THE HUNS.
More than an hour after Hermanric had left the encampment, a man
hurriedly entered the house set apart for the young chieftain's
occupation. He made no attempt to kindle either light or fire, but sat
down in the principal apartment, occasionally whispering to himself in
a strange and barbarous tongue.
He had remained but a short time in possession of his comfortless
solitude, when he was intruded on by a camp-follower, bearing a small
lamp, and followed closely by a woman, who, as he started up and
confronted her, announced herself as Hermanric's kinswoman, and eagerly
demanded an interview with the Goth.
Haggard and ghastly though it was from recent suffering and long
agitation, the countenance of Goisvintha (for it was she) appeared
absolutely attractive as it was now opposed by the lamp-light to the
face and figure of the individual she addressed. A flat nose, a
swarthy complexion, long, coarse, tangled locks of deep black hair, a
beardless, retreating chin, and small, savage, sunken eyes, gave a
character almost bestial to this man's physiognomy. His broad, brawny
shoulders overhung a form that was as low in stature as it was athletic
in build; you looked on him and saw the sinews of a giant strung in the
body of a dwarf. And yet this deformed Hercules was no solitary error
of Nature--no extraordinary exception to his fellow-beings, but the
actual type of a whole race, stunted and repulsive as himself. He was
a Hun.
This savage people, the terror even of their barbarous neighbours,
living without government, laws, or religion, possessed but one feeling
in common with the human race--the instinct of war. Their historical
career may be said to have begun with their early conquests in China,
and to have proceeded in their first victories over the Goths, who
regarded them as demons, and fled at their approach. The hostilities
thus commenced between the two nations were at length suspended by the
temporary alliance of the conquered people with the empire, and
subsequently ceased in the gradual fusion of the interests of each in
one animating spirit--detestation of Rome.
By this bond of brotherhood, the Goths and the Huns became publicly
united, though still privately at enmity--for the one nation remembered
its former defeats as vividly as the other remembered its former
victories. With various disasters, dissensions, and successes, they
ran their career of battle and rapine, sometimes separate, sometimes
together, until the period of our romance, when Alaric's besieging
forces numbered among the ranks of their barbarian auxiliaries a body
of Huns, who, unwillingly admitted to the title of Gothic allies, were
dispersed about the army in subordinate stations, and of whom the
individual above described was one of those contemptuously favoured by
promotion to an inferior command, under Hermanric, as a Gothic chief.
An expression of aversion, but not of terror, passed over Goisvintha's
worn features as she approached the barbarian, and repeated her desire
to be conducted to Hermanric's presence. For the second time, however,
the man gave her no answer. He burst into a shrill, short laugh, and
shook his huge shoulders in clumsy derision.
The woman's cheek reddened for an instant, and then turned again to
livid paleness as she thus resumed--
'I came not hither to be mocked by a barbarian, but to be welcomed by a
Goth! Again I ask you, where is my kinsman, Hermanric?'
'Gone!' cried the Hun. And his laughter grew more wild and discordant
as he spoke.
A sudden tremor ran through Goisvintha's frame as she marked the manner
of the barbarian and heard his reply. Repressing with difficulty her
anger and agitation, she continued, with apprehension in her eyes and
entreaty in her tones--
'Whither has he gone? Wherefore has he departed? I know that the hour
I appointed for our meeting here has long passed; but I have suffered a
sickness of many weeks, and when, at evening, I prepared to set forth,
my banished infirmities seemed suddenly to return to me again. I was
borne to my bed. But, though the woman who succoured me bid me remain
and repose, I found strength in the night to escape them, and through
storm and darkness to come hither alone--for I was determined, though I
should perish for it, to seek the presence of Hermanric, as I had
promised by my messengers. You, that are the companion of his watch,
must know whither he is gone. Go to him, and tell him what I have
spoken. I will await his return!'
'His business is secret,' sneered the Hun. 'He has departed, but
without telling me whither. How should I, that am a barbarian, know
the whereabouts of an illustrious Goth? It is not for me to know his
actions, but to obey his words!'
'Jeer not about your obedience,' returned Goisvintha with breathless
eagerness. 'I say to you again, you know whither he is gone, and you
must tell me for what he has departed. You obey him--there is money to
make you obey me!'
'When I said his business was secret, I lied not,' said the Hun,
picking up with avidity the coins she flung to him--'but he has not
kept it secret from me! The Huns are cunning! Aha, ugly and cunning!'
Suspicion, the only refined emotion in a criminal heart, half
discovered to Goisvintha, at this moment, the intelligence that was yet
to be communicated. No word, however, escaped her, while she signed
the barbarian to proceed.
'He has gone to a farm-house on the plains beyond the suburbs behind
us. He will not return till daybreak,' continued the Hun, tossing his
money carelessly in his great, horny hands.
'Did you see him go?' gasped the woman.
'I tracked him to the house,' returned the barbarian. 'For many nights
I watched and suspected him--to-night I saw him depart. It is but a
short time since I returned from following him. The darkness did not
delude me; the place is on the high-road from the suburbs--the first
by-path to the westward leads to its garden gate. I know it! I have
discovered his secret! I am more cunning than he!'
'For what did he seek the farm-house at night?' demanded Goisvintha
after an interval, during which she appeared to be silently fixing the
man's last speech in her memory; 'are you cunning enough to tell me
that?'
'For what do men venture their safety and their lives, their money and
their renown?' laughed the barbarian. 'They venture them for women!
There is a girl at the farm-house; I saw her at the door when the chief
went in!'
He paused; but Goisvintha made no answer. Remembering that she was
descended from a race of women who slew their wounded husbands,
brothers, and sons with their own hands when they sought them after
battle dishonoured by a defeat; remembering that the fire of the old
ferocity of such ancestors as these still burnt at her heart;
remembering all that she had hoped from Hermanric, and had plotted
against Antonina; estimating in all its importance the shock of the
intelligence she now received, we are alike unwilling and unable to
describe her emotions at this moment. For some time the stillness in
the room was interrupted by no sounds but the rolling of the thunder
without, the quick, convulsive respiration of Goisvintha, and the
clinking of the money which the Hun still continued to toss
mechanically from hand to hand.
'I shall reap good harvest of gold and silver after to-night's work,'
pursued the barbarian, suddenly breaking the silence. 'You have given
me money to speak--when the chief returns and hears that I have
discovered him, he will give me money to be silent. I shall drink
to-morrow with the best men in the army, Hun though I am!'
He returned to his seat as he ceased, and began beating in monotonous
measure, with one of his pieces of money on the blade of his sword,
some chorus of a favourite drinking song; while Goisvintha, standing
pale and breathless near the door of the chamber, looked down on him
with fixed, vacant eyes. At length a deep sigh broke from her; her
hands involuntarily clenched themselves at her side; her lips moved
with a bitter smile; then, without addressing another word to the Hun,
she turned, and softly and stealthily quitted the room.
The instant she was gone, a sudden change arose in the barbarian's
manner. He started from his seat, a scowl of savage hatred and triumph
appeared on his shaggy brows, and he paced to and fro through the
chamber like a wild beast in his cage. 'I shall tear him from the
pinnacle of his power at last!' he whispered fiercely to himself. 'For
what I have told her this night, his kinswoman will hate him--I knew it
while she spoke! For his desertion of his post, Alaric may dishonour
him, may banish him, may hang him! His fate is at my mercy; I shall
rid myself nobly of him and his command! More than all the rest of his
nation I loathe this Goth! I will be by when they drag him to the
tree, and taunt him with his shame, as he has taunted me with my
deformity.' Here he paused to laugh in complacent approval of his
project, quickening his steps and hugging himself joyfully in the
barbarous exhilaration of his triumph.
His secret meditations had thus occupied him for some time longer, when
the sound of a footstep was audible outside the door. He recognised it
instantly, and called softly to the person without to approach. At the
signal of his voice a man entered--less athletic in build, but in
deformity the very counterpart of himself. The following discourse was
then immediately held between the two Huns, the new-comer beginning it
thus:--
'Have you tracked him to the door?'
'To the very threshold.'
'Then his downfall is assured! I have seen Alaric.'
'We shall trample him under our feet!--this boy, who has been set over
us that are his elders, because he is a Goth and we are Huns! But what
of Alaric? How did you gain his ear?'
'The Goths round his tent scoffed at me as a savage, and swore that I
was begotten between a demon and a witch. But I remembered the time
when these boasters fled from their settlements; when our tribes
mounted their black steeds and hunted them like beasts! Aha, their
very lips were pale with fear in those days.'
'Speak of Alaric--our time is short,' interrupted the other fiercely.
'I answered not a word to their taunts,' resumed his companion, 'but I
called out loudly that I was a Gothic ally, that I brought messages to
Alaric, and that I had the privilege of audience like the rest. My
voice reached the ears of the king: he looked forth from his tent, and
beckoned me in. I saw his hatred of my nation lowering in his eye as
we looked on one another, but I spoke with submission and in a soft
voice. I told him how his chieftain whom he had set over us secretly
deserted his post; I told him how we had seen his favoured warrior for
many nights journeying towards the suburbs; how on this night, as on
others before, he had stolen from the encampment, and how you had gone
forth to track him to his lurking-place.'
'Was the tyrant angered?'
'His cheeks reddened, and his eyes flashed, and his fingers trembled
round the hilt of his sword while I spoke! When I ceased he answered
me that I lied. He cursed me for an infidel Hun who had slandered a
Christian chieftain. He threatened me with hanging! I cried to him to
send messengers to our quarters to prove the truth ere he slew me. He
commanded a warrior to return hither with me. When we arrived, the
most Christian chieftain was nowhere to be beheld--none knew whither he
had gone! We turned back again to the tent of the king; his warrior,
whom he honoured, spoke the same words to him as the Hun whom he
despised. Then the wrath of Alaric rose. "This very night," he cried,
"did I with my own lips direct him to await my commands with vigilance
at his appointed post! I would visit such disobedience with punishment
on my own son! Go, take with you others of your troop--your comrade
who has tracked him will guide you to his hiding-place--bring him
prisoner into my tent!" Such were his words! Our companions wait us
without--lest he should escape let us depart without delay.'
'And if he should resist us,' cried the other, leading the way eagerly
towards the door; 'what said the king if he should resist us?'
'Slay him with your own hands.'