and official. He would give due consideration, he informed the messenger, to the contents of the letter from the Princess Honoria and would find a way to convey his answer to her in due course.

As he spoke, his eyes were considering the articles of great rarity and value which covered a large part of the surface of the table. These were from the loot of generations. Even in the smallest and humblest houses in the town such trophies would be found. Selecting a ring with a fine opal, his parsimonious instincts rebelling at the necessity, he handed it to Hyacinthus as a reward for the risk he had assumed. With a gesture of dismissal, he then brought the talk to an end.