Cutha was slain! The Saxons were defeated!
These were the magic words that men were repeating to each other.
Cutha was slain, the Saxons were defeated—these were the two first acts of the Black Horse—cried the followers of Cormac; the rest would follow, and Britain would soon be again in the hands of its own people.
Cormac’s great army settled down to rest and make merry in the peaceful valley of the Severn. His soldiers recked not that they were shut off from retreat by hill and forest; that they were dangerously easy of access to the West Saxons, and to those fierce Angles—the men of the Merce.
South-south-east they had journeyed. They had swept, triumphantly, across the land as though the victories they sang of were already behind them. Their leader, they said, was to take all before him and drive the Saxons from the shores. Revenge was to be taken at last on the Jutish conquerors who had been the first of the savage stock to set foot in Britain; the two brothers bearing the strange titles signifying the Horse and the Mare—Hengist and Horsa, who had left the emblem of the White Horse as a sign of conquest.
But it was the Black Horse now against the White. On all sides the emblem of a black steed was displayed—on samite, and on coarse flax, and hemp; this was to put utterly to shame, to destroy entirely, the dread sign of Hengist.
The popular cry of the Black Horse appealed to all men. On all sides chieftains had flocked forward to fight under the boy-leader—among them Brochmael, Prince of Powys, who had united with him in defeating the Saxons. And, just as on Southern slopes, the Saxons cut their white horse on the chalk soil—so Cormac’s hosts burnt their hostile symbol black on moss and heather.
The Severn valley was scorched in many places with the forms of sprawling monsters that bore no more resemblance to a horse than to any other quadruped. A huge banner, bearing the same device, flapped over Cormac’s tent on the left bank of the river.
The wreck of a princely Roman mansion had been hastily fitted for the reception of Ethne and her maidens. Ruined though it was, it was a fitting palace for the splendour-loving Ethne. Gilt bronze mingled with the oak shingles and stone of the roofs; and in the nobler portions of the house, were tiles of gilt bronze; the baths were of a size for royal use, and the walls were richly gilt, or lined with sheets of brilliant glass. Glass in place of mica or shell filled the windows, and brilliant glass was inlaid, jewel-like, in the walls and in the mosaic of the floors; the rich metal-work was by Byzantine workmen.
Ethne herself was clad, royally, in purple and ermine; bare arm and brow and neck clasped by Celtic torques. For ornaments she seldom wore the amber, rock-crystal and coloured glass with which most women were content, and now the long brooch that clasped her brat flashed with encrusted emeralds, set in by cunning Roman workmanship.
“Here let us winter,” she said, one brilliant autumn day as she sat in state on a carved golden chair. Above her, like a baldichino, hung an embroidered peplos of great worth and beauty—so old it had once decked the shrine of a temple to Apollo.
The marred walls about her had been hastily patched by fresh-hewn oak and beech from the surrounding forests; the gleaming trunks and red autumn leaves showed, side by side, with walls covered by sard and jasper and amethyst.
As protection from the wind skins of sheep and goats were hung around, mingled with tapestries that might, in their beauty, have been woven at the loom of Penelope; they were embroideries from Egypt—that country so lavish in her embroideries, that they worked on the sails of the galleys she sent to Tyre!
“Winter here? Not a doubt of it,” said Elgiva, bluntly. “And the crows will winter likewise. They will feast the winter long upon our flesh, and our blood will warm the winter rain.”
She was sitting on a low stool beside Ethne of the Raven Hair; with the old hound, Gelert, stretched at her feet. The creature scarcely left her side—night or day. He had never wavered in his devotion to her since the day she had saved his life. And just as much as he loved Elgiva, he detested Ethne; and though at Elgiva’s command he would try and curb his hatred, he would burst out into a low snarl if, by chance, Ethne touched him, or her draperies passed over him. Elgiva tried hard to break him of this habit and to teach him to love Ethne—but without avail; nor was he to be gained over by any advances that Ethne would make to him.
The affection between the two women seemed to increase each day; Ethne now professed Christianity, and declared she owed her conversion to Elgiva.
Cormac’s suspicions against Ethne had vanished; he took her advice on all points. It was upon her suggestion that he had chosen the Severn Valley as a camping-ground.
During the campaign Elgiva, with her more sober judgment, had opposed the descent into the plains. Nor could she see that it aided their plans—for Redwald and his men, it was believed, lay further to the south and the west.
She pointed gravely to the hills beyond.
“Forests and mountains stretch between us and our refuge,” she said. “We have crossed the barrier that earth herself has built between us and our enemies.”
“Fair mother-earth helped us in our need with hill and forest,” said Cormac. “Then were we the vanquished, now are we the victors. Is not Cutha slain and Ceawlin loathed and detested by the Saxons themselves?”
He was smiling and triumphant, as his eye swept the scene of the river-banks before him—the motley array of Kymry, who owned him for their leader. British legions, still manifesting the polish and discipline of Rome, woad-dyed savages, blue on the russet landscape; bands of Hibernian Fili—their sleek race-horses, slight and frail, beside the stout cavalry of the Romanised Brets; Picts from boundless Caledonia—the swing of their sheep-skin garments never ceasing in their restless masses; and warriors also from weems and caves with arrows tipped with stone, or bearing leaf-shaped swords as in days of old. Near at hand were workers inspecting and repairing the scythe-edged chariots of early days—ever the pride and stay of the Britons. From peak and wind-swept down came the hum and shriek of bagpipes. Above all, great swarms of kites hovered in the air—for the hosts of the great army yielded rich store for nest and maw.
On the hills beyond—sinister background for the reckless warriors—burnt black on ling and heather was the conquering symbol, the Black Horse. To Cormac’s ears came in uncouth, primitive verse a weird refrain, sung continuously in his honour, a battle song that had been in his family for unknown generations, descended from that dim past whence sprang the origin of his forefathers’ totem, the Horse. A vague, formless kind of verse, difficult of translation and, when translated, shaping itself into words akin to these:
“In days of Eld, when men choose birds and beasts around them,
To bear their name and race and station,
I sought and chose the swift, free horse!
Into his silken, mobile ear my lips have slipt their whisper.
Bear me away—away with the wind and the lightning and storm.”
“You say we have crossed the barrier between ourselves and our enemies,” said Ethne, in reply to the Saxon’s words. “But I tell you, my Elgiva, that we need no barrier against friends.”
“You speak in riddles,” said Elgiva, looking in wonder at the bright-eyed and smiling woman.
“I speak in riddles, say you? And I can show you a riddle, too, as well as speak one. Behold!”
At a sign from her some slaves drew apart two great pieces of tapestry that covered a gap in the ruined walls; they saw that a great feast was under preparation.
Not a flower-crowned banquet such as Ethne had loved to spread before her friends in her Roman villa in Damnonia—but a feast of the rudest fare. Rude in its fare and rude in its abundance—hogs and oxen, roasted whole, mingled with cakes of meal as big as shields; hogsheads of cheese and curds, and stacks of onions. Such a feast as would have gladdened the roughest of the Picts and Scots; or have laden the board of their enemies—the rude Saxons.
“Shall I aid you both to the reading of my riddle?” said the smiling Ethne, “when I tell you that to-morrow morning we feast not with our warriors but with our enemies—not indeed with our enemies, but with our allies? That side by side the servers lay wine-cup and bottomless drinking-horn!”
There was silence, whilst Cormac and Elgiva grasped the meaning of these words. And then a torrent of words from both assailed Ethne’s ears.
“We feast with the Saxons!” cried Elgiva. “Remember Vortigern, and how he feasted with them, and beware! How when Bret and Saxon were drinking side by side Hengist cried, ‘Draw your daggers!’ and each Saxon smote the Briton at his side and slew him.”
“We are allied with the Saxons!” cried Cormac. “Without my knowledge? How? When?”
“What matter if we knit our noose ourselves!” continued Elgiva, scornfully. “Better die meadful and feasting than in drought and famine on the battle-field. Curd and flesh to-day—cow-berry and toad-stool to-morrow!”
Ethne clapped her hands lightly to her ears.
“Listen! Listen!” she cried, smiling. “For I have wonderful news to tell you!”
“Great news, indeed!” exclaimed Cormac, with rising fury, “that we should be the allies of that villain, Ceawlin of Wessex! No, Ethne——”
“Ceawlin of Wessex—never!” cried Ethne, interrupting him. “But what do you say to Ethelbert of Kent?”
“Ethelbert of Kent!”
Cormac’s face changed. An alliance with the Kentish over-lord was entirely different, for it was said his wife was a Christian—Bertha, daughter of the Frankish king, Charibert.
“Yes, we are allied with him against Ceawlin!” cried Ethne, with sparkling eyes; while Cormac breathed hard, and gazed at her between friendly anger and admiration. “It is a thing of years ago, the feud between the two; since Ethelbert was woefully beaten at Wibbesben by Ceawlin. Ethelbert was but a stripling then, but he means now to have his revenge!”
She paused, smiling.
“I will show you,” she said, “the pathway there is to be cut among our enemies. There is discussion among them, and one Saxon wars upon another. Last night, and the night before, when you little dreamed of what I was doing, I had secret interviews with one of the most powerful of the Saxon thanes, and I soon learnt that Redwald is no longer with Ceawlin, but has left him and gone over to Ethelbert. That a thane should leave his chief is one of the most terrible things that can happen among the Saxons—but Ceawlin of Wessex, as these Saxon dogs have named this side of Cæsariensis, is hated by his own people as well as by his enemies, and some of our allies, the Hwiccan, are part of the West Saxons. Ethelbert, king of erstwhile Cantii, has come round by Mercia to join us here and has seized upon the moment to unite with the Hwiccan, as well as with us and the Mercians; he wishes to depose Ceawlin and place himself in power. To reward us for our support, he will——” She turned, with outstretched hands to Elgiva. “He will force Redwald to deliver up your mother to us!”
Elgiva fell, with a low sob, at Ethne’s knee, and placed her lips on the hands that held hers.
“He knows, then, where Redwald is?” said Cormac.
“Redwald is, at this moment, in Ethelbert’s camp. By this time to-morrow Elgiva and her mother will be together.”
Cormac stood before his foster-sister with bowed head, looking at her with soft, grave eyes. For a moment his gaze wandered to the great motley army, basking in the autumn sunlight, and then returned to her. For the time his wild hopes of dominion over the Saxons were nothing to him, before the fact that his father’s last injunctions were about to be fulfilled—and through Ethne!
He might have fought twenty battles and yet been as far as ever from the chief object of the campaign—here, at the very beginning, Ethne had accomplished it.
“Do you blame me now that I kept the thing secret from you?” asked Ethne, softly. “When so much depended on it, it seemed cruel to rouse your hopes until I was certain.”
For a time he could not answer; speech failed him as he remembered his words to Elgiva against Ethne.
At last he murmured in broken tones, as he knelt before her:
“I can never repay you, Ethne—I am unworthy even to thank you.”
He turned to Elgiva and said:
“It is finished, Elgiva—my father’s wishes are fulfilled. You remember, in the grotto, you said you wished you might owe your mother’s rescue to another rather than to me. You have your desire now.”
The girl made no reply.
“And yet—in spite of all my gratitude to Ethne, I should have liked you to have owed it all to me. It is sweet to fight for those—we love!”
A quick blush flamed on Elgiva’s face. Her eyes met Cormac’s. Her hands fell into his outstretched to her.
Ethne threw her arms round both.
“How say ye, my love-birds? Shall we have feast first and marriage after? Shall the priest at eve join ye two in wedlock?”