BOOK V

THE NIGHT AND THE DAWNING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Page

"In a physical ecstasy he spoke out that which

clamored on his lips" [Page 44] Frontispiece

"'Were I that woman, I should have wanted to

love him'" [Page 85] 72

"'You sent for me, Lady Varia?'" [Page 152] 176

"Half a dozen young beauties had taken possession,--girls

of the haughtiest blood in Britain" [Page 240] 254

"The sight burst upon him in all its hideousness--where

had been the stately mansion of his lord" [Page 344] 364

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CHARACTERS

EUDEMIUS, a Roman lord living in Britain

VARIA, his daughter

LIVINIUS, a Roman citizen, a boyhood friend of Eudemius

MARIUS, his son, of the Roman legions in Gaul

MARCUS SILENUS POMPONIUS, Count of the Saxon Shore }

AURELIUS MENOTUS, duumvir of Anderida } Guests of

FELIX, his son } Eudemius

CAIUS JULIUS VALENS, a Roman citizen }

JULIA }

NIGIDIA } Roman girls, daughters of the

PAULA } guests of Eudemius

GRATIA }

NERISSA, nurse to Varia

HITO, master of the household of Eudemius

CHLORIS, of all nations, living upon Thorney

SADA, a Saxon } inmates of her house

EUNICE, a Greek }

ELDRIS, a Briton, a convert to Christianity

WARDO, a Saxon, a slave in the house of Eudemius

VALERIUS, a Roman, a soldier of fortune

TOBIAS, a Hebrew, a worker in ivory

RATHUMUS, a British peasant, bound to the soil

SUSANNA, a Hebrew woman, his wife

NICANOR, a story-teller, their son

WULF, the Red, a Saxon free-lance

CEAWLIN, a Saxon chieftain

FATHER AMBROSE, of the Christian church

NICODEMUS, the One-Eyed, a British freedman

MYLEIA, his wife

MARCUS, a slave in the house of Eudemius

BALBUS, a convict

JUNCINA, a fish-wife on Thorney

SOSIA, her daughter

A flower-girl, a Saxon singer, slaves, trades-folk, soldiers of the

military police; guards and overseers of the mines, and miners;

Roman nobles and patrician women; Saxon men-at-arms, and men of the

outland nations

Scene: Britain in the last days of Roman power

Time: between A.D. 410 and 446

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LIST OF TOWNS AND RIVERS

WITH THEIR MODERN SITES AND NAMES

Abus Flumen Humber River.

Ad Fines Broughing, Hertfordshire.

Anderida Pevensey.

Aquae Solis Bath.

Bibracte _Unknown_.

Caledonia Scotland.

Calleva Silchester.

Corinium Cirencester.

Cunetio Folly Farm, near Marlborough.

Deva Chester.

Dubrae Dover.

Eboracum York.

Gobannium Abergavenny.

Glevum Gloucester.

Isca Silurum Carleon.

Leucarum Llychwr, county of Glamorgan.

Londinium London.

Noviomagus Holwood Hill, parish of Bromley.

Pontes Staines

Portus Magnus Porchester.

Ratae Leicester.

Regnum Chichester.

Rutupiae Richborough

Sabrina Flumen Severn River.

Serica China.

Tamesis Flumen Thames River.

Tripontium _Near_ Lilburne.

Uriconium Wroxeter.

Urus Flumen Ouse River.

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THE MANTLE OF MELCHIOR

BOOK I

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NICANOR: TELLER OF TALES

Book I

THE MANTLE OF MELCHIOR

I

Nicanor the story-teller was the son of Rathumus the wood-cutter, who

was the son of Razis the worker in bronze, who was the son of Melchior

the story-teller. So that Nicanor came honestly by his gift, and would

even believe that his great-grandsire had handed it down to him by

special act of bequest.

Now Rathumus the wood-cutter, tall and gaunt and fierce-eyed, coming

home with his fagots on his shoulder in the gloam of the evening, when

the fireflies twinkled low among the marshes, saw Nicanor on the side of

the hill against the sky, sitting with hands clasped about his knees,

crooning to the stars. Rathumus bowed his head and entered his house,

and to Susanna, his wife, he said:

"The gift of our father Melchior hath fallen upon the child. I have seen

it coming this long, long while. Now he singeth to the stars. When they

have heard him and have taught him, he will go and sing to men. He is

our child no longer, wife. His life hath claimed him."

Susanna, the mother, said:

"He will be a man among men. He will be a great man among great men. It

may be that the Lord Governor will send for him. But--oh, my boy--my

boy!"

Rathumus answered gravely:

"Pray the holy gods he will not misuse his power!"

Presently Nicanor came in, with the spell not yet shaken off him,

wanting his supper. A smaller image of his father he was, lean and

shock-headed, with gray steady eyes changing from the stillness of

childhood's innocence to the depth and wonder of dawning knowledge.

Rathumus said:

"What hast been doing, boy?"

Nicanor stretched like one arousing from sleep.

"I know not," he answered. "Perhaps I slept out under the moon last

night and she hath turned my head.--Father, I have been thinking. When I

am become a man I shall do great things. Even you have told me that the

destiny of a man's life lieth between his hands."

"Son," Rathumus said quickly, "remember also that men's hands lie

between the hands of the gods, even as a slave's between the hands of

his over-lord. Keep it in mind, child, that thou art very young, that

thy first strength hath not yet come upon thee; and strive not to teach

to others what thou hast not learned thyself. For that way lies mockery

and the scorn of men."

"Now I do not understand where thy words would lead," Nicanor said; and

his gray eyes, in the wavering torchlight, were doubtful. "I teach no

one. Perhaps--it was not I who slept under the moon, after all."

For he was young, and though his parents saw what had come upon him, he

himself saw not.

So Nicanor had his supper, of black bean-porridge, taking no thought of

those parents' loving thought for him; and later climbed the ladder to

the loft where he slept. After a while, Susanna, yearning over her boy

in this, the first dim hour of his awakening,--yearning all the more

since she saw that he was following blindly the workings of his own

appointed fate, without any sense or knowledge of it himself,--went up

the ladder also and sat beside him, thinking him asleep. But Nicanor put

out a hand and slid it into hers, and shuffled in his straw until he was

close against her. She gathered him into her arms, his shaggy head upon

her breast, and rocked him to and fro in the darkness. To-morrow he

would go where this fate of his called him; but this last night he must

be hers, all hers, who had borne him only to give him up. Nicanor,

stupid with sleep and comfort, murmured drowsily, and she bent close

over him to listen.

"Mother, three nights ago my father spoke of Melchior, and the name hath

lingered in my head. Who was he? What was he?"

"Thy father's father's sire," she told him. She saw it coming; the

chains which bound his heart to hers were stretching. "He was a teller

of tales, son, and--thy father thinks a fold of his mantle hath fallen

upon thee. He it was who was first servus in the family of our lord.

Little one, tell mother; what thoughts hast thou when the night comes

down and the wide earth hushes into drowsy crooning? Hast ever felt

dreams stirring at thy heart-strings like chords of faintest music?"

"Mother!" Nicanor cried, and tightened his arms about her. "Thou hast

it--the words--the words! Tell me how to do it! Thoughts I have, and

visions so far away that they are gone before I know them--but the

words! I cannot say the things I would, so that they ring. Teach it me,

then!"

Susanna laughed, and stroked her boy's hot head.

"Words I have, little son," she said softly, "but I have no tune to sing

them to. A woman hath but one tune, and that is ever in the same key.

One song, and one only, in her life she hath, and when that is ended,

she is dumb. But please the good God! thou'lt have what lies behind the

words and alone makes them of value; the thought which is the

foundation-stone to build upon. And then the words will come also. What

visions hast thou seen, sonling?"

"Mother, I cannot tell, for my mouth is empty though my head rings.

Always it begins as though a curtain of mist were swept rolling back

from the face of the world, and I see below me vague mountains and broad

lonely wastes, and gray cities sleeping in dead moonlight, for it is

ever night. I see clouds that reach away to the rim of the earth, and it

is all as in a dream, and--and so deep within me that I lose it before I

know it.--Oh, I cannot tell!"

He stirred restlessly and nestled his head deeper into her breast, and

she stroked his hair in silence. When he spoke again there was a new

note in his boy's voice.

"Mother, I too will be a teller of tales, even as was that sire of my

father's sire whose name was Melchior. For in that there is to me all

joy, and no pain nor sorrow at all. And I shall be great, greater than

he and greater than those who shall come after me."

Susanna laid her hand across his mouth.

"Hush thee, for the love of dear Heaven, hush! That is boasting, and

good never came of that! Oh, little son of mine, listen to me, thy

mother,--it may be for the last time,--and keep my words always in a

corner of thy heart. They shall be as a charm to keep all danger from

thee. Pray to God nightly, the dear God of Whom I have tried to teach

thee; keep thy hands from blood, thy body from wanton sin, and thy

tongue from guile. So shalt thou be pure and thy tales prosper; for

untainted fruit never blossomed from a dunghill. Remember that the Lord

loveth all his creatures even the same as he loveth thee. As thou hast

good and evil both within thee, so have others; wherefore judge them in

mercy as thou wouldst thyself. And judge thyself in sternness as thou

wouldst them; so shalt thou keep the balance true. Now thou art sleeping

through my preaching--well, never mind! Kiss thy mother, dear one, and I

will go."

She descended the ladder; and Nicanor's voice came sleepily muffled

through the straw.

"All the same I shall be great--greater than that old man who was before

me--greater than kings--greater than any who shall come after--"

He slept, and the moonlight streamed upon him in a flood of silver.

And below, at Rathumus' side, lay Susanna, the mother, and stared

wide-eyed and wakeful through the darkness.

II

Nicanor sat beside the fire, his hands clasping his knees, his eyes

glowing in the ruddy leaping of the flames. Around him on the moor

squatted a band of belated roving shepherds, who from all the country

round were bringing their flocks to fold for the Winter. About the fire,

at discreet intervals, the sheep were herded, each flock by itself.

Around every huddle a black figure circled, staff in hand, hushing

wakeful disturbers into peace. The shepherds ringing the fire sprawled

carelessly; uncouth rough men with shaggy beards and keen eyes, their

features thrown into sharp relief against the light. Farther off, small

groups, close-sitting, cast dice upon a sheepskin with muttered growls

of laughter. The musky smell of the animals tinged the first chill of

Autumn which hung in the air. Around them the moor stretched away, vast

and silent, broken into ridges filled with impenetrable shadows until it

melted into the mystery of the night. Over the world's darkness a

slender moon, sharp-horned, wandered through rifting clouds.

Nicanor's voice rose and fell with the crackling flames. His eyes

gleamed, his face quivered; the men within hearing hung upon his

words. Gradually the dicers' laughter died; one by one they left

their clusters and joined the circle at the fire. Nicanor saw, and

his heart swelled high. This was what he loved,--to fare forth at

night and come upon such a crowd of drovers, or it might be wood-cutters

or charcoal burners; to begin his chant abruptly, in the midst of

conversation; to see his listeners draw close and closer, gazing

wide-eyed, half in awe; to move them to laughter or to tears, as

suited him; to sway them as the marsh winds swayed the reeds. At

times, when this sense of power shook him, he took a savage delight

in seeing them turn, one to another, great bearded men, sobbing,

gasping for breath, striving for self-control,--simple-hearted

children of moor and forest, whose emotions he could mould as a

potter moulds his clay. He could have laughed aloud, he could have

sung for sheer joy and triumph, to watch this thing. Again, he would

make them shiver at his tales of the world of darkness--shiver and

glance from side to side into the outer blackness, with eyes gleaming

white in the firelight. For it was a superstitious age, in which

every field, every hearth-stone, had its presiding genius for good or

ill; and there were many things of which men spoke with bated breath

and two fingers out.

Nicanor ended his chant:

"So this man died, being unpunished, and went away into a great country

which was a field of flowers. And in the midst of the field was a city

wherein the man would enter. But even as he walked through this field of

flowers, he saw that out of the flowers ran blood, and the flowers spoke

and cried out upon him because of that thing which he had done when he

was upon the earth. And the man was sorely frightened."

There was a mutter and a stir among the crowd. A black bulk heaved

itself up between Nicanor and the firelight, and a swollen voice cried

out:

"Now by Christ His cross, how comes it that this snipe of a stripling

may speak from his mouth of what lieth beyond the grave? For this is

death, and death is a matter concerning Holy Church alone. By what right

doth he tell us of what she says no mortal may know?"

Cries from his mates interrupted.

"Nay, Rag; shut thy gaping mouth and leave the lad in peace! And so--and

so--what then befell this wicked man, son?"

But Rag was not minded to be put aside so lightly.

"I say 'tis wrong!" he bawled. "No man, without warrant, may thus blab

of what goeth on beyond the grave!"

A voice seconded him from the outer ring, but dubiously.

"I think the Saxon right! How may we know if this lad speaks true of

that which comes to pass hereafter? Boy, what earnest canst give that

this thing happened so?"

But another shouted:

"In the name of the gods, Rag, get thee to sleep once more, thou

stupidest lout in Britain! It is a scurvy trick to waken thus at the

wrong time and trumpet thy nonsense in such fashion. Good youth canst

not skip that bit for peace's sake, and get on to the next part?"

Rag's voice blared into this one's speech.

"Nay, now I am awake, I'll not sleep again until I know if a lie hath

waked me. For if it be not the truth, it is a lie, and a lie shall have

short shrift with me!"

The men, stirred by the tale, took sides. A gale of conversation sprang

up. Some wished the story to go on; others would know by what means this

lanky youth could tell of what was to come to pass hereafter. They knew

not the word imagination. Consequently fierce arguments arose. The burly

cause of the uproar curled up and went quietly to sleep once more,

leaving his fellows to settle for themselves the questions he had

propounded. It is the way of his kind. High words fanned the spark of

their excitement. Two met with blows; one stumbled into the hot embers.

He cursed, and the light flashed on a drawn blade. Instantly the noise

redoubled. Mingled with it was the bleating of frightened sheep, the

oaths of drovers who strove to check incipient stampedes. Nicanor hugged

himself with joy. If but his father could be there to see! Melchior,

that wonderful great-sire of his, could not have so stirred men that

they were ready even for blood and violence. He, Nicanor, could;

wherefore he was greater than Melchior. His blood leaped at the thought;

he wished to proclaim his exultation to the world.

But things soon took a different turn.

In the confusion, Rag, lying almost beneath his comrades' feet, got

himself kicked. He leaped to his feet, dazed, roaring like a bull, and,

stupid lout that he was, took unreasoning vengeance upon the first

object which caught his eye. This chanced to be Nicanor.

"See what thou hast brought us to, son of perdition!" he cried. "But for

thee and thy fool's tales we should be lying asleep like good men and

true. This is thy work, with thy talk on heaven and hell and flowers

which vomit blood. God's death! Heard ever man the like? If thou knowest

not of what thou pratest, thou hast lied, and that deserves a beating.

If thou dost know, thou hast the black art of magic,--an evil-doer, with

familiars who tell thee things not to be known of earth; and that

deserves a flaying!"

His voice was loud. His partisans took up his cry. Nicanor found himself

surrounded. He became enraged; forgot that he himself with his wizard

tongue had worked them into a very fitting state for any outbreak. That

the emotions he had aroused should be turned against himself was a

monstrous thing. He drew his knife; one seized it from his hand and

flung it into the heart of the fire. Black figures danced around him; he

was lifted off his feet by their rush; flung down, trampled upon,

bruised, kicked, beaten. Men, losing all thought of him, fought over his

head, clamoring old pagan creeds and shrieking aloud their theories

concerning the Seven Mysteries of the Church. They differed wildly. From

the criticism of a romantic tale, the discussion flamed into a religious

war.

One with a broken head fell senseless near Nicanor. He, in scarcely

better case, turned and squirmed until he got himself covered with the

body; so saved his ribs and perhaps his life.

The combat ended, after a lapse of minutes, as abruptly as it had

started. A cry arose from the hurrying guardians of the flocks:

"The sheep! Look to the sheep! They scatter!"

The animals, frightened by the uproar into panic, broke from their

cordon and bolted into the darkness. Religion was forgotten on the

instant; men in the act of giving a blow swung around and fled after

their property. Seeing this out of the tail of his eye, Nicanor crawled

from beneath the protecting body. He stood upright beside the deserted

fire, panting, glaring, his clothes in tatters. Blood flowed from his

nose, and from a cut upon his temple. He was a sorry sight. He lifted

his clenched fist and shook it at his vanishing assailants.

"By Christ His cross!" he swore, repeating Rag's oath, "after this I

shall make you believe what I tell you, though I say that your hell is

heaven and your heaven hell. You have bruised me, beaten me, because of

what? Something too high for your sodden brains to know! You have

flouted me; now I shall flout you. I shall make you fear me, tremble at

my words--ay, kiss the very ground beneath my feet. You shall learn to

fear me and my power; you shall cringe like the curs you are!"

He went home in a quiver of rage and hate and shame, wounded in his

body, still more sorely in his dignity, and told his mother he was going

away. Where, he did not know. This was a small detail, since to him all

the world was new. Folk had faith in the manifestations of Providence in

those days; Rathumus and Susanna believed they heard Fate speaking by

the mouth of their angry son. Susanna's eyes filled with tears. Rathumus

nodded his great head gravely and slowly. Nicanor, overflowing with his

wrongs, strode up and down the hard earth floor in a passion. Again he

gave tongue to his lamentations.

"I am stronger than they--I shall conquer! Thou shalt see! I shall make

them acknowledge that I, son of Rathumus, am greater than they. This

shall be my revenge, and though it take me all the years of my life, I

shall win to it by fair means or foul."

"Son, son!" Rathumus said sternly. "Speak not thus rashly. For the gods,

and the gods alone, is vengeance."

But Susanna took her boy to his own loft, and there comforted him,

motherwise.

"Thou wilt yet get the better of them all, my son. That they should have

dared to treat thee so! But oh, be careful, for my sake! Now hearken. I

will have thy father pray that our gracious lord permit thee to go to

Christian Saint Peter's church, on Thorney, which is called the Bramble

Isle, to learn a trade. Though he be no believer in the Faith, our lord

is a good man, merciful unto us, his slaves, and I doubt not will give

consent. Then seek there a man by name of Tobias, a colonus and a worker

in ivory for the good Christian priests. He, it may be, will aid thee

for sake of her who is thy mother."

She stopped, then, and looked into his face. But he met her eyes without

a change, and never thought to question what her words might mean. For

he was very young; also his mother was his mother. So that Susanna

smiled, for pure joy and happiness, and said:

"He is a wise man, with goodly store of wealth. Also hath he been in far

strange countries, and seen right marvellous things. And he will take

thee to learn of him, if so be thou wilt say thou art son to Rathumus

and Susanna his wife. And so wilt thou become great, and very wise, and

loving."

So in the end, Nicanor started off alone in the world, with his parents'

blessing, which was all they had to give him, to find out whither this

Fate of his had called him.

III

Thus it was that Nicanor left his home in the gray northlands, up by the

rolling hills and the barren moors which lay under the great Wall of

Hadrian; and journeyed down the long road which led ever southward to

Londinium. Past Eboracum, on the Urus, that "other Rome," where the

Governor of Britain dwelt, famous as the station of the Sixth Legion,

called the Victorious, the flower of the Roman army, which men said had

been there for upwards of three hundred years. He crossed the wide river

Abus, and thought it the ocean of which he had heard tales; he stole at

stations and begged at farms, and drank in all that he could see and

hear.

Over hills and through valleys the great road ran, straightaway for

league upon league, turning aside for no obstacle, invincible as its

builders, ancient and enduring. It crossed rivers, it clove through

darkling woods, it traversed wide and lonely wastes, and led past walled

towns, worn by the feet of marching legions, scored with the grooves of

wheels. And even as across the world all roads led to Rome, so here did

all roads lead to Londinium, and therefore to Thorney on Tamesis.

And Londinium was no longer the collection of mud huts filled with

blue-painted Britons, of which dim tales were told. For under Roman rule

fair Britain had cast half off the shroud of her brutish early days, and

blossomed into a civilization such as she never before had known, and

would not know again for many hundred years. One passing glimpse of

light she caught--even though it had its shadows--before the veil shut

down once more with the coming of the Saxons. For, though Roman rule in

Britain was said to end with the fourth century, Roman influence, Roman

customs, Roman laws, survived and were paramount during the years of

independence which followed, until throttled by the slowly tightening

hand of Saxon barbarism. Then the old dark times returned.

The Romans were hard taskmasters, but the task they had was hard. They

were often merciless, but those beneath them had been wild beasts to

tame. They were in power supreme and absolute, and they lived in ease

and plenty upon the toil of native serfs and bondsmen. Fair villas,

stately palaces, costly foods and fine raiment--all the luxuries those

old days knew were theirs. Under them was the mass of the native

population, staggering beneath their burden of taxation, bound to the

soil, often absolute slaves, who spent their lives toiling in

brickfields, in quarries, in mines, and in forests, living in

straw-thatched cabins upon the lands of masters who paid no wage. When

there was rebellion, these masters knew how to deal punishment swift and

sure; when there was submission, they gave kindness and reward. Had Rome

not been as strong as even in her decline she was, Romans could not have

held Britain as long as they did. For on sea and land, on the verge of

the civilization they maintained, were restless tribes, Scots, Picts,

and Saxons, seizing every pretext, every moment of unguardedness, for

encroachment and disturbance.

So that their stern discipline was necessary, and not without results

which went for further good. Under Roman rule all the surface of the

land was changed. Great towns, walled and fortified, rose on the sites

of ditch-surrounded villages. Marshes were drained, bridges were built,

and rivers banked; forests were cleared and waste lands reclaimed. More

than all, the land was tilled and rendered productive, so that Britain

became the most important grain province of the empire. Romans found in

Britain a scant supply of corn, grasses on which the cattle fed, wild

plums, a few nuts and berries. They brought to Britain fruits and

vegetables from many lands beyond the seas; from Italy gooseberries,

chestnuts, and apples; walnuts from Gaul; apricots, peaches, and pears

from Asia. Paved roads webbed the island, wide and well-drained, by

which bodies of troops could be massed at any given point with

incredible rapidity. Fortifications were built and in the north walls of

solid masonry were thrown across the country from the Oceanus Ibernicus

to the Oceanus Germanicus, for the determent of common foes.

That upon which Rome once set her seal could never wholly lose the mark;

must remain bound to her by ties, which, stretching across the

centuries, would link the future to the past. In spite of the bitterness

of her defeat and ruin, and because she still was Rome, she was mighty

enough to leave precious gifts to the peoples who should come after her.

To Britain, because Britain had been her own, she left many legacies

great and small: the sonorous richness of her speech, soon corrupted to

make for a new world a new speech as noble; and more than all, she left

the word of her mighty law, proudest monument ever reared by mortal

hands to a nation's glory. Rome's sons builded well for her; and the

labor of their hearts and hands was not for the day alone, but for the

ages. Towns yet to rise upon the ashes of her stately cities would find

their model in her municipal government, and in her laws concerning the

taxation of land and the distribution of personal and real estate. Old

customs she left to be handed down to those who should sit in her sons'

places,--the luctus of widows, who for a full year of widowhood might

not wed again; the names of her deities she gave to the days of the

planetary week. Her superstitions and folk-lore, deep-rooted, survived

and lingered long among many nations: the old sorcery of the waxen image

of an enemy transfixed by bodkins for the torment of that enemy; the

belief in the were-wolf (one of the oldest of Roman traditions); the

association of the yew tree with mourning and the passing of human

souls.

Britain, with all her virgin wealth unmined, furnished Rome with

enormous food supplies; sent many thousand men to serve with Roman

armies on the continent; and received the colonists, called auxiliaries,

brought thither in accordance with Rome's invariable policy of

transplanting to the land of one nation captives from another. Thus the

population of Britain, composed of people from nearly every race or

tribe which has been subdued by Rome, was strangely heterogeneous, yet

as strangely fused. It was Romanized; the national individuality of its

units was lost in that of their conqueror. But as Rome destroyed the

nationality of her captives, so in time she inevitably destroyed her

own. If they were Romanized, she was Gothicized and Gaulicized. But by

this means only was the circulation of her life-currents maintained to

the uttermost branches of the empire. That great empire, age-old,

rotting inwardly almost to decay, was vitalized, as it were

galvanically, against her approaching dissolution by the blood of her

colonies. In the throes of hierarchical government, torn by three

irreconcilable religions,--polytheistic, Julian or Augustan, and

Christian,--she had no strength to spare for these outsiders when her

own life was at stake. The story of Roman Britain is the old story which

history repeats down all the ages: Rome sacrificed one part of Europe

that the whole might not be lost, and offered up the few for the good of

the greater number.

For in those dark days from the second century of the Christian era

until near the close of the fifth, when came the last stage of the

struggle and the extinction of the Empire of the West, the world seemed

tottering to its ruin. Kingdoms shook and crumbled to their fall; new

powers strove headlong for their seats; men found themselves harried on

all sides, with no pause for respite, and harried again in turn. They

did not understand; they knew only that fierce unrest possessed all the

earth, manifesting itself in the terrible wandering of the nations,

which was to culminate in a new world and a new order of things. Small

wonder that bewildered folk, swept on and overwhelmed in the maelstrom

of world-wide turbulence, unknowing what must happen next, predicted and

believed that with the year 999 the end of the world would surely come.

They had good reason for such belief. At Rome the fierce tribes from

Northern Europe could no longer be held back. Goths, Vandals, Huns, each

in their own good time had joined in the attack. Rome the Mighty, the

Eternal, invincible as Fate, whose power no man believed could have an

end, was brought to bay at last, impotent, drained by internal sores,

goaded and tortured by foes without, with a horde of wolfish barbarians

snarling and snapping at her throat. From one distant province after

another her legions were called home. The fated twelve centuries of her

power were ended; the direst tragedy of history had begun.

Britain, with all her fear and hatred of the heavy Roman hand, had yet

been secure from outer harm while the strength of that hand was with

her. For in the north were skulking bands of Picts and Scots, lawless

and undisciplined, seized with the contagion of excitement which stirred

their neighbors. In the south were Saxons, the terrible men of the Short

Knives; about the coasts to east and south were bands of pirates, Jutes

and Saxons both. Driven from their own lairs, they could but seek new

resting-places; and Britain was the only spot where they might obtain a

foothold. These rovers the Roman legions had held long years in check;

yet it was told that soon the troops would be recalled to Rome's

defence. None believed that Britain would be left wholly to herself; for

Rome was too far away for her full peril to be brought home to those

whose own affairs kept their hands well filled. But in the tenth year of

the fifth century across the sea came letters from Honorius the

Emperor, urging the cities of Britain to provide for their own defence,

since Rome could no longer send them aid. And for Britain this was the

slow beginning of the end. There followed then invasion after invasion

of barbarians, which the cities, forever quarrelling among themselves,

were forced to unite in repulsing. The Saxons thus overcome, ended

usually by settling in Roman cities under Roman government peaceably

enough until the next attack by their countrymen, in which they

invariably joined. By the year 420 Angles and Saxons had gradually

established themselves on the eastern and southeastern coasts, while

other allied tribes constantly harassed the western districts.

Since the second century Rome's army in Britain had dwindled to four

legions. At Deva, in the west, was the Twentieth Legion, holding in

check the fierce mountain tribes of the Silures, and, with the Second,

farther south, at Isca Silurum, keeping at bay the pirates who at times

sailed up the broad Sabrina on plunder bent. In the north, at Eboracum,

was the famous Sixth, within quick reaching-distance of Valentia and

Caledonia. At Ratae was the Ninth, guarding the low country and the

eastern fens. But after the Emperor's letter, the Ninth and the

Twentieth sailed away, and the proconsul at Eboracum perforce sent part

of his own troops to fill their places. Two years later, the Sixth was

recalled. And then the consul abandoned Eboracum, that great city which

since its foundation had been the seat of government for all the land,

and with his forces moved farther south, leaving it deserted.

But not for long. For Caledonians and Saxons came down from the north

and occupied it, and settled there to stay. And after that, whenever

Romans left the northern towns, seeking greater security in the

southward provinces, the barbarians advanced and took possession, and

thus gained the foothold for which they had been struggling ever since

the Conquest. And so the coming of the end was hastened.

Those later days of the departure of the troops were stirring days. The

island, governed by the lords of the cities, each in feudal

independence, had shaken off the leading-strings of Rome. It was

wealthy; as yet it was prosperous; the advance of the barbarians, though

it might be sure, was slow. When Rome's troubles were past, she would

send her troops again, and the invaders would be driven out for good and

all. Yet there were many folk abroad in those days, asking anxious

questions, filled with responsibility and care. And ever and again,

along the great white roads, a cohort would go flashing past, lined up

to full number, gallant in fighting trim, with standards flying, and

eyes set always southward, toward the sea and Rome.

* * * * *

There were many other folk upon the busy highways,--an endless

procession that went and came. Pack-horses, war chariots, slaves and

soldiers, nobles, merchants, and artificers, men with goods to sell and

men without,--a motley throng from many lands. Nicanor, shy and

fierce-eyed and of shaggy hair, tramping steadily southward in the wake

of the swift-footed soldiers, felt that the world was a very mighty

place, and never had he dreamed of such great people. As he drew nearer

Londinium, the traffic and the bustle increased. More troops kept coming

up; and again others passed them, going down. And now, among the low

hills, he caught glimpses of fair and stately houses gleaming among

wooded groves; and there were huts of plastered mud, straw-thatched,

where dwelt gaunt, collared slaves.

On either side of the road were broad meadows where sheep were grazing;

and ploughed fields where men and women stood yoked like cattle and

strained to the cut of the ploughman's lash; and quarries where men

toiled endlessly under heart-breaking loads, driven on by blows and

curses. These were the things which Nicanor had known all his life, for

his father worked, and his mother. But when he met a fat and perfumed

man, riding upon a milk-white mule, with servants before and behind him,

and beasts of burden bearing hampers,--then Nicanor could not

understand. He bowed before the fat man deeply, thinking him the great

Lord Governor himself; and men by the roadside laughed and mocked him.

So that he fought them, and came out of his second conflict very

valiantly, with a closed eye and a lip badly cut.

And so, in the fulness of time, he came to the last day of his journey.

It was a gray day, touched with the smoky breath of Autumn, with all the

country veiled in softest haze. It was very early morning, and few

people were upon the road, although since the first light of dawn men

had been working in field and forest. From a farmhouse off the road came

the crowing of a cock and the creak of a cumbrous handmill hidden in a

thick copse near by. Nicanor, sitting by the roadside where he had

slept, ate the food remaining overnight in his wallet, and rolled his

sheepskin cloak into a bundle for his shoulders. Behind him, from the

road, came a man's voice, suddenly, singing a rollicking drinking-song.

The singer brought up beside Nicanor, a black-haired man in a soiled

leather jerkin and cap of shining brass, with a matted beard and narrow

eyes, and a great leaf-shaped sword swinging at his thigh. This one

hailed him heartily, in a loud voice.

"Good youth, canst tell me where I am?"

"Why, yes," said Nicanor, proud to display his knowledge of the

locality. "This be the street a Saxon man at Ad Fines named to me

Eormen--"

"Ad Fines? Thirty miles from Londinium? Now I could have sworn that

yesternight I was in Tripontium, thrice thirty miles from there. I was

there yesterday--or maybe that time a week ago. 'Tis a small failing of

mine to go where I do not mean to go, and know not how I get there, when

the wine is in me. But this way will do, and now I am so far upon it, I

may as well go farther."

He sat down beside Nicanor.

"Dost know of any lord would have a fine stout serving-man?" he said

with a wheedle. "One who can carve, be it swine or human, skilled with

sword or sling, who can drive a chariot, pair or single-span?"

"Not I," Nicanor answered. "I be a stranger in these parts."

"Bound for Londinium?" asked the black-haired man.

"Nay, for the Christian church of Saint Peter's, on Thorney which is

called the Isle of Brambles," said Nicanor, without guile.

"Why, then, I'll go there too," the stranger said amiably. "For I am

most devilishly lost, driven from town and camp, the first time sober in

a week; and money I must gain, or starve. Eh, Bacchus! the women--the

women!" He sighed, shaking his black head dolefully.

"What concern had they with it?" Nicanor wished to know. "Did they turn

thee out from camp and town?"

"Ay, boy, turned me out and turned me inside out," said the black-haired

man, and grinned. "Never a little copper ass have I left upon me. See,

now, our paths lie in the same direction, since my path is any path.

Shall we go together? For I swear I'll not get lost again. Behold me,

Valerius, sometime of the Ninth Legion at Ratae, now, by the grace of

God, of no legion at all. I have my tablet of discharge from service; a

follower of fortune you see me, with my sword as long as the purse of

him who hires it."

Nicanor, half shy, half pleased with his new acquaintance, told in turn

his name and station.

"Thou and I will be good friends," the soldier said. "I love a lad of

spirit, such as thou. I'll fight for thee and thou shalt steal for me.

'Tis a fair division of labor. Hear you how my tongue waggeth? For a

week it hath been sleeping off the wine, and now that it be sober again,

it runneth by itself. Come, friend, art ready?"

On the way Valerius talked irrepressibly, with many strange oaths and

ejaculations, mixing his religions impartially. He told weird tales of

life in camps and teeming cities, so that Nicanor's blood tingled, and

he longed to go also and do these things of which he heard. The tales

of Valerius did not always hang together, but Nicanor cared not at all

for that. By and by Valerius took to asking questions, his tongue in his

cheek at some of Nicanor's replies. In half an hour he had learned the

boy's life, deeds, and ambitions, and had extracted a promise that

Nicanor would get the worthy Tobias to provide him also with employment,

preferably around the church, where would be fat pickings and little

work. At noon they ate by the roadside with two kindly disposed

merchants, and later continued on their way, meeting other folk, with

whom Valerius passed the time of day.

So, toward sunset, they came with many others ahorse and afoot, to

Thorney, the Isle of Brambles, at the foot of the road. And here Nicanor

thought he had never seen anything so wonderful, and stood staring

wide-eyed, while Valerius hummed his drinking-song and chewed a piece of

metyl leaf, which turned his lips and teeth quite red.

For here the country broadened out into a great marsh, vast and

spreading widely over the land, dotted with eyots, where birds flew low

among the sedge. Away to west and east were low grim hills, with a sense

of unending space and loneliness upon them. And at the foot of the

street was the ford, crowded here with men,--soldiers and serfs and

freedmen,--with horses and mules and heavy carts. Through the ford they

all went splashing; and it was wide and shallow, marked out by stakes

and with stepping-stones showing above the water. And beyond the ford,

under the gray skies, was Thorney, the Bramble Isle, alive with a

swarming throng of people. On the right of the island was Saint Peter's

church, upon the spot where next Saint Peter's Abbey, and centuries

later the great Westminster, would stand. It rose silent in a smother of

confusion and a babel of noise of men shouting, and horses neighing, and

the songs of boatmen on the Tamesis which bounded the southern end of

the island. There was a temple of Apollo close beside it, for old gods

and new dwelt side by side. To the ancient faith of their pagan fathers

the aristocracy of Britain still held true; the new God was for slaves

and humble folk, who had derived no benefits from the old creeds and

were willing to try any which promised help. And old Rome had seen the

rise and fall of many gods, for she was aged and very wise. Jupiter,

best and greatest, Isis, Mithras, Astarte, Serapis--what was one more or

less in her pantheon?

Around the church was a formless huddle of houses, thinning out and

straggling at the water's edge; and fires were blazing here and there,

and men were hurrying to set all in order for the night. For Thorney was

a halting place where travellers from north and south and east and west

rested a space and went their way,--a noisy, crowded place, where

centred traffic for all Britain passing to and from Londinium, the great

port, and the greater inland cities.

All of this Nicanor took in with delighted eyes. He ran down to the

ford, dodging between pack-mules and jolting two-wheeled carts, and

slipping eel-like past other pedestrians, forgetting Valerius, who

hurried after. He strode from stone to stone, splashed by straining

horses that tugged beside him, and sprang to shore upon the island. So

he won to his journey's end.

"Now to find that good man Tobias," quoth Valerius, and shook his wet

feet daintily, as a cat that has stepped by accident in a puddle. "He

will give thee food and lodging, which thou wilt share with me--so?

Knowest thou his house? Jesus, Lord! Did ever man see the like of the

nest of houses? Hey, friend!" He laid a hand on the shoulder of one

passing. "Canst tell us where dwells the worthy Tobias, worker in ivory

to the Christian Church?"

"Nay, not I," the man said, and hurried on. Over his shoulder he called

back: "Ask the good priest yonder."

Valerius doffed his brazen cap to this holy man. He, in frock of sober

gray, with head shaven to the line of the ears, and worn, pale face,

walked toward the church, his beads swinging by one finger. At

Valerius's question he looked up.

"The house next the open space on the right," he answered; raised two

fingers in benediction upon them, and went his way. Valerius and Nicanor

betook themselves to the house appointed.

It was then that Nicanor began to realize that he wished himself alone.

Valerius hung to his arm affectionately, and Nicanor was too shy to

shake him off. He did not know what to do; wherefore he did nothing. The

house next the open space was low, of stone and timber. It was evident

that Tobias was well-to-do. Valerius pounded upon the door; the heavy

shutter of a window swung open, and a man's head peered out. It was a

pink head, very bald, with flabby cheeks, a full-moon face, and pursed

lips, and the beaked Hebraic nose of his father's race.

"Who comes?" the man asked, and stared at them.

Nicanor said:

"Art thou Tobias, the ivory carver?" and the pink head nodded.

Then Nicanor said:

"From Rathumus and Susanna his wife I come, and I am Nicanor, their son,

and would be prentice to thee."

"And Valerius, thy friend," whispered Valerius, plucking at his sleeve.

"And Valerius, my friend," said Nicanor, obediently.

"Why, holy saints!" Tobias said. "From Susanna--and would be prentice to

me! Hold a minute till I let thee in."

His pink head disappeared and the shutter slammed. Soon the door was

opened, and Tobias welcomed them to his house. And a very good house it

was, for Tobias was wealthy. He called his slave, and she brought food

and wine, and they sat at the trestled board on cross-legged stools and

ate until they could eat no more. Then Tobias asked questions, and

Nicanor told of his home and of his parents and of his mother's words,

while Valerius, full-fed, dozed with his head on the table. And as

Nicanor talked, Tobias watched him, for to save his life the boy could

not open his mouth without a tale coming out of it; and when he had

ended Tobias rose and kissed him on both cheeks, and said:

"Thou'lt stay with me, boy, and learn all that I can teach thee, until

thou'rt master-workman. And thou shalt live with me, and be my son, for

sake of her who is thy mother--and it is not my fault that thou art not

my son in very truth. Marry, but thou hast a silver tongue in that shock

head of thine. Now come to bed; thy friend here is snoring like an ox.

And in the morning we'll begin work, and one of my lads shall tell thee

what to do."

So they roused up Valerius and took him off to a room with one window

and a bed. And here Valerius, slipping out of his baldric, pulled the

blanket from the bed, flung himself, dressed as he was, upon the floor,

and was instantly as one dead.

IV

But Nicanor went to the window and opened the wooden shutter and leaned

out. He heard the roar of the many camps, blending into one vast

undercurrent of sound; he caught the red gleam of fires half hidden

behind intervening houses; now and then a bellowed chorus reached him.

Also there were sweet tinkling sounds, of a kind which he had never

heard before, which thrilled him strangely. Sudden desire took him to be

out in the midst of this new stirring life; to see the crowded places,

the mingling of many men. Preparations for the night were going on, for

it was dark by now, with high twinkling stars. He could see, by leaning

far out, the moving glare of torches held high as belated wayfarers

crossed the ford, the reflection of the lights dancing on the shallow

waters. The fascination of it, this his first sight of Life, gripped

him, not to be denied. He sprang to the ledge of the window, writhed

himself through, and dropped to the ground outside.

Then, at once, he was in a new world,--a world of flickering flames and

black dancing shadows, and strange sights and sounds, and restless

figures passing always to and fro. And, quite dazed, he stumbled

against one, not a rod from the house, who laughed, with a laughter

which made him think of the tinkling music he had heard, and beckoned

him, drawing him in the darkness. But Nicanor, thrilling through all the

awakening soul and body of him, turned and ran, shy suddenly, but at

what he did not know.

So he came to a fire burning in a ring of stones; and around the fire

men were sitting, eating and drinking, and the light played on their

faces. With them were women, at whom Nicanor stared agape. For they were

very fair to look on, with jewel-bound hair and slumberous eyes, lithe

as snakes, with bare shoulders and dress of strange clinging stuffs.

These were dancing girls, being taken to the great inland cities for

sale or hire. And near by, huddled close for warmth, were slaves,--men,

women, and children, chained in long strings, on the way to be sold in

Gaul. Here were fishermen, also, and boatmen, gathered by themselves, a

noisy crew, with loud jokes which Nicanor heard and did not understand.

All about him was a babel of voices and laughter, boisterous and

profane; now and then an altercation, short and violent. It went to

Nicanor's head like wine. Never had he known anything like it; life like

this had passed his bleak northern home entirely by. He drew nearer the

groups around the fire, drinking it all in greedily,--new sights, new

sounds, new impressions. His face was flushed with excitement, his

breath came short; so much he found to interest him that he stared

bewildered, uncertain what to look at first. The smell of cooking food

was in the air, mingled with the aromatic pungency of many fires of

wood. Horn cups clashed; at intervals hoarse laughter drowned the

shouts of teamsters and the creak and strain of wheels.

And suddenly, under the intoxication of it all, Nicanor found himself

speaking in a new, fierce mood of exultation. What he was going to say

he did not know; but his voice fell into the old measured chant, regular

as the tramp of marching feet, which carried through all the tumult of

sound around him. His heart beat hard, his hands clenched, but he flung

back his head with eyes which glittered in the firelight. Those nearest

looked on him in amazement, ready to scorn. Then they held silent, and

listened. Others drew closer, to see what might be going on. More came,

and more. Women left men's knees and joined the little crowd, smiling,

then with parted lips of wonder. Nicanor neither saw nor heard them. For

the first time in all his life he was carried beyond himself; in a

physical ecstasy he spoke out that which clamored at his lips, caring

nothing for his audience, unconscious of them utterly. And because that

is the one thing which will grip men's minds and compel them, he held

them spellbound, in spite of themselves,--until, abruptly, in a flash,

he became conscious of himself, seeing himself, hearing himself. That

moment he lost his hold of them. And he knew it, and stopped short. And

for an instant there was silence.

Then a woman drew a long breath which was like a sigh, and a man

muttered something into his beard. The spell snapped; and like a flood

let loose their talk leaped at him. They shouted, "More!" They would

know who he was, and whence he came, and he must finish the tale for

them. But Nicanor shook his head, dumbly, with a new and strange emotion

surging through him. He was frightened at himself, at his feeling, at

what he had done. And back of his fear lay something deeper, something

which he could not name,--half exultation, half truest awe, as though he

stood in a presence mightier than he and knew himself for but the tool

with which the work was wrought.

There came a woman, very wonderful, and hot as flame, and put into his

hand a broad piece of silver, looking into his eyes. A man with a broken

nose thrust a copper coin into his palm; others followed. For a moment

he stood staring at the fire-lit faces around him like one foolish or in

a trance, with his own face quite white. That he might receive money for

his soul had never entered his head. Then he broke away from them all

and ran--ran as though for his life--back to the house of Tobias, and

clambered through the low window and flung himself upon the bed,

laughing and sobbing and shaking, and clutching his coins in sweating

hands.

For he had entered into his heritage at last, and the Future had become

the Present.

V

The working-place of Master Tobias was a small room half underground,

with three windows on a level with the street. Long boards on trestles

were ranged upon three sides, leaving the centre free; these were much

chipped and scarred, and black with oil and dirt. On these tables were

small list-wheels for polishing, formed of circular thicknesses of

woollen stuff clamped tightly between two wooden disks of smaller

diameter which left a pliant edge of wool projecting, held firmly in

wooden frames and turned by hand. There were trays of tools for carving

and graving and scraping, and boxes of fine sand and of glass-parchment.

In a corner was a grindstone; and the unclean floor was littered with

sawdust and scrapings of bone. Here half a dozen men were working, in

oil-stained aprons of leather. The wheels hummed continuously, with a

steady droning; at intervals the great saw shrieked and grated; from the

storeroom a boy brought long tusks ready for the first cutting.

Men have worked in ivory before ever history began, and of all known

arts it is the most ancient and one of the most beautiful. And no two

master-workmen have gone about it after precisely the same manner, but

each has followed his own method of treating the bone, of cutting, which

is a delicate business, of smoothing, and of polishing. At different

ages widely differing means were employed to bring about the same

effect. There were many curious things to be learned in the way of what

and what not to do,--how to treat bone with boiling vinegar, and secret

processes of rolling out ivory and joining it invisibly, for the making

of larger pieces than could possibly be cut from any one tusk. Lost

secrets, these, to us; and being lost, by many doubted as having ever

been. These things Master Tobias had learned, many years before, from a

workman of Byzantium, where the work was already famous, and far and

away ahead of all. This man, dying, had left Master Tobias all he knew,

and tools such as never otherwise could he have obtained. So that the

fame of Master Tobias went abroad through the province; and he did much

work in the way of tablets, diptychs, caskets, figures of gods and

goddesses and of Christian saints. Many a carven comb and jewel-box

found its way to some haughty Roman beauty's dressing-table, the work of

Master Tobias's own fat hands. He found good markets for his wares,

since Roman love of bijouterie was strong, and he had few competitors.

It was not until the establishment of Saxon dominion that the art

obtained a permanent foothold in Britain; and then it went back to its

first crude beginnings, as did nearly all other things at that second

conquest.

So behold Nicanor, bare-armed and in leathern apron, carrying tusks to

and fro, cleaning them after their arrival from the merchants' hands,

and giving them out to the workmen as required. Thus he came to learn

the various shades of coloring; how to tell when bone was healthy and

might be expected to take the cutting well, or when it would be apt to

crack and split under the saw. Having come to know the differences in

degree, he was put to checking off the lots as they arrived, according

to kind and grade. Mammoth tusks of elephants, sometimes ten feet in

length, weighing close on a hundred pounds, solid to within six inches

of the tip; teeth and tusks of the wild boar, walrus-bone and

whale-bone, used for coarser work and filling,--all these he must tell

apart at a glance. For to the untrained, bone is bone.

This was light work, and left him time to watch what others did;

whereby, quite unconsciously, he absorbed much useful knowledge, which

was as Master Tobias intended. Then, being well acquainted with color

and texture and grain, he was put to help with the big saw,

coarse-toothed, worked by two men, and had to learn to cut his lengths

to a fraction of an inch as required, with the least possible waste.

This took him some time, for a bone is full of twists and turns which

render it liable to be cut to pieces, so that much care is needful. So

he went up, step by step, knowing well each detail before he undertook

the next, until at last he began to work under Master Tobias's own eye.

And then, for the first time, having acquired an insight into the art,

was he able to appreciate the skill of the master-workman. And this is

the way of all art from the beginning, and as it must be to the end,

since only he who knows may understand.

In long course of time, when many months had gone, came the day when he

brought forth his own first work, a crucifix, the fruit of his own

labors, touched by no other hands from first to last. Himself he

selected the tusk, flawless, finely grained; cut it to the block, shaped

it, the upright of the cross, the arms, the rough outline of the Christ

upon it. Then, bit by bit, cutting, cutting, cutting, the figure grew,

with rounding outlines, and coherent features. The straining ribs,--for

this effect he cut against the grain, in the way that Master Tobias had

taught him,--the pierced hands and feet, the draped cloth about the

loins; slowly it formed under his eager fingers. He smoothed it with

glass-parchment, polished it on the list-wheel; in the end painted it,

with red lips and crimson drops of blood and draping of richest purple.

And he chose that Christian symbol solely because, out of all the

subjects offered by Master Tobias, it presented fewest difficulties in

the matter of draperies--greatest stumbling block to all novices. So it

was finished, and became the pride of his life,--but not for what it

was; only for that it was the work of his own hands. Had it been an

offering to Apollo he would have loved it just as well. And when he had

finished it, Master Tobias kissed him upon either cheek, even as he had

done once before, and declared that he could die happy, for he should

have a successor to keep his art alive.

But all this took much time; and meanwhile Nicanor was learning many

things besides the art of carving.

When he was in the humor for it, Nicanor could work very well indeed, as

he had shown. But more often than not he was sadly out of humor; and

liked nothing so much as to slip away from the hum and drone of the

wheels and the smell of bone and oil, and wander out of the quiet church

precinct down to the busy life at the fords. Here was unending

amusement; all day long he would watch the going and the coming, listen

to the uproar of traffic, silent himself or mingling with the crowds.

Day after day narrow barges went up the Tamesis with the tide from the

port of Londinium, deep-laden with wines and spices, silks, glass,

candles, and rich stuffs from foreign lands; with lamps and statuary and

paintings for the great Roman houses; with fruits and grain, vegetables,

meats and poultry. And at the ebb came the barges down again, this time

with wool and pelts, smelling villanously and tainting all the air as

they went by. Here also was the river-ford, passable at low tide, marked

out by stakes, and leading from the southern side of Thorney, opposite

the marsh-ford, over to the mainland, where again the road began and

stretched away to Londinium. Here the fisher-folk cast their nets for

salmon in their season, for other fish in plenty the year round,

shouting across to the bargemen passing up or down. These, besides the

few priests and servants of Saint Peter's church, and the keepers of the

inns, were the only ones who lived upon the Bramble Isle. All others

came and went, and never stayed save for a night.

Day after day came craftsmen, traders of all kinds, merchants with

bundles of hides on pack-horses to be shipped at Dubrae; mimes, actors,

musicians, jugglers. Crested-helmeted cohorts, with glancing shields and

bristling spears, splashed through the fords on their way south, stern

dark-faced men from many nations. Long strings of slaves, who then as

later formed so large a part of Britain's export trade, were marched

with clanking chains along the highways. Always was color, life,

movement, the clamor of voices, the rumble of wheels; a constant stir,

ceaseless, pulsing, feverish.

It was small wonder, then, that Nicanor, alive in every fibre of his

eager being, thirsting for adventure, should escape from the workshop's

confinement as often as might be, to watch and wonder at the passing

show. Also it was small wonder that Master Tobias did not like such

rovings of his pupil, and openly disapproved. With reason he argued that

if a man would make his work worth while he must stick to his bench and

tools. But Nicanor, at such times, cared little whether or not he made

that work worth while. At his bench he was restless, fretting to be

gone. Only outside, amid hurrying men and the confusion of arrival and

departure, was he at peace, entirely happy and content. And this was but

natural, since young dogs strain always at the leash, and as his fate

had written. But this, Master Tobias, bound heart and soul to his

beloved task, could not understand.

Being both fiery, they clashed often, when dire confusion followed. Upon

these occasions, Master Tobias, purple with wrath, brandished his burin

and raved. Nicanor was an ingrate; Nicanor was a fool and a

good-for-naught, who deserved everlasting punishment and would surely

get it. And Nicanor, white-hot within and silent,--two years before he

would have screamed with rage like any other infuriate young wild

thing,--laid aside his tools and left the work-room, his head in air,

his jaws set like steel to a thin smile, his wrath blazing all the

fiercer for being dumb. Not until he found himself with a circle of

gaping faces around him, hanging on his words, would his anger cool and

his world right itself to normal. Then, his steam worked off, himself

peaceful and serene, he would return to the house for supper, meet

Master Tobias's menacing growls with demure politeness, and forthwith

charm him into abject surrender with diabolical art. So peace would be

restored, with the combatants firmer friends than ever--until the spirit

within him moved Nicanor once more. And yet,--for this is as it always

happens,--each fresh quarrel was fiercer than the one before.

It was after one of these passages-at-arms that Nicanor, losing his

temper completely, spoke to Master Tobias as he had never dared speak

before. And then, foolishly bound to keep the last word, strode off in a

fume, out of the church grounds, through the huddle of houses and crowd

of passing folk, whose clamor put him yet more out of sorts, and down to

the river-ford. Here he paused, kicking up the earth with the toe of his

laced leather shoe, in a very evil temper, wanting only something to

vent his spleen upon. And standing thus, he heard all at once an outcry

behind him, and wheeled, and saw a thing which made him forget his

grievance and consider that after all he was more lucky in his lot than

some.

At first he saw only a crowd of men and boys, who jeered and hooted.

This was a sight not new; but in their midst he caught a glimpse of a

crested helmet and the black cloak of a slave-driver. And then the crowd

parted, and Nicanor saw a girl, a lean wisp of a thing, with burning

eyes and a gray face framed in straight black hair, with chained wrists

and a ragged frock which slipped aside to show a long red welt across

her brown shoulders. The slave-driver held the end of the chain, his

heavy whip tucked beneath one arm,--a squat man with a black and brutal

face and small hard eyes. He was appraising the girl's good points

glibly, as though of a mare to be sold,--her working strength, present

perfections, future possibilities. The soldier, wax tablets and stylus

in hand, his back half turned to Nicanor, made notes of what he said, at

intervals throwing in a comment or a question.

"From the north, you say?"

"Ay, lord, born of a Roman soldier and a British wench. A good

investment, noble sir, and the price but small,--only five-and-fifty

sestertii,--and that because I give thanks to be rid of her."

"Hath she spirit, fire? I want not a puny, slinking chit."

"Spirit--fire!" the man repeated with a curse. "If that be what you

wish, lord, it is here in very flesh. This young she-devil hath given me

as much trouble as three men."

The soldier fumbled for his pouch and counted money into the dealer's

hand. The latter counted it again, spat upon it for luck, made his mark

in the Roman's book, and unchained the girl's wrists.

The Roman laid a hand on the shoulder of his bargain.

"Come, pretty one!" said he, and turned, so that for the first time his

face was to be seen. "Thou'lt get no more blows nor curses, if so be

thou'lt do thy duty well."

Leering, he drew her forward. Nicanor cast a glance upon him, and

started, and hailed him. For the Roman was Valerius, the errant one;

and what he wanted with a slave girl who had no beauty, and where he got

her price, was more than Nicanor could tell.

Valerius, still with a hand on the girl's shoulder, grinned at him, and

said:

"Why, now, friend, 'tis a very good day that brings thee to my sight.

Not since I was repairer of sandals to the good fathers--thanks to

thee--have I seen thee, though I hunted the place over for thee, and

mourned right tenderly when I found thee not. And that was near a year

ago."

And always, though his speech was pleasant, as he spoke he moved away,

sidling, with a certain stealthiness, a glinting of his narrow eyes from

side to side. Nicanor became interested, and followed a pace. The girl

stared at him with desperate dumb eyes.

"Thou hast made a good purchase," he said carelessly, and thought that

for an instant the other showed his teeth.

"Not for myself!" Valerius said humbly. Whether it suited him, for

motives of his own, to play the worthy poor man, Nicanor could not tell.

"I but act on behalf of my lord Eudemius, of the great white villa off

the Noviomagus road, this side of Londinium--hey, now! by all the

furies, what is this?"

For the gray-faced girl, with hunted eyes, flung herself suddenly from

his hand, crying in a hoarse croak of a voice:

"Not for him! Not for the lord Eudemius, the Torturer! I am not bought

for him!"

Again Nicanor found himself staring, for there was fear and anguish in

her voice such as he had never heard in human tones. And as they looked

at her in amazement, she rocked from side to side, sobbing without

tears, and whispering keenly:

"Not for him! Ah, dear Christ in heaven! not for him!"

"And why not?" Valerius demanded. "What hast thou against him that his

name sends thee squealing--"

"What against him?" the girl said fiercely. "He tortures--he

mutilates--he strips flesh from living bones, and laughs! Let a slave

raise an eyelid in his presence, and he were better dead. Ay, I know--I

know! I will not go to him! I will drown--choke--hang myself first!"

She glared around her as though to seek deliverance where none was.

Valerius shook her roughly by the arm.

"Thou'lt come with me and hush thy whining!"

They had reached a lane between the houses, unpaved, trampled hard and

uneven by many feet. This lane was known then as the Street of the Black

Dog; and it ended abruptly at the low stone wall which here marked the

boundary of Saint Peter's land. By the wall, at the head of the street,

was one of the rude stone crosses which were raised at intervals around

the walls and at every gate therein. This was forty or fifty yards ahead

of them as they stood. As Valerius touched the girl she sprang away from

him and fled forward up the street, with head thrown back and torn rags

fluttering and her black hair streaming behind her in a cloud. Valerius

shouted and plunged after her, a hand outstretched with clutching

fingers. And after them went Nicanor, his eyes alight with the lust of

the chase, the fierce joy of the hunting, old as mankind itself. As

Valerius snatched at a rag on the girl's shoulder, he gave a sharp yelp

of triumph, as a hound yells when its leash-mate has nipped the fox. But

the rag tore away as the girl struggled free. She reached the head of

the street, a flying figure of terror, with the black-browed Roman at

her heels and Nicanor racing alongside; staggered, recovered, stumbled

again even as he touched her, and fell forward at the foot of the stone

cross, with a sob like that of a horse ridden to the death, clasping the

column with both hands and crying:

"I claim sanctuary! I claim sanctuary!"

Then her head fell forward on her outflung arms, and she lay with thin

shoulders heaving to her fighting breath, and her face hidden in her

tangled mane. Valerius stopped, almost in his stride, all but

overrunning her, so close upon her had he been. He shook his balled fist

and cursed her, glaring down upon her, not daring to touch so much as a

strand of hair. For she was in the shelter of holy Church; and few men

were bold enough to violate that terrible, wonderful Law of Sanctuary

which even then was beginning to be dreaded and respected, and which

high and low might claim alike. So that Valerius walked in half-circles

about her, like a baffled beast which sees its prey torn from its very

jaws; and she lay and shuddered, and Nicanor stood watching with avid

eyes. For as yet he was only a very primitive young animal, with the

instinct of his kind to join with the hunter against the hunted. People

began to gather, quickly, clamoring with question and theory; and upon

these Valerius scowled, biting his nails in fury. The girl raised

herself, crouching close beneath the cross, and looked around her like a

trapped thing, crying:

"A priest! Is there no Christian priest here who will tell this man that

I be safe from him in sanctuary?"

Valerius pulled Nicanor to him.

"Go thou and find one," he said harshly; "for while she sticketh to this

cross I dare not lay finger upon her lest I be torn limb from limb by

fools. He can but give her up; for she is bought and paid for, and it is

not hers to say whether she finds her master to her liking. And quick

with thee, that I may get her where she cannot fly again."

So Nicanor went swiftly through the nearest gate into the yard of the

church, and looked about him for a priest. And it seemed to him that the

more hasty grew his search, the less was it rewarded, for he was in a

desperate hurry to get back and see what followed. Presently, ahead of

him, he saw a priest, whom he knew as Father Ambrose, and he ran to him,

shouting:

"Holy Father, a slave hath claimed sanctuary at the cross by the Street

of the Black Dog, and asketh for a priest to confirm her right."

The good Father kilted up his gown, and together they ran through the

nearest byway to that street. And then, quite suddenly, as they reached

the end of it, Nicanor felt with a shock that he must have mistaken the

place. For although the cross was there, and the wall, and the street

was the Street of the Black Dog, yet there was no sign of the girl, nor

of Valerius, nor of any of those who had gathered to look on. So that

Nicanor turned to Father Ambrose with a face of pure fright, and

stammered:

"But I left them here, upon this spot! Or else I am sure bewitched!"

He looked to right and left and back to Father Ambrose. Father Ambrose

shook his head and said passively:

"It may be that they have arranged the matter among themselves. Let us

return."

He walked off, placid and unstirred; and Nicanor touched the cross to

make sure that it was real and no delusion, and looked into the sky and

around upon the clustered houses, and spoke no word at all. But he knew

quite surely that the matter had not been arranged.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

BOOK II

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Book II

THE GARDEN OF DREAMS

I

The years went on,--misty Springs, golden Summers, flaming Autumns,

Winters stark and chill, leaving each its tale on the unrolling scroll

of time. For in those years the consul departed from Britain with his

forces, and the cities ruled themselves, each in a state of feudal

independence, now warring amongst themselves, now making common cause

against their common foes.

Were history to write itself more often with a view to cumulative

dramatic effect, there would be small need for the romance of

imagination. One would have history a tale, of swift climax and

excitement, when it is in fact a scattered medley--a battle here, a bit

of statecraft there; here a burning Rome, yonder a new God; and between

these the commonplace round of human life and toil and death, the

inevitable dead level of the tale. It is because of the long lapses

between cause and effect, the revolutions slow and of secret tardy

growth instead of by fire and sword, that men turn to Imagination to

bridge the gap. Events, grand and stirring, woven, one believes, into

the very fabric of history, are proved to be the pleasant tale of some

ancient ardent romancer, with an eye for dramatic effect. And often it

is the bit choicest and most intimate of detail, binding the chronicle

into a dramatic whole, which the iron pick of Research digs from the

heap of bones, and wise men say: "That brilliant hero never lived; this

great battle was but a skirmish; some old monk wrote that--it never

happened." Many a glowing jewel, cherished tenderly and shining bravely

through the dust of ages, has turned, in the white light of knowledge,

to worthless glass. So do the old gods perish.

Thus came the chronicle of Saxon conquest down to us,--a brave and lusty

tale, scarred with battles, written in blood, picturing a horde of

savage foe-men that swarmed over the Walls and swept through a

blood-drenched land. In fact and deed, it was a conquest of absorption

rather than extermination, dramatic only in its vast significance; a

gradual amalgamation of two forces, in which the stronger, cleaner Norse

blood triumphed over worn-out and depleted Roman stock. As weeds, rank

and sturdy, overrun a garden, choking out other plants, so in Britain,

Saxon life overgrew Roman life, inch by inch, almost imperceptibly. The

conquest was by no means bloodless. Towns were sacked and men were

slain; here was an explosion, there an outbreak of lawlessness; but for

the most part the change was wrought with deadly slowness and a sureness

which nothing could check.

In these years Nicanor grew tall and strong and long of limb, and his

voice ceased to play him false with strange pipings which had filled

him with wrath and dire dismay. He learned to use eyes and ears as well

as tongue; he worshipped at the altars of strange gods, and laughed at

them. He lived from day to day as the birds live, picking up a crumb

here and yonder. In the workshop he spent as little time as might be,

restless, not content with what he had, ever eager for that which he had

not, devoured by the curiosity which would lay hands on the strange

throbbing thing called Life, and probe its inmost hidden meaning.

And as time went on, the unrest deepened which possessed him. He was

unhappy, and he could not tell why. He wanted something, and he knew not

what. His shyness developed into fierce aggressiveness, unreasonable,

alarming. He prowled continually among the camps, sullen and

quarrelsome, vaguely miserable, and blaming his misery upon all the

world. He took to spending much time, with small profit to himself,

among the chained gangs of slaves, where were cruel sounds and crueller

sights. At the hiss and cut of the lash on bared backs and thighs he

thrilled with savage exultation; he took morbid delight in the sight of

pain inflicted; and this he could not at all understand. At this season

his tales were all of war and blood and violence, of treachery and

despair. When night came he slept fitfully or not at all, with uneasy

half-formed dreams. And in these dreams he was always searching for a

thing which had no name, starting over the river-ford upon the high

southern bank, ending nowhere under gray skies and desolation. He

neglected his carving, waged bloody battles with his fellow workmen,

bullied Master Tobias like any slave-driver. Lonely and shy and sullen,

he fought through his crisis by himself, not knowing that it was a

crisis, nor why it had come upon him.

No one took the trouble to help him; he would not have thanked them if

they had. Outwardly he was taller, more gaunt, with a certain rough

virility which impressed. Men knew that he was savage, and baited him

even while they feared him; himself only knew that he was

miserable,--more miserable, because he could not understand why he

should be so at all. He lived the wild life of the camps, drinking,

brawling, making fierce love with a vague notion that this was what he

wanted, ever finding the fruit of desire change to ashes in his mouth.

Always the power within him grew; and always he despised those upon whom

he wrought his magic. For it was nothing to master these, to do with

them as he willed; all his art was lost upon them since they could not

understand.

He was then at work with Master Tobias upon a book-cover for the

gospels, which was for Saint Peter's, and very much interested he was

and pleased with his share in it. In the morning he went to work right

willingly, with no thought other than to do as best he might with all

his skill. So he got his tools, and the oil and glass-paper for the

first polishing, and, Master Tobias not having yet appeared, started to

go on himself with the bit of scroll he had begun the day before. Seeing

it with fresh eyes after a lapse of hours, it struck him that a change

might be made in one place with much advantage from the design which

they had planned. So he made the change, and was still more pleased.

When Master Tobias entered, Nicanor pointed to what he had done, and

said:

"Is not this a better way, good sir? That corner needs balancing, and it

is in my mind that the design should work up this way--" he illustrated

with his burin--"and so bring into harmony--"

And then it was that the unexpected happened. For Master Tobias rose

from his stool and stood over him, and said:

"Hast thou changed the design I made?"

Nicanor replied that he had, and wished to show the advantage of his new

idea. But Master Tobias struck his hand aside, and shrill with rage,

exclaimed:

"Thou good-for-nothing clod! Thou hast spoiled the work with thy clumsy

handling! Why canst not leave alone what thou dost not understand? Who

gave permission to change? Body of me! Must I stand over thee every hour

in the day and switch thy hands for disobedience?"

"But it is not spoiled!" Nicanor protested with indignation.

Master Tobias stormed.

"I say it is! I say it is, and must be smoothed out and changed. And

thou'lt stay within and do it, until all is as it was before. I'll show

thee my designs are not to be altered thus unwarrantably!"

And herein he made a mistake. For when he said "Thou shalt!" Nicanor's

impulse was "I will not!" and as yet he acted upon impulse. Master

Tobias could have flogged him if he wished; Nicanor cared not a rap for

flogging. He rose in open rebellion and pushed away his stool.

"Not I!" he said. "The design is false, and I will not put into my work

what is not as it should be!"

He turned and marched out of the room--leaving Master Tobias dumb with

astonishment and rage--surly and savage and very bitter, with his hand

against every man because he thought that every man's hand was against

him.

And then, quite suddenly, there swept over him the fierce, insistent

longing for change which wrestles with every man at some time or other

in his life; the hot desire to fling himself out of the rut into which

that life inevitably must settle, to encounter anything, good or bad, so

long as it brought a change. And because he was still too young to see

that this is the very one thing which may not be; the one thing of which

Fate says: "Come and go, and plan as ye will, but remember that I hold

the leading-strings; for my name men call Circumstance, and my law is

that man shall do not what he will, but what he must,"--because as yet

he could not see this, he left Thorney that day for Londinium, saying no

word of his grievance to any man, with his bundle tied to a stick upon

his shoulder.

It was on the road to Londinium that he overtook one journeying in the

same direction, who kept pace with him persistently, let him go fast or

slow. This was a venerable man, with a long beard of white, and wise,

all-seeing eyes that smiled and smiled beneath the penthouse of his

brows. Nicanor came to hate him vindictively, with no reason at all, as

he hated all the world just then.

Nicanor stopped at evening by the roadside, and sat down to eat the food

he had brought with him. And this ancient man stopped also, and sat upon

a stone near by, and watched him. Nicanor, with meat and black bread in

his hands, glanced up, ready to scowl, and met the old man's eyes,

smiling at him. It was so long since any man had done other than revile

him--since one's own mood will reflect itself like an image in clear

water upon the minds of those around one--that Nicanor was surprised

into smiling back, uncertainly, it is true, but still smiling. Then it

was as though a bit of that outer crust of moroseness melted, and left

something of his old boyish shyness in its place. Without stopping in

the least to think why he did it, he broke the bread and meat into two

portions, and held out one, in silence, awkwardly, as a child who does

not know whether his gift will be accepted or cast upon the ground.

Now if that old man, perhaps not understanding, had not taken what he

offered, turning from him then, it must surely have been that Nicanor

would have shrugged his shoulders, and flung the food upon the road, and

shut up once more within his shell of surliness, with his opinion of

mankind fully justified in his own mind. But whether he wanted it or

not, the old man took his gift, with eyes grave yet always smiling upon

his lowering, half-shamed face, and said in a voice like a deep-toned

bell, so clear was it and vibrant:

"I thank thee, my son."

He ate the food, slowly; and Nicanor watched him slyly, as he ate his

own supper, fancying himself vastly indifferent to all ancient smiling

strangers. But deep down in his rough shy heart he was pleased for that

he had succeeded in not turning another soul away from him--so small a

thing has power to change the balance sometimes; and when the old man

spoke he did not wish to repulse him, as often. The stranger said, quite

as though he had a right to know:

"Son, art sure that it will be well for thee to go to Londinium? Is what

thou seekest there?"

Nicanor answered with immense surprise:

"I seek nothing."

"So?" the old man said, and smiled. "Now I thought that surely thou wert

seeking something, and very near to black despair because thou hadst not

found it."

And at once, like an echo from another world, there came to Nicanor the

memory of a time when he had wandered seeking for something which he

could not name, upon the downs, under gray skies and desolation. And he

did not know if this had really happened or had been but a dream. But he

began to think the old man very strange and rather to be feared. He

said:

"Old man, how may you tell that I seek for what I cannot find; and why

would it be not well for me in Londinium?"

The old man's face changed then, so that for an instant Nicanor was

frightened. For into it there came a high far look of utter peace, such

as the face of a holy saint who has suffered all might wear, if he

awakened. And while Nicanor stared, not knowing what to think about it,

the old man said gently:

"Son, I may tell by right of having known myself what thou art knowing

now. For the faces of men are as an open scroll to those who have

learned to read what is writ therein, and thy story is upon thee very

clear. Thou art in a world of thine own creation, but this world of men

hath also claims upon thee, which thou canst not ignore. And I say to

thee, go again to that place which thou hast left, for to find what thou

art seeking, one need not go afield. And when thou hast found that

thing, which is in this world of men, seek thou sanctuary, which is holy

love."

Nicanor said: "I do not understand! What hath love to do with it?"--and

told of the love that he had seen, which was all he knew. The old man

listened, with unchanging eyes upon him, and said:

"Now truly I see thou dost not understand. This be not love, but a blast

of furnace heat which scorcheth. But some time thou wilt come to

understand the meaning of my words, and then shalt thou find sanctuary

and peace. Ay, peace--that is what men cry for in the dark days that are

passing; and they shall seek refuge and find none, and the bitterness of

death shall be upon them. For it shall be said even as by the prophet of

Babylon, mother of old evil--'Rome the Mighty is fallen--is fallen!'"

He swayed gently as he sat, with hands uplifted and eyes no longer

smiling; and to Nicanor's eyes his long white beard and hair were as a

mist of silver around his head.

"Thou also shalt pass through the Valley, for the Black Dog of trouble

is upon thee; and thou shalt work out thine own unhappiness and thine

own salvation. For thy way is the way of loneliness, and of

misunderstanding, and of the Cross. And this is as it must be, since the

price of heart's blood and heart's desire is pain, and for what thou

gainest, thou must pay the price."

He ceased, and his hands fell to his sides and his white head drooped.

He leaned to Nicanor, groping, old, and suddenly very feeble, and

whispered:

"Son of men, I too have trod the path which thou art treading now. And I

say to thee, seek thou sanctuary while yet there may be time, for no

man knoweth what the end shall be. And when thou art entered in, all

else on earth shall matter nothing, for thou shalt be at peace. This I

know, O Youth, and tell thee, for--I did not enter in."

He rose and laid a withered hand on Nicanor's bent, shaggy head.

"Unto each his own appointed work, and his own appointed fate, and the

reward which he hath merited. Now peace be with thee!"

He turned away and passed onward into the falling night.

Thereafter the world unrolled itself between them, for they never met

again.

Wrapped in his cloak, Nicanor lay and stared at the stars above him, and

pondered those things which he had heard. And, because again he could

not understand, he put upon them his own interpretation. But he at once

began to make a tale about that old man, with his silver beard and his

smiling eyes; and so he fell asleep, thinking that that was all there

was in it.

When he awoke at break of dawn, he was inclined to think the whole a

dream. But there was a new and softer mood upon him, greatly surprising

to himself, and the black soul within him was tamed and stilled. So, in

blindly superstitious obedience to the word of the strange old man, he

turned his face away from Londinium and all that he longed to find

there, back toward the life which was his, and the work which was his,

and the Isle of Brambles in the fords.

And so came Fate, hard following on his heels.

II

For out of the gray mists of morning came soldiers, six or eight, with

ring of weapons and shuffling thud of feet; and with them was a

centurion in command. These overtook Nicanor where he went slowly back

toward Thorney; and the centurion laid a rough hand upon him and bade

him halt. Nicanor turned; but before he could ask angrily why they had

stopped him, his wrists were fast in handcuffs and he was a prisoner in

chains. He turned upon the centurion.

"Now what is this? I have done no wrong. I demand release!"

"Demand if it please thee," the soldier said. "But in truth I think thee

something more than fool to let thyself be thus caught doddering by the

way. To escape once, and baffle all the great lord Eudemius's searchers,

and then be stumbled upon like any sheep--faugh! I expected better

things of thee!"

"Now have I naught at all to do with the lord Eudemius!" said Nicanor.

He explained, carefully, who he was, and whence he came and to whom he

belonged, and they turned a deaf ear to him. He was the man they

sought, even the slave of Eudemius, escaped three days ago, with a

reward out for his capture. This last explained it, but that Nicanor

could not know. They insisted that they were in the right; all he could

say and do would not convince them otherwise.

They skirted around Londinium by a street lined widely with tombs, and

struck a road leading south and slightly west, which the men, talking

among themselves, named the Noviomagus road. Ten miles, and they reached

the station known by that name, and here took horse, with Nicanor

mounted behind a guard. The road led through the neck of the great

forest of Anderida, and came out again into the open, and they followed

it until three hours after noon. Then they turned aside into a narrower

branch road, and so rode easily for another hour until they entered a

grove of ilex trees. To the farther end of this they came abruptly, and

saw before them open country, a broad and gentle slope of hill; and on

its summit a great stately house, white-walled, with outbuildings in the

copse around it. In the centre of the blank wall of the front of the

house which confronted them, was a gateway, with gates of bronze, and a

porter's lodge. Here the porter, looking through his wicket, asked their

business, and, being told, directed them around to the rear. So they

entered at another smaller gate, and were in a court, open to the sky

and surrounded on all sides by buildings, where slaves were working.

This, Nicanor learned from the soldiers' talk, was in the quarters of

the slaves.

[Illustration: "'Were I that woman, I should have wanted to love

him.'"]

And here the centurion found the overseer, and talked with him long and

earnestly. The overseer paid over the reward, and the centurion, as

Nicanor saw without at all understanding the transaction, returned

certain broad pieces, which the steward hid away upon himself with a

furtive glance around. The soldier then departed with his men, his

tongue in his cheek; and the overseer came to where Nicanor stood in

chains, and looked at him. He was a very fat man, with little eyes sunk

in unwholesome flesh, and was far haughtier than the great lord Eudemius

himself. When he saw Nicanor's face, he began unexpectedly to curse and

bluster, and said:

"How now, fellow! Is this a trick thou and thy mates have played upon

me, to obtain my master's gold? Thou art not he who escaped three days

ago."

But light had broken upon Nicanor, and he answered:

"So I told them, and so thou couldst have seen if thou hadst looked

before thou didst pay--and receive back--thy master's gold. If this be

thy practice, sure thy lord must be the poorer for thy loyal service!"

But the overseer was talking very fast, without paying heed at all.

"By my head, but this is a scurvy trick to play a man! But now thou art

here, here shalt thou stay in that other's place; for it would go hard

with me were my lord to learn that reward had been paid for nothing--and

a slave is a slave to him."

Nicanor turned on him in a blaze of wrath, and the fat overseer, wary of

the lean strength of him, called his men.

"Take him to the armorer's and have put upon him the collar. And on pain

of punishment let no man say he is not the one who went away."

So they put upon him the brazen collar of slaveship, with the name of

Eudemius engraved thereon; and set him to work among the household

slaves. And he, being alone, was helpless, and could do no more than

bide his time as best he might.

But at first, when his bonds galled, he stormed, raging in fury at his

impotence and the high-handedness of those who had betrayed him to his

servitude. Finding that this brought him but blows and curses, and was

of no manner of good, he calmed down and simmered inwardly. Then--and

herein he surprised himself--he began to take an interest in this new

life into which he had been cast. He had abiding faith in himself, and

this is a thing of which every man has need; he was undergoing a new

experience, which at the outset was interesting. When he became tired of

it--well, he would then find means of escape. The work was not over

hard, since there were many hands to lighten it; he was brought into

contact with a magnificence of which he had never dreamed. As always, he

kept his eyes and ears open; with his strange, sure prescience that all

he could see and hear and know would be useful to him, somehow,

somewhen, he set out to learn all he could of the life of the great

mansion and of those who dwelt therein.

So he found out many things; and one day he found Varia, the great

lord's daughter.

The house was so vast that one might lose himself with ease among its

many halls and courts and passages if he did not know its plan. Nicanor,

sent one day on an errand to the kitchens, reached them in safety; and

then took the wrong way back, and found himself wandering in a part of

the house new to him. This did not trouble him, for by then he was well

known among the household servants, and was sure of soon meeting some

one who would set him right. So, quite without thought, he pushed open a

door at random, and then abruptly lost all his wits through sheer

amazement and delight.

For he was in a garden, beautiful to his eyes beyond all words, with

broad terraces and gleaming marble steps where peacocks strutted; with

at one end a fountain banked in a tangle of roses, where sprays of water

fell with silvery splash and tinkle; with marble seats and statues

gleaming from the cool gloom of trees. Around the garden were high

walls, vine-hung, with the surrounding buildings of the villa for a

broken background. An untamed profusion of green life rioted here; pale

flowers of night, whose fragrance hung heavy on the air, swam in a

sea-green dusk; ivy clung and clambered along the crannies of gray

walls; roses sprawled in a red torrent of perfume over the yellowing

images of old gods and heroes. In one corner a placid lake gazed

still-eyed at the sky, with white swans floating on its mirrored black

and silver. Nicanor drew breath with a quick pleasure which was almost

pain; here one might think great thoughts and dream great dreams. For it

was as a bit of that Forgotten Land of dreams, through which all men

have journeyed, though the road to it is lost, with a glamour of mystery

and a charm upon it which held him spellbound.

Out of the velvet shadow into the still evening light, one came toward

him, in silence, with dark hair hanging in heavy braids on either side

of her pale face, with dusky eyes and scarlet lips and jewels that

glimmered in the folds of her perfumed robes. He bowed before her,

keeping his eyes upon her face; for though he was a slave, he was first

a man, and next a poet, which means a lover of all things beautiful, and

he had never seen a woman like her in all his life before.

"Who art thou?" she said. And though she was a great lady and the

daughter of that noble house, she was yet a girl, and scarce beyond her

childhood, and she drooped her head before his glance.

"Nicanor, thy slave," he answered, but his voice was not a slave's

voice.

"Why art thou here?" she asked him. "This is mine own place, where none

but I and my women come."

"I crave thy pardon, lady," he said; and told her how he came. In turn,

her eyes rested on his face; and he, meeting them, felt his pulses leap

to a sudden shock which sent the blood back pounding to his heart. For

they were wandering eyes, awake and seeing, yet which slept, with no

light of reason in them. So then he understood why the name of their

lady was spoken throughout the household in hushed tones as of one dead;

why she was so closely hidden from the eyes of the world. And she was

the Lady Varia,--the lord Eudemius's only child,--the last of his great

house, fair, futile flower.

"Nicanor," she repeated, with a pretty halting on the word. Her voice

was low and dreaming, more tender than a dove's. "Where have I heard

that name? Why, Nerissa hath told me thou art he who telleth tales to

the men and maids at evening. See, it is evening now. Wilt not tell me

too a tale? I should like it, for sometimes I am very lonely."

She was far above him as the stars; but she was a woman, and he a

man--and the first tale was told within a garden. She held out a hand to

him, and he took it and touched it to his forehead, and it fluttered in

his and then lay still. She led him to a bench by the sleeping lake, a

child whose will might not be thwarted, and bade him tell her tales such

as he told her men and maidens. This the sure instinct of his art taught

him he might not do, since those tales which held them thralled were not

for such as she. But he locked his hands about his knee, and thought an

instant, his head flung back and his eyes intent and eager, with an odd

shining deep within them.

So his tale began, in the deep-voiced chant which had rung out by moor

and camp-fire, hushed now, that the peace of the evening's stillness

might not be broken. She sat quite still beside him, her hands clasped

childlike in her lap, listening with parted lips. The dusk deepened, and

the golden moon hung over the surrounding wall and flooded the garden in

wan hoary light. The pool lay a lake of silver in a black fringe of

trees. The night flowers breathed forth drowsy perfume, making heavy the

summer air. Nicanor's voice rolled on, endlessly through the scented

darkness....

Until Nerissa, the old nurse, came upon them suddenly, clamoring for her

charge. Varia sprang to her and kissed her, with fond coaxing arms about

her, so that she relented, since her lady's will was law. She dismissed

Nicanor, and he crossed his arms before his face, and went away from

Paradise.

Varia hid her face on her nurse's shoulder--poor groping soul that found

its happiness in things so small--and said:

"He hath told me tales, Nerissa, so strange and wonderful that never was

aught like them in all the world. I will have him to come again, for I

am so happy--so happy! And thou shalt not tell, for then he could not

come, and he is not to suffer for it. Promise, Nerissa, dear Nerissa--it

is but a little thing!"

Thus Varia.

And Nicanor--ah, Nicanor! That night there opened to him a new world,--a

world of beauty and of sweetness and of pain. He, a son of the soil,

knowing his roughness, his uncouthness, his bondage, never giving them a

thought till then, had led her by the hand, a daughter of the stars, for

a little space, the barriers down between them. One bit of common ground

they had; beyond it, distance immeasurable and impassable.

* * * * *

That night Nicanor was once more seeking, always seeking, for something

vague and left unnamed; past the river-ford of Thorney, where ever that

night-long search began; and so through all the world to where a garden

lay in moonlight. Here also he would have sought, for he knew that what

he strove to find was waiting. But a web of moonlight held him back from

entering; and from the outer darkness an old man's voice came to him,

clear as a deep-toned bell, which said:

"The price of heart's blood and heart's desire is pain, and for what

thou gainest, thou must pay the price."

III

In the garden was a little narrow door, vine-hung, which led to the

outer world. No one ever used this door; for long years it had stood

locked, and the key to it was lost,--so long lost that no one ever

thought to look and see that the lock was clean and newly oiled that it

might turn without noise; and the vines which half hid it on the inner

side could tell no tales.

Marcus, oldest of all the many household slaves, white-headed and

shrunken, and bent with the toil of years, squatted by the fire in the

court of the slaves' quarters, cleaning a copper pot with a swab of

twigs soaked in oil to pliancy. Within the house a feast was in

progress, so that all the slaves were there on service, and Marcus had

the fire to himself. He crooned softly as he scrubbed; and the flames

struck gleams of light from the collar of brass about his neck and the

round shining sides of the kettle, as it turned and twisted in his

hands.

Presently Nicanor came into the circle of firelight, staggering under

the weight of a great cask upon his back, with sweat-matted hair that

streaked his face, and straining muscles. Out of the zone of light he

passed, with only the panting of labored breath and the pad of naked

feet; and the darkness swallowed him. Following came another, also

laden; and another, with a squat stone jar upon his shoulder; and yet

another, each giving out every ounce of power within him, straining like

a beast of burden beneath the yoke, that those in the great house might

be served perfectly and without fault. They passed; and from the

kitchens came a rattle of crockery, a hiss of burning fat, the shrill

voices of cooks and scullery women.

Marcus flung his mop into the fire, got himself to his feet, and went

after them, kettle in hand. The fire, left to itself, cast wavering

gleams upon the dark walls about the court, the bare trodden ground, the

covered well in its centre.

Marcus, seeking Nerissa to give the kettle to her, came to the garden,

and stood in the entrance and looked across it. Further than this even

he dared not venture, since all the space within was sacred to the

lord's daughter and her women. Opposite him, across the open lawn, were

the wide steps, white in the moonlight, leading to the tessellated walk

above. Beyond this, light shone softly from Lady Varia's chamber, half

screened by the tall slender columns of the gallery. The two windows,

reaching to the floor and giving upon the terrace, were open to the warm

air; in the room the lights were low. Marcus saw suddenly the Lady Varia

herself enter the room alone, walking slowly, like one unwilling or

tired. Then he would have gone, lest he be reprimanded; but even as he

turned, the vines along the farther wall rustled, though no wind

stirred. So that Marcus, faithful old watch-dog, drew back in the

shadows and waited, thinking no danger, yet bound to see that all was

well.

This was what he saw: Lady Varia moving within the low-lighted room,

pausing before her dressing-table near the tall silver lamp, to remove

the weight of jewels which loaded her, aimless, and with slow uncertain

steps like a child too weary to know rightly what it does. And from the

darkness by the wall a figure coming with swift silent strides across

the turf to the marble steps, black as a shadow in the moonlight, lean

and lithe and with an untamed shock of hair. The figure stood upon the

lowest step and called softly,--a tender, wordless call which drifted

low across the night and scarcely reached to Marcus's ears. Marcus felt

for the knife-hilt at his belt. But the Lady Varia, within the lighted

room, heard the call, and stepped across the threshold with head raised

and hands hanging at her sides like any sleep-walker, and crossed the

pavement where the moonlight lay in silver, and came down the steps,

slowly, yet hesitating never at all. Marcus, watching in wonder and

fright and awe, saw the black figure lift her hand and kiss it; saw the

two walk hand in hand across the garden into the dusky jungle of tall

shrubbery. So that Marcus was in two minds,--whether to give the alarm

at once, and have the intruder captured, or whether to go up quietly

himself and find out what was going on.

In the end he crept along through the shadow beneath the walls; and

presently, as he came, heard a voice speaking softly, yet with passion.

The words were plainly audible, and Marcus heard, and crept closer yet

and listened,--listened to words such as in all his stunted life he had

never heard before; words which stirred forgotten memories of other

things once known, once loved and lost, which he understood in part, and

felt more than he understood. He crouched in the shelter of a

wide-leaved plant, seeing only the outline of a black figure on the

stone bench, and a white one half lost in the darkness beside it. The

spell of the voice wrapped him round, deep-toned, vibrant, yet hushed

into accord with the stillness of the night. Bent on capture, he found

himself all at once held captive, his mind swayed as grass in the wind

to the sweep of that other's fancy. But abruptly the voice ceased, and

the stillness settled deeper. Marcus heard a rustle of soft garments

upon the bench; a low voice saying:

"More--more! Cease not, I pray thee, friend!"

And that other voice, answering:

"Nay, lady; what use? Something is wanting--the words will not come. I

know not why, whether it be in me, or whether--"

"Nay, but I'll have one more. Once thou didst begin to tell of a youth

who was poor and lowly, who lived in the country of the north--"

"Does she, then, remember that?" Marcus muttered, "she, whose mind is

water, where an image fades with the changing light? Eh, thou

black-headed slaveling, what miracle hast thou wrought?"

"Wouldst have that tale?" Nicanor asked. "Ay, lady, once I did begin,

and dared not finish. Dare I now? My faith! the trouble will not be for

lack of words in this! So then; it was even as thou hast said. The youth

lived in the gray northlands, up by the Great Wall, where gray hills

roll over all the earth and gray skies look down upon them. He tended

sheep upon these hills for his father's lord, and lived upon black

porridge and sour bread, and went clad in a sheepskin. And because he

had never known that life held other things than these, it was all to

him as it should have been. But there came a time when this youth went

out into the world. He left his flocks and herds, with his lord's

permission, and went down the long road to the south, past great cities

where men lived in luxury and ease and other men toiled and sweated that

this might be. He saw many strange faces, heard the babble of many

tongues; and it seemed to him that each face was seeking for a thing

which had no name, and each tongue was calling for what might not be

found. And after a while the youth knew that he too was seeking what he

could not find, and he wondered if it might be that same thing for which

those stranger faces hungered. In the end, he came to a fair house, and

dwelt there, among those ones who sat in luxury and ease and those

others who toiled for them. And in this house was a certain place, of

which was said: 'This spot is holy ground. Here none may enter rashly.'

But the youth was rash, and entered."

His voice faltered. On the seat beside him the Lady Varia leaned

forward.

"And then?--" she said softly.

"And there he found what he had been seeking," said Nicanor, very low.

"What every soul upon this earth has a right to search for, but not

every soul has a right to take. The name of this thing, O lady of mine,

was Happiness; and some there be who call it also Love, and others there

be who know that it is Pain. For in the garden dwelt one fair and pure

and holy,--a daughter of the great ones of the earth. And because she

was fair he loved her; and because she was great he might not woo her;

and because she was pure he would not stain her. For she had taught him

to love as a woman may teach a man."

"He loved her?" Lady Varia said. Her voice was low and dreaming under

the spell of his.

"Ay, lady of mine, he loved her!" Nicanor said; and in place of the

vibrant tenderness of his voice was a swift fierce triumph. "He loved

her, and nothing could do away with that." Once more his tones were

hushed.

"On earth, between man and woman, are two kinds of love, my lady,--one

which a man may teach a woman, which is quick desire and the bitter

sweetness of passion, the meaning of a kiss, the thrill of a caress: and

this, when all is said and done, is of earth, and of the flesh; and one

which a woman may teach a man: and this is reverence, and tenderness,

and holiness, and of the spirit. And she taught the youth this kind of

love, my lady; taught him to revere and honor what in other women he had

ever held lightly; taught him that because she was weak she was so

strong that nothing he might do could prevail against her. And so--he

went away."

"And she?" said the dreaming voice. "Did she love him?"

There fell a pause. In the bushes, close at hand, one strained his ears

to listen, a naked knife gleaming in his hand.

"Ay," Nicanor answered slowly. He turned to her, not touching her, yet

so close that he felt her breath on his sleeveless arm. "She loved him.

And she did not know it."

"Not know it?" Varia said. She turned her face toward him, and the

moonlight fell full on the warm whiteness of her throat. "I think she

should have known. And then, she being great, and he so lowly, I think

she should have told him that she knew."

"If--if you were she," said Nicanor, and his voice shook, "would you

have told him?"

"Oh, I should have told him!" Varia said, and her voice was low and

strained. "I should have said--'I want you to love me! I want you to

love me and stay with me always--'"

Nicanor bowed his face forward on his hands. Lady Varia, leaning

forward, put her hand upon his shoulder.

"Were I that woman, I should have wanted to love him if he had been like

that," she said, tremulously, yet very sweetly.

Nicanor straightened up and caught both her hands.

"Ah, no, my lady, you would not!" he said hoarsely. "You would have

driven him from you and been angered beyond forgiveness. You would have

hated and despised him, because--oh, don't you understand, it is the

only thing you could have done! If she had said that--how could--how

could he have left her?"

"But why did he leave her?" Varia asked. "Could he not have stayed

always in the garden?"

Nicanor mastered himself with an effort.

"No," he said thickly. "Because he was only a man--and some day--it

would be more than he could endure. If he saw that in her sweet

innocence she did not realize the temptation she held out to him, he

might--he might have done that which always after he must regret."

He raised her face with one hand and looked at her. Her eyes were

closed, her red mouth quivered. He hesitated, his breath coming hard;

then he bent his head and kissed her. As he took her in his arms, she

shivered, crying softly:

"I am afraid! Oh, what is this that you would do!"

But when he loosened his hold she clung to him, murmuring:

"Nay, I am not afraid! I love your kisses. Oh, you must not go as did

that youth--always you must stay within this garden--"

Then Marcus crept from his shelter and stood before them, silent, his

knife gleaming in his hand. Nicanor, lifting his head, saw him suddenly,

and started, for this meant death by tortures no man might name. He

sprang to his feet and thrust Lady Varia behind him in the same motion,

so that in the darkness his body hid her as she crouched upon the bench.

Marcus snarled, like an aroused watch-dog, and said:

"Thou more than fool! Dost know what this night's work will bring thee?"

Nicanor, his heart pounding hard, his hands clenched, answered nothing,

glancing about him to see if the old man might be alone. But the garden

lay silent. Then he sprang, as a wolf springs, straight for the old

slave's throat, and felled him. Lady Varia screamed,--a quick, shrill

sound which stabbed the night stillness like a knife, and cried:

"Oh, kill him not--kill him not! I pray thee, kill him not!"

"Hush thee, dear lady, or the house will be upon us!" Nicanor exclaimed,

his words rushing through locked teeth. "Get quickly to thy chamber and

leave all things to me."

She sped away over the turf, panting with fear and excitement, and

flitted up the steps and across the marble walk and into her room, and

closed the window. Nicanor, kneeling on the slave's chest, gagging him

with a wad torn from his own garment, heard the doors shut with a gasp

of relief. He tied the old man's arms tightly with his girdle, trussing

him as he had trussed the carcasses of sheep to be loaded upon mules.

Then, having him bound and helpless, he rose and stood over him,

whetting his knife on his hand, with senses keyed to hear footsteps in

every stir of leaf and sigh of wind. But the garden lay always silent

under the moon's cold eye. He spoke to his captive, in a voice which

grated just above a whisper.

"I'll not kill thee now, since she begged thy life, old man. But while

thou'rt above the ground there's no more peace for me. Now what to do

with thee?"

He stood over his prisoner, motionless in meditation, muttering his

thoughts aloud.

"There's no place within the house to keep thee safe. And if that

clacking tongue of thine betrays us, it needs not much to fancy what

will happen then. This is what comes to pass when one serves a brutal

master, old man; one must e'en be a brute one's self. I cannot kill

thee; they'd miss thee and start a search--besides, my lady said me nay.

Ha, that makes thee squirm? Ay, she'd be mine for the lifting of my

finger--even I, Nicanor, thy master's slave, have but to say to her, thy

master's daughter, 'Go thither!' and she goes, and 'Come!' and she comes

to me as I will. Hearest thou that, old man? Her lips have been defiled

by a slave's kisses; she hath lain unresisting in a slave's arms, to the

unending shame of her proud lord father. And why do I tell thee this,

old man? To see thee writhe, thou also, at that shame; to have thee know

the whole, and never profit by thy knowledge. Again I say, I cannot kill

thee, but none the less I'll stop that tell-tale mouth of thine. Look

you, it's the choice between my life and thy eager tongue which even now

yearns to blab the tale of my sin and her disgrace. Therefore--"

He knelt above his captive, who glared at him with bloodshot eyes that

glittered in the moonlight. He tested the keenness of his blade, shook

back his shaggy hair, and with a sudden twist removed the gag from the

old man's jaws, choking back, at the same moment, with pitiless hands,

the cry which rose to his lips. Then he bent over, so that the bulk of

him hid from the moonlight his victim and his work. There was a single

glint of steel, a convulsion of the thin figure on the ground; a faint

click, and a choked and gurgling cry, instantly suppressed. Then Nicanor

cleaned his blade by driving it thrice deep into the soft ground, and

stood up; and Marcus rolled over and over in agony at his feet, with

inarticulate animal cries which scarcely rose above the silence of the

night. Nicanor unloosed his bonds and touched him with his foot.

"Hereafter thou'lt hold thy peace, old man! Neither good nor ill wilt

thou ever prate of mortal more, for I've drawn thy sting. Once thou wert

kind to me; twice, in return, did I steal for thee, and once took a

beating from thy shoulders. But thou wert more loyal to thy master than

thou wert friend to me--and in a matter such as this, I take no

chances. As I have served thee, so will I serve any man who crosses me.

Now go. Wash thy mouth with cold water and chew pounded leaves of betel.

It will stop the blood."

He left the garden with noiseless strides, a black shadow in the

moonlight. Marcus got himself slowly to his feet, moaning like an animal

in pain. He shook his fist at the vanishing figure, with uncouth and

terrible sounds which had once been speech, but even then were none the

less a curse. So, shuddering and crying, he crept from the sleeping

garden, where all was still and peaceful, and where pain and sorrow

should have had no place.

* * * * *

And never again was that garden so peaceful and so still, for Life had

entered it, by the little narrow door, bringing with it what Life must

bring.

IV

Nicodemus, the freedman, one-eyed, short, immensely broad,

beetle-browed, and grizzled, stood in the door of his wine-shop and

watched the crowding press of travellers at the marsh-ford, fore-runners

of the throng which nightly descended upon Thorney. Behind him, in the

dim recesses of the smoky shop, his wife, Myleia, hawk-nosed and

slatternly, prepared food for the strangers who would soon be upon them

clamoring for bed and board. It was early evening, with a faint twilight

haze still tinged with pink and primrose; but already lights were

twinkling here and there among the clustered houses, and fires had been

started on the beach.

There was no more excitement at the ford than was usual at that hour;

the noise was no greater, the confusion no more profound; yet Nicodemus

watched it all intently, as though he had not seen it every night

before. His one eye, small and hotly blue beneath its bushy brow,

glinted over the bustling scene; watched a dozen men flogging a horse

that had slipped in mid-stream and fallen with its pack, blocking a long

file of animals and carts behind it; followed three half-drunken

soldiers lurching through the shallow water, using their pikes as

staves; lingered over a bloody battle between two carters whose wheels

had locked; and suddenly sobered into gravity at sight of a figure

striding through the ford, in worn leathern jerkin and brazen cap, with

a ponderous leaf-shaped sword swinging at its side. At sight of this

one, Nicodemus turned and went within.

The shop, lighted dimly by an evil-smelling lamp, showed small and

low-ceiled. Jars of cheap wine and casks of ale and beer, with an array

of drinking-cups of all shapes and sizes, stood on shelves along the

wall at one side. A trestled board, much scarred and hacked, ran down

the centre of the room, flanked by rows of stone stools. Built around

two sides of the room was a series of rude bunks. Over the edge of one

of these a head of rough and matted black hair was visible. An odor of

stale liquor, scorched meat, and pungent wood-smoke hung heavy in the

air. Myleia entered, from the kitchen beyond, with a tray of half-cooked

beef. Nicodemus went to the bunk and shook the occupant ungently.

"Valerius is here!" he said. His voice, like himself, was rough and

brusque, rumbling hollow from the depths of his cavernous chest. The

figure in the bunk stirred and muttered. Nicodemus turned his head.

"He'll not sleep this off for another six hours," he growled. "Wife,

some water."

The hawk-nosed woman came to his side with a jug of water. As she gave

it to him, she put one hand, gnarled, distorted by work, hairy as a

man's, on his broad shoulder, and he put his own hand up over it. They

stood silent, looking down at the black head buried in the dingy

blankets. The lamplight fell soddenly on their faces, throwing them into

relief against the murky gloom of the room. Nicodemus grunted, and

without warning emptied the water over the black head. Myleia laughed

huskily. The remedy was partially effectual. The head rose dripping from

the blankets, with dazed and drunken eyes.

"Pull thyself together, Nicanor, lad!" Nicodemus said sharply. "Valerius

is coming for thee. Thou hast overstayed thy leave; he is to take thee

back to the house of thy lord. Dost understand?"

Nicanor, answering nothing, sat upright with an effort, pressing his

hands to his head, his body swaying slightly from the hips. Nicodemus

put a hand on his shoulder.

"Come!" he urged.

Nicanor looked at him, blinking stupidly. Still he did not speak, but

moistened his lips with a swollen tongue. He began to sink slowly back

into the blankets, supine and inert. Nicodemus sat on the edge of the

bunk and passed a long gorilla arm about his shoulders. He motioned to

his wife, who stood watching, arms akimbo, her face expressive of lively

sympathy. She went to the shelves where stood the jars of liquor,

returning with a brimming horn cup. Nicodemus took this, tilted back the

heavy head at his shoulder, and started to pour its contents down

Nicanor's throat. Nicanor choked, gasped, and swallowed automatically.

A black figure blocked out the twilight in the door.

"Peace be with ye, friends! What's all this?" said a hearty voice.

Valerius entered; saw the face of the patient, and stopped short.

"Nicanor!" he exclaimed. "Why, I'm come for him. He should have been

back last night. Hito--prince of overseers--hath a black mark against

him. Drunk again?"

Nicodemus nodded casually. "Bide a bit, friend, and I'll have him in

shape. He's awake now."

Nicanor, slowly recovering his sodden wits, looked at Valerius,

recognizingly, opened his mouth to speak, found the exertion too great,

and shut it again. He let his head sink back against Nicodemus.

Presently, with his eyes closed, he said thickly:

"You, Valerius? What now?"

"I want you, my friend," said Valerius, promptly. "It would seem you

forget the trifling fact that Hito commanded your return last night.

While you wear the collar, you'll have to heed the word of him who holds

the chain--mark you that. You're in for a flogging as it is--best not

let your case get to higher quarters." He turned to Nicodemus. "Can we

get him started, think you?"

Nicodemus let the shaggy head drop back into the bunk, and rose.

"Let him bide an hour and he'll be ready for you," he suggested. "Which

is to say that he'll be able to walk, with help. Sit you down,

comrade--the night's young yet."

He beckoned Valerius with him to the table, with a nod at Myleia. She

brought cups and an ampulla of wine--not from among those upon the

shelves. Valerius, with a grunt of satisfaction, pushed his sword out of

his way and sat down. But voices at the door, a shout, a pounding of

horses' hoofs, recalled Nicodemus to his duties as host. He signed to

Valerius to help himself, and hurried to the door.

The twilight had deepened into dusk, through which the fires at the ford

glowed redly. The air, sharp with the evening chill, was vibrant with

sounds of preparation for the night. Outside the wine-shop door a group

was gathered,--three men mounted, three others afoot. One of the latter,

a slave, was calling lustily for admittance, beating with his staff upon

the door.

"Here, lords, here!" cried Nicodemus in alarm. "What may the lords be

pleased to want?"