Читать книгу The Darkness and the Dawn - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 16

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Attila summoned Giso with a rap of impatient knuckles on a small Chinese gong as the door closed on the diminutive but proudly carried back of Hyacinthus. The attendant came to the door and paused there.

“You have the ears of a fox,” said Attila. “What have they heard about the Princess Honoria?”

Giso closed the door behind him. “The impatient one? She is the worst of the lot.” He paused and smirked. “It is necessary to keep that one under lock and key. She has become a mystery because no more than a handful of people know where she is being held.”

Attila was frowning. He had hoped for a different report. “I know where she is being held.”

“So! That was what brought Little Hips to see you.” Giso made a sweeping gesture. “It is all nonsense to speak well of her. The princess is an open door where anyone can knock and enter.”

The temper of the Hun leader flared up suddenly. “You are a fool!” he cried. “Send Micca in to see me. And keep out of my sight yourself or I will be tempted to shorten you by the length of your head.”

“I am a fool,” said Giso, cheerfully.

Micca entered the room and stood before the Hun ruler with his head bent and his eyes on the floor. There was a rigidity about his long back which suggested uneasiness and more than a hint of wariness in his warm dark eyes.

“O Mighty Attila, born of the heavens and the earth, established by the sun and the moon, I am your humble servant,” he said.

“Begin,” said Attila.

Micca proceeded then to demonstrate that the caravan in which he made his rounds and the wide empire of trade he had established were no more than a blind to cover up his real function in life. Micca was a spy, a very handsomely paid spy no doubt, in the employ of the man who proposed soon to plant his broad and heavy foot on the neck of civilization. “The world trembles, O Great Tanjou,” said the merchant. “There is no longer any doubt in Constantinople or Rome or Ravenna. They know you will strike soon. But where will the blow fall? That is the speculation which keeps the world occupied. Nothing else is spoken of. It is generally believed that you will hurl your strength at Rome. The city cringes in fear. A Roman bishop, to whom I sell many strange articles—strange for a churchman to need—bought nothing from me on my last visit there no more than two weeks ago. His face was ashen, his hands trembled. He said to me, ‘I need nothing because soon I shall perish in the flames of Rome.’ ”

Attila heard this statement with a mental smacking of lips. He savored for several moments the feeling of pride it aroused in him and then directed the attention of his visitor to a matter of immediate concern. “What can you tell me about the Princess Honoria?”

Micca’s eyes narrowed. He realized that he must now walk on thin ice. What was it this Hun wanted to hear?

“Hyacinthus has been cunning enough, O Master of the Earth, to keep all his secrets from me,” he began, cautiously. “I knew only that he desired to talk to you of the princess. Perhaps I could supplement what he has told you if I had some knowledge of his mission.” There was a pause which Attila did not show any inclination to break. “This much I can say: that she is kept somewhere in the high hills between Rome and Ravenna. She has a considerable household and she abides in comfort and dignity; but she may not set a foot outside the marble walls of her palace.”

“What is your opinion of her?”

Micca answered without delay or reserve. “She has a wise head and a strong mind. If she should ever emerge and gain the upper hand of the emperor—it is not impossible—all Rome would shake with the exercise of her will.”

“What of her person?”

Micca gave this matter some thought. “If I pause it is because four years have passed since I saw the princess with my own eyes. One can never be sure of what four years will do to a woman. When I saw her, she was—what word shall I use?—she was intoxicating. She was slender and she carried herself with a regal air. Perhaps it is misleading to put the effect of her in such words. She was queenly, it is true, but at the same time she was—ah, she was completely feminine and alluring! Men’s eyes did not leave her.”

“All that you say means nothing,” declared Attila. “Queens and princesses are always praised to the skies. You are told that one is beautiful and when you see her you find her eyes dull and her skin muddy. You are told that one has a regal figure and you find that she has the grace of a hippo in the Nile. I have been misled often by this light which blinds men’s eyes and now I want the truth.”

Micca answered with an emphatic nod of his head. “When I last saw her she was beautiful, O Heaven-Born. What is she now? I cannot tell.”

“Is she dark or fair?”

“She is dark, O Great King. Her eyes were like a pool glistening under the moon. Her hair was black but lustrous. Ah, yes, Proud and Mighty One, she was a picture to set one dreaming.”

“Has there been any further scandal about her?”

Micca could have told of the stories whispered by men lolling on their couches in the bathing houses of Rome, in fact wherever they met in their hours of leisure. He had reached the conclusion, however, that Attila wanted to hear the opposite of this. On that account he decided to dissemble.

“If there has been talk, it has not come to my ears.”

“What you mean is that other stories are being told about her.”

“They have not been told to me. But consider this, O Great Tanjou: a woman who has once been indiscreet is always thereafter a mark for vicious tongues. Men state as fact what they want to believe.”

“That is true,” said Attila. “One must not be misled by the loose tongues of fools.” The Hun ruler digested what he had been told for a few moments. He did not trust this tall old man standing with bent back before him. Micca always had a purpose in what he said. It happened, however, that he had stated what Attila wanted to hear.

“And now for matters of more importance. What word have you of Aetius?”

Aetius was the dictator of Rome. As a boy he had been sent as a hostage to the court of Rugilas. He and Attila had been much of an age. They rode together and they fought and wrestled. They ran races and competed in all manner of games, the fleet and slender Roman boy and the strong, thickset Attila. Aetius always won, except when it came to a sheer test of strength. He was a superior type, handsome, lithe, charming, educated, always ready to recite from the poets or to sing and to play on the lute.

There was a curious flatness in the tone of Attila in propounding this question. He did not intend to convey any hint by his voice of the feelings he held for the man who now controlled the destinies of Rome. All over the world it was believed that he and Aetius were still the closest of friends. Micca, uncanny in the accuracy of his judgments and perceptions, knew better than this. He knew that Attila hated Aetius, that he had always hated him.

Micca answered in a voice which conveyed no intimation of the knowledge he carried in his shrewd head. “The Emperor Valentinian grows more irked every day because he must bow to the will of this general. The mother of the emperor hates Aetius because he killed her favorite in his climb to power. Yet Aetius is more firmly established than ever before and this is because of you, O Heaven-Born.”

Attila nodded. “Naturally. He is the best general they have and they must place their reliance in him to face me if I decide to strike at Rome. But let me tell you this, Micca of the Medes. They must not be too sure of the genius of Aetius. He is not a Scipio Africanus or a Caesar. He is not even a Pompey.”

“You will have an opportunity soon to judge him as he is today. He intends to pay you a visit.”

Attila was taken completely by surprise. He leaned forward and stared hard at the itinerant merchant.

“He is coming here?”

“Yes, O King of Kings.”

Attila did not speak for several moments. “That is strange. Does he not realize he will be placing himself in my power?”

“Aetius,” declared the merchant, “is a man of rare parts. No one is more gifted. But he has one weakness in his fine armor. He has a great conceit of himself. Tell him that he is not another Caesar and he would hate you all the rest of his life. Will the Unconquerable Lord of the Earth and the Skies permit a poor vendor of trifles to speak in full candor?”

Attila nodded his head. “Proceed.”

“Aetius will come here to meet you without fear. It is firmly in his mind that he can bend you to his will if he can meet you again face to face. He is certain he can dissuade you from your purpose of invading Italy. He is convinced, of course, that such is your plan.”

There was a pause. Attila had listened with the impassivity of a statue. His eyes, fixed on the merchant, were without expression. “How much he would like to know if it is my plan,” he thought. Aloud he said only, “Go on.”

“He will bring proposals.”

“Yes.”

“He has other courses to suggest. The one on which he counts most is a plan for you to invade northern Africa. He will be prepared to offer you a free hand against the Vandals there under Gaiseric. He will even be prepared to lend you assistance should you want it. He will unquestionably agree that Carthage should remain in your hands.”

“It is a great prize.”

“Yes, Mighty King. Carthage has become again one of the greatest cities of the world.”

After a long silence, Attila began to ask questions. He grilled the merchant for two hours about the preparations the Romans were making to resist attack. How large would their armies be? Was help expected from Constantinople? Where would the legions be concentrated? How soon would their concentrations be completed? Micca was well informed on all points. He responded with a wealth of detailed information. Attila, watching him and weighing his answers, became convinced that he was hearing the truth. He made no notes but his mind was busy storing up every morsel of fact and rumor. He was mentally setting down the number of the legions, the names of the commanders, the places where they were stationed.

To an onlooker it would have seemed curious that the relationship between the two men had changed. No longer were they master and man, the ruler of so much of the earth and the spy who served him. They were so absorbed in their talk that such considerations had been laid aside. Attila asked his questions and commented on the replies he received in a low and rapid voice, the tenseness of his expression demonstrating the depth of his interest. Sometimes he appeared angry, sometimes he was jubilant; occasionally even he was amused and his broad face would light up and the sickle smile would appear. Micca talked with equal absorption, and he not only answered the questions thrown at him so abruptly but asked some of his own. It was a case of two men who knew their respective trades meeting on what was, for the moment, common ground.

Micca had continued to stand, however, and he gave a sigh of relief when Attila announced that he had no further questions. The merchant said: “I am weary, O Mighty King, born of the earth and the stars. We were in the saddle by daybreak and I have had nothing to eat since.”

Attila got to his feet. He had become again the ruler, holding the power of life and death in his hands. His mind was busily reviewing what he had heard. “This man grows more useful all the time,” he was saying to himself. “I must continue to use him, even though I am sure now that he spies for Aetius as well as for me. Perhaps he betrays both of us to that soft lot in Constantinople; those stupid drones who ride in their gold chariots behind their fat white mules. How daringly he asked me questions, seeking for information he could sell. He is playing us all against each other and raking in his rewards with both hands. What a pleasure it would be to have him covered with honey and staked out for the ants to finish.”

He studied the merchant closely and the wrinkles tightened about his eyes and all hint of humanity left his face. He was saying to himself, “This smooth and daring rat will pay me one visit too many. He will come to me when I have no further need of him. Then I will burn out his eyes with red-hot spear points and I will cut off his ears. I will send him back to my good friend Aetius—that very good friend of my youth—and with him will go a note that I give him to the Romans exclusively so that he can see and hear for them.”

Then he smiled again, a wild and exultant grin. He was thinking that when this time came Aetius would himself be dead, his body rotting with the soldiers who had fallen beside him.

“You shall have an honored place at my board,” he said to the merchant.