CHAPTER XVI.
ETHELBERT OF KENT.
The day of the feast had dawned. Ethne had long left her bed, and was now surrounded by her women at her toilet-table. She slipped the bronze case from her mirror and looked at herself attentively. The days of warfare and anxiety had left no impression upon her; the white skin was as fair as ever, the lips as red, the hair as glossy in its blue-blackness. Fresh from the bath, satin-like from delicate unguents, never had the fair and beautiful skin appeared to greater advantage—this she believed she owed to the elaborate system of bathing Roman Britain had taught her to love, and which she could now enjoy to the utmost; for she had put the baths of the villa into order after much trouble. In her bathing she was a true Sybarite—luxuriating in hot air and vapour, and in summer in sun-baths—spending much time in passing, by almost imperceptible degrees, from cold to the utmost degree of heat she was capable of enduring; after which she plunged into new milk, or was anointed with costly and perfumed oil. She could endure hardship and privation, but her love of luxury and wealth was a passion with her. The toilet table at which she sat was scattered with accessories of the most perfect kind. The silver unguent vases, filled with Celtic spikenard, were in the form of the sacred lotus-flower; the caskets and mirror-cases were ornamented with beautiful honeysuckle pattern, and her own portrait was supported by cupids of priceless workmanship.
Ethne’s magnificent toilette was almost completed—one woman was tying some dusky British pearls about the throat, and another was staining the fingers with henna when Gelert rushed into the room searching and sniffing into every corner and behind every hanging; whining piteously meanwhile. He pushed against the tiring-woman engaged on painting the fingers, and the vase of henna was thrown on Ethne’s robe.
Ethne flew into a rage immediately; she rose and kicked the creature so savagely that it became necessary to change her embroidered shoe as well as repair the damaged robe.
“Ah, brute!” she cried. “Always at hand to annoy me—why did you not follow your mistress?”
Contrary to his usual custom, the hound showed no ill-feeling to Ethne, in spite of her treatment of him; and stretched himself on the ground beside her, although she tried to beat him off. When she rose to leave the room he still hung about her; when her women would have driven him away he snarled and bit at them savagely.
He had been seeking for Elgiva and, unable to find her, was determined to remain by Ethne’s side, where he hoped his mistress would, sooner or later, return.
There was no time for delay; the candle-bearers stood waiting outside the door—for Ethne, doing all things in royal state, had ordered that a great candle, six feet in height, should precede her in the procession.
She knew that all was in readiness. The hall of the feast was swept, and garnished, and sprinkled with vervain-water; ivy wreaths to ward off the effects of drinking were ready for each feaster. The door opened, the great candle shed its rays on her, the procession waited—she rose and followed.
She glanced exulting over the scene as she sank into her seat of honour.
The leaders of the party, both Briton and Saxon, occupied an elevated position; the dishes and plates from which they ate were of pure gold; all fashioned, as Roman taste had demanded, from ancient and beautiful Greek models. The stage on which they sat had once been an upper chamber of the Roman villa, but its walls had suffered in the Saxon destruction, and it now stood open to the halls and courts below. From her position Ethne had a view of much of the great banquet she had prepared. The half-ruined mansion had lent itself readily to her purpose. In their ravages the heathen had thrown down so many of the walls that the lower rooms and halls formed, with the outer courts, an almost continuous apartment; in many places there was no roof at all, but this proved an advantage in the eyes of the rude chieftains on either side; in the open air they found greater space for the hounds and body-slaves it was their pleasure should attend them. Clad in skins of goat and sheep, hot with mead and gluttony, the warriors gave no thought to autumn gust and passing raindrop; and cared not that wasp and bee mingled with the viands before them.
Ethne’s eye travelled proudly over the scene before her. To her feet the throng of feasters swept; and on through broken courts and halls—branching off here and there to fill unseen side-aisles—and on again to the great opening arch where their figures showed clear against the distant dusk of the forest. A mighty feast even in those days. Where it overflowed into the outer air it gained a fringe of slaves, with here and there a favourite horse called by his master to partake of Roman pulse or oaten cake; to the uproar would be added the shrill neigh of some Hibernian racer, or the deep note of a Saxon war-horse.
But in the midst of her triumph Ethne was moved to disgust. In days gone by she had entertained her guests—polished Greeks and Romans—at flower-strewn tables to the music of singing maidens; the air sweet from perfumed fountains and the wine-flagons garlanded with roses. Now her guests fought with their food as animals with their prey; they scrambled together for the possession of tit-bits, and swallowed great junks of flesh with the ease and rapidity of the hounds at their feet; to the perpetual discord of dirk on platter there was a harsh, pervading accompaniment of men munching their food as animals munch their corn. Like animals, too, she thought they looked, clad wholly in sheep and goat-skins—even their trews of hide; their yellow hair swart from neglect, their fine skins chafed and roughened by sun and air; with grass and hay bound round their feet. And to these savages she must sue! Filthy, unwashed, barbarous—feasting in the ruins they had made.
“A goodly sight, O King!” she said, turning to the Anglo-Saxon in a seat of honour at her side. “These fine warriors are the admiration of the Britons, even on our only meeting-ground, the battle-field—therefore, a thousand times more at festival!”
“And yet I thought but just now, from your manner of looking at them, and from your nostrils’ twitching that you would sooner my warriors were at battle-distance than with you at cup and meat!”
Many of the Saxon thanes at the upper table had added a unique ornament to their appearance—the waving length of a peacock’s feather. For when the servers had entered bearing aloft these dainties with their gorgeous tails outspread—a wild scramble had ensued that each might obtain one of the feathers.
“Now, indeed, O King, you wrong me!” returned Ethne, in her sweetest manner, “and for your words you must needs at once pledge me in this loving-cup, and pledge me in the ale you love so well.”
From a beautiful slave she took a golden bowl that glittered with emeralds, and drinking from it first, held it herself to the lips of her companion.
But he took it coldly into his own hand, turning it with particular care that he might drink from the very spot which her lips had pressed. He returned it to the slave—spilling clumsily the remainder on Ethne’s sweeping robes.
A sound between a chuckle and a grunt escaped him.
“I drink from the same spot with you,” he said, “but I give you no fair words, but the truth, as my reason. You look at me so honey-sweet and mouth your words so smoothly—and I have heard full many tales of sweet words and poisoned cup!”
Ethne sighed audibly; she leaned towards him with seductive grace.
“Let us continue, then, as we have begun, O King Ethelbert! Give me the truth only, or what you deem the truth—and leave me to find the sweet words myself.” She smiled and her ugly tusks showed themselves.
He had seized upon a dish of rosy apples and was devouring them, shredding the floor and her dress with pip and core. His eyes, narrowed with the relish of the fruit, glanced sideways upon her—half-contemptuously, half-suspiciously. He knew it was through this woman, and not through her foster-brother, that the alliance with the Kymry had been formed. To his stern Saxon mind it seemed a meaningless prelude to the business in hand, thus to bandy what seemed to him baby speeches. Ethne’s beauty also was not altogether to his liking; her small and slender proportions, the blue-black of her hair, and the ivory pallor of her skin were far removed from his ideal of womanly beauty; and to him her delicate manner and bird-like appetite were unnatural. He glanced from her to the scene below, at the Saxon women—large, fair, and feasting bravely.
His Thor and Odin religion of terror supplied him with a host of elves and sprites—pale, dark-haired, bright-eyed—and he could not dissociate the thought of them from this small, dark woman at his side. Instinctively, he said a charm to himself, and muttered incantations between each mouthful.
As to Ethne, she was experiencing some disappointment in this meeting between herself and the great Ethelbert of Kent.
She looked on him with more favour than he on her. He had not yet grown coarse from overfeeding and drinking; and his figure had the majesty of the gods, to whom he traced his origin. His long hair and golden beard sparkled, almost as brightly as the massive crown upon his head. Much of his dress was of a splendour Ethne had seldom seen surpassed; but through the openings of his upper garments she could see that, under rich robes embroidered and jewelled, he wore the close-fitting dress of sheep-skin that was the garb of the meanest serf; the thongs, which bound the sandals together, were pointed with jewels and gold, and gold formed every fastening of his garments.