The Druidess: A Story for Boys and Others by Florence Gay - HTML preview

CHAPTER XVIII.
 ENGLAND’S FIRST CHRISTIAN QUEEN.

The foster-brother and sister were imprisoned in one of the rooms of the Roman villa, in which the feast had been held. They were not fettered, but were carefully watched by a strong body of soldiers. They were to be put to death upon the following day. Their great army had scattered in every direction; a great number of prisoners had been taken by the Saxons. The Black Horse had failed!

The man and woman sat as far from each other as the room would allow. Cormac sat with his face buried in his hands. Ethne crouched like a wild animal caught in its lair; her body still quivered with the war-passion of the evening before; her face was swollen from the blows she had received; her beautiful hair was matted with blood, and blood stained her white skin and her tattered finery.

Cormac could not bear to look at her. He knew now the part she had played with Redwald. During the long night she had told him everything—told it him fiercely—with wild, heathen oaths. In her despair and rage there was still some pleasure in letting him know of Elgiva’s fate.

In all the tumult and distress of Cormac’s mind Elgiva’s loss seemed scarcely harder to bear than that Ethne should prove so treacherous and vile.

“We shall die together,” said Cormac, taking his hands from his face and looking at Ethne solemnly. “It is fitting—that I who tied myself so blindly to you in life, should not be parted in death!”

Ethne made no reply.

“And yet,” he said, after a time, as though continuing some thought aloud, “I could have sworn at the Fair that you loved Elgiva and lamented her loss.”

“Lamented her loss!” repeated Ethne, gloomily. “Ay, her loss meant all lost in those days—long ago I promised you should hear what the diviners told me at the Beltane festival, and now you shall hear it. They told me I should gain my lost possessions in Damnonia, in exchange for a Saxon maid. Now you know why I brought the great, fawning wench with me to Britain.”

She started up, raging again.

“Did the stars tell me right? Did they divine aright? Ah!” she turned on Cormac, “it was your silly calf-love for the Saxon gawk that stood in the way! I feared to delay lest you should discover my plans and prevent them—then I acted too quickly, and lost everything. I should have kept her with me until I was certain that Ethelbert would do as I wished.”

Her rage was horrible to witness.

As she stormed up and down the chamber there was a rustle in one of the corners, and the hound, Gelert, ran into the room.

Ethne rushed upon him immediately—here was something on which to vent her fury. The creature crouched down in supplication before her—but she kicked and trampled him underfoot.

“Beast!” she roared. “You haunt me like an evil genius; why did you not go with your mistress? Ah! curses upon her—she is safer now than I!”

The animal shrank under her blows, with a strange moan that was almost a murmur of expostulation. After all he had gone through, and the battles in which he had fought, there was something almost human about the old hound.

It was strange how, in his grief and search for Elgiva, he seemed determined to control the deep resentment he had always nursed against Ethne. He endured all her ill-usage patiently in the hope that, by her means, he might yet find Elgiva. He whimpered now like a whipt child.

Cormac rose and thrust Ethne away from the creature. Gelert was now specially dear to him because of the lost Elgiva.

Ethne turned on her foster-brother. In her rage she was a mad-woman—forgetting that the Saxons had bereft her of her weapons she sprang backward, fumbling at her girdle for her dagger; her face horribly distorted, showed to their full her beast-like tusks.

The hound, looking on, understood the familiar action. He had lived too long among fighters not to know that she sought her sword; and that sword, he knew, was to be used against his master. He was an old warrior, well-trained in his work—many a man on the battle-field had received his death-wound from Gelert. With one spring his whole weight was hurled on Ethne; one short snap of his iron jaws and his old fangs had torn a fatal wound in her thin white throat.

The next moment all was tumult in the chamber. Several of the soldiers, who were on guard, rushed in on hearing Ethne’s death-cry. Cormac was seized by the soldiers, who believed he had been attacking the woman. Ethne was carried into an adjoining room.

Gelert gave a loud bark of joy, and rushed forward to meet two women who appeared at the door, accompanied by a Saxon who wore the dress of a priest.

To Cormac’s entire bewilderment, Elgiva stood before him.

“You, too!” he moaned. “Are you to suffer also for all this sin and treachery? Your life, I hoped, was safe.”

“And yours, too, Cormac,” she answered, solemnly. “You owe it to a fellow-Christian!”

Then, after a time, she told him what had happened to her after her departure from Ethne’s side on the preceding morning.

When Cormac had heard her story, he remembered the words of Saint Columba—the Cross and not the Sword will subdue the Saxons!

Elgiva said that at dawn on the day of the feast, Ethne awoke her saying that her mother was on her way to the British camp, and that Elgiva was to ride with some waiting Saxons to meet her. Elgiva set forth immediately, and rode some distance before she discovered Ethne’s treachery, and that she was being taken, as a prisoner, to Redwald. She endeavoured to escape, but found it useless. She then appealed to the men who accompanied her; and in her explanations and expostulations, she discovered that one of them had a wife who had lately adopted Christianity, and was now in the service of Queen Bertha. She persuaded this man to let her see his wife.

The interview she craved brought her more than she had dared to hope. Her mother’s story and long resistance to Paganism had already reached Queen Bertha’s ears; she now prevailed on Ethelbert to allow her to purchase the liberty of both women from Redwald—a difficult matter to arrange, even at the great price she offered; but Redwald was loath to refuse anything to the wife of the king to whom he had just vowed fealty.

“And so, Cormac,” said Elgiva, “I am sent back to you, and my mother with me, on the one condition that we depart to-morrow at dawn.”

Afterwards they looked down on the body of Ethne of the Raven Hair. The mother of Elgiva gently closed the staring eyes and said:

“Judge not, that ye be not judged! This woman was a Druidess, and a daughter of Druids, and they are reared in vice and cruelty. Their mothers are naught to them; when they marry it is not with one man, but with many; the children they bear are sent at once to the foster-mother. Love and honour are closed books to them.”

THE END.