“... some to the mountains--others yielded to be slaves because of
hunger--others to the seas--singing and sighing under the shadow of
their sails.”
(From the Epistle of Gildas, the most ancient
British author.)
“Prate to me no longer of marriage and giving in marriage. We love each
other--that’s enough! Perchance we’ll love others, and a many, ere we
die. Marriage, forsooth! And this new-fangled Christian craze--one man,
one wife--’tis folly! Fit only for maids and striplings. Tush, boy! I
have borne with thee, and humoured thee, because of thy hurt--but now I
am weary of this madness!”
Cormac made no reply; only gazed with love-sick eyes at the speaker,
Ethne of the Raven Hair.
She had brought him back from death to life; when he lay more helpless
than a babe she had raised his head and put food between his lips; in
hours of pain and weariness she had anticipated his least want. He had
lost his father, his lands, his favourite horse--all that had meant
the world to the boy--but Ethne remained, and he loved her.
“In a few more days,” she said, “you will mount your horse again.”
“My horse!” said the boy, bitterly. “I have not even the power to save
his bones from the crows.”
“There are other horses in the world,” replied the woman impatiently.
“You shall have another stallion, Cormac--blacker and more beautiful
than the last. When you ride to battle again the banners shall bear the
old device. The Black Horse is not vanquished--he is but worsted for a
time--he will rise again victorious. The Black Horse, Cormac of Fail,
the Black Horse against the White!”
The boy shook his head.
“I will never fight again,” he said, mournfully. “The world is lost to
me--you are my world now, Ethne, and when you cease to love me I shall
die.”
Again his thoughts wandered gloomily on the late events--the hideous
defeat--the tempestuous sea--the days of agony and weakness.
They were sitting out of doors, at a short distance from the little
wattled cote the monks had given them. The day was so warm that
Ethne had unfastened the long gold brooch on her left shoulder and
thrown off her brat, or shawl. Her white arms and bosom were bare,
beautiful gold torques twined her arms; a gold crescent shone above her
forehead. Her thick black hair fell about her to her knees--round her
waist was a rich purple scarf, called a criss, fringed with gold and
embroidery. Her saffron-coloured tunic was open at the bosom and showed
an embroidered under garment called a lann. Her dress was that of a
princess of Hibernia.
His words brought a smile to her face. Ethne’s beauty was gone when she
smiled, for the turned back lips revealed a terrible defect--that her
eye-teeth had grown double the length of the others and were sharp and
jagged, like the fangs of a wild beast.
“Mere words!” she said, with the ugly smile growing stronger. “If you
loved me, you would follow my wishes.”
“I will follow you to the end of the world,” he said. “Only try me.”
At his words the woman turned sharply and looked at him with glittering
eyes.
“Do you mean this?”
“I do.”
Her nostrils grew large--her breath came loud and heavy. She raised her
clenched hand upward. The boy’s spirit rose.
“Would you to battle again?” he asked. “Where--how?”
“Where!--how!” she screamed. “Here in Hibernia! Rally the men
of Hibernia around you--and take your sword and strike at this
Christianity that has cost us our home and country!”
She had risen in speaking. Now she sat down again and pressed her lips
together; and she placed her hand upon her heart, trying to subdue her
passion.
She looked at him narrowly, as though half fearing the effect of her
words upon him. He trembled from head to foot.
“This is madness!” he said, in a low voice. “The madness of
despair--and it is harder for you than for us, for you had not Elgiva’s
cause at heart.”
“Elgiva!” she hissed. “Accursed Saxon name!”
Ethne leapt from her seat again; and, with her face and clenched hand
thrown to the sky, let fall a hundred curses on her foes.
She had found a vent for her smothered wrath, and the boy forgot for
the time her former words.
The fear and loathing of the Saxon were upon them both. They fell into
each other’s arms sobbing and crying out that Rome had done this thing
to them. Rome had deserted them in their hour of need.
“The Romans taught us to love ease and luxury,” cried the boy, “and to
cry out for help when we were hurt! When we had learnt our lesson well,
they sailed away and left us. Then that fool Vootigern did his pretty
piece of work--he made room in the nest for the cuckoo who has kicked
us out of fair Britain.”
“There is little left of fair Britain now,” cried Ethne. “They have
made sword-land of half of it, the other grows smaller every day--this
last defeat has cut it in two. Damnonia and Cornwall, with the precious
fortress, Tintagil, is severed from the rest. Men say, too, towards
Caledonia there is a weak spot, where the Angles of the North are
pressing closer to the sea.”
The boy’s face grew sadder. It was monstrous--incredible! The fair
isle of Britain over-run by barbarians; its gentle people made food
for vultures, bound in hideous serfdom or hid like vermin in the
crevices of the earth. Noble lords and tender ladies herding, like
animals, in caves--and filling their starving bodies with oak-flittern
and beech-mast of the forest! The boy folded his arms tightly over
his heaving bosom. In all the bitterness and shame that his thoughts
brought him--hardest of all was the knowledge that he had not died
upon the battle-field. He had fled, he said to himself--unconsciously,
indeed--but, nevertheless, he had fled! Flown before the Saxons like
fire--as the heathen themselves were wont to describe it.
“It is late, Cormac,” said Ethne, suddenly, looking at the shadows of
the trees. “Long past noon, and you have need of meat and milk. Soon,
very soon, you will be well enough to fast one day and feast the next;
but we have not finished yet our work of making flesh and blood!”
When they entered their dwelling, the little round building seemed all
gloom and smoke. But a bright voice greeted them and, when they were
seated, a young girl brought them bowls of broth. She had been standing
over the smoky central fire, stirring the contents of an iron cauldron
with a ladle of yew-wood. Her eyes were red from the smoke, and her
hands black and scorched from handling some half-charred nuts she had
been roasting in the ashes.
Ethne and Cormac seated themselves on some leathern cushions piled on
a heap of dry heather; the girl drew a low stool of yew-wood before
them, and laid their platters upon it. She threw herself down, at some
little distance, and proceeded to eat the nuts she had taken from the
fire. An old war-hound, blind in one eye and covered by half-healed
scars, dragged himself towards her and lay down with his head resting
against her knee. He had previously feasted well from the bones of the
soup-pot; but now he took one or two of the roasted kernels she offered
him and made a show of eating them, as though to please her. It was
the same hound who had followed them on their flight from Britain,
whose life the girl had saved and for whom she had received wounds from
Ethne; he was a wonderful creature still, in spite of his age--all
muscle and fire--of the breed the Romans had admired; so tall, his head
reared itself to the height of a man’s shoulder; so strong he could
bear a man over bog and boulder; his one great eye, set in a cavern,
seemed lit as by a spark of fire; his lean form, clothed by shaggy
hair, of a weird colour, resembling the hair-like growth of ancient
pine-trees.