Meanwhile King Witichis, in his armed city of Ravenna, displayed all
the arts and activity of an experienced general.
As, week by week, and day by day, larger or smaller divisions of the
Gothic troops which had been treacherously sent to the frontiers by
Theodahad, returned to the city, the King was unceasingly occupied in
arming, training, and regulating the whole army, which was gradually to
be brought to the number of a hundred and fifty thousand.
For Theodoric's reign had been extremely peaceful; the garrisons of the
frontier provinces had alone seen active service against the Gepidae,
Bulgarians, and Avarians; and during a peace of more than thirty years
the regulations of the army had become somewhat rusty.
Therefore the King, supported by his friends and generals, had work
enough on his hands.
The arsenals and docks were emptied; immense magazines were built in
the city, and, between the threefold walls, endless rows of workshops
were erected for smiths and armourers of all kinds, who were obliged to
labour day and night, in order to satisfy the demands of the ever
increasing army, and the eager exigence of the King.
All Ravenna had become a camp.
Nothing was heard but the hammers of the smiths, the neighing of
horses, the rattle of arms, and the war-cry of man[oe]uvring troops.
In this turmoil and restless activity Witichis sought to deaden his
grief as well as he could, and looked eagerly forward to the day when
he might lead his brave army to meet the enemy.
But though his first impulse was to lose himself in the vortex of a
fierce struggle, he did not forget his duty as King, but sent Duke
Guntharis and Hildebad to Belisarius with a proposal of peace on the
most moderate conditions.
His time thus completely claimed by affairs of state, Witichis had
scarcely a thought or look to spare for his Queen, upon whom, as he
also imagined, he could bestow no greater favour than the undisturbed
enjoyment of liberty.
But since the fatal marriage feast of Witichis and Mataswintha, at the
end of which she had learned in the bridal chamber, from his lips, that
he did not, could never love her, and had but called her wife to save
the nation, Mataswintha had been possessed by a demon: the demon of
insatiable revenge.
The most deadly hatred is that of revolted love.
From her childhood Witichis had been Mataswintha's ideal. Her pride,
her hope, and her love were all centred in him; and she had as little
doubted that the sun would rise on the morrow, as that her longing for
him would be satisfied. And now she was forced to confess to herself
that he had discovered her passion, and did not reciprocate it; and
that, although she was his Queen, her love for him appeared criminal,
with regard to his banished wife, who yet alone reigned in his heart.
He, whom she had looked upon as her destined liberator from unworthy
bondage, had done her the greatest injury; he had caused her to enter
into a marriage bond without love. He had deprived her of her liberty,
and had refused his heart in exchange.
And wherefore? What had been the cause of this sin? The Gothic kingdom,
and the Gothic crown; for, to uphold these, he had not hesitated a
moment to blast her whole life.
"If he had merely failed to reciprocate my love," she said to herself,
"I should have been too proud to hate him. But he draws me to him,
bestows upon me, as if in mockery, the name of wife, leads me to the
very brink of happiness, and then contemptuously thrusts me down into
the night of unspeakable humiliation! And why all this? For the sake of
an empty sound the Gothic kingdom! For a circlet of gold! Woe to him,
and woe to his idol, to which he has sacrificed me! He shall repent it.
Without mercy he has destroyed my idol--his own image. Well, then, idol
for idol! He shall live to see his kingdom destroyed, his crown broken.
I will shatter his ideal, for whose sake he has sacrificed the bloom of
my life; and when he stands despairing and wringing his hands before
the fragments, I will say: See! thus my idol, too, was shattered!"
So, with the unstable sophistry of passion, Mataswintha accused the
unhappy man, who suffered more than herself; who had sacrificed not
only her happiness, but that of his well-beloved wife, to his
fatherland.
Fatherland!--Gothic kingdom! The words fell chilly upon the ear of the
woman who, from her childhood upward, had connected all her sufferings
with these names.
She had lived solely absorbed in the egoism of her _one_ feeling, the
poetry of her passionate love, and her whole soul was now possessed
with the desire of revenge for the loss of her happiness. She wished
that she had the power to destroy the kingdom at one blow.
But the very madness of her passion endowed her with demoniac cunning.
She understood how to hide her deadly hatred and her secret thoughts of
revenge from the King--to hide them as deeply as the love which she
still entertained for him. She was also able to show an interest in the
Gothic kingdom, which seemed to form the only tie between herself and
the King; and indeed she really took a deep interest in it, although in
an inimical sense. For she well knew that she could only injure the
kingdom and ruin the King's cause if she were initiated into all its
secrets, and intimately acquainted with its strength and weakness.
Her high position made it easy for her to learn all that she wished to
know; out of consideration for her powerful party, the knowledge of the
situation of the kingdom and army could not be withheld from the
daughter of the Amelungs. Old Earl Grippa furnished her with all the
information which he himself possessed. In more important cases she was
present at the councils which were held in the King's apartments.
Thus she was perfectly well acquainted with the position of the
kingdom; the strength, quality, and divisions of the army; the hopes
and fears of the Goths, and the plans of attack formed by the generals.
And she longed with impatience for a speedy opportunity of using her
knowledge as destructively as possible.
She could not hope to enter into relations with Belisarius himself,
therefore her eyes were naturally directed to the Italians in her
vicinity, with whom she could easily and unsuspectedly communicate; and
who, though neutral in the presence of the Goths, were, without
exception, secretly favourable to the Byzantines.
But on recalling their names to her memory, she found that there was
not one to whose wisdom and discretion she could entrust the deadly
secret: that the Queen of the Goths desired the destruction of her
kingdom.
These cowardly and insignificant men--for all the best had long since
joined Cethegus or Belisarius were neither worthy of trust nor capable
of dealing with Witichis and his friends.
Mataswintha cunningly tried to learn from the King and the Goths
themselves, which of the Romans they held to be their most dangerous
and powerful enemy; but in answer to such questions, she only heard one
name, repeated again and again, and he who owned this name was beyond
her reach in the Capitol of Rome--Cethegus the Prefect.
It was impossible for her to enter into communication with him. She
could trust none of her Roman slaves with such an important mission as
the bearing of a letter to Rome.
The clever and courageous Numidian, who fully shared the hatred of her
beloved mistress to the rude barbarians, from whom she had always
experienced contempt, had, in truth, offered, with much zeal, to find
her way to Cethegus; but Mataswintha would not expose the girl to the
perils of a journey through Italy during war-time. Therefore she was
already reconciled to the thought that she must postpone her revenge
until the march to Rome. But not the less zealously did she continue to
inquire into the plans and stratagems of the Goths.
One day she was returning from the council of war, which had been
held in the camp without the walls, in the King's tent; for, since
the armament had approached its completion, and the Goths had been
daily expecting the order to march, Witichis--partly to avoid
Mataswintha--had left his rooms in the palace and taken up his abode
among his warriors.
The Queen, accompanied only by Aspa, was walking slowly forward,
pondering upon what she had just heard. She had avoided the press and
noise of the inner camp, and pursued her way between a marshy arm of
the river Padus to the left and the rows of white tents to the right.
While she wandered on, noticing nothing, Aspa's sharp eyes were
watching a group of Goths and Italians which surrounded the platform of
a conjurer, who appeared, from the astonishment and laughter of the
spectators, to be performing new and marvellous tricks.
Aspa lingered a little to see something of these wonders. The conjurer
was a slender youth, a Celt, to judge by the dazzling white skin of his
face and bare arms, and by his long yellow hair; but this supposition
was belied by his coal-black eyes. And he really performed wonders in
the eyes of his simple audience. Now he sprang up, turned over and over
in the air, and fell, now on his hands, now on his feet. Then he seemed
to devour glowing coals with great appetite, and in their place, to
spit out coins; then he swallowed a dagger a foot long and afterwards
drew it out of the back of his head, throwing it up in the air together
with three or four others, and catching them in turn by the handle, to
the great enjoyment of the spectators, who rewarded him with laughter
and cries of admiration.
But Aspa had already lingered too long.
She looked after her mistress, and observed that her path was
intercepted by a troop of Italian carriers and livery-servants, who
evidently had not recognised the Queen, and who passed straight before
her on their way to the river, joking and making a great disturbance.
They appeared to be pointing and throwing stones at some object which
Aspa could not distinguish.
She was just about to hurry after her mistress, when the conjurer upon
the platform near her suddenly uttered a shrill cry. Aspa turned in
affright, and saw the youth take an immense leap over the heads of the
spectators, and rush at the Italians.
He was already in their midst, and, bending down, disappeared for a
moment.
But he quickly rose to his feet, and one and then another of the
Italians fell prone under his blows.
In a moment Aspa stood at the Queen's side, who had quietly withdrawn
from the turmoil, but, to her surprise, stopped short at a little
distance, pointing at the group with her finger.
And indeed the sight was a strange one.
With incredible strength and still greater agility the conjurer held
his assailants off. Springing at his adversaries, turning and bending,
retreating and then suddenly darting forward to pull the nearest down
by his foot, or to overthrow him with a powerful blow, he defended
himself bravely, and that without any weapon, with his right hand
alone; for in the left he held something close to his breast, as if
hiding and protecting it.
This unequal combat lasted several minutes.
The conjurer was pushed nearer and nearer to the water by the angry and
noisy crowd. Suddenly a naked blade glittered. One of the livery
servants, enraged at receiving a severe blow, drew his knife and sprang
at the conjurer from behind. With a cry the latter fell; his enemies
rushed upon him.
"Help! drag them away! help the poor man!" cried Mataswintha to the
soldiers, who now approached from the forsaken platform; "I, your
Queen, command you!"
The Goths hurried to the knot of struggling men; but before they could
reach them, the conjurer, who had broken from his adversaries, sprang
out of the tumbling group, and, with a last effort, darted straight off
in the direction of the two women--followed by the Italians.
What a sight!
The Gallic tunic of the poor conjurer hung in rags from his body; his
false yellow hair was torn off his head, and beneath appeared locks of
glossy black; the white hue of his neck ended in a chest the colour of
bronze.
With a last exertion of strength he reached the women, and recognised
Mataswintha.
"Protect me, save me, white goddess!" he cried, and fell at her feet.
The Italians had already reached him, and the nearest raised his knife.
But Mataswintha spread her blue mantle over the fallen man.
"Back!" she cried with majesty. "Leave him. He is under the protection
of the Queen of the Goths!"
The livery-servants fell back abashed.
"Indeed!" at last said the one with the dagger, "is this dog and son of
a dog to go unpunished? and five of us lie half dead on the ground, and
I have three teeth too few? Is there to be no punishment?"
"He is punished enough," said Mataswintha, pointing to the deep gash on
the neck of the conjurer.
"And all this fuss about a worm!" cried another. "About a snake that
escaped from his knapsack, which we tried to kill with stones."
"See, he has hidden the viper in his bosom. Take it from him!"
"Kill him!" screamed the others.
But now a number of soldiers came up, and procured respect for their
Queen, pushing back the Italians, and forming a circle round the
wounded man.
Aspa looked at the latter attentively, and suddenly cast herself down
beside him, crossing her arms on her bosom.
"What is the matter, Aspa? Rise!" said her mistress, much astonished.
"Oh, mistress!" stammered Aspa, "the man is no Gaul! He is one of my
people. He prays to the Snake-God. Look at his brown skin--as brown as
Aspa's! And here--here is writing; letters are tattooed upon his
breast; the sacred hieroglyphics of my country!" she cried with
delight.
And, pointing with her finger, she began to read.
"Why this disguise?" asked Mataswintha. "It is suspicious. He must be
arrested."
"No, no, mistress," whispered Aspa; "dost thou know what these letters
mean? No other eye than mine can decipher them for thee."
"Well?" asked Mataswintha.
"They say," whispered Aspa, "Syphax owes a life to his master, Cethegus
the Prefect.' Yes, yes, I know him; it is Syphax, the son of Hiempsal,
a friend of my family. The gods have sent him to us."
"Yes, Aspa," said Mataswintha, "the gods have sent him: the gods of
revenge! Goths, lay this wounded man upon a bier, and follow my slave
to the palace. Henceforward he shall be employed in my service."