The Scarlet Banner Part 2

"Those are men from the Papua mountain. They plundered our frontiers for a long time. Gelimer attacked their camp and captured their chief Antalla's three daughters, whom he returned unharmed, without ransom.

Then Antalla invited the Asding to his tent to thank him; they concluded a friendship of hospitality,--the most sacred bond to the Moors,--and since then they have rendered faithful service even against other Moors. The parade is over. See, the ranks are breaking. The leaders are going to the Capitol to convey to King Hilderic the report of the campaign and the booty. Look, the crowd is dispersing. Let us go too. Come back to my house; Eugenia is waiting to serve the evening meal. Come, Hegelochus."

"I am ready, most friendly host. I fear I may burden you a long time.

Business with the corn-dealers is slow."

"Why are you stopping? What are you looking at?"

"I'm coming. Only I must see this Gelimer's face once more. I shall never forget those features, and all the strange, contradictory things which you have told me about him."

"That is the way with most people. He is mysterious, incomprehensible,--'daimonios,' as the Greeks say. Let us go now! Here!

To the left--down the steps."

CHAPTER III

High above, on the Capitolium of the city, towered the Palatium, the royal residence of the Asdings; not a single dwelling, but a whole group of buildings. Originally planned as an acropolis, a fortress to rule the lower city and afford a view over both harbors across the sea, the encircling structures had been but slightly changed by Genseric and his successors; the palace remained a citadel and was well suited to hold the Carthaginians in check. A narrow ascent led up from the quay to a small gateway enclosed between solid walls and surmounted by a tower. This gateway opened into a large square resembling a courtyard, inclosed on all sides by the buildings belonging to the palace; the northern one, facing the sea, was occupied by the King's House, where the ruler himself lived with his family. The cellars extended deep into the rocks; they had often been used as dungeons, especially for state criminals. On the eastern side of the King's House, separated from it only by a narrow s.p.a.ce, was the Princes' House, and opposite to this, the a.r.s.enal; the southern side, sloping toward the city, was closed by the fortress wall, its gateway and tower.

The handsomest room on the ground-floor of the Princes' House was a splendidly decorated, pillared hall. In the centre, on a table of citrus wood, stood a tall, richly gilded jug with handles, and several goblets of different forms; the dark-red wine exhaled a strong fragrance. A couch, covered with a zebra skin, was beside it, on which, clinging together in the most tender embrace, sat "the handsomest of the Vandals" and a no less beautiful young woman. The youth had laid aside his helmet, adorned with the silvery wing-feathers of the white heron; his long locks fell in waves upon his shoulders and mingled with the light golden hair of his young wife, who was eagerly trying to unclasp the heavy breast-plate; at last she let it fall clanking beside the helmet and sword-belt upon the marble floor. Then, gazing lovingly at his n.o.ble face, she stroked back, with both soft hands, the cl.u.s.tering locks that curled around his temples, looking radiantly into his merry, laughing eyes.

"Do I really have you with me once more? Do I hold you in my embrace?"

she said in a low, tender tone, putting both arms on his shoulders and clasping her hands on his neck.

"Oh, my sweet one!" cried the warrior, s.n.a.t.c.hing her to his heart and covering eyes, cheeks, and pouting lips with ardent kisses. "Oh, Hilda, my joy, my wife! How I longed for you--night and day--always!"

"It is almost forty days," she sighed.

"Quite forty. Ah, how long they seemed to me!"

"Oh, it was far easier for you! To be ever on the move with your brother, your comrades, to ride swiftly and fight gayly in the land of the foe. While I--I was forced to sit here in the women's rooms; to sit and weave and wait inactive! Oh, if I could only have been there too!

To dash onward by your side upon a fiery horse, ride, fight, and at last--fall, with you. After a hero's life--a hero's death!"

She started up; her gray-blue eyes flashed with a wonderful light, and tossing back her waving hair she raised both arms enthusiastically.

Her husband gently drew her down again. "My high-hearted wife, my Hilda," he said, smiling, "with the instinct of a seer your ancestor chose for you the name of the glorious leader of the Valkyries. How much I owe old Hildebrand, the master at arms of the great King of the Goths! With the name the nature came to you. And his training and teaching probably did the rest."

Hilda nodded. "I scarcely knew my parents, they died so young. Ever since I could remember I was under the charge and protection of the white-bearded hero. In the palace at Ravenna he locked me in his apartments, keeping me jealously away from the pious Sisters, the nuns, and from the priests who educated my playmates,--among them the beautiful Mataswintha. I grew up with his other foster-child, dark-haired Teja. My friend Teja taught me to play the harp, but also to hurl spears and catch them on the shield. Later, when the king, and still more his daughter, the learned Amalaswintha, insisted that I must study with the women and the priests, how sullenly,"--she smiled at the remembrance,--"how angrily the old great-grandfather questioned me in the evening about what the nuns had taught me during the day! If I had recited the proverbs and Latin hymns, the _Deus pater ingenite_ or _Salve sancta parens_ by Sedulius--I scarcely knew more than the beginning!"--she laughed merrily--"he shook his ma.s.sive head, muttered something in his long white beard, and cried: 'Come, Hilda! Let's get out of doors. Come on the sea. There I will tell you about the ancient G.o.ds and heroes of our people.' Then he took me far, far from the crowded harbors into the solitude of a desolate, savage island, where the gulls circled and the wild swan built her nest amid the rushes; there we sat down on the sand, and, while the foaming waves rolled close to our feet, he told me tales of the past. And what tales old Hildebrand could tell! My eyes rested intently on his lips as, with my elbows propped on his knee, I gazed into his face. How his sea-gray eyes sparkled! how his white hair fluttered in the evening breeze! His voice trembled with enthusiasm; he no longer knew where he was; he saw everything he related, or often--in disconnected words--sang. When the tale ended, he waked as if from a dream, started up and laughed, stroking my head: 'There! There! Now I've once more blown those saints, with their dull, mawkish gentleness, out of your soul, as the north wind, sweeping through the church windows, drives out the smoke of the incense.' But they had taken no firm hold," she added, smiling.

"And so you grew up half a pagan, as Gelimer says," replied her husband, raising his finger warningly, "but as a full heroine, who believes in nothing so entirely as the glory of her people."

"And in yours--and in your love," Hilda murmured tenderly, kissing him on the forehead. "Yet it is true," she added, "if you Vandals had not been the nearest kinsfolk of my Goths, I don't know whether I should have loved you--ah, no; I _must_ have loved you--when, sent by Gelimer, you came to woo me. But as it is, to see you was to love you. I owe all my happiness to Gelimer! I will always remember it: it shall bind me to him when otherwise," she added slowly and thoughtfully, "many things might repel me."

"My brother desired, by this marriage, to end the hostility, bridge the gulf which had separated the two kingdoms since--since that b.l.o.o.d.y deed of Hilderic. It did not succeed! He united only us, not our nations. He is full of heavy cares and gloomy thoughts."

"Yes. I often think he must be ill," said Hilda, shaking her head.

"He?--The strongest hero in our army! He alone--not even Brother Zazo--can bend my outstretched sword-arm."

"Not ill in body,--soul-sick! But hush! Here he comes. See how sorrowful, how gloomy he looks. Is that the brow, the face, of a conqueror?"

CHAPTER IV

A tall figure appeared in the colonnade leading from the interior of the dwelling to the open doorway of the hall.

This man without helmet, breastplate, or sword-belt wore a tight-fitting dark-gray robe, dest.i.tute of color or ornament. He often paused in his slow advance as if lost in meditation, with hands clasped behind his back; his head drooped forward a little, as though burdened by anxious thought. His lofty brow was deeply furrowed; his light-brown hair and beard were thickly sprinkled with gray, which formed a strange contrast to his otherwise youthful appearance. His eyes were fixed steadily on the floor,--their color and expression were still unrecognizable,--and pausing again under the pillared arch of the entrance, he sighed heavily.

"Hail, Gelimer, victorious hero!" cried the young wife, joyously. "Take what I have had ready for you ever since your return home was announced to-day." Seizing a thick laurel wreath lying on the table before her, she eagerly raised it. A slight but expressive wave of the hand stopped her.

"Wreaths are not suited for the sinner's head," said the new-comer in a low tone, "but ashes, ashes!"

Hilda, hurt and sorrowful, laid down the garland.

"Sinner?" cried her husband, indignantly. "Why, yes; so are we all--in the eyes of the saints. But you less than others. Are we never to rejoice?"

"Let those rejoice who can!"

"Oh, brother, you too can rejoice. When the hero spirit comes, when the whirl of battle surrounds you, with loud shouts (I heard it myself and my heart exulted in your delight), you dashed before us all into the thickest throng of the Moorish riders. And you cried aloud from sheer joy when you tore the banner from the hand of the fallen bearer; you had ridden him down by the mere shock of your charger's rush."

"Ay, that was indeed beautiful!" cried Gelimer, suddenly lifting his head, while a pair of large brown eyes flashed from under long dark lashes. "Isn't the cream stallion superb? He overthrows everything. He bears victory."

"Ay, when he bears Gelimer!" exclaimed a clear voice, and a boy--scarcely beyond childhood, for the first down was appearing on his delicate rosy cheeks--a boy strongly resembling Gibamund and Gelimer glided across the threshold and rushed with outstretched arms toward the hero.

"Oh, brother, how I love you! And how I envy you! But on the next pursuit of the Moors you must take me with you, or I will go against your will." And he threw both arms around his brother's towering figure.

"Ammata, my darling, my heart's treasure," cried Gelimer, tenderly, stroking the lad's long golden locks with a loving touch, "I have brought you from the booty a little milk-white horse as swift as the wind. I thought of you the instant it was led before me. And you, fair sister-in-law, forgive me. I was unkind when I came in; I was foil of heavy cares. For I came--"

"From the King," cried a deep voice from the corridor, and a man in full armor rushed in, whose strong resemblance to the others marked him as the fourth brother. Features of n.o.ble mould, a sharp but finely modelled nose, broad brow, and yellow, fiery eyes set almost too deeply beneath arched brows were peculiar to all these royal Asdings, the descendants of the sun-G.o.d Frey.

Gelimer's glance alone was usually subdued as if veiled, dreamy as if lost in uncertainty; but when it suddenly flashed with enthusiasm or wrath its mighty glow was startling; and the narrow oval of the face, which in all was far removed from roundness, in Gelimer seemed almost too thin.

The man who had just entered was somewhat shorter than the latter, but much broader-chested and larger-limbed. His head, surrounded with short, close-curling brown hair, rested on a strong neck; the cheeks were reddened by health and robust vitality, and now by fierce anger.

Although only a year younger than Gelimer, he seemed still a fiery youth beside his prematurely aged brother. In furious indignation he flung the heavy helmet, from which the crooked horns of the African bull buffalo threatened, upon the table, making the wine splash over the gla.s.ses.

"From Hilderic," he repeated, "the most ungrateful of human beings!

What was the hero's reward for the new victory? Suspicion! Fear of rousing jealousy in Constantinople! The coward! My beautiful sister-in-law, you have more courage in your little finger than this King of the Vandals in his heart and his sword-hand. Give me a cup of wine to wash down my rage."

Hilda quickly sprang up, filled the goblet, and offered it to him.

"Drink, brave Zazo! Hail to you and all heroes, and--"

"To h.e.l.l with Hilderic!" cried the furious soldier, draining the beaker at a single draught.

"Hush, brother! What sacrilege!" exclaimed Gelimer, with a clouded brow.

"Well, for aught I care, to heaven with him! He'll suit that far better than the throne of the sea-king Genseric."

"There you give him high praise," said Gelimer.