THE BLACK HORSE.
Cutha was slain! The Saxons were defeated!
These were the magic words that men were repeating to each other.
Cutha was slain, the Saxons were defeated--these were the two first
acts of the Black Horse--cried the followers of Cormac; the rest would
follow, and Britain would soon be again in the hands of its own people.
Cormac’s great army settled down to rest and make merry in the peaceful
valley of the Severn. His soldiers recked not that they were shut off
from retreat by hill and forest; that they were dangerously easy of
access to the West Saxons, and to those fierce Angles--the men of the
Merce.
South-south-east they had journeyed. They had swept, triumphantly,
across the land as though the victories they sang of were already
behind them. Their leader, they said, was to take all before him and
drive the Saxons from the shores. Revenge was to be taken at last on
the Jutish conquerors who had been the first of the savage stock to set
foot in Britain; the two brothers bearing the strange titles signifying
the Horse and the Mare--Hengist and Horsa, who had left the emblem of
the White Horse as a sign of conquest.
But it was the Black Horse now against the White. On all sides the
emblem of a black steed was displayed--on samite, and on coarse flax,
and hemp; this was to put utterly to shame, to destroy entirely, the
dread sign of Hengist.
The popular cry of the Black Horse appealed to all men. On all sides
chieftains had flocked forward to fight under the boy-leader--among
them Brochmael, Prince of Powys, who had united with him in defeating
the Saxons. And, just as on Southern slopes, the Saxons cut their white
horse on the chalk soil--so Cormac’s hosts burnt their hostile symbol
black on moss and heather.
The Severn valley was scorched in many places with the forms of
sprawling monsters that bore no more resemblance to a horse than to any
other quadruped. A huge banner, bearing the same device, flapped over
Cormac’s tent on the left bank of the river.
The wreck of a princely Roman mansion had been hastily fitted for the
reception of Ethne and her maidens. Ruined though it was, it was a
fitting palace for the splendour-loving Ethne. Gilt bronze mingled with
the oak shingles and stone of the roofs; and in the nobler portions
of the house, were tiles of gilt bronze; the baths were of a size for
royal use, and the walls were richly gilt, or lined with sheets of
brilliant glass. Glass in place of mica or shell filled the windows,
and brilliant glass was inlaid, jewel-like, in the walls and in the
mosaic of the floors; the rich metal-work was by Byzantine workmen.
Ethne herself was clad, royally, in purple and ermine; bare arm and
brow and neck clasped by Celtic torques. For ornaments she seldom wore
the amber, rock-crystal and coloured glass with which most women were
content, and now the long brooch that clasped her brat flashed with
encrusted emeralds, set in by cunning Roman workmanship.
“Here let us winter,” she said, one brilliant autumn day as she sat
in state on a carved golden chair. Above her, like a baldichino, hung
an embroidered peplos of great worth and beauty--so old it had once
decked the shrine of a temple to Apollo.
The marred walls about her had been hastily patched by fresh-hewn oak
and beech from the surrounding forests; the gleaming trunks and red
autumn leaves showed, side by side, with walls covered by sard and
jasper and amethyst.
As protection from the wind skins of sheep and goats were hung around,
mingled with tapestries that might, in their beauty, have been woven at
the loom of Penelope; they were embroideries from Egypt--that country
so lavish in her embroideries, that they worked on the sails of the
galleys she sent to Tyre!
“Winter here? Not a doubt of it,” said Elgiva, bluntly. “And the crows
will winter likewise. They will feast the winter long upon our flesh,
and our blood will warm the winter rain.”
She was sitting on a low stool beside Ethne of the Raven Hair; with
the old hound, Gelert, stretched at her feet. The creature scarcely
left her side--night or day. He had never wavered in his devotion to
her since the day she had saved his life. And just as much as he loved
Elgiva, he detested Ethne; and though at Elgiva’s command he would try
and curb his hatred, he would burst out into a low snarl if, by chance,
Ethne touched him, or her draperies passed over him. Elgiva tried hard
to break him of this habit and to teach him to love Ethne--but without
avail; nor was he to be gained over by any advances that Ethne would
make to him.
The affection between the two women seemed to increase each day; Ethne
now professed Christianity, and declared she owed her conversion to
Elgiva.
Cormac’s suspicions against Ethne had vanished; he took her advice on
all points. It was upon her suggestion that he had chosen the Severn
Valley as a camping-ground.
During the campaign Elgiva, with her more sober judgment, had opposed
the descent into the plains. Nor could she see that it aided their
plans--for Redwald and his men, it was believed, lay further to the
south and the west.
She pointed gravely to the hills beyond.
“Forests and mountains stretch between us and our refuge,” she said.
“We have crossed the barrier that earth herself has built between us
and our enemies.”
“Fair mother-earth helped us in our need with hill and forest,” said
Cormac. “Then were we the vanquished, now are we the victors. Is not
Cutha slain and Ceawlin loathed and detested by the Saxons themselves?”
He was smiling and triumphant, as his eye swept the scene of the
river-banks before him--the motley array of Kymry, who owned him
for their leader. British legions, still manifesting the polish and
discipline of Rome, woad-dyed savages, blue on the russet landscape;
bands of Hibernian Fili--their sleek race-horses, slight and frail,
beside the stout cavalry of the Romanised Brets; Picts from boundless
Caledonia--the swing of their sheep-skin garments never ceasing
in their restless masses; and warriors also from weems and caves
with arrows tipped with stone, or bearing leaf-shaped swords as in
days of old. Near at hand were workers inspecting and repairing the
scythe-edged chariots of early days--ever the pride and stay of the
Britons. From peak and wind-swept down came the hum and shriek of
bagpipes. Above all, great swarms of kites hovered in the air--for the
hosts of the great army yielded rich store for nest and maw.
On the hills beyond--sinister background for the reckless
warriors--burnt black on ling and heather was the conquering symbol,
the Black Horse. To Cormac’s ears came in uncouth, primitive verse a
weird refrain, sung continuously in his honour, a battle song that had
been in his family for unknown generations, descended from that dim
past whence sprang the origin of his forefathers’ totem, the Horse.
A vague, formless kind of verse, difficult of translation and, when
translated, shaping itself into words akin to these:
“In days of Eld, when men choose birds and beasts around them,
To bear their name and race and station,
I sought and chose the swift, free horse!
Into his silken, mobile ear my lips have slipt their whisper.
Bear me away--away with the wind and the lightning and storm.”
“You say we have crossed the barrier between ourselves and our
enemies,” said Ethne, in reply to the Saxon’s words. “But I tell you,
my Elgiva, that we need no barrier against friends.”
“You speak in riddles,” said Elgiva, looking in wonder at the
bright-eyed and smiling woman.
“I speak in riddles, say you? And I can show you a riddle, too, as well
as speak one. Behold!”
At a sign from her some slaves drew apart two great pieces of tapestry
that covered a gap in the ruined walls; they saw that a great feast was
under preparation.
Not a flower-crowned banquet such as Ethne had loved to spread before
her friends in her Roman villa in Damnonia--but a feast of the rudest
fare. Rude in its fare and rude in its abundance--hogs and oxen,
roasted whole, mingled with cakes of meal as big as shields; hogsheads
of cheese and curds, and stacks of onions. Such a feast as would have
gladdened the roughest of the Picts and Scots; or have laden the board
of their enemies--the rude Saxons.
“Shall I aid you both to the reading of my riddle?” said the smiling
Ethne, “when I tell you that to-morrow morning we feast not with our
warriors but with our enemies--not indeed with our enemies, but with
our allies? That side by side the servers lay wine-cup and bottomless
drinking-horn!”
There was silence, whilst Cormac and Elgiva grasped the meaning of
these words. And then a torrent of words from both assailed Ethne’s
ears.
“We feast with the Saxons!” cried Elgiva. “Remember Vortigern, and
how he feasted with them, and beware! How when Bret and Saxon were
drinking side by side Hengist cried, ‘Draw your daggers!’ and each
Saxon smote the Briton at his side and slew him.”
“We are allied with the Saxons!” cried Cormac. “Without my knowledge?
How? When?”
“What matter if we knit our noose ourselves!” continued Elgiva,
scornfully. “Better die meadful and feasting than in drought and famine
on the battle-field. Curd and flesh to-day--cow-berry and toad-stool
to-morrow!”
Ethne clapped her hands lightly to her ears.
“Listen! Listen!” she cried, smiling. “For I have wonderful news to
tell you!”
“Great news, indeed!” exclaimed Cormac, with rising fury, “that we
should be the allies of that villain, Ceawlin of Wessex! No, Ethne----”
“Ceawlin of Wessex--never!” cried Ethne, interrupting him. “But what do
you say to Ethelbert of Kent?”
“Ethelbert of Kent!”
Cormac’s face changed. An alliance with the Kentish over-lord was
entirely different, for it was said his wife was a Christian--Bertha,
daughter of the Frankish king, Charibert.
“Yes, we are allied with him against Ceawlin!” cried Ethne, with
sparkling eyes; while Cormac breathed hard, and gazed at her between
friendly anger and admiration. “It is a thing of years ago, the feud
between the two; since Ethelbert was woefully beaten at Wibbesben by
Ceawlin. Ethelbert was but a stripling then, but he means now to have
his revenge!”
She paused, smiling.
“I will show you,” she said, “the pathway there is to be cut among
our enemies. There is discussion among them, and one Saxon wars upon
another. Last night, and the night before, when you little dreamed of
what I was doing, I had secret interviews with one of the most powerful
of the Saxon thanes, and I soon learnt that Redwald is no longer with
Ceawlin, but has left him and gone over to Ethelbert. That a thane
should leave his chief is one of the most terrible things that can
happen among the Saxons--but Ceawlin of Wessex, as these Saxon dogs
have named this side of Cæsariensis, is hated by his own people as well
as by his enemies, and some of our allies, the Hwiccan, are part of
the West Saxons. Ethelbert, king of erstwhile Cantii, has come round
by Mercia to join us here and has seized upon the moment to unite with
the Hwiccan, as well as with us and the Mercians; he wishes to depose
Ceawlin and place himself in power. To reward us for our support, he
will----” She turned, with outstretched hands to Elgiva. “He will force
Redwald to deliver up your mother to us!”
Elgiva fell, with a low sob, at Ethne’s knee, and placed her lips on
the hands that held hers.
“He knows, then, where Redwald is?” said Cormac.
“Redwald is, at this moment, in Ethelbert’s camp. By this time
to-morrow Elgiva and her mother will be together.”
Cormac stood before his foster-sister with bowed head, looking at her
with soft, grave eyes. For a moment his gaze wandered to the great
motley army, basking in the autumn sunlight, and then returned to her.
For the time his wild hopes of dominion over the Saxons were nothing to
him, before the fact that his father’s last injunctions were about to
be fulfilled--and through Ethne!
He might have fought twenty battles and yet been as far as ever from
the chief object of the campaign--here, at the very beginning, Ethne
had accomplished it.
“Do you blame me now that I kept the thing secret from you?” asked
Ethne, softly. “When so much depended on it, it seemed cruel to rouse
your hopes until I was certain.”
For a time he could not answer; speech failed him as he remembered his
words to Elgiva against Ethne.
At last he murmured in broken tones, as he knelt before her:
“I can never repay you, Ethne--I am unworthy even to thank you.”
He turned to Elgiva and said:
“It is finished, Elgiva--my father’s wishes are fulfilled. You
remember, in the grotto, you said you wished you might owe your
mother’s rescue to another rather than to me. You have your desire now.”
The girl made no reply.
“And yet--in spite of all my gratitude to Ethne, I should have liked
you to have owed it all to me. It is sweet to fight for those--we love!”
A quick blush flamed on Elgiva’s face. Her eyes met Cormac’s. Her hands
fell into his outstretched to her.
Ethne threw her arms round both.
“How say ye, my love-birds? Shall we have feast first and marriage
after? Shall the priest at eve join ye two in wedlock?”