The Scarlet Banner Part 42

"Yes, I, Verus. I waited for you here--you and this hour,--this hour which at last has come, slowly, lingeringly; this hour for which I have wished, longed, labored by prayer, by counsel and action, for which alone I have lived, suffered, struggled during years and tens of years."

"And why, O Verus, why? What injury have I done you?"

Verus uttered a shrill laugh, and reined in his horse, stopping suddenly.

Gelimer started. He had rarely seen this man smile, never had he heard him laugh aloud.

"Why? Ha! ha! You can still ask? Why? Because--But to answer this question I should have to repeat the whole story of our--the Romans', the Catholics'--sufferings from the first step which Genseric took upon this soil. Why? Because I am the avenger, the requiter of the hundred years of crime called 'the Vandal kingdom in Africa.' Hear it, ye saints in Heaven! This man--he was present when all my kindred were horribly murdered, and he asks why I have hated and, so far as I had power, destroyed him and his people?"

"I know--"

"You know nothing! For you can ask me: _Why_? You know, you mean, of my dying mother's curse. But this you do not know--for you had fallen senseless,--that when she hurled the curse at you I wrenched myself free from my ropes, from my martyr's stake, sprang to her into the midst of the flames, clasped her in my arms, and wished to die with her. But she thrust me back out of the fire, crying: 'Live, live and avenge me--and all your kindred--and fulfil the curse upon that Vandal and all his people!' Again I pressed forward, clasped the dying woman's hand, and swore it. Your warriors tore me away from her; I saw her fall back into the flames, and my senses failed.

"But when I recovered consciousness, I was no longer a boy--I was the avenger! I saw, heard, and felt nothing but that last clasp of my mother's hand, her glance, and my vow. And I abjured my religion--apparently. And you, miserable Barbarians, made stupid by arrogance, you believed that I had done this from cowardice, from fear of torture and the flames! Oh, how often in former years I have felt your silent, scarcely-concealed contempt, you foolish simpleton, and borne it with mortal hatred, with a fury which burned my heart.

Arrogant brood of vain fools! Cowardice, fear, to you the most infamous of insults, you attributed to me without hesitation. Blind fools! As if I did not suffer more, ten times more than death in the flames, during all these years, while ruling myself, enduring without a word of explanation the scorn of the Carthaginians, the Catholics, for my apostasy; stifling every emotion of hate and wrath and hope in my heart, that you might not perceive them, wearing an outward semblance of stone, while my whole soul was seething with fury, to serve you, to conduct your blasphemous service of G.o.d as your priest, bearing your insufferable boasting! For you Germans, without boasting aloud (your loud braggart is easily endured, we despise him), are silent boasters.

You walk over the earth as if you must constantly crush something; you throw back your heads as if you were greeting and nodding to your ancestors in heaven: 'Yes, yes, the world belongs to us!' And that you do not know and feel it, while you are insulting us mortally by such conduct, because it is a matter of course--is the most unbearable thing about it. Oh, how I hate you!" He struck with his whip at the figure walking by his side, who received the blow, but did not seem to feel it. "You Barbarians, who, a few generations ago, were cattle-thieves on the frontier of our empire, whom we slaughtered, enslaved, threw to the beasts by hundreds of thousands,--naked, starving beggars who gratefully picked up the crumbs flung to them by Roman generosity,--hence with you all, all, you wolves, you bulls, you bears, whom only b.e.s.t.i.a.l strength and G.o.d's permission--as a punishment for our sins--allowed to break into the Roman Empire! Hence with you!" He again raised his whip to strike, but seeing a Herulian warrior's eye fixed threateningly upon him, he lowered his arm in embarra.s.sment.

Gelimer remained silent, except for frequent sighs.

"And your conscience?" he now said very gently. "Has it never rebuked you? I since escaping the lion--I have trusted you entirely, I laid my heart in your hands, you became my confessor; did you feel no shame then?"

A scarlet flush dyed the priest's pallid face for an instant, but it pa.s.sed like a flash of lightning. The next moment he answered:

"Yes! So foolish was my heart--often. Especially at first. But," he went on wrathfully, "I always conquered this weakness by saying to myself whenever I felt it, and your insulting arrogance made me feel it daily (oh, that Zazo! I hated him most of all): They deem you so base that, in the presence of the dead bodies of all your kindred, you abjured your faith! These insolent, incredibly stupid Barbarians--but it is arrogance, even more than stupidity--believe that you, you, the son of these parents, could really be devoted to them, could forget your martyrs, to serve them and their brutal, imperious splendor. They think that you can be so inconceivably base! Avenge yourself, punish them for this unbearable presumption! Oh, hate, too, is a joy, the hatred of nation for nation! And so long as a drop of blood flows in the veins of other nations, you Germans must be hated, unto death, until you are trampled under foot."

He dealt a heavy blow with his clenched fist upon the uncovered head of the tottering King. Gelimer did not look up, did not even start.

"What threat are you muttering in your beard?" asked Verus, bending toward him.

"I was only praying, 'As we forgive our debtors.' But perhaps that, too, is vanity, sin. Perhaps--you are not my debtor. Perhaps you are really," again he shuddered, "my angel, whom G.o.d sends, not to protect me, as I supposed in my vanity, but in punishment."

"I was not your _good_ angel," laughed the other.

"But--if I may ask--?"

"Ask on! I want to enjoy this hour to the utmost."

"If you hated me so bitterly, desired to avenge your mother on me, why did you carry on this game for so many long years? Often and often,--when I lay helpless in the lion's power, you might have killed me, so why--?"

"A stupid question! Have you not understood even yet? Fool! True, I hated you, but even more--your nation. To kill you had its charm. And I struggled sorely with my hate at that time, in order not to kill you instead of the lion."

"I saw that."

"But I perceived: here, in this man, lives the soul of the Vandal people. To raise him to the throne, and then rule him, is to rule his people. If I should kill him now, I should drive Hilderic to a secret treaty with Constantinople. Zazo, Gibamund, others, will resist long and bravely. But if this man, who, above all, could save his people, should become king, and then, as king, be in my power, his countrymen will be most surely lost. If it should become necessary to kill him, an opportunity can probably always be found. Far better than to murder him is through him to rule--and ruin--the Vandal nation!"

Then Gelimer groaned aloud and, staggering, involuntarily caught at the horse's neck for support. Verus thrust his hand aside; he stumbled and fell on the sand, but instantly rose and pursued his way.

"Did the priest strike you. King?" cried the Herulian, threateningly.

"No, my friend."

But Verus went on:

"Hilderic must be removed from the throne, for he would not implicitly obey my will. He demanded all sorts of indulgences for the Vandals, and Justinia.n.u.s was ready to grant them. But I desired not only to make Gelimer and his Vandals subjects of the Emperor,--I wanted to destroy them. Your rough brother discovered my intercourse with Pudentius; if I had been searched at that time, if Pudentius's letter had been found, all would have been lost. Instead, I gave it to him; I betrayed his hiding-place, but I knew he was already outside the walls, mounted on my best racer.

"The King and you both entered the trap of my warnings. I rejoiced at your readiness to believe in Hilderic's guilt, because you--desired it; because with secret, though repressed eagerness, you longed for the crown. Even though you dethroned Hilderic in good faith, how alert, how ardent you were to secure the throne! I aided, I saw you strike down poor Hoamer, who was perfectly right when he denied Hilderic's purpose of murder. You called the duel a judgment of G.o.d, you believed you thereby served Heaven's justice, and you served only your own l.u.s.t for power and, through it, _me_! Your pa.s.sion--stimulated by Satan, not G.o.d--gave you the impulse, the swift strength of arm, to which Hoamer instantly succ.u.mbed. It was a devil's judgment, a victory of h.e.l.l, not a decree of G.o.d. Now I became your chancellor; that is, your destroyer.

I quarrelled openly with the Emperor; I negotiated secretly with the Empress. I sent your fleet to Sardinia, after learning the day before that Belisarius had set sail with his army. After the battle of Decimum, I advised you to shut yourself with your troops in Carthage.

The game would then have been over six months earlier, but this one move failed,--you would not accept my counsel. I was obliged to guard against Hilderic's vindicating himself, so I took out of the chest before I let Hilderic search it, the warning letter, which I had dictated. But I could permit no scion of Genseric's race to live: Justinian would have received your two captives with honors after the victory of Belisarius! I had them killed by my freedman and secured his escape. But you--I had long reserved it for the hour of your greatest supremacy, in case of the most extreme peril of our plans--you I crushed at the right moment by the revelation that you had dethroned Hilderic without cause and then murdered him. But my mother's curse and my oath would not be fulfilled until you walked in chains as Justinian's captive.

"Therefore, to prevent your escape, I shared all the suffering, all the privations, of these last three months. Letters from King Theudis, directly after the battle of Decimum, had offered you rescue through the coast tribes by the galleys of the Visigoths. You never saw those letters; I suppressed them. Not until deliverance really beckoned, when you already stretched your hand toward it, did I strip off the mask to destroy you utterly. Now I shall see you kiss Justinian's feet in the hippodrome at Constantinople; this is the final consummation of my mother's curse, my oath, and my people's vengeance."

He ceased, his face glowing, his eyes flashing down at the prisoner.

Gelimer stooped and kissed the shoe in Verus's stirrup.

"I thank you. So you are G.o.d's rod which struck and felled me. I thank G.o.d and you for every blow, as I thanked G.o.d and you when I believed you to be my guardian spirit. And if, meanwhile, you have committed any sin against me, against my people,--I know not how to express it,--may G.o.d forgive you, as I do."

CHAPTER XXIII

PROCOPIUS TO CETHEGUS:

HE went all the way to Carthage on foot, declining horse or camel, remaining silent or praying aloud in Latin, no longer in the Vandal language. Fara offered him suitable garments instead of the worn, half-tattered purple mantle which he had on his bare body. The captive declined, and asked for a penitent's girdle, with sharp points on the inside, such as the hermits wear in the desert. We did not know how to obtain such crazy gear, and Fara probably disapproved the wish, so the "Tyrant" himself made one from a cast-off horse-bridle which he found and the hard, sharp thorns of the desert acacia. Close to the gate of his capital, his strength failed, and he fell, face downward, in the road. Verus stopped behind him, hesitating. I believe he meant to set his foot on the King's neck; but Fara, who probably had the same suspicion, roughly pushed the priest forward, and raised the monarch with kind words. Directly beyond the Numidian gate, in the s.p.a.cious square in the Aklas suburb, Belisarius had a.s.sembled the larger portion of his army, filling three sides; the fourth, facing the gate, remained open. Opposite the entrance, on a raised seat, the General, in full armor, sat throned; above his head rose the imperial field standards; at his feet lay the scarlet flags and pennons of the Vandals which we had captured by the dozen; every thousand had them. Only the great royal banner was missing; it was never found. Around Belisarius stood the leaders of his victorious bands, with many bishops and priests, then the Senators, aristocratic citizens of Carthage and the other cities, some of whom had returned from exile or flight during the past few months; Pudentius of Tripolis and his son were among them, rejoicing. To the left of Belisarius, on purple coverlets at his feet, lay heaped and poured in artistic confusion the royal treasure of the Vandals: many chairs of solid gold, the chariot of the Vandal Queen, a countless mult.i.tude of treasures of every description,--how the jewels glittered under the radiant African sun,--the whole silver table service of the King, weighing many thousand pounds, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of the royal household, besides weapons, countless weapons from Genseric's armories; old Roman banners, too, which, after a captivity of years, were again released; weapons enough in the hands of brave men to conquer the whole globe; Roman helmets with proudly curved crests, German boar and buffalo helmets, Moorish shields covered with panther skins, Moorish fillets with waving ostrich plumes, breastplates of crocodile skin,--who can enumerate the motley variety?

But at the right of Belisarius, with their hands bound behind their backs, stood the prisoners of the highest rank, men, and also many women, beautiful in face and figure,--the whole picture, however, was inclosed, as though in an iron frame, by our squadrons of hors.e.m.e.n and the dense ranks of our foot-soldiers. How the horses neighed; how the plumes in the helmets waved; how the metal clanked and glittered with dazzling brightness! A magnificent spectacle which must fill with rapture the heart of every man who did not view it as a captive. Behind our warriors crowded eagerly the populace of Carthage, taught by many a blow with the handle of a spear that it had nothing to say, and bore no part in this celebration of its own and Africa's deliverance.

Our little procession stopped within the vaulted gateway, awaiting a preconcerted signal. A tuba blared; Fara and I, followed by some subordinate officers and thirty Herulians, rode into the square to Belisarius's throne. He commanded us to dismount, rose, embraced and kissed Fara, and hung around his neck a large gold disk,--the prize of victory for bringing as prisoner a crowned King. Then he pressed my hand and asked me to accompany him in all future campaigns. This is the highest reward I could receive, for I love this man who has the courage of a lion and the heart of a boy!

At a signal we took our places on the right and left of the throne. Two blasts of the tuba. Clad in the richest vestments of the Catholic priesthood,--I noticed that even the narrow Arian tonsure had been changed to the broader Catholic one,--Verus came from the gateway into the square, his figure drawn up to its full height, his head thrown back proudly. He was evidently thinking: "But for me you would not be here, you arrogant soldiers." Yet that is by no means true; we really should have conquered without him, though more slowly, with more difficulty. And in the degree to which it was correct--just so far it irritated my friend Belisarius. His brow contracted, and he scanned the approaching priest with a look of contempt which the latter could not endure. When he bowed he lowered his lashes--arrogantly enough. "I have a letter from the Emperor to read to you, priest," said Belisarius. He extended his hand for a purple papyrus roll, kissed it, and began:

"Imperator Caesar, Flavius Justinia.n.u.s, the devout, fortunate, glorious victor and triumphator, at all times Augustus, conqueror of the Alemanni, Franks, Germans, Antae, Alani, Persians, now also the Vandals, Moors, and Africa, to Verus the Archdeacon.

"'You have preferred, instead of dealing with me, to conduct a secret correspondence with the Empress, my hallowed consort, concerning the fall of the Tyrant to be consummated, with G.o.d's a.s.sistance, by our arms. She promised you, if we conquered, to ask me for the reward you desired. Theodora does not intercede with Justinian in vain. After proving that you had only apparently adopted the faith of the heretics, while in your heart, and also to your Catholic confessor, who was authorized to grant you dispensation for that external semblance of sin, you had always been faithful to the true religion, you are recognized, having secretly received the Catholic consecration, as an orthodox priest. So I command Belisarius, immediately on the receipt of this letter, to proclaim you at once Catholic Bishop of Carthage.'--Hear, all ye Carthaginians and Romans: in the Emperor's name, I proclaim Verus Catholic Bishop of Carthage, and will put on the Bishop's mitre and deliver the Bishop's staff. Kneel, Bishop."

Verus hesitated. He seemed to wish to receive the gold-embroidered mitre standing; but Belisarius held it so low, so close to his own knees, that the priest could do nothing but submit, if the desired ornament and his head were to meet. The instant he felt it covered, he sprang up again. Belisarius now placed in his hand the richly gilded, crooked shepherd's staff. Then the Bishop, holding himself haughtily erect, was about to move to the right of the throne.

"Stop, Reverend Bishop," cried Belisarius, "the Emperor's letter is not yet finished." And he read on:

"'So the desired reward is yours. But Theodora, as you have learned, does not intercede with Justinian in vain; so I will also fulfil her second request. She thinks so bold and so crafty a man would be too dangerous in the bishopric of Carthage; you might serve your new master as you did the old one. Therefore she entreated me to have Belisarius, immediately on receipt of this message, seize you,'"--at a sign from the General, Fara, with the speed of lightning and with evident delight, laid his mailed right hand heavily on the shoulder of Verus, whose face blanched,--"'for you are exiled for life to Martyropolis on the Tigris, upon the frontier of Persia, as far as possible from Carthage. The Empress's confessor, whom she desires to have transferred from Constantinople to Carthage, will manage the affairs of the bishopric as your Vicarius, with the consent of the Holy Father in Rome. There are penal mines in Martyropolis. During six hours in the day you will care for the souls of the convicts. That you may be better able to do this, by thoroughly understanding their state of feeling, you will, during the other six hours, share their labor.' Away with him!"

Verus tried to answer, but already the tuba blared loudly again, and, before it sounded for the third time, six Thracians had hurried the priest far away from the square, and disappeared in the street leading to the harbor.

"Now summon Gelimer, the King of the Vandals," said the General, loudly.

And from the gateway into the square came Gelimer, his hands fettered with a chain of gold. One of the numerous pointed crowns found in the royal treasure had been pressed upon his long tangled locks, and over his ragged old purple mantle and penitent's girdle was flung a magnificent new cloak of the same royal stuff. He had submitted to everything unresistingly, motionless and silent, only at first he had objected to the crown; then he said gently, "Be it so--my crown of thorns." In the same unresisting, unmoved silence he now, like a walking corpse, crossed with slow, slow steps the s.p.a.ce,--possibly three hundred feet,--which separated him from Belisarius. While, at the mention of his name, a loud whisper, mingled with occasional exclamations, had run through the ranks, all the many thousands were silent now that they saw him: scorn, triumph, curiosity, vindictiveness, pity no longer found any expression; they were silenced by the majesty of this spectacle, the majesty of utter misery.

The captive King crossed the square entirely alone. No other prisoner, not even a guard or warrior accompanied him. He kept his eyes, shaded by long lashes, fixed upon the ground; they were sunk deep in their sockets; his pale cheeks, too, were deeply sunken; the thin fingers of his right hand were clenched around a small wooden cross.

Blood--visible when the mantle slipped back in walking--was trickling from his girdle, down his naked limbs, in slow drops upon the white sand of the square.