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Title: The Druidess: A Story for Boys and Others

Author: Florence Gay

Release date: March 21, 2022 [eBook #67674]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: John Ouseley, 1908

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from scans of public domain works at The National Library of Australia.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DRUIDESS: A STORY FOR BOYS AND OTHERS ***





  THE DRUIDESS.

  A STORY FOR BOYS AND OTHERS.

  BY

  FLORENCE GAY.

  London:

  JOHN OUSELEY,

  16, FARRINGDON STREET, E.C.

  [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]




PREFACE.


As this story touches upon history to a certain extent, perhaps too
much licence has been taken with Ethelbert’s movements in bringing
him as far west as the Severn Valley. The union between the Britons
and Saxons was suggested by the historical league formed between the
Britons and those Saxons who revolted against the detested Ceawlin,
and, settling in the valley of the lower Severn, took the name of
Hwiccan. The date of this league was 592--eleven years after the
destruction of Uriconium which in the following story is placed about
578. Some liberty, also, has been taken with the date of Ethelbert’s
marriage with Bertha, which took place in 584.

It seems hardly necessary to say that Banba and Fail are old bardic
names for Ireland. And that the cities Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath
were known in Roman days as Glevum, Corinium and Aque Sulio.

S. Kevin is known also as S. Coemgen.

The date of the Convocation at Druimceta is difficult to discover, but
must have been during the reign of S. Columba’s friend, King Aedh,
572-599.




DEDICATED TO MY NEPHEWS AND NIECES.




  CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER.                                                         PAGE.

  I. FROM THE BRITONS’ APPEAL TO AËTIUS--COMMANDER OF THE ROMAN
  ARMIES, 446 A.D.                                                    11

  II. GLÉAND DÉ                                                       21

  III. FROM THE EPISTLE OF GILDAS THE MOST ANCIENT BRITISH AUTHOR     29

  IV. MANY A BRANCH OF THE RACE OF CONN IS IN THE LAND OF BANBA OF
  SMOOTH GRASS (BOOK OF LECAN)                                        37

  V. WHY ETHNE HATES THE CHRISTIANS                                   50

  VI. THE SACRED HEART OF HIBERNIA                                    60

  VII. INTO THE ARMS OF MOLOCH                                        69

  VIII. ETHNE AGAIN AS LEADER                                         79

  IX. TO THE NORTH                                                    88

  X. BARDS OF HIBERNIA                                                98

  XI. SAINT COLUMBA                                                  114

  XII. THE FAIR                                                      122

  XIII. MAN AND WOMAN                                                134

  XIV. LEADER OF THE KYMRY                                           149

  XV. THE BLACK HORSE                                                158

  XVI. ETHELBERT OF KENT                                             172

  XVII. ETHNE’S ERROR                                                181

  XVIII. ENGLAND’S FIRST CHRISTIAN QUEEN                             189




THE DRUIDESS.




CHAPTER I.

“The barbarians drive us to the sea; the sea drives us back to the
barbarians; between them we are exposed to two sorts of death; we are
either slain or drowned.”

  (From the Britons’ appeal to Aëtius--Commander
  of the Roman armies 446 A.D.)


Upon a cold, spring morning in the year of Our Lord 577, the closing
scenes of a battle were being fought out on the western shore of
Britain; in that part of the country then called Damnonia; on a stretch
of low-lying land, between the two rivers--the Yeo and the Axe.

On the winning side stood the Saxons with the whole breadth of
vanquished Britain behind them--on the losing, the Britons with but a
narrow strip of land between them and the sea; that narrow strip of
flat sea-shore.

There were women on both sides. Brawny-limbed, red-skinned Saxons with
floating ruddy hair--fighting with a strength and valour worthy of
the men beside them; as much at home in that scene of blood-shed as
they were by their hearths making the trews and baking the bread of
their lords and his ceorls. British ladies reared in the refinement
and luxury that the Romans had made common in Britain; satin-skinned
and white-handed, strangers to the lightest toil--now forced, in dire
necessity, on the battle-field; but, once there, waging war with the
spirit of their ancestress, Boadicea; smaller and slighter than their
foes and untutored in the art of weapons, they were gifted with a
natural dexterity and passion that enabled them, in this hour of need,
to be of service to their lords and brothers.

One, in particular, had been conspicuous in the long three days’
fight, on account of her activity and skill. A slight, dark woman,
raven-haired and white-limbed, clad in robes of royal saffron-colour,
flashing with gold and emeralds. Often by her side was a youth, who
bore a strong likeness to her; and these two, woman and boy, commanded
the retreating Britons.

The boy was mounted on a beautiful Hibernian stallion, of a pure
jet-black, and on the banners still drooping, here and there, overhead
was the emblem of a Black Horse in opposition to the White Horse of the
Saxons.

No leader could have shown more courage and spirit than this youth. In
this last agony of defeat his example still inspired his followers;
he gave no sign of the almost mortal wounds with which his body was
pierced; his garments were red with blood, and his horse was smeared
with white, where the sweat had lathered into foam--but on that
stricken field every valiant warrior showed battle stains, and every
jaded steed was pale with foam.

Strapped on the shoulder of the boy-leader was a small image of the
Virgin, and in the ranks, behind him, were numerous emblems of the
Christian Faith.

This was not only a battle between Saxon and Briton, it was also
a battle between Christian and Heathen; and yet the woman, on the
Christian side, from time to time broke forth into the Druidical
incantations of early British days; this she did in moments of savage
passion as she stood upright in her car dealing forth death from the
sheaf of arrows at her side.

In one corner of the battle-field the mist-cloud lifted wholly for a
few minutes, and the sun shone on the thinned ranks of the Britons
showing them woefully hindered in their movements by fallen warriors
and horses; a mere sprinkling of young and strong remained; here and
there a wounded man raised himself and still tried to use his bow.
Old men and women fought on desperately. The war-dogs were still
numerous--a veritable phalanx armed with spiked collars and goaded into
savage rage, strangely horrible with their red, hanging tongues and
bloodshot eyes.

In the sudden gleam of sunshine the boy saw that the woman leader
was in extreme peril. She had driven her chariot so quickly over the
grass--slippery with dew and blood--that her horse had fallen. The boy
galloped over dead and dying to her side--as he rode he saw a javelin,
aimed at the woman, pierce the side of the struggling horse.

At a sign from his friend, the youth, with rare dexterity, harnessed
his own horse to her chariot, in place of hers. She pointed to a gap in
the ranks of a small band of Saxons; and, mounting again on his steed,
the boy galloped with her to the spot--the sharp knives of the chariots
doing desperate work among a body of Saxon soldiers through which they
ploughed.

It was the ancient method of warfare, which the woman by instinct had
followed. At just such a gap in the ranks of the foe as she had chosen
it was the custom to leap from the chariot and charge on foot; but now
she remained standing in her car and, suddenly cutting the traces, set
her companion free to charge furiously on the surprised enemy--whilst
she aided him by a quick shower of arrows. Her artifice succeeded; the
boy bounded forward causing such havoc among a little band of Saxons
that they--taken off their guard--turned and fled.

In the panic of the moment the enemy did not see that the boy’s gallant
horse had received his death-wound. With a last frantic attempt to obey
his master’s onward signal, the animal raised itself on its hinder
limbs, pawed wildly in the air, gave one long, whistling breath and,
with throat and nostrils choked with blood, fell back dead--and, in
falling, fell upon his master.

It was the last act of the long, stubborn, futile resistance. The
hovering fog-cloud swept down again upon the field as a curtain drops
at the end of a scene.

The woman stood--listening. She could hear the steps of the retreating
Saxons--but, beyond that, was another indistinct and distant clamour;
her quick sense of hearing was confused; she bent and laid her ear to
the ground. She listened intently and learnt that the main body of the
Saxon host was advancing towards them.

Flight alone remained. She looked towards the flat sea-shore; the water
only revealed itself for a stone’s throw--all beyond was fog--the
sea that was visible was sullen grey with furious, crested waves of
dead-white foam. Even in that moment’s glance she saw fugitives from
her own ranks, perish on the ocean--washed from the frail rafts they
had hastily made and set forth upon.

What of the boy lying crushed under his war-horse--was he dead?

He still breathed--but not all the strength she could summon was
sufficient to extricate him from his position, had not a larger and
stronger woman come to her aid. From her appearance the newcomer was
Saxon, rather than British; she had the same blue eyes and yellow
hair, the same strong features and heavy frame as the enemy from whom
they were fleeing! With the strength and haste of despair the two
women dragged the dead horse from the boy’s body, and carried off the
unconscious hero.

When they reached the shore they found a raft awaiting them; and in
a few seconds they were being pushed off, through the surf, by a few
remaining British slaves.

They were accompanied by two or three scores of their own countrymen;
but of these the greater number were soon washed from their rafts and
their drowned bodies cast back again upon the beach.

In a few minutes the approaching Saxons had reached the shore; some of
the more blood-thirsty dashed through the water in pursuit, but they
were either drowned or driven back by the waves.

Just as their bark had passed safely through the surf, the two women
saw a dark form swimming swiftly towards them. The fair-haired girl
gave a cry for joy, as she distinguished the head of a great war-hound
above the water; the animal had been often by the side of the youth
during the battle and now love of his master drew him, bruised and
bleeding, through the waves. The smaller woman would have beaten him
off with her oar; but the other prevented her and aided the animal
as he scrambled on to the raft, and threw himself beside the boy. The
quarrel over the animal was so violent that the bark was in danger of
foundering; the dark woman showed as much fury against the girl as she
had shown that day against the enemy.




CHAPTER II.

GLÉAND DÉ.


In the days when cells and churches sprang up like mushrooms throughout
Hibernia, Saint Kevin had chosen as the site of one of his monasteries
that point on the eastern shore of Leinster, where the coast is
rendered dangerous by sand-banks.

The little band of monks who dwelt there added to their life of toil a
special watch upon the sea; they made the rescue of fugitive Britons
their peculiar care; feeling it a sacred duty to protect members
of the Faith, who had been driven from their homes by the fire and
sword of the heathen. Moreover, S. Kevin, as a child, had been under
the guidance of Petroc, a Briton, and for this reason Britons were
particularly dear to his followers.

Some days after the battle in Damnonia, the monks, keeping their
ceaseless watch upon the sea, saw a raft among the wreckage that the
waves were bringing to the shore. At the peril of their lives they
dashed into the water and dragged the raft safely to the beach. On
it were four unconscious beings. A fine young chieftain with his
body sadly pierced and wounded--like a marble Antinous from loss of
blood; bearing marks of royal birth in his person and in his princely
garments. With his head upon the young prince’s feet was a great
war-hound, hoary with age, his hair matted with brine and blood. A
big fair girl lay with one arm round the hound’s neck and the other
clasped to her heart a man’s sword and torques--of so rich and rare
a pattern that only a great king could have possessed them. A little
removed from these three beings was a small dark woman from whom the
simple monks recoiled at first, saying she had the air of a sorceress;
she was clothed royally, like the boy, and was fair, too, as women are
accounted fair in Hibernia--having long fine hair of ebony blackness.

It needed much care and skill to bring the three human beings from
the death-like trance to which exhaustion and exposure had brought
them. But the monks knew their work well; many a homeless Briton had
found warmth and comfort at their hands; indeed, the little monastery
was already so thronged by castaways that it was thought better to
carry the three poor refugees to Saint Kevin’s great monastery at
Glendalough--where the sculptured saint may still be seen in the
ancient ruin called Priest’s house; he is the central figure in the
triangular pediment of the doorway, bearing on his head the crown of
the early bishops of Ireland.

Crowned with gold, he is represented to the world; yet, in the life he
led in the wilderness, it must have been seldom that crown or mitre
adorned his head. His monastery at Glendalough was too luxurious for
him, and, for years at a time, he would withdraw himself into the heart
of the woods, sheltering in a hollow tree or bee-hive hut; without
fire, and existing on herbs and water. In the long trances of prayer,
into which he would fall, the beasts rambled fearlessly around him, the
birds perched on his arms and shoulders singing and twittering about
him. At such times, he said, the leaves and branches gave forth divine
music to him. It was the state of spiritual ecstasy common to the early
saints; who tested to the full the efficacy of prayer from which they
drew the spiritual power that shed a greater influence than a life
spent in ceaseless activity.

Glendalough, or Gléand dé, signified Valley of God; it seemed a fitting
name, for there the tender-hearted monks laboured every day among the
Britons whom they had rescued, sharing with them their own scanty food.
Only a ragged hut of wattles with heather beds could be spared to the
newcomers; but the monks brought cushions of down to spread upon the
heather and begged, from the neighbouring chieftains, warm cloaks and
skins of sheep and bear.

The women recovered before the boy.

When, at last they were able to sit up and look about them, their
eyes--that had closed on scenes of bloodshed and storm--opened on green
meadows dotted with apple-trees in full bloom and bordered by gardens
filled with herbs and fruit-bearing plants. On a sunny slope stretched
a vineyard, and in the distance were rows of bee-hives--bees and vines,
sure sign of a monastery. Gentle-faced monks were at work on the soil,
their songs mingling with the cheerful tinkle of carpenters and masons
at their trades, for on the land around were being raised high, domed
churches and beautiful carved crosses. On the breeze came the sound of
silver bells.

When the wounded youth opened his eyes and saw this scene and heard
its pleasant sound, he cried out that he was in Paradise.

“Tir Tairgirie!” he cried; the delirium of weakness was upon him. “The
Saxons have slain body, but spirits have carried my soul hither to its
resting place!”

He raved of Tir Tairgirie--the paradise of every Celt, the constant
theme of their bards. Hidden from earthly vision by a cloud, full
of lovely dwellings, grass and flowers; a place of unending day
and perpetual fagless summer--abounding in meat and apples--free
apples--free from disease or death.

As the young warrior slept the two women watched over him.

The rain--the frequent rain of Hibernia--came up on the wind, and beat
through the wattles of the cote and on the arms and bosoms of the
women. But they gave no heed to wind or rain so long as their warrior
was protected--stripping their own bodies to add to the coverings
the monks had begged for them from the chiefs around--purple cloaks,
wrought with rich broidery by Fail’s fair daughters.

“Go!” said one woman to the other. “We need thee not--he and I.” The
speaker had the cold, brilliant beauty of ebony and alabaster.

“No,” replied the other; “he woke with my name on his lips.”

“Ay!” said the first. “A dream cry--a wail of nightmare horror. Thou
art his evil star. And with thy sobs, thy hoggish sighs and silly tears
thou dost disturb his rest! Leave him to my care. I am sick of thy
blunders.”

“Then will I wait on thee,” said the fair girl, bluntly. “Ay, though I
hate thee, Ethne of the Raven Hair. I will put all within reach of thy
hand that thou need’st. I will go and come at thy beck and call--for
thou hast rare skill in sickness, that I see--and I will serve him
through thee.”

Ethne watched the boy jealously. An early training among the Druids
had given her great knowledge in Nature’s laws, and she knew that the
loss of blood which was the warrior’s chief danger could be cured by
rest and food and air. She did not leave him night or day. Yet, as she
watched him, there was neither love nor tenderness in her gaze.

On the fourth day after their journey to Glendalough he opened his
eyes and looked at her. She saw the fever had left him.

“There, there,” she said, softly. “Sleep on now, and take your
rest--wounds need time to heal, and time now we have in plenty.”

The boy would have raised his head, but at the attempt pain closed,
like a vice, on his temples; a white arm, laden with bracelets, held
him back on his pillow of heather.

His eyes dwelt on the white arm; he recognised the royal saffron-scent
of the drapery that fell over it. With a feeble movement he turned so
that his cheek might rest against it.

“Where is she--the Saxon--Elgiva?” he asked after a time.

“She prays,” was the answer; the boy knew, without looking, that there
was a smile of scorn in the dark eyes and on the sneering lips above
him.

Through the openings of the wattled cote in which he lay he had seen
that the day was dark and gloomy; the sky so purple with coming storm
that the sprays of hawthorn aloft had a faint, pinkish tinge upon them.
The day was as dark and tempestuous as his own sad soul.

“She prays,” continued the scornful voice, “and has she not need to
pray--to offer up thanksgiving? The Saxons smote us on one cheek, then
we offered the other--full and grievously have we been smitten on both.
Therefore she may well be pleased at our performance of the Christians’
Duty!”

The woman paused, and when she spoke again there was rage as well as
scorn in her tones.

“Never forget, boy, the fruit thy father’s Christian zeal has borne! In
the shaping of thy future life, remember always, Cormac of Fail, that
this mushroom faith has cost us our British possessions!”




CHAPTER III.

“... some to the mountains--others yielded to be slaves because of
hunger--others to the seas--singing and sighing under the shadow of
their sails.”

  (From the Epistle of Gildas, the most ancient
  British author.)


“Prate to me no longer of marriage and giving in marriage. We love each
other--that’s enough! Perchance we’ll love others, and a many, ere we
die. Marriage, forsooth! And this new-fangled Christian craze--one man,
one wife--’tis folly! Fit only for maids and striplings. Tush, boy! I
have borne with thee, and humoured thee, because of thy hurt--but now I
am weary of this madness!”

Cormac made no reply; only gazed with love-sick eyes at the speaker,
Ethne of the Raven Hair.

She had brought him back from death to life; when he lay more helpless
than a babe she had raised his head and put food between his lips; in
hours of pain and weariness she had anticipated his least want. He had
lost his father, his lands, his favourite horse--all that had meant
the world to the boy--but Ethne remained, and he loved her.

“In a few more days,” she said, “you will mount your horse again.”

“My horse!” said the boy, bitterly. “I have not even the power to save
his bones from the crows.”

“There are other horses in the world,” replied the woman impatiently.
“You shall have another stallion, Cormac--blacker and more beautiful
than the last. When you ride to battle again the banners shall bear the
old device. The Black Horse is not vanquished--he is but worsted for a
time--he will rise again victorious. The Black Horse, Cormac of Fail,
the Black Horse against the White!”

The boy shook his head.

“I will never fight again,” he said, mournfully. “The world is lost to
me--you are my world now, Ethne, and when you cease to love me I shall
die.”

Again his thoughts wandered gloomily on the late events--the hideous
defeat--the tempestuous sea--the days of agony and weakness.

They were sitting out of doors, at a short distance from the little
wattled cote the monks had given them. The day was so warm that
Ethne had unfastened the long gold brooch on her left shoulder and
thrown off her brat, or shawl. Her white arms and bosom were bare,
beautiful gold torques twined her arms; a gold crescent shone above her
forehead. Her thick black hair fell about her to her knees--round her
waist was a rich purple scarf, called a criss, fringed with gold and
embroidery. Her saffron-coloured tunic was open at the bosom and showed
an embroidered under garment called a lann. Her dress was that of a
princess of Hibernia.

His words brought a smile to her face. Ethne’s beauty was gone when she
smiled, for the turned back lips revealed a terrible defect--that her
eye-teeth had grown double the length of the others and were sharp and
jagged, like the fangs of a wild beast.

“Mere words!” she said, with the ugly smile growing stronger. “If you
loved me, you would follow my wishes.”

“I will follow you to the end of the world,” he said. “Only try me.”

At his words the woman turned sharply and looked at him with glittering
eyes.

“Do you mean this?”

“I do.”

Her nostrils grew large--her breath came loud and heavy. She raised her
clenched hand upward. The boy’s spirit rose.

“Would you to battle again?” he asked. “Where--how?”

“Where!--how!” she screamed. “Here in Hibernia! Rally the men
of Hibernia around you--and take your sword and strike at this
Christianity that has cost us our home and country!”

She had risen in speaking. Now she sat down again and pressed her lips
together; and she placed her hand upon her heart, trying to subdue her
passion.

She looked at him narrowly, as though half fearing the effect of her
words upon him. He trembled from head to foot.

“This is madness!” he said, in a low voice. “The madness of
despair--and it is harder for you than for us, for you had not Elgiva’s
cause at heart.”

“Elgiva!” she hissed. “Accursed Saxon name!”

Ethne leapt from her seat again; and, with her face and clenched hand
thrown to the sky, let fall a hundred curses on her foes.

She had found a vent for her smothered wrath, and the boy forgot for
the time her former words.

The fear and loathing of the Saxon were upon them both. They fell into
each other’s arms sobbing and crying out that Rome had done this thing
to them. Rome had deserted them in their hour of need.

“The Romans taught us to love ease and luxury,” cried the boy, “and to
cry out for help when we were hurt! When we had learnt our lesson well,
they sailed away and left us. Then that fool Vootigern did his pretty
piece of work--he made room in the nest for the cuckoo who has kicked
us out of fair Britain.”

“There is little left of fair Britain now,” cried Ethne. “They have
made sword-land of half of it, the other grows smaller every day--this
last defeat has cut it in two. Damnonia and Cornwall, with the precious
fortress, Tintagil, is severed from the rest. Men say, too, towards
Caledonia there is a weak spot, where the Angles of the North are
pressing closer to the sea.”

The boy’s face grew sadder. It was monstrous--incredible! The fair
isle of Britain over-run by barbarians; its gentle people made food
for vultures, bound in hideous serfdom or hid like vermin in the
crevices of the earth. Noble lords and tender ladies herding, like
animals, in caves--and filling their starving bodies with oak-flittern
and beech-mast of the forest! The boy folded his arms tightly over
his heaving bosom. In all the bitterness and shame that his thoughts
brought him--hardest of all was the knowledge that he had not died
upon the battle-field. He had fled, he said to himself--unconsciously,
indeed--but, nevertheless, he had fled! Flown before the Saxons like
fire--as the heathen themselves were wont to describe it.

“It is late, Cormac,” said Ethne, suddenly, looking at the shadows of
the trees. “Long past noon, and you have need of meat and milk. Soon,
very soon, you will be well enough to fast one day and feast the next;
but we have not finished yet our work of making flesh and blood!”

When they entered their dwelling, the little round building seemed all
gloom and smoke. But a bright voice greeted them and, when they were
seated, a young girl brought them bowls of broth. She had been standing
over the smoky central fire, stirring the contents of an iron cauldron
with a ladle of yew-wood. Her eyes were red from the smoke, and her
hands black and scorched from handling some half-charred nuts she had
been roasting in the ashes.

Ethne and Cormac seated themselves on some leathern cushions piled on
a heap of dry heather; the girl drew a low stool of yew-wood before
them, and laid their platters upon it. She threw herself down, at some
little distance, and proceeded to eat the nuts she had taken from the
fire. An old war-hound, blind in one eye and covered by half-healed
scars, dragged himself towards her and lay down with his head resting
against her knee. He had previously feasted well from the bones of the
soup-pot; but now he took one or two of the roasted kernels she offered
him and made a show of eating them, as though to please her. It was
the same hound who had followed them on their flight from Britain,
whose life the girl had saved and for whom she had received wounds from
Ethne; he was a wonderful creature still, in spite of his age--all
muscle and fire--of the breed the Romans had admired; so tall, his head
reared itself to the height of a man’s shoulder; so strong he could
bear a man over bog and boulder; his one great eye, set in a cavern,
seemed lit as by a spark of fire; his lean form, clothed by shaggy
hair, of a weird colour, resembling the hair-like growth of ancient
pine-trees.




CHAPTER IV.

“Many a branch of the race of Conn is in the land of Banba of smooth
grass.”

  (Book of Lecan.)


The girl rose often and attended to the wants of her companions.
Cormac’s eye fell on her and marked the difference between her and
Ethne. The contrast was strong. The young Saxon wore a straight robe
of sack-cloth, frayed here and there, and stained from labour in the
field and at the fire-side; her feet were bare; she wore no ornaments;
her hair, tangled and powdered with ashes, was badly plaited, tied
with rushes and drawn round her neck. Her skin was red and rough, her
movements awkward, her hands large and toil-worn. She was as broad and
tall as a fully-developed woman, but she had the shapeless figure and
raw limbs of a child, or an awkward boy.

Once when she stooped over Ethne, in filling her cup, the Celtic woman
raised her hand and slapped her in the face.

“Ah, beast!” she cried. “Cub of a Saxon sire--I loathe thy very touch!”

When the meal was over, some water was required from the spring, and
the girl ran to get it. The hound, who could not endure the Saxon out
of his sight, followed her.

Ethne sneered as she glanced after the retreating figures.

“It will soon be time, Cormac of Fail,” she said, “for you to take the
Saxon maid to wife. She will make a fitting bride for a king, in yon
sack-cloth shift.”

Again she sneered--Cormac grew crimson.

“And thou can’st have none other. Remember that! One wife must suffice
for a Christian. Ha, ha!”

Cormac pushed his platter from before him and rose.

“Ethne,” he said, “I cannot fulfil my father’s commands. I cannot wed
the Saxon.”

He trembled from head to foot. He had left Ethne’s side and was gazing
on the wall, where a golden crown, torques of gold, and a king’s sword
were displayed, deeply stained with blood. They had been taken from his
father’s body on the field of battle; Elgiva, the Saxon, had carried
them away, and she had placed them on the wall of their dwelling.

The boy stooped forward and kissed the tokens, one by one. The tears
streamed from his eyes.

Solemnly he knelt down and, clasping his hands together, looked upward
as though in prayer.

“Father,” he cried, “forgive me, but I cannot fulfil thy commands--for
marriage without love is no marriage--and I loathe the Saxon!”

The boy’s grief was touching. Ethne watched him with the ugly sneer
lifting her lip and showing the fang beneath.

“Well done, boy!” she cried. “A good Pictish chieftain needs no Saxon
among his wives.”

Both the speakers turned as a wooden pail was cast down on the ground.
Elgiva stood before them.

“What work is this you are at now,” she cried. “Ethne of the Raven
Hair?”

The girl’s broad chest, red from sun and wind, heaved under her
sack-cloth. She frowned on both Ethne and Cormac.

“Why do you seek to turn the son against the father’s wishes?”

The dog, which had followed the girl, gave a low growl as he noticed
her attitude, and pressed closer to her side. She threw her arm round
the creature’s neck; his one eye, red as a coal, burned with hatred as
he looked at Ethne.

“Child of a Saxon savage,” replied Ethne, haughtily, “do I render
account to thee of my doings?”

The girl gave no heed to the taunt.

“Nay, but he shall wed me,” she cried, firmly, “and fulfil the commands
of his father.”

Ethne burst into low laughter.

“Thou wilt have a rare bride, Cormac,” she cried. “She will mend thy
trews like all true Saxon wives, and she will wear them, too!”

Cormac strode forward.

Every word the Saxon uttered angered him. He was full of shame and
wounded vanity when he looked at her; she was so raw, ugly, and
uncouth. Her eyes were still red from the smoke; her mouth, naturally
large, was increased in size by half-healed scars.

Now, at Ethne’s mocking laughter, he fell into a fury.

“I will not marry thee,” he cried. “Great gaby! Ugly blear-eyed,
red-legged girl!”

In his rage he lifted his hand and slapped her on the face. The old
hound whimpered as though his master had struck him.

Elgiva was speechless with surprise. Cormac fell back to his old
position beside Ethne.

Elgiva’s face smarted with pain; one of the half-healed wounds bled
afresh. Cormac had struck her--just as in the days when they had been
babes together! Moreover, he had said he would not marry her. Her eyes
filled with tears; she did not care for the pain, or for Cormac’s
unkindness to her--but the thought that he had turned so soon against
his dead father’s wishes was anguish!

“It is your fault, Ethne,” she said. “You have persuaded him to say
this. You are wicked and heartless! You did not love Griffith because
he would not make you his wife. You hate me because, for my mother’s
sake, Griffith warred upon the Saxons!”

She sat down on the floor and, burying her face in the hound’s neck,
sobbed as though her heart would break. The animal licked her hair and
shoulders. Cormac watched her uneasily. It was unlike Elgiva to give
way to tears. The Saxon blood which flowed in her veins--loathed by
herself as well as by her companions--had endowed her with a stoical
calm in times of ordinary distress.

He began to feel ashamed of the blow he had given Elgiva. He had
determined that he could not marry her, but the very fact that he was
breaking his father’s commands made him more anxious to show kindness
to one who had served that father with more than a daughter’s devotion.

He remembered how, on the battle-field, she had attempted to throw
herself between him and his death-blow; and how she had waited on his
dying moments under the swords of the enemy.

In the midst of her grief, a new and comforting idea came to Elgiva.
She sat up suddenly, ceased sobbing, and looked inquiringly at Cormac.

“Perhaps,” she cried, “you have no mind to marry! You mean to follow
the good Saint Kevin and become a monk!” If such were the case,
Cormac’s treatment of her was explained. Had not the holy Kevin himself
done more than Cormac when a girl had spoken to him of marriage? Had
he not taken a great bunch of nettles and beaten her with them till
she was sore? Elgiva’s warm heart filled with remorse at her unkind
thoughts of Cormac. She knew the dead Griffith’s wishes too well to
doubt that it would be more pleasing to him that Cormac should enter a
monastery than that he should become her husband.

“To enter a monastery!” sneered Ethne. “To till the ground like a
slave! To wear homespun and tend sick-beds! Bah! Cormac is a warrior,
and the monks have not enough spirit to kill a slave!”

“Yet the monks drew our raft to shore at the risk of their lives--and
restored us to life,” said Elgiva. She had risen in anger.

“But you do not love the monks any more than you love me,” she said.

“I hate ye all--Saxon virgin and toiling slaves!” returned Ethne. “Nor
have I turned slave and ploughman after their example.”

The girl glanced down at her roughened hands and earth-stained dress.

“No,” she said, “you add to their work, instead of sharing it. Even for
the saffron robes on your back you must give the good men trouble. You
sent the poor monk, Patrick, many a weary mile with a heavy yew chest
on his shoulders. And when the case was opened what was it you had sent
him for? Nothing but silk and samite--gold torques and embroidered
crisses!”

Cormac, meanwhile, had been gazing at Elgiva with a troubled face.
He was thinking of his dying father on the battle-field, and of his
anguish when their fight for his British kinswoman had been in vain.

Cormac went up to Elgiva and placed his hand roughly on her shoulder.

“Listen, girl,” he said. “I have told you I will not marry you, and it
is true. But I tell you also that I will rescue your British mother, or
die in the attempt.”

He turned to Ethne and embraced her.

“My Ethne! My spouse that will be,” he cried. “My madness is passed--I
am thy warrior once more--thy warrior with wounds healed by thee. We
will to battle again!”

“Ahoi!” she screamed, “Cormac of Fail--Cormac, the Black Horse. To
warriors alone doth Ethne give her favours! Pict, I call thee and
brother! Prince of Hibernia and twig from the tree of Tara! Cormac of
Fail--sprung from the loins of gods and princesses!”

She parted her crowding locks and saluted him fiercely. She drew back
and smiled at him, with the little tusks gleaming on either side of her
mouth. Even with that ugly smile upon her lips the boy marvelled at
her beauty--at her smooth white limbs, her blue-black hair, and her
flashing purple eyes.

He fell back from the compass of her arms and drew his sword,
flourishing it around his head.

“Pict do you call me!” he cried, in the same screaming voice. “Ay,
Pict am I, and Pict art thou! And we will rally Pict and Scot around
us! We will to Britain again and harass the Saxons, as in olden days
we harassed the Britons! Scot am I and Scot art thou--and the Scots
brought Lia Fail and the Ogham books to Hibernia!”

“Fire!” she returned, “and blood and plunder! Men we make white with
fear. Our swords drink deep of blood of maids and babes. Ahoi--we will
once more to Britain!”

She drew her lips over her savage fangs. Once more she pressed her hot,
fierce mouth to the boy’s.--She also drew her sword and brandished it
above her head.

“Blood!” she cried, “and fire and sacrifice! Come with me, boy, to the
sacred heart of Hibernia and I will show thee warriors that will set
the world on fire. Tell me, Cormac, wilt thou come?”

He was as fierce and hot as she, and he yelled out with bloodthirsty
oaths that he would follow her to the world’s end.

Then--like all true Hibernians, in times of excitement, they fell to
calling pedigrees.

“Hail, Cormac!” she cried, striking his shoulder with the flat of her
sword, “Whelp of the lion, Tuathal!”

“Tuathal the Legitimate!” chanted Cormac, proudly. “Sib am I also to
Cormac, son of Art, to Conn of the Hundred Battles, and Niall of the
Nine Hostages!”

“Sib art thou also to me, Cormac of Fail!” screamed the woman. “Through
the blood of an Ethne--Ethne the Terrible, princess and priestess!
Mighty was she in life, treading in blood as a milk-maid in dew--and
mighty was she in death, for white oxen drew wood and treasure
to her pyre for nine days after her death. Myrrh and amber they
brought--unguents and spices and gold. Beasts they slaughtered by the
score, and all the earth was drenched with mead and blood.”

“Hail to our ancestress, Ethne!” called the boy, “wife of
Oengus--Oengus the Christian, baptised by Saint Patrick!”

“Nay!” thundered Ethne, suddenly dropping the chanting tone in which
they were speaking. “But the wife of Oengus--she of my race and my
name, never lapsed into Christianity! Druidess she was, and druidess
she remained--and in the battle in which she was slain her incantations
struck awe into the hearts of all that heard them!”

Then again her voice grew high and shrill as a battle-cry.

“Blood and sacrifice!” she yelled “and the secrets told by fresh-slain
men!”

Suddenly she made a thrust at Cormac with her sword, a mere feint--so
dexterous that, though it drew blood, it was a mere scratch that might
have been received from a sharp thorn. There was a light in her eyes,
like that of a half-angry tigress playing with its whelp.

“Ha, cub!” she snarled, “thou hast been bred in the faith of a cur but
if thou would’st have Ethne and Ethne’s aid thou must leave all and
return with me to the ancient faith and to the Druids!”

The boy fell before her, as though he had received a mortal wound.

“I cannot understand,” he gasped. “Thou art a Christian, Ethne!”

She laughed and folded her arms.

“I am a Druidess! Learn that, ye two poor white-livered Christians.”

Her glittering eyes glanced from Cormac to Elgiva.

The distant chime of the monastery bells came softly to their ears; and
closer at hand the chant of Saint Patrick’s hymn, the Feth Fiddha. The
June sun shone warm through the chinks in the walls.

For a time Cormac was unable to speak. When he did so, his voice was
hoarse and uncertain.

“It is a foul and horrible faith. Its rites are bloody and
repulsive--there is human sacrifice--and the burning to death of men
and women and little children! At its best it teaches neither love nor
charity.”

She spat upon the ground.

“So much for your love and charity! I never heard such words till I
lived amongst fools and Christians!”

“But thou art a Christian, Ethne!”

The woman again laughed impatiently.

“A Christian! ’Twas a slight thing that--to humour thy fond old
father--when in return he gave me gold and lands!”

The boy’s eyes drooped proudly. He turned and left the hut, and the old
hound slunk after him.

Two heavy hands seized Ethne’s shoulders--and the Saxon’s blue eyes
flamed into the purple ones.

It was the age when primitive passions held sway--and this young girl,
reared in the gentle faith of the Christians--now that her anger was
roused, was every whit as fierce as Ethne.

Ethne seized her knife, but the Saxon wrenched it from her grasp and
threw it to the farther end of the hut.

“Viper!” cried Elgiva. “Foul woman and false friend! Thou art
un-chaste, un-loving! Thou hast stolen his heart, and now seek to
defile him in thy Druid rites. He shall not sacrifice, I tell thee, he
shall not sacrifice!”

Ethne was inarticulate with rage. The two women fought like animals.
Ethne tore at the girl with her teeth, but Elgiva prevailed--and at
length threw the Celt, bruised and bleeding to the ground.

Then she wept. Not from rage or anger; but from fear and the knowledge
of her own weakness. For she knew with Cormac she was powerless.




CHAPTER V.

WHY ETHNE HATES THE CHRISTIANS.


Elgiva had spoken the truth when she had said that Ethne had no love
for the dead Griffith, because he had not made her his wife.

As a child, Ethne had been told she should be one of the wives of the
rich and famous chieftain, Griffith Finnfuathairt--King Griffith of
Erin he was called, though his kingdom in Hibernia had been long ago
cut up and divided; when his father, unable to resist the dangers and
excitement of a pirate’s life, had joined in with some Picts and Scots
who led a life of adventure on the shores of Britain. After a wildly
spent youth, the pirate settled down with his wives and retainers in
Damnonia; there he became the owner of a valuable lead-mine in the
Mendip Hills and, when he died, his eldest son, Griffith, found he was
possessed of enormous wealth and vast lands covering the greater part
of Damnonia.

Ethne’s father, Brian O’Fhirgil, had been King Griffith’s bard--as
the O’Fhirgil, had been bards in the family of Finnfuathairt for
generations. Ethne had been sent, as a babe, to Hibernia; where she had
been fostered, and where she had lived until she was twelve years of
age. The family, who had fostered her, had been poor. On her arrival
in Britain the wealth and splendour of Griffith’s lands and palaces
impressed her in a way she had never forgotten. She was enraptured by
the magnificence of the Roman villa where her mother dwelt with the
baby prince, Cormac. From that day Ethne became a slave to wealth and
luxury. When she was shown the villa destined for her, as Griffith’s
wife, her delight knew no bounds; and it was arranged that when she was
sixteen she should take her place in his household. It wanted but three
months to that date, when Griffith, who had always been attracted by
the faith, suddenly became a Christian.

In the case of a convert of his age, with several wives and numerous
family ties--the wives were often retained. But Griffith, with true
zeal, separated from all but the mother of Cormac; and the coming
marriage with Ethne was, of course, annulled.

Ethne was furious at the disappointment. In her anger at Griffith’s
decision she showed him so plainly her real motives and fell so low in
his opinion that, when--after the death of Cormac’s mother--he could
have given her the place she coveted, he declined to do so. This last
slight she never forgave; although King Griffith made her the mistress
of a handsome Roman villa on the Mendip Hills, and gave her much land
and gold as well--this last she only looked upon as her due, for it was
the duty of every chieftain to dower the daughters of his bard.

She felt all the misfortunes of her life had come to her through
Christianity; which had robbed her, not only of her position as a
king’s wife, but also of her lands and the luxury of Roman Britain.

In this last onslaught of the Saxons against the Britons, Ethne felt
sure King Griffith would have escaped, had he not armed and attacked
the enemy.

After conquering the three cities of Gloucester, Cirencester and Bath
the West Saxons, under Ceawlin, had driven the Britons to the sea
across a long stretch of coast, extending from the mouth of the Severn
towards the northern bank of the river Axe. Griffith’s territory lay
on the southern bank, was strongly defended, and the Saxons would not
have been unwilling (so Ethne believed) to have formed an alliance
with him. Alliances were not uncommon between Picts and Saxons--and
Griffith’s father had been considered a Pict. It was in vain Ethne
reasoned with Griffith; he deliberately crossed the Axe, and attacked
the conquering Britons--and it was his zeal for the Christian faith
that led him to take this step.

Many years before, in a Saxon raid upon Damnonia, a British woman had
been carried off from Griffith’s territory. The woman shared the fate
of many of her country-women--she was forced to wed a Saxon.

In this case the woman contrived, from time to time, to communicate
with her friends; and with her kinswoman, Griffith’s wife. When her
child, Elgiva, was but a few years of age, she found means to send her
to Griffith; she braved the wrath of her husband, rather than the child
should be bred after the manner of its savage and heathen father.

Griffith formed many plans to rescue the poor woman; and in this last
fight with the Saxons he had hoped to succeed.

He knew she was with the Saxon army and close to the army frontier.
Her husband was dead, but she was retained by his brother, Redwald,
one of Ceawlin’s most powerful thanes; who not only kept his brother’s
wife a prisoner, but had shown a desire to gain possession of Elgiva,
also. The woman was able to communicate with the Britons, and aid them
in their plans. Griffith believed that, in the tumult and excitement of
the time he could carry her off, quickly and easily re-cross the Axe,
and retire to his strong and impregnable castle of Brean Down. It has
been shown how fatally he was mistaken; how he was slain, and his tribe
driven from the shores of Britain.

“One reason have I to be thankful in the midst of all my loss,” said
Ethne to herself a few days after her late interview with Elgiva, “and
that is the death of Griffith!”

She was wandering by herself, beside the stream that watered the valley.

“Griffith checked me--restrained me--opposed me in all things. But
Cormac--Cormac! I shall twist him to my purpose, as I twist my hair
about my fingers.”

She was determined to link her fortunes with Cormac’s. He was necessary
to her; at any rate for the present, because he was the last of a royal
house--of an ancient name to which she trusted to rally followers. To
connect herself with him would strengthen her own slight connection
with his family. She felt that fortune had favoured her in the fact
that both she and he had inherited a similar type of face and form--a
type dear to Hibernians, combining blue eyes and blue-black hair.

It had given her much thought to decide the nature of the tie that
should unite them in the eyes of the world. At first she had an idea
of marrying the lad; but finally decided that it would further her
interests to rely on the bond of fosterage that existed between them,
and which was strengthened by the fact that their families were related
to each other. The ancient system of fosterage was almost sacred in
the eyes of Hibernians--she and Cormac should be known as brother and
sister; children of the great Tuathal.

“Hibernia shall give me warriors to regain my lost possessions,” she
cried. “And Cormac shall help me to my triumph! How soon I am rid of
him after I care not!” She threw her arms towards the sky. “Why was I
born a hanger-on of the house of Finnfuathairt? Why should he, and not
I, be first of the royal line? Ye stars! Help me to power quickly for I
am sick of clinging to the skirts of others! All my life long Griffith
thwarted me--and yet I was forced to live on his bounty. Now must I
have this cub ever at my side, fearful lest at any minute he should
play me false and refuse to follow me!”

It grew late, but still she remained, wandering up and down the little
glade in which she walked. The moon rose; and when it was fully risen
she stole away, with a soft, cat-like tread, towards a little clump of
oak trees that stood on the fringe of the neighbouring forest.

She had not long to wait. Soon her quick ear caught the sound of a
footstep--light and cat-like as her own. A man muffled in a Druid’s
cloak came quickly towards her.

They met in thick shadow--one or two patches of moonlight was all that
found their way to them through the leaves, but they showed that the
man, beneath his cloak, was clothed in shimmering white.

“It is over--you have done it! It was propitious?”

It was Ethne’s voice saying these words. She was breathless--quivering
with excitement.

The man was breathless also, for he had been running.

“No--we were disturbed--”

“What! you have not divined?”

“Listen--we were disturbed--”

“You have not divined--you have not divined! What of your promises--did
you not swear, last time we met, that you would not come again unless
you had done it!” She tore at her flowing hair in her anger. “I tell
you I must consult--I must know. There are a hundred things I want
advice upon; you are all such dolts and thick-heads--”

“But I tell you--it is difficult--we were disturbed.”

“Disturbed! but you could wait and begin again!”

“We were afraid of discovery--we had to bury the body!”

“You had already killed him, then--it was a man!”

“Yes.”

“I believe now a woman is better. Disturbed! Fools and
numb-skulls--then dig it up and begin once more.”

“You forget--the body must still be quivering with life, if we are to
read aright!”

She stamped her foot in anger.

“How were you disturbed?”

“By the fool Kevin and his monks.”

Rage kept her silent for a minute--then she burst forth.

“These Christians! These accursed Christians! Everything I set my hand
to they come and spoil! Oh, when I hold Hibernia in my hands, let them
look to themselves! I will burn their monasteries over their heads as
the Saxons burnt our palaces! I will thrust them to the sea--I will
throw them to the bears! I will cut out their tongues and give them to
my dogs. I will cut their legs from under them, when they stretch their
hands in prayer, I will strike at them too! Footless and handless they
shall crawl in the dust before me!” In her rage she ground her teeth.
Then turned quickly to the man. “When will you try again?”

“I do not know! We must wait until Beltane. I told you that long ago.
We shall have more chance then of a victim!”

“A victim--is that your word? I tell you if the ancient faith were as
it should be, we should be selecting victims--not seeking them! What
news have you in other quarters--are our people arming themselves?”

“Everywhere!”

“And the first attack is to be made at Druimceta?”

“Ay, and a fitting place, too, to strike at them--since it is there,
instead of the ancient place at Tara, that King Aedh has chosen to
assemble the princes.”




CHAPTER VI.

THE SACRED HEART OF HIBERNIA.


“To-morrow--at dawn!” said Ethne. “Be ready!”

Cormac was well and strong again; on the morrow he was setting forth to
see the wild plains of Hibernia--and Ethne would be at his side.

He was once more her slave. At first he had said that he would part
from her, would never look on her face again, if she belonged to that
foul and horrible faith.

But it was in vain he strove against a boyish passion for a woman more
than half-a-score of years his senior--the very fury of her outbursts
fascinated him. So it came to pass that the old relations were
established between them, and little reference made to the cause of
their division.

Though he rose early on the following day, Ethne was before him; seated
on a beautiful white horse and holding by the rein a magnificent black
stallion.

The creature was a pure bred Hibernian race-horse. His trappings were
mounted with gold; a magnificent purple cloak lay across the saddle,
ready for Cormac’s use; it was lightly flecked with gold--Cormac saw
at once it was one of the speckled cloaks so much in vogue amongst the
Druids.

“I told you you should find a horse awaiting you,” said Ethne, “and
that it would be of the true colour.”

“But you did not tell me it would be of the purest breed the world can
show!” exclaimed Cormac, as he leapt to the saddle. The horse rose on
its hind quarters and pranced; the colour mounted with joy to the boy’s
face.

A stout hide shield was slung on Cormac’s arm, a short, Irish sword
thrust in his belt; room was found on his horse trappings for a tough
yew bow, a sheaf of arrows bristled at his side--some with poison
lurking in their points, others tipped with stone and of a rude make
like the arrows of ancient cave-dwelling people. A pike supplemented
his short sword, and some half-javelins found their place at his saddle.

He turned to Ethne, and poured out warm thanks for the horse.

“The gift is not from me,” said Ethne, her long hair streaming in the
wind as she rode beside him. “Nor do I know if the givers’ names will
please you, my Christian brother.”

“Tell me!” said Cormac.

“Need you ask?” returned Ethne. “Where can you find such fire, such
strength, and lightness, but in the horses of the Druids? The steed is
a gift to you from my brother-Druids.”

Cormac made no reply.

“It is a love gift, too, Cormac--for their hearts are true to the
children of Tuathal! Though they can no longer feast at Tara, they can
pour out such poor treasures as they have at the feet of their future
lord. They are not rich, boy--and they could have sold that horse
for its weight in gold to the Eastern merchants who are ever seeking
Hibernian racers--but they chose rather to starve than forego the joy
of giving him to you.”

The boy breathed hard--deeply touched.

“They shall not find me ungrateful,” he said.

“They ask little at your hands,” said Ethne. “All they say is, Come and
Try. Try our mysteries, and see if they do not yield more knowledge and
certainty than the Christian faith.”

Cormac shook his head.

“Well, well, we will not talk of it now,” said Ethne, lightly raising
her arm as a signal to her horse to go faster.

Ethne looked her best on horseback. She was as lithe and active as a
boy; and could rival a man in all the feats common amongst the riders
of the day. She could rise upon her feet when her horse was at full
gallop--could jump from the saddle and mount again, without drawing
rein; and, as she rode along, could bend lightly down and pick the
wayside grass and flowers.

Cormac drew deep breaths of rapture as he rode by Ethne’s side. It
was good to feel a horse under him once more, to feel the wind on his
face and hear the saddle creak beneath him. It was pleasant, too, to
ride beside Ethne whom he loved; to laugh and talk; to be sure his
wounds and weakness were a thing of the past; to cherish wild hopes of
future war and victory--that seemed near and possible on this bright
summer morning. He was a man now, he told himself; he had left boyhood
behind him; a man and a leader of men--with a woman at his side. They
travelled quickly; the horses, of their own accord, broke into a
gallop and carried them forward, mile after mile, in swift, easy motion.

After Cormac’s weeks of confinement, the long ride was bliss to him.
The motion of his horse was like the flight of a bird, he thought--such
a long, winged, untiring stroke, bearing him on through the scented
summer air. He had no eyes for the country near at hand; his gaze was
fixed on a gap in the hills before him where smooth and soft, stretched
the waving grass of Hibernia. In the songs which Ethne sang to him
there was so much about the wild grass of the great plains. How it
waved up the slopes of the hills around, and clothed them to their
summits. How it sprang, everywhere, even roofs of the little wattled
cotes of the hamlets; how the bards would lie and sing their melodies
into it, and all the tiny blades would carry the music from one to
another--thus spreading their songs over all Hibernia. There were a
thousand pretty fancies of a like kind in the old tales and songs.
Cormac noticed how much greener and richer it was than the grass of
Britain; unspoilt by frost, bright and fresh from constant showers.

In the deep, rich pasture hundreds of horses lived lives of
joy--untouched by the hand of man. In their freedom a thousand times
more beautiful and graceful than their brothers who knew bit and
saddle. And here, in Hibernia, thought the boy to himself, he would
find warriors as fresh and free as the creatures of the wilds. It was
his constant wail that Rome had caused the ruin of Britain--here he
felt the truth of his words. In the life struggle against Jute and
Angle and Saxon only fierce, wild races could survive. Civilisation
meant indeed destruction.

“Rome!” he said to himself. “Rome is no more!”

Ay, she had been gone for long--fallen prey to Goth and Hun, but for
the first time in his life Cormac realised it; and in doing so a
momentary weakness seized him for Roman civilisation had played its
part in his life; it had drawn his grandfather from his fellows, the
Picts and Scots, and made him Bret!

But here, thought Cormac, in Hibernia he would find the ancient spirit,
unknown in poor, lost Britain. Back, then, once more to Pict and Scot!
He leapt to his feet, on his horse’s back, as they rode along; and,
brandishing his sword around his head, uttered the wild scream of a
war-cry.

Ethne joined her voice to his; and, as they galloped by wattled
hamlets, by dun and cabin, all eyes were turned on the two noble
riders and on their black and white horses. The news spread fast
that Cormac of Fail, of the race of Finnfuathairt, had returned from
Britain. Men, women and children ran everywhere to salute them. A
party soon formed around them, mounted on horseback. When they halted
beautiful girls ran forward, offering mead and curd to refresh them.
Old men tottered from sunny grianans to look upon the face of the last
of the house of Finnfuathairt. Old women called down blessings upon
them and children peeped at them shyly from hiding places. Slaves crept
unperceived from quern and hoe to stare upon them, open-mouthed.

Everywhere Ethne proclaimed their lineage.

“We are the children of Tuathal the Legitimate! We trace our descent
through the race of Finnfuathairt! Cormac of Fail, known in Britain as
the Black Horse; and Ethne of the Raven Hair--foster sister to Cormac,
and likewise descended from his family, through Ethne the Terrible!”

Her cry was taken up far and wide; for Hibernians never tired of
reciting pedigrees. And, here and there, one would come forward who
remembered her in childhood; and how she had been sent for from
Britain when her mother fostered Cormac.

Every hour the crowd around them grew larger. From marsh and forest
wild men came forth, clad in skins with red naked limbs; their beards
and long hair plaited, strange devices tattooing their freckled skins.
Even from the weans beneath the earth, short, long-armed men, dark and
swarthy, scrambled out and ran, fleet-footed, in the rear--some, among
them, leaping on the great Irish hounds, rode in this manner amongst
the throng.

Thus riding on in triumph, they left the hills behind, and entered the
great central plain of Hibernia.

The day drew near its close; but, as the shadows fell, Cormac thought
that the crowd around him grew thicker. He had pictured these wide
plains desolate and uninhabited; and now it seemed to him they swarmed
with people and with flocks and herds--everywhere he looked he saw
lights twinkling.

Ethne had chosen for their journey the time of the Beltane Festival.

“It is a fitting time to enter the sacred heart of Hibernia,” she had
said to Cormac, in speaking of the two great Druidical festivals,
Beltane and Santheine. “Therefore I have chosen it; it is our time of
joy--so hallowed by custom that even some of the Christians share it
with us.”

There was such excitement and fascination in these ancient festivals
that the wild spirits of the Hibernians were unable to resist them;
when, as Christians, they wished to do so. They entered often from
mere love of excitement and danger; not realising--or realising too
late--that they were offering homage to the sun-god of the Druids who
was no other than Baal--the Baal of the Syrians, the Phœnicians, and
the ancient Hebrews--the Bosheth, or shameful thing of the Jewish
writings.




CHAPTER VII.

INTO THE ARMS OF MOLOCH!


“All hail! all hail! Son of the House of Tuathal! Twig from the tree of
Tara!”

These words were cried in Cormac’s ear next evening; as he and Ethne
gave their horses drink at a running stream.

The cry was followed by a shout of victory as a Druid--the horse
beneath him wet with sweat--leapt across the stream; his beard and
garments streamed in the wind as he disappeared in the smoke of a
circle of fires.

“Behold! behold!” cried Ethne, leaning forward and pointing to the
circle of fires. “You have seen the winner!”

With a wild cry, she struck her horse--the creature bounded forward and
she disappeared after the Druid.

A great wave of excitement passed over Cormac. He knew enough of the
rites of the Druids to realise what this meant to Ethne. He had seen
the winner of the Snake’s Egg--the Anguineum; the most prized of all
druidical charms; believed to be thrown in the air from the frothy
striving of entangled serpents; and eagerly sought after by waiting
Druids who stood around with outstretched cloaks ready to catch it as
it fell. The lucky Druid who caught it would forthwith ride at full
speed on a waiting horse to gain security by the placing of running
water between himself and the pursuing serpents--for it was believed
the vipers turned immediately in pursuit.

As far as Cormac could see, the country was dotted with wreaths of
smoke. As the evening fell, innumerable fires twinkled under the smoke;
tongues of fire leapt on every hill, on every peak and granite column;
they lit up the tracks in the swale and heath before him. He knew that
to the Druids they were sacred fires.

As he looked around it seemed to him that all Hibernia was ablaze.
Again the same wave of excitement passed over him--a strange, savage
thrill as of some unknown instinct awakening within him. As though he,
like the world around him, had been set on fire.

Other wild spirits had taken fire, likewise. The sight of the leaping
flames worked like mead on the Hibernians. Those who still professed
the ancient faith plunged, intoxicated, into all the sacrificial rites
of the Druids. Many who professed Christianity, threw it, for the time,
aside--as they might have thrown aside a mask; or mingled the fierce
and bloody orgies of Beltane with the rites and ceremonies of their own
Easter.

Suddenly a band of Druids, in shimmering white robes, circled around
Cormac; the setting sun sparkled on their golden harps and ornaments.

One of their number sprang forward with cries of praise and greeting.
At his call the other members of the band grouped themselves around the
young prince in attitudes of extravagant joy and homage.

“Cormac of Fail! Stealer of men’s hearts! Maker of ravens’ food--and
shedder of blood! Hail, then, to Banba--great son of thy fathers!”

These words were cried in the monotonous chant of bards accustomed to
attune their voices whenever occasion required it. They paused; then
smote a full chorus from their harps.

“From sea to sea, in this circle of Tuathal’s carving, every heart is
full with joy at thy return and with sorrow at thy losses. Ahoi!” The
voices rose to a battle-cry. “Ahoi! for Tuathal of Tara’s hosts! Ahoi,
for Tuathal--maker of Ravens’ food--Tuathal of war horses, foam-pale!
Ahoi, ahoi! We have lost the Egg--we have missed the sacred thing--but
we have found the child of Tuathal--Tuathal from Tara of Fail!”

The bards paused--the earth around Cormac was covered with white-robed
Druids, prone before him. The blood mounted on the boy’s cheeks. Again
they smote upon their golden harps.

“Welcome to Hibernia! Welcome--thrice welcome! Behold us at thy feet!
We--the mouthpiece of thy country! We offer thee all--all that Fail
hath to give! Her gold, her honey, her white-toothed daughters, her
swift racers, her fair, spotted trout, her sloes, and apples and brown
nuts--her blood for thy sword to drink. Take all, take all--only let us
worship thee. For art not thou from Tuathal’s loins? Tuathal Teachmar?
Who armed his hosts with spears--who placed his steward over Ceara and
built wattled towers on the hill tops to protect the land! Tuathal from
Tara of Fail!”

They rose to their feet; dropped their harps, and held out their arms
to him, circling about him.

“Come back to us, for we love thee--come back to us! For art thou not
of us, brother of Ethne? Brother of Ethne, Ethne, our Druidess!”

Again they broke into wild battle-cries. Some of them, leaping on their
horses, galloped in a ring around Cormac, followed by their great
barking hounds.

Darkness was falling on the land; but the lurid light of the myriad
fires lit it in a strange, unearthly fashion. The noise, the glare, the
mad movement of the circling horsemen confused Cormac.

The frenzy of their sacred rites was upon the Druids. Golden
sickles flashed on high. A storm of song and shouting followed the
battle-cries. Sharp chords came, crashing from fiercely smitten harps.

The band led Cormac, with horse and hound, towards one of the blazing
fires; the horses shying and leaping, terrified at the blaze, and
smoke, and moving shadows; the dogs showed their white teeth as they
snarled with fear of the fires.

The clamour increased. Cormac’s heart beat harder; his face burned.

On the heights above the simple folk were driving their cattle through
the fires--they received the stir and spirit of the movement; and,
flocking forward, soon swelled Cormac’s little band to a frenzied host.
They stripped themselves of their garments, and thrust them before the
young man’s horse.

Every step of his advance added fresh satellites to the ring in which
he moved; as they circled about him with wild faces and frenzied
shouts, they sprang through fire and the mazes of sword-dances till
their bodies were singed and bleeding.

Cormac was ascending one of the hills that dot here and there Ireland’s
stretch of central plain. From far and wide the people were flocking to
a long, sloping hill-side, leading to the great Dun of Tlachtga that
his ancestor had erected near Athboy. It was the holy place of the
Druids where, on all great festivals, the sacred fire was made from
which all the hearths in Munster were lit.

On the hill-side the flocks and herds mingled with the people; driven
through and through the smoke and between the fires, till half mad with
fear. A thousand beast-eyes caught the red of the flames, and added to
the glitter of the scene; the jagged horns of oxen bristled in the
close masses; the wind from their nostrils played a full accompaniment
to the babel of tongues. Night seemed lighter than day in the full
glare of the fires--and the moving black shadows seemed full of points
of light, in glittering pike and knife.

The masses of men, women, and beasts swayed and spread, like a sea,
on the hill-side; and, above them, flashed like foam the white dress
and limbs of Druid and Druidess--leaping and bounding on the stone
monuments with which the hill was dotted.

Highest of all a band of chanting Druids was grouped, motionless,
around a great white bull breathing his last on the stone of
sacrifice--his blood staining their golden knives and white robes and
his own white skin.

Suddenly, in the midst of a surging mass, a small hand, strong as iron,
seized Cormac’s bridle and wild eyes flashed into his.

It was Ethne; her saffron garments torn and singed. The white fell of
her stallion splashed with blood.

“Choose!” she cried. “Come to us, child of the sun, and worship with
us, or depart to the saints! They will give you caves to fester in and
cold stones to do penance on--mast and acorns for hermits’ food--go,
Christian!”

The supreme contempt in her tones had little sting for Cormac. He
hardly heard her words; with all his might he was struggling against
the overwhelming desire to enter in upon this scene of fire and danger.
The natural desire of a youth to join in the dancing, wrestling, and
horse-racing; and joined to this was a fierce desire for further
excitement and danger.

The horrible fascination was growing.

In a hush, in the storm, the voices of the chanting Druids came to his
ears--silver sweet. He could see them raise their sacred symbols. The
beatings of his heart grew faster.

“You have the Christians’ symbol!” he said. “The Cross!”

The Druid at his horse’s bridle borrowed the silver tone of the
sacrificial chanters.

“We have their symbol,” he said, “because we have all symbols--the
symbols of all eternity--reaching to the very limits of the darkness
behind us, to the uttermost limit of the light before us. We are the
sons of the Sacred Tree--and all knowledge is with us, and all desire,
and all ecstasy!”

Beside them was a group of frenzied worshippers cutting their naked
bodies with flints; their cries broke in upon the silver of the Druids’
voices in notes of brass.

The youth upon the saddle had closed his eyes; he swayed a little as
though he had already drunk of the mead which the people were spilling
and drinking.

“You are ours,” cried the voice of the Druid, “ours! But you reel
and sicken at our incense as the bee, fresh from the cell, reels and
sickens at a field of clover!”

The young warrior opened his eyes. His face was as white as the Druid
robes around him. He leant forward in his saddle--his eyes were wide
with hunger--the hunger of fierce, stifled excitement. With one
sweeping glance he took in all the scene before him--the struggling
hosts that seemed to circle to the far horizon--the smoke blending with
the dark sky above--the stars blending with the distant fires--the
distant fires that brought the dull glitter of far bog and quagmire
into the play of universal flame. Burning flame that added crimson to
the flowing blood--flesh to the glancing steel--gold to the poured-out
mead--and snow to the naked limbs of the frenzied dancers.

His ears were deafened by savage yells, screams of pipes and cries of
terror-stricken brutes.

Suddenly he leapt to his feet on his saddle--the flame danced on his
brandished sword and on his eyes--fire seemed to fill his veins.

A battle-cry rang from his mouth. Something fiercer than love of battle
came upon him--bloodshed, and steel, and mead, and women, and danger
urged him forward into what looked like a whirlwind of fire and weapons.

He sprang with a savage cry to the arms of those awaiting him. He
drained the horn of mead held to his lips. The jewelled fastenings of
his robe were unclasped--and seizing sword and shield he flew, naked
limbed and quivering, into the mazes of sword and fire.




CHAPTER VIII.

ETHNE AGAIN AS LEADER.


Just at dawn he left them--after the human sacrifice had taken place.

He had not realised that the wild and terrible night would end in such
a sacrifice. And it was only when it happened that the full horror of
the festival burst upon him. Then--just as suddenly as he had entered
upon the scene--he turned and left it.

He went forward blindly. Stumbling, sometimes, over the prostrate
bodies of bacchantes--stupid with mead, half-dead from excess. The day
had fully dawned, the fires were waning, the air was full of smoke.

Once he hurried forward surrounded by a bellowing herd of cattle;
and once he narrowly escaped being gored to death by a maddened
bull. The forests through which he passed swarmed with the sheep and
oxen of Rath and Dun--herding with the forest swine, and deer, and
bears. Weird creatures, whom he could scarcely term men, fled at his
approach; they had been startled from their forest-lairs and were now
returning--shaggy-haired, blink-eyed, stained with woad, and clad in
skins of sheep and bear.

Once only he stopped in his wild flight; when he found a stag wounded
fatally in an encounter with a fellow stag; he stayed to plunge his
sword to its heart and end its sufferings. In doing so he shed tears
to think of the sufferings and terror of the animals in the night just
past.

His speed was terrific as he ran through marsh and forest, tearing his
way through bracken and knee-holly. He fled as though pursued; and it
was himself he fled from--his own flesh and mind degraded by the dread
rites in which he had shared.

He threw himself upon a runaway horse and went on, and on, and on--with
ever the scene of blood and fire before him.

       *       *       *       *       *

A little child with a face like the morning, passed by, singing as
it went, carrying flowers mixed with hawthorn leaves. All around lay
cultivated fields, gardens, and rows of bee-hives; beasts were basking
in the sun.

Such was the scene upon which Cormac opened his eyes. How long he had
slept he did not know, but he found himself lying on a mass of dry
moss beneath an oak tree. Someone had covered his half-naked body with
a sheep-skin and he lay warm and comfortable. For a moment he thought
he was back with S. Kevin’s monks and that the Beltane festival was a
bad dream. Then full remembrance came, and he cowered down in the moss
and covered his face with his hands. He, a Christian, had entered into
the foul and bloody rites of the Druids.

To his ears came the soft chime of six-sided bells. After a time he
sat up and looked about him. He was surprised to see the quantity of
hawthorn that abounded everywhere. Every child that passed carried
branches of it; there were fields of young hawthorn tenderly cared for
by labourers; among the larger trees wood-men were busy cutting it and
piling it in heaps--and others were busy carrying away the waiting
piles upon their shoulders.

Cormac rose to his feet as he realised where he was. He knew he could
not be far from the cell of his cousin, the Princess Brigit--the sweet
girl-saint of Kildare; who was so full of the spirit of love and
propitiation of early Christianity that she thought it no sin to keep
one of the Druid’s sacred fires burning--consecrating it anew to the
Christian Faith and hoping to win the Druids over likewise. The great
fire was fed entirely on the hawthorn wood; in using such fuel Saint
Brigit felt she gave a truly sacred and symbolic character to the fire,
for she believed that Our Lord’s Crown of Thorns was made of hawthorn.

In all the land around him lay the feeling of home and peace for which
Cormac’s smarting spirit longed--but he could not stay. In this sweet
spot he felt himself unclean.

A kindly wood-cutter offered him some food, which he gratefully
accepted. Then he turned westward and went on once more till he had
left Kildare far behind him, and the wild plain spread itself before
his eyes.

Around him waved the long grass, and he stretched himself at full
length upon it, plucking it in handfuls; heaping it on his face; as
though there were something cleansing in its cool touch--hot and sick
still at the memory of his Baal madness.

He realised, too late, that the sun-god of the Druids was Baal. A
flood of light was poured on some of Ethne’s wild assertions--that the
Druids held the ancient faith from which the Hebrew prophets had led
the Jews away. Ay, it was Baal, the Druids worshipped--at the temple
of the sun in the Slieve Bloom mountains--at the place of sacred fire
near Tara--everywhere, Baal. And in their worship the very depths of
iniquity were reached; bloodshed and license went hand in hand.

He writhed anew at the thought of his shares in the festival. He could
not rid himself of the memory of those twisting serpent dances, leading
to scenes of bloodshed, excess, and fire.

As he lay in grief and shame upon the grass, a few hot tears dropped
from his closed eyelid. Suddenly some strong instinct caused him to sit
up and open his eyes. Before him was Ethne of the Raven Hair.

She had ridden noiselessly over the plain towards him, and had reined
in her horse at a little distance; she sat motionless on her saddle
looking at him with a smile of scorn on her face.

“You ran away!” she said.

She was again dressed in spotless saffron coloured robes, her
long hair flowing, smooth and glossy, under her veil, the golden
crescent glistening on her forehead; her adornments were richer than
usual--besides her golden torques she wore emeralds and British pearls
on the clasps of her robes; her fingers were almost covered with rings.
She was mounted on the same white stallion on which she had made her
journey to the plains; here and there he showed blood-stains, and some
yellow patches where the flames had caught and singed him.

“And you have lost your horse,” she continued. “I cannot find him
anywhere.”

The boy made no answer. He looked at her as he might have looked at an
evil spirit.

Now that he faced her for the first time since the dreadful festival,
he could not have said whether he hated her or not--all he knew was
that his feelings towards her had changed. He could not forget the last
dreadful scene in which he had seen her amongst the foremost of those
who had offered the human sacrifice. When he had seen her lift her gory
knife, uttering fierce incantations meanwhile, he had fled.

“What a fool you were, Cormac,” said Ethne, “to leave just before we
divined.”

“Let me forget!” cried Cormac, striking his brow, as though in agony.
“Let me forget--I will forget!”

The Druidess looked at him in amazement. His emotion was a further
instance of the work of this strange faith, Christianity.

“Unclean!” he cried, and again with the same frenzy, “Unclean, unclean!
Oh, Ethne, your religion is cruel--monstrous--devilish!”

“Cruel--monstrous--devilish?” she said, repeating his words slowly.
“Why not? All we want is the secrets of the gods--the secrets that
concern us.” She was speaking quietly and patiently, because she had
found she could only manage him by patience. “Why should we not kill
if it will help us to read the future? Is not Death the portal to the
Beyond, and if you would have its secrets you must enter by the only
door open. We believe that when Death has just descended upon a human
being his heart and lungs and inward parts unfold the future to us! And
’tis better if every passion be excited first!”

Cormac shuddered.

He felt he must leave Ethne; never look again upon her face--he would
return to the Christians. And then the dreadful thought came that he
himself had offered unto Baal--he was unclean! He wished to leave
Ethne, yet she still attracted him and there was a new and horrible tie
between them.

Then weakly he began to excuse her to himself. If she believed, as
she said, did it not make her crimes the less? Why should he think of
fleeing from her presence--was he not worse than she? He, who called
himself a Christian!

She had dismounted and had thrown her bridle over her arm. Almost
unconsciously they moved forward on the marshy bridle-path before them.

“We have sinned,” said Cormac. “But my sin is greater than yours.”

The Druidess looked at him with the same expression of scorn and wonder
that she had shown before. After a time she said:

“Some day--not now--I will tell you the message that the diviners
unfolded to me.”

Cormac only answered by a gesture of horror.

“We have all our work to begin over again,” said Ethne. “You have lost
your horse--and by your foolish flight you have scattered the warriors
we had gathered about us! You are clad in sheepskin like a serf, or a
Christian hermit!”

Cormac stood still.

“Ethne,” he cried, “I cannot go on--I cannot, and I will not, continue
this unholy work!”

“What a craven thing you are!” cried Ethne. She was glad to see a flush
of anger on the boy’s face. “And what of your promises to me--the
Christians are always boasting that they keep their promises--have I
not done my part, were you forced into anything against your will?”

“I do not blame you,” Cormac said proudly. “The fault was mine--but I
will not continue.”

“I do not know what you mean by repeating you will not continue--you
will not continue. I promised to rally warriors around you, so that
you might rescue Elgiva’s mother--and I will do it. I promise you,
if you wish it, that you shall not be led into any more of our
festivals--since you cannot resist the joy of them!”

“Have no fear of my entering upon them again,” said Cormac.

“I hoped to make a man of you!” exclaimed Ethne.

“Then give me man’s work to do!” cried Cormac, fiercely, “and not the
work of fiends and beasts. Give me warriors to lead into battle, and
let me die at their head if need be!”

“You shall have them!” cried Ethne, with sparkling eyes.

“When?” he asked.

“When we go North--an army awaits us there. We will start to-morrow.”

For a time he wavered; then consented to go with her.




CHAPTER IX.

TO THE NORTH.


They spent that night in the wattled cote of a wood-cutter. Tamed
wolves and great hounds slept on the straw beside them, making the air
so foul that they were glad to leave at the first streak of dawn.

A lowering sky--dark and thunderous--shadowed the frowning wastes
before him. Patches of white bog-cotton sprang here and there--ghastly
in the early light; brimming pools flashed like dull steel around; the
stretches of furze and heath held a dull crimson in their hue like the
spent blood on a battle-field.

A sighing hermit--from his cell in a roadside cavern--aided them in
their search for a horse for Cormac’s use; pointing with a fleshless
hand, to a clough in a line of low barren hills, where sluggish runlets
gleamed silvery, in the dank soil of a peat valley.

“In that peat morass,” the hermit told them, “a hundred stallions have
been driven--as spoil in a feud between two kings, that is laying waste
the country side. A score of them have foundered in the bog--and, I
doubt not, will fall easy prey to any passer-by.”

There, knee-deep in slough and peat, Cormac found a beautiful creature;
tired and spent with struggling in the bog--the veins under its satin
skin netting its body like cord; its eyes strained and blood-shot. An
animal so black and glossy that beside it the black peat looked as grey
as ashes.

They found it a long, hard task to draw it from the bog; and only to
be done by harnessing Ethne’s stallion to the struggling creature, and
thus dragging it forth.

Whilst the animal rested and recovered its full strength the woman and
boy disputed over the road they should travel on.

“Come with me first to Tara,” Ethne said. “Come and see the place where
our ancestors reigned as gods and kings. Come and see the halls where
Tuathal held his feasts--where, every day, three hundred cup-bearers
handed golden goblets to the royal guests--and every king in Hibernia
came and paid homage to their over-king.”

“I will not go to Tara!” said Cormac, firmly. He felt that it was too
near the late scene of horror. It was near the Druids’ sacred place of
fire.

“You will not!” cried Ethne, angrily. Then a change came over her face,
and she grew as pale as death. “No--you had better not. You are a
Christian, and even Christians feel shame when they look on Tara. For
was not the curse that it is under laid on it by one of your saints?”
She dropped her voice to sad, moaning tones like the wind among the
branches overhead. “Yes, the feasts are no more and the golden roof
is falling--the wind is sweeping through the sacred halls! Tara is
deserted! Tara is accursed--and the evil was wrought by the Christians!”

Then she raised her voice in a scream, and looked at him with glaring
eyes.

“And you, Cormac of Fail, you--and I also, forgive me, Sun in
heaven--fought for the faith that cursed the home of our ancestors!”

Cormac looked at her with a frown for a time. Ethne’s sudden transports
of emotion had enchanted him. Now he felt he could never look at them
without conjuring up that dreadful scene when she had helped in the
human sacrifice.

She read his thoughts and her fury increased. She knew that the
last few days marked an era in Cormac’s life; he had passed, like
lightning, from boyhood to manhood; in doing so the tie between them
had changed--she had no longer the same power.

He had slipt upon the black stallion’s back, without saddle and without
bridle, one hand grasping the creature’s tangled mane, the other urging
it forward. The horse bounded and leapt furiously, but Cormac sat
firm--a picture of youthful skill and ease.

“To the North!” he said, glancing back at Ethne. “To the North--where
you have promised me warriors!”

So they went on day by day--over rich loam and peat and chalky
marl--towards the wilds of the North.

To the steep and savage hills and cliffs of Tir Conall’s coast, to
Tir Conall’s broad and treeless waste of moor and bog--everywhere
and always the wild sea thrusting fierce arms into the jagged land;
till Cormac felt there was less of land than of water in his path;
for the rains of autumn had commenced--tarn, river and mountain
stream were brimming. Far North they went, until the Ultima Thule of
Hibernia--Innistrahul--lay before them. And then they turned westward;
where the troubled sea, beating under beetling cliffs, sprang higher in
the air than the highest tower of Hibernia.

The bittern and the white stork--coot and heron--were thick in the
marshy land around him; from moor and heath came the weird cries of
curlews, and the fallows were strewn with their egg-shells.

Here he discovered tribes that were sib to him in the country off Tir
Conall. When the two sons of his ancestor, Niall of the Nine Hostages,
made sword-land of so much of Ulster they gave to the northern lands
beyond the country of The Waters, the names of Tir Eogan and Tir
Conall--that is to say Tir Eogan or the Country of Eogan, and Tir
Conall, or Country of Conall.

He found a warm welcome and many followers amongst his kith and kin;
the young warrior, on his matchless steed, took the Hibernian hearts
by storm. Hoary chieftains, weary of warring on each other, came at
the call of one who bore the ancient name; huntsmen left the chase
and armed their great wolfhounds for war; youths from schools and
monasteries left parchment and vellum and took up pike and battle-axe
again. And Cormac found smiles and favour from the daughters of the
land; as he passed they would run and offer him mead and milk and
apples; many a king’s daughter, in her sunny grianan with her carved
work-box before her, busied herself embroidering saffron coloured
crisses for the black-haired youth; many a maiden of less degree
offered him simpler love-tokens; but, if here and there he dallied, he
was never drawn from the great object of his ride--to gather warriors
to do his father’s bidding.

From Druid and from Christian alike the same tale met his ear:

“The greater part of the noble youth of Hibernia become missionaries
and monks--wandering often to the very limits of the earth. Of those
left behind, the idle and careless join the bards; the rest turn
pirates--plundering their own people as well as the Britons and Saxons.
We need such as thee, Cormac of Fail, to strike once more the ancient
chords, and rally our men around thee!”

All agreed it was among the bards he was to find warriors--that
great and numerous company, comprising two thirds of the men of
Hibernia--could he but rouse them from the enervating spirit that
pervaded them. Ethne smiled to herself, well pleased, for it was
from the bards or Filid, she herself had decided they should find
followers; for, although Druidism was not always openly avowed by them,
she knew at heart they retained the ancient faith she trusted to revive
in Hibernia.

Hibernia needed him, Ethne told him often; and her words encouraged
the wild hopes he cherished. Hibernia--with her gold and her learning,
her intellect, her enterprise, her high spirit--might she not be
mistress of the world, could she but send forth warriors as she sent
missionaries?

The Christian zeal Ireland showed was the wonder of the age. Daily,
from her shores, she saw her children depart to spread the gospel in
the world. Kings and scholars--ardent and dauntless--bare foot and
clothed in sack-cloth going forth to spend their lives in wattled cote
by barren sea-shore, or to freeze in Alpine heights, or in open boats
on the ocean. Giving their lives up gladly, that they might spread
the Light in a world of darkness. There were others, spending lives
of prayer, fast-bound in gray stone walls--fasting and lying in cold
stone--and others again spending lives of toil in the monasteries,
making copies of the gospels and the pentateuch for the use of men;
covering coarse Irish vellum with hand-writing of the greatest beauty.

The two faiths--Christian and Pagan--were strangely mingled in these
northern lands. Monastery rose within sight of Druid circle--cromlech
and cross side by side; the Christian crosses often owed their beauty
to the druidical symbols with which they were wreathed. One night
Cormac would lodge with a Druid in the shadow of an ancient tower--on
the next he would crouch on the cold clay of a hermit’s cave. At Derry,
or the Place of Oaks, he stayed with the monks who were building the
great monastery Columba had founded--then he passed to the palace of
the northern kings and joined in its revelry; in the day-time sitting
and watching the feats of the juggling Druids--and at night listening
to their tales as he sat with the hounds and men by the hall fire.
The spirit of early Christianity was to work by degrees amongst the
heathen; it was difficult to wean the people entirely from the ancient
superstitions; often the priests were content, for the time, if they
could but abolish the cruel and evil rites of the Druids.

And Cormac--with a boy’s hopeful outlook--began to trust Ethne was in
a state of transition from the pagan to the Christian faith; for she
ceased to speak to him of the Druids and their religion; no longer
seemed desirous of turning him towards it.

Cormac and his followers rode on--through boundless forests, marshy
wilds, and high-lying pasture-lands; through a land without cities;
over broad, unbridged rivers that they crossed at fords and shallows on
their swimming horses, or by the aid of stepping stones and hurdles; by
unpaved roads and bridle-paths; galloping through scattered hamlets of
wattle and wicker-work; scaring the cotter’s children at play among the
marsh mallows; sometimes slackening their speed amid pastures gray with
sheep. Now pausing to exchange a word with some half-crazed swineherd;
now bursting into wild Hibernian songs; and for days meeting no living
creature save red-deer, wild boar, and swine.

Upon a wet and windy afternoon they reached the Rath of Cormac’s great
kinsman, King Aedh, son of Ainmire--the friend and anointed of Saint
Columba; and, like Columba of the tribe of that Conall Gulban, who had
given its name to the land of Tir Conall.

In the marchland that now stretched before them lay a large village
of wicker cabins. Through these buildings and their accompanying
midden-heaps, they threaded their way till they reached the dun of
the chieftain--King Aedh; a collection of cabins surrounded by a
double wall with a ditch between the two walls. These cabins, although
considerably larger, were built after the same pattern as the other
bee-hive shaped dwellings of the village--by interweaving wattles on
either side of a clay wall and thatching the conical roofs with rushes.
A rude church in the group had hewn oak mingled with the wattled walls.
Just upon the rampart--to escape the shadow thrown by other buildings,
the sun-chamber or Grianan of the chieftain’s wife, was always placed;
formed of white wattles--often polished and sweet scented.




CHAPTER X.

BARDS OF HIBERNIA.


Cormac wished to present himself to King Aedh at once; but this he
found impossible as the great chieftain lay sleeping in his hall;
wearied out with a skirmish of the previous day upon a neighbouring
king who had refused to pay him tribute.

The whole of Ireland was in a state of ferment over the boroim, or
cow-tribute, which King Aedh insisted on exacting from his tributary
kings. Cormac knew that in Leinster Saint Kevin had inveighed against
it, and that the great Saint, Columba, was at present on a visit to
Aedh endeavouring to arrange matters peaceably between him and his
fellow-kings. And Cormac knew also, with a sense of pride, that Columba
had another matter at heart--the welfare of the bards. It pleased the
youth to think that the great man was so deeply interested in the men
whom he hoped to make his followers. King Aedh had proposed to banish
them, looking upon them as a set of swaggering idlers; but Columba was
doing his utmost to prevent such a sentence being carried out.

As Cormac looked about him he saw he was in time to take part in the
convocation which Columba had assembled in Druimceta to discuss these
troublesome matters--for all around the country was littered with tents
and hastily built wattled huts; the grass was bruised and broken by
the feet of many herds, and scorched and charred by camp-fires lately
quenched by the rain. In the distance he could hear the shout and din
of a multitude.

With the greatest difficulty he found a shelter for the night for
himself and his followers. He and his foster-sister were forced to
enter an over-crowded house. There was scarcely room to move; the
air was foul; the wattled walls black with smoke and filth, in place
of being polished and sweet-smelling; on the stale straw beneath the
hounds were eating the refuse of past days.

As he gazed about him from the crowded hearth, Cormac could see, by the
great brewing-vat in a corner that he was in the hall of a Flaith or
nobleman--noblemen alone having the right to brew. The chief himself
was sleeping in the gloom of an alcove--and was doubtless an ally of
King Aedh’s and had taken part in the same skirmish, for the space
in front of the building was all littered by spoil the victorious
warrior had taken from an enemy--vats of good malt, purple cloaks,
horse-trappings, honeycomb, and hogs’ flesh.

A hush had fallen now on the great hall--after long feasting; but the
steam and smell of flesh remained. Some of the feasters had fallen
asleep with half filled platters beside them. The cauldron from which
they had eaten still simmered over the central fire; in the great pot
was thrust a long ladle of yew-wood--from which had been served the
flesh of boar and deer stewed with leeks and hazel-nuts.

A flickering light aloft, strove with the gloom and smoke; the light
fell from a molten pool of raw bee’s-wax held in a high vase or bowl
of bronze and carved yew. The air was full of the long, deep breath
of slumber; for on the floor around the bed of the sleeping chief lay
his warriors, slaves, and hounds--sleeping also. Nearly all the hall
slumbered except two or three bards playing chess before the fire, some
wretched hostages in fetters, and two men of the chief’s or king’s
bodyguard who stood with hand on upright pike, on either side of his
great bed. The bed was all gloom except when the fitful light gave
momentary flashes of the gold with which the limbs of the king were
twined--and of the great torque that encircled his waist.

A look of disgust had passed over Ethne’s face when she entered the
foul air of the great room. She sighed, more than ever, for the luxury
and refinement of her Roman villa in Britain. She looked at the
smouldering, central fire with its surrounding ashes and refuse of days
long past; the earthen floor strewn with stale straw, gnawn bones, and
spilt meal; the rough dressers laden with wooden platters, drinking
horns, and vessels of yew and bronze; the gaping chests and cupboards
which held meal, and clothes, and skins.

Yet there was a barbaric splendour in the great size of the circular
room; in the horse-trappings and arms of the king upon the walls; in
the row of suspended shields belonging to the warriors, slumbering
around their chief.

Cormac was soon asleep stretched on a long leathern cushion covered by
a sheep-skin. He was tired with his long day’s journey and glad to
follow the example of the warriors around him.

He did not wake again until long after dawn--when he was roused by the
noise and uproar about him. There was scarcely room to move, the hall
was so filled with a medley of jesters, horse-boys, clowns, and bards.

A slave was busy at the fire baking oat-cake; trying, at the same time,
to stir the soup-cauldron and keep the greedy hounds at his elbow in
order. A bard, accompanying himself on a noisy timpan, was reciting a
story; there was such a jangle of sounds that Cormac could scarcely
hear his own voice or those of some jugglers at coarse conjuring tricks.

A piercing howl from one of the hounds suddenly silenced for the moment
all other uproar. The distraught slave at the fire, wofully hindered in
his work, had dealt an inquisitive beagle a sharp blow from a scalding
ladle.

A general commotion at the hearth ensued.

The owner of the beagle had been lounging before the fire munching
brook-lime and hazel-nuts; he now rose and seizing a besom of
birch-twigs, dealt the slave a blow that laid him full length on
the ground. In falling the slave was thrown against a couple of
chess-players--upon whose play a party of idlers had been laying
wagers; all of these turned savagely at the interruption of their
pastime. The fall, also, disturbed some drunken revellers asleep on the
floor; and they too started up with drawn swords. More than a score of
dogs rushed forward and added their clamour to the uproar.

“And all this spoil-sport and foolery over a cursed hound!” cried one
of the chess-players. “The cursed hound of a cursed bard!”

“Hound! Hound, sayest thou? And this to a bard--a Flaith, and son of a
Flaith! Hound thyself--beguiled and doting tool of a king--and would
thy tongue were slit for thy heresy towards us! Take thee, will I, by
the apple of thy throat and cast thee forth!”

The owner of the beagle was a long-armed Hibernian Pict clad in bards’
dress; druidical symbols tattooed his naked arms and legs; his beard
was plaited and his long hair confined at the back by a conical spiral
of bronze and gold; his garments were ragged and filthy--from sloth and
not from poverty, for he was verily covered with costly ornaments and
amber beads. His mouth was still full of brook-lime and nuts--in his
hand was a raw onion, which he had been about to eat.

“Ye cursed beggarly bards! Botch and blain of Hibernia! Paupers and
panderers all! Parasites on our folly and vanity! Living by flattery,
and eating us out of house and home in return! Take me, wilt thou, and
cast me forth!”

The bard was too angry to reply. His gold ear-rings danced with the
rage that shook him.

“But wait! A few more hours, and you and your stallions, your beagles
and false tongues will be banished for ever! Take me, wilt thou, and
cast me forth!”

The bard stuffed the waiting onion in his mouth and seizing the besom
with both hands took up a threatening attitude.

“Peace!” said an old man, stepping forward. A sombre figure in his
Irish monkish dress, cowled garment of brown frieze, book-wallet and
leather-flask slung on shoulder, thick knotted stick as sole weapon.

“Is this the spirit you discuss grave matters we have followed Columba
all the leagues from Iona to ponder and pray upon? It is not meet
that ye brawl over such things as ye brawl over your chess and your
horse-racing!” He turned sternly on the chess-player. “Know you not
that Columba has taken the bards under his protection?”

“Ay, that do I know well; and I know better that our Christian spirit
of forbearance is ill-suited to them--and I know too that some of them
make a cloak of Christianity, when at heart they belong all to one
faith--fire and blood! Fili they term themselves and half our men are
turning Fili. And why not? ’Tis an easy life--for we must keep them
and their mares and their stallions--their greyhounds and beagles!
Grow barley for their winter fodder, and dower their daughters when
they marry! Drones they are, and like rooks for flocking--ever in
hordes--see how they crowd on us now winter is coming--swaggering to
our firesides to idle and brag there all the winter and tell their idle
tales!” The speaker paused, turned about and wildly waved his sword.
“Away with them--away with them. Neither grist nor gold do they bring
us! Greedy gules they be, swilling and guzzling all! And now, forsooth,
must the Church--the Church--maintain their horses for them! Away with
them, I say, away with them! I am aweary of warring against them with
tongue and book--let us to work and settle the question with pick and
knife!”

The quarrel spread like wild-fire in the hall, till everyone had taken
his place on the two sides that were glaring at each other. It was a
marvel how the scene had arisen from the simple accident. Cormac found
himself in the angry ranks with his hand on his knife. There was a
sudden rush to the open air to gain room for combat.

No sooner were they outside than they were driven back by a long line
of galloping horsemen. There were shouts of “Back! Back!” and “Make
room”; a great procession was passing through the village.

The heralds had already gone by; carrying trumpets twelve feet in
length, with deep, vibrating notes like the roar of lions. Pipe, and
harp, and clash of battle-axe accompanied the war-songs of the warriors
as they rode past in the rain; prancing stallions often added their
notes to the din. There was a continual glitter of sword, pike, and
javelin; a glare of saffron robes and purple cloaks--woaded limbs
and faces. Here and there bronze lance-heads and bronze axes showed
themselves, mingled with primitive, leaf-shaped swords of bronze, stone
hammers, and hide-covered shields of wicker. Horse and man bristled
with tough yew-bows and sheaves of arrows; some of the darts had poison
lurking in their tips and others were tipped with stone after the
rude manner of their cave-dwelling forefathers. Many bronze shields
could be seen; some were heirlooms--all bossy and gleaming with rich
ornament. There was little order in the procession; it was a perpetual
jostle between horse and woman and man; great Irish hounds slipped in
and out among the crowd.

In one part of the procession a note of sombre colour and the sound
of hushed music prevailed, where a thousand chanting monks from Iona
followed their leader Saint Columba.

Suddenly the glare of saffron and purple streamed brighter, the clash
of battle-axe grew sharper; King Aedh passed by, followed by the kings
of Munster, of West Munster, of Leinster, and of Ossory; and many other
kings, amongst whom was Aidan, son of Gabran, one of the kings of the
Alban Picts.

Cormac found himself on his black stallion carried away in the fringe
of the procession; down a steep hill-side to a barren stretch of moor,
where a race-course had been mapped out, and race-horses by the score
were being entered for a contest.

Ethne suddenly appeared beside him mounted on her white horse.

“You are ready Cormac, to fight for your bards--on the side of the
saint, Columba?”

“Ready! Ay, more than ready!” cried Cormac, raising himself in his
stirrups with a war-shout.

“So! Then--be wary, and wait till I give the signal!”

She left his side and passed, at full gallop, into the mazes of an
ancient Druidical temple that adjoined the racecourse.

The savage hills around gave a wild setting to the temple or winding
avenue of stone columns into which she passed. As she rode through the
circle, in which the rude pillars were arranged, she uttered Druidical
incantations in a low, piercing voice. The place was thronged with
bards and their steeds and beagles--they were riding and walking
through the two long avenues and the great central circle; a group in
white robes were assembled around the stone of sacrifice--one of these
ran to Ethne’s side as she reined in her horse.

“Fortune favours us!” she said, in a low impressive voice. “You
fight for your liberty not only under Cormac of Fail, but under the
protection of the saint, Columba! Remember!”

Cormac meanwhile, looking proudly around, saw the place was thronged
with his followers. There were bards horse-racing and making wagers on
horse and hound; bards as jugglers, sorcerers, and minstrels; bards at
sword play, ball-tossing and serpent-playing.

Ethne, also, cast her eye over the assembled bards, as she looked out
on the race-course from the temple. And she recognised them all as
Druids--both those within the columns and without.

Chief among them was the bard who had quarrelled over the hound so
short a time before; he was riding races on a swift white mare, and
outstripping all who rode with him.

At the height of the revelry it was this man who headed the mead-drunk
bards as they circled round Cormac--on their lips cries of “Ethne!”
“Tara!” “Cormac of Fail!” “Cormac, The Horse--the Black Horse!”

They flocked around him on their matchless Hibernian horses--creatures
all quivering from the race-courses, their bodies flecked with the
foam and blood of their own rivalry. Some of the animals had been
freshly driven in from the plains and wastes--roped with difficulty,
and throwing one after another of their nimble riders. In the ranks
about Cormac many startled, riderless creatures strove towards him, as
though seeking his protection--this sight appealed to his followers,
who renewed their cries of “The Horse--the Black Horse!”

The sight alone of those beautiful creatures, with their scarlet
nostrils and flowing manes, was enough to quicken a young man’s blood.
Cormac pressed forward, so proud and elated that he was scarcely aware
of the words that were cried around him; only hearing shouts and
battle-cries.

“Fire and Sword! Pict and Scot!” cried the bards, surging round him.
“Men we make white with fear! Babes and women feed our swords. Ahoi!
Come, Cormac, brother of Ethne! Ethne daughter of Druids! Come, Brother
and Druids!”

They danced savage, prancing dances--rough, red limbs tossing and
twirling. With broad, expanded nostrils they uttered screaming Pictish
war-cries.

“Away with the Christians!” they yelled. “Away with cave-dwellers,
fools, and fasters! Hibernia shall have men and warriors--not saints
and hermits! Away with monks and virgins!”

Cormac dashed forward with Ethne by his side. Where he was going he
did not know. He only knew that he was fighting for the liberty of his
bards, and that Columba was on his side. Once the strange cry against
the Christians came to his ear; that it concerned his own undertaking
he did not, for one moment, realise--but it angered and puzzled him.

Then it seemed to him they were charging full upon the long procession
that had passed through the village a few minutes before: But there was
no time for thought or conjecture then; for, on a sudden, they were in
the midst of their enemies and his men began to fall around him.

He was conscious that the attack he was leading was weak; that his
followers fought badly; that Ethne, wildly and angrily, was calling
upon them to do better--to be men, not cowards!

Then he knew that disaster had befallen them, because his men were
fleeing.

Afterwards, in trying to recall the swift attack and defeat, he could
remember nothing clearly, except the strange shock and tumult of the
moment when he saw his bards put to flight by warriors in monkish dress!

Long afterwards, in his life, he was haunted by vague memories of that
disastrous flight--that proof of his bards’ cowardice--that end of his
hopes and dreams. For long it would suddenly come on him at times as a
nightmare of shame.

The greater number of his Druid followers were taken prisoners; some
were killed, a few escaped to the sea-shore.

Cormac fought on bravely, determined to die rather than yield.

A sword-gash across his temples filled his eyes with blood; he dashed
his hand across them; and saw, before him, a tall figure mounted on
one of the half-tamed Hibernian horses, so numerous everywhere. The
animal had met its master now, for it tried in vain to unseat the man
who rode without saddle and with only a rough bridle of hemp about
the creature’s head; he urged it forward to meet Cormac; it advanced,
rearing on its hindquarters.

Cormac saw the face of the rider towering above him--a beautiful face,
pale as marble with large, flashing brown eyes.

Cormac advanced also holding his sword ready to strike. He had a sudden
strange presentiment that his life was within the power of the man
before him, who had the invincible air belonging to one of Nature’s own
warriors.

Suddenly the untrained horse swerved to one side and bounded away. In
an instant its rider had slipped from its back and advanced towards
Cormac, a tall thin figure in the dress of a monk, with the front of
the head shaven after the manner of the Hibernian tonsure. Then the
blood from the young warrior’s wound came and blinded his eyes once
more. All was darkness.

He felt sick and giddy from pain and confusion of thought--why was he
fighting against the Ionian monks?

A hand closed on his like a vice of iron--a strong arm was thrown about
him. He was dragged from his saddle and forced to render up his sword.

Someone wiped the blood from his eyes. He looked up and saw again the
white, beautiful face and flashing eyes that had faced him on the
battle field.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I am Columba!”




CHAPTER XI.

SAINT COLUMBA.


“Treachery somewhere,” said Columba, when he had heard Cormac’s story.
“Treachery that has brought bloodshed and loss upon them and well-nigh
cost them their leader.”

The holy man had borne Cormac tenderly from the battlefield to the
little wattled cote in which he preferred to live rather than in the
great hall King Aedh had prepared for him. He had washed the wounds of
the youth, and kept constant watch by his bedside.

It was now the afternoon of the second day after the fight. Cormac lay
on his bed, and Columba sat at the open doorway.

The little circular dwelling was the simplest of its kind, without
furniture, the earthen floor devoid of rushes. There was no convenience
for either light or fire. In one corner was the bed of the saint--a
stone flag with a smaller stone for a pillow; in another a cup of wood
and a larger bowl of earthenware. Cormac lay, warm and comfortable,
on a pile of heather covered by a bear-skin. The seat on which Columba
sat was of stone; he wore a coarse cassock and hood of undyed homespun
wool, drawn over an under-dress of linen; on his feet were sandals.

Cormac’s eyes were fixed on the saint’s face. He felt he could never
tire of looking at the wonderful white face and the great brilliant
eyes. Nights of prayer and days of fasting had given Columba a strange
unearthly pallor and thrown purple shadows round eyes and mouth. The
great eyes shone out all the more brilliantly for their dark setting.
All that is beautiful in eyes seemed united in those of Columba--they
were fearless and bright as a child’s, piercing as an eagle’s, soft as
a dove’s; to gaze into them made it easier to understand how Columba
could be--at the same time--saint, poet, warrior, and statesman; to
gaze into them made Cormac’s difficult story an easy one to tell--he
told it as a child would have told its parent, never doubting he would
be understood and forgiven.

A favourite horse had come and lain its head on Columba’s shoulder;
at his feet was a hound he had saved from a bear; beside the hound
was a lamb. A tamed sea-gull nestled its head in the saint’s neck--it
had been discovered by Columba, broken-winged on the seashore; he had
bandaged the wing and cherished the little creature, and ever since
the bird had hovered near him. From the half-closed hand lying on
the sack-cloth robe the tiny head and bright eyes of a little wren
were peeping. As Cormac gazed at the great man he realised what was
meant when men said that Columba lived in a kingdom of love. Yet he
was a wild and fearless warrior, too, gaining repute on the isles and
mainland of savage Caledonia.

The saint suddenly addressed the young man.

“You are better, my son. Your wounds were slight, though they were
many--you will soon be at the head of your bards again.”

Cormac frowned.

“Never again! I will lead men--not cowards and deceivers.”

Columba turned, so that he might face his guest; putting up his hand as
he did so to soothe the fluttering bird at his neck.

He seemed about to speak when suddenly a change came over his face.
He fell on his knees; his eyes closed--then opened again, with the
rapt gaze of an ecstatic. Columba prayed. He prayed with his whole
being--with that power of prayer peculiar to those Hibernian saints
who did so much in spreading the Faith in Europe, and whose lives
bear witness to it for all time. Passionate, almost involuntary,
prayer; in which in their communings with their Maker their very
souls seemed drawn from their bodies. A state in which prayer was as
natural as thought, and from which Columba seemed to derive that almost
supernatural power by which he confounded the tricks of the juggling
Druids at the court of Brude, the Pictish king.

After a time he asked Cormac softly:

“Will you leave your work?”

“My work?” repeated Cormac.

“Ay, your work--you alone are able to work in that vineyard. Cormac of
Fail, my warrior from over the seas, chosen redeemer of my bards, you
have a noble work before you.”

“When they told me,” he continued slowly, “of Cormac of Fail, and how
he was gathering my bards around him, I hardly dared to believe it.
Such news was too good to be true! I had heard of your father--King
of Damnonia we called him in the North--and I knew that the son of
Griffith Finnfuathairt could lead warriors in a noble cause only--when
I heard all this, I tell you that I felt the saviour of my bards had
come.” He paused again. “My bards,” he murmured, in a tone of infinite
tenderness. “My bards!”

The last words were said to himself, half unconsciously.

“I know the tales men tell of them--how they swagger, and idle, and
brag by the firesides of their chiefs--and how bragging leads to
brawling, and brawling to worse things. It is true! But it is not given
to all men to lead lives of prayer--there are others who must go out
into the world and fight; and if they cannot, they will stay and idle
at home. All they want is a noble cause--and then we shall have noble
warriors and noble men!”

Columba’s eyes flashed, and Cormac remembered the war-like deeds of the
saint’s father, Feidilmid. He had come from a race of warriors, the
Kings of Conall, bred in the dark wolf-haunted mountains of the North,
where life meant perpetual warfare, with beast as well as man. At that
time, and for centuries after, Hibernia rang with the exploits of the
great Conall Gulban of the same race--he after whom the north-west of
Hibernia was named, Tirconnall.

“My son, you have a noble work before you to redeem the youth of
Hibernia!” The saint held out his hands in entreaty. “I ask you, I
entreat you to give them a trial.”

Cormac’s cheek burnt with pride and shame that the great Columba should
treat him as a friend and equal. It was even more surprising than
that he, one of the greatest men of the day, and the ruler of forty
churches, should live the life of a peasant.

Cormac had pictured him in robes of state in the great chair of a
king, with the body guard of a king around him; and on his head the
golden crown common to the bishops of Hibernia. Or, if indeed he had
thought of him in sack-cloth, as was the custom amongst so many of the
saints--he had imagined him as austere, and glorifying in his humility,
with ashes on his head and his sack-cloth in rags.

“Take time,” said Columba, “and gather your men about you--then cross
the sea to Gwynned--to North Wales, and you will find men there in
plenty to unite against the heathen!”

Cormac was silent. A few hours ago he had felt the utmost fury against
his late army. They had come that morning before the cote in which
he lay and had sung a lament on the late event--a wild Hibernian wail
telling of defeat and disaster, of the swift flight of horses pursuing
and pursued, of the falling in trenches slippery with blood, of a black
bog and hungry war-dogs, of showers of javelins and darts and the loss
of gold and silver and fair women. The refrain ran:

  “Mead we drank--yellow, sweet, ensnaring!
    And under its bane fell prey to the foe--
  Raining our red life-wine, in streams, in the valley!”

They sang with mock tears, artfully trembling voices. Cormac, under the
care of the man against whom they had conspired, writhed in shame as he
heard them.

After a time, under Columba’s pleading, he felt his heart soften to the
bards. But, when he thought of Ethne, he grew like stone--for he knew
hers was the treachery of which Columba had spoken.

He remained obdurate when, later on, she implored him to allow her to
accompany him to Wales. She protested that she was innocent, that she
also had been deceived by the bards; but Cormac remained firm in his
refusal to allow her to accompany him; he could run no risks in this
second undertaking.

He remained, for a time, in the little wattled cote; sharing the simple
life of the saint who slept on a stone slab with a stone pillow beneath
his head.

Columba helped him to gather soldiers around him; and, by his powerful
aid, made all the necessary arrangements for transporting his men to
Wales.

“Go, my son,” said the saint, as he gave him his blessing on his
departure, “and God help you to restore the lost mother to the maid.
But never think that, with the sword, the Saxons are to be conquered.
The Cross, and not the Sword, will subdue them!”

They were the prophetic words of one who had spent his life in
converting a people almost as savage and invincible--the Picts.




CHAPTER XII.

THE FAIR.


More than a year had gone by since his flight from Damnonia when Cormac
found himself once more in Britain. Following the advice of S. Columba,
he landed in Northern Wales; and, leaving the body of his warriors to
follow, made haste to the great Fair on the banks of the Conway, in
connection with the ancient assembly--the Gorsedd, from which arose, a
little later, the Eisteddfod.

He was almost unattended. He wished to mix, as a stranger, with the
crowd at the Fair, believing in this manner he would more easily become
acquainted with the people from whom he wished to gather warriors.

Long before he arrived at the scene of the Fair he found the country
scattered with the mares and stallions of the visitors, who had
journeyed there before him. As he rode down a rich glade the clang and
clash of barbaric music came to his ears, a quaint city rose in sight,
backed by wild and glorious hills. The walls of the city were shaped
into a triangle; they bristled with spear and pike-point, standard and
pennon. The one and twenty towers, rising from the walls, were hung
with quaint scrolls written with the weird characters of the Ogham
language, bidding all the world make merry in the assembly that Aedd
the Great had founded centuries before Julius Cæsar had landed in
Britain.

The scent of mead came to Cormac’s nostrils as he entered the crowded
labyrinths of the Fair. Great vats of it were piled just near the
entrance; some of the vats had been broken open, the mead spilt upon
the ground, its pungent sweetness filling the air--the famous Pictish
mead brewed from heath honey, and so fragrant that Boetius believed it
was brewed from flowers themselves. Beside the spilt mead some drunken
Caledonian Picts were sleeping in the sunshine; their wares lay around
them--brooms, brushes, and beds of heather, and soft bales of yellow
heath-dyed wool, bound together by hempen ropes.

Passing through a place of barter Cormac found himself amongst booths
and work-shops. On every side was a continuous crush of musicians,
merchants, snake-charmers, bards, and law-givers. Spinners, potters,
carpenters, workers in gold and silver cried their wares. Everything
was offered to the passer-by, from an ingot of gold to roasted
cow-flesh on spits. Now came a blinding flash from sun-lit metal,
and a sword was thrust in Cormac’s face. Gold and silver-smiths were
proclaiming their work. “An Excalibur! An Excalibur!” they chanted.
“Without trouble of crossing the lake and suing unto Morgan le Fay!
Young men and warriors! An Excalibur!”

Other marvels of their work they showed; delicate thread of pure gold
as fine as hair, and sword handles of such miraculous workmanship that
a square inch of mosaic held on its surface more than two thousand
points of gold.

Cormac made his way, with care, through mazes of pottery--art brought
from Rome. There was precious Samian ware; red, satin-glazed and
wrought with fairy-like ornament--fit for daintiest lady, and so highly
prized that when broken it was delicately mended with rivets of bronzed
lead; plain biscuit ware, shaped into lamps, and other common vessels
of black Roman pottery. He stopped and watched the play of the potter’s
wheel--as hundreds have done before and after him--to see the clay,
rising birdlike, to the potter’s hand; receiving there, as it were, his
life and thought--created, not made. Poets sang of its dance of joy
upon the wheel; bards symbolised its play in their music. Homer had
compared the rhythm of its rise and fall under the potter’s hand to a
dance.

Then he lingered, fascinated, before the work of the Gaulish
bell-casters. Fair and noble ladies knelt before the furnace
and cast therein their ornaments of gold and silver; a joy and
penance--both--that they should add to the golden tongues that called
the folk to prayer; some of the little four-sided bells bore upon them
that mystic form of the cross--the Fylfot.

Sheltered by hempen awnings lay the book-stalls, with a large display
of plain, waxed tablets, made of birch, elm, and the inner bark of ash;
scribes were busy among them with reed and stylus. Towering above were
some ancient papyrus rolls, fifteen cubits in length--reed-written
with ink of gum-water and soot, and there were many plain boc-fell
folios such as Cormac’s countrymen wrote on by day and night in tower
and monastery, with red cinnabar and cuttle-fish ink. There were a
few Hibernian bindings, splendid and massive, with clasps, hinges, and
bosses upon them, that might have been used upon an abbey-door. But
it was a poor collection after former days of Roman splendour--when
bejewelled diptycha of gold and silver had been common--now people
contented themselves with coarse birch, joined by common wire.

Leaving the book-stalls behind him, Cormac made his way through many
cubics’ length of earth covered with basket work of every shape and
size--the famous wicker-work of ancient Britain. Marvels, too, he saw
of British wool--which the Romans had taught them to spin so finely it
was likened to spiders’-webs.

At every point he was assailed by eager vendors. At length he sat
down, tired, upon some felled trees where a group of diviners, with
their dice and knuckle-bones were lounging; close to a booth where a
fluttering pennon announced that a two-headed cow was on show within.

From his position on the fallen tree, Cormac caught glimpses of the
stone chair of the Brehon or Judge, which was placed on the great
burial mound around which the Fair centred. On his right-hand stretched
the race-course and wrestling rings; on his left the sea gleamed in
the distance.

It was not long before Cormac became aware that a woman formed one in
the group of people around him. Although half-hidden by the foliage of
the tree, she was quite close to him--so close that her flowing lenn
almost brushed his knee, and the saffron fragrance of her robes was
quite distinct to him.

It was a strange thing to see a fair and delicately-dressed woman
amongst these rude jugglers. Cormac was full of wonder. He wished he
could see the girl’s face. Every moment his wonder increased; was
she some high-born Druidess, mated by caprice with one of these low
serpent-charmers? No, the ring on her hand would never be worn by a
Druidess; he could see her hand, plainly with the ring upon it--bearing
the monogram of Our Lord, the bezel ornamented with a dove within an
olive branch.

What power in the loosely-lying hand and arm! White and delicate, but
of a strength to wield a battle-axe. And the wide sloping shoulders
and snow-white column of her throat, gleaming like marble through
the meshes of her yellow hair--such women, surely, stood before the
southern sculptors when they chose their images to bear the weight of
temple and palace!

Where had he seen such women? Not amid the nervous fiery creatures of
his own race, not among the beautiful fragile ladies of Roman-Britain.
A faint dislike, a sudden shuddering sense of disaster came upon
him--he knew now where he had seen such great, fair, goddess-like
women! But they had not been thus clothed in delicate raiment,
glossy-haired, perfumed, and dainty--but dishevelled and gory with hair
streaming in the fore-ranks of the Saxons.

Every moment his wish to see her face grew stronger.

He could see she made her replies unwillingly to the man at her side;
and evidently wished to remain silent and unnoticed. Indeed, there were
strong reasons why she should desire to escape notice, for at these
great fairs men and women were kept apart under fear of death.

Cormac looked with rage at the girl’s persecutor. Every minute he was
attracting attention to her; others besides Cormac had turned their
eyes on the pair.

Cormac was powerless; to interfere was to attract more notice to the
woman. Her persecutor was one of his own countrymen; of a low, juggling
order with a Pictish accent of the coarsest kind--a snake-charmer with
gold rings in his ears and a speckled cloak such as the Druids wore. He
had ringed himself round with hissing serpents--on arm and ankle, round
neck and trunk.

Cormac could see that the girl looked on the serpents with horror.
The snake-charmer thrust his hands, out-spread, towards her and
contemptuously cracked every finger-joint in her face. With a brutal
movement he came a step nearer, so that the vipers thrust their tongues
almost in her face--and then, with a dexterous movement slipped one
of the serpents from his arm to hers. The girl had stood her ground
bravely and uttered no sound; but at this outrage she sprang backward
and came with some force against Cormac, who threw one arm around her;
and, with the other, cast the serpent in the charmer’s face.

“Fool and meddler!” cried the snake-charmer, angrily. “Leave my
business alone. You shall pay for this!”

He recovered the viper; and folding it together with its fellows,
slipped them into his breast. There was an angry glitter in his eye,
and he withdrew from the spot, muttering ominously.

Cormac feared for the girl’s safety. He looked around for some place of
safety for her--there was none. All that could be done was to draw her
into the shadow of the felled trees. He turned towards her, and for the
first time saw her face.

It was Elgiva, the Saxon!

They stood gazing at each other. They must have remained in this
position for some moments when they were startled by screams of
wrath--that which Cormac had dreaded now happened.

An angry mob, headed by the snake-charmer, surrounded them--a
murderous, screaming crowd which grew larger every moment; serfs drew
their whittles and joined in--stragglers and rude horse-boys, armed
with clubs and yew-staves, came at the call.

“A woman--a woman!” The angry cry spread like lightning “a woman--a
woman in the Men’s Airecht! Deliver her to justice!”

Cormac planted himself in front of his companion; he had thrown his
cloak around her, to hide her dress. Now he forced her into the leaves
and twigs of the fallen tree.

“Ay, and a Saxon woman, too!” screamed the snake-charmer, “a Saxon, a
Saxon!”

There was a further howl of wrath from the crowd; and Cormac’s body
would have been hewn down instantly, but that the slaying of a man at a
Fair meant not only death, but a curse after death on the spirit of the
slayer.

Cormac was parrying blow after blow; men were climbing towards the
woman along the trunk of the hewn tree, and some were trying to set on
fire the dried leaves and twigs.

“A Saxon! a Saxon!” they yelled. “If a man do but enter the airecht of
the women he must die--let her die also! Let her die the death!”

Their enemies pressed closer upon them--still kept at bay by Cormac’s
sword. Some of the wildest in the mob took up stones and began to stone
them. Cormac and the girl retreated more and more under the thick
foliage. Suddenly their retreat was cut off--they touched upon a great
rock against which the felled trees had been massed.

For a minute they were left in peace.

Then Cormac saw a flame of fire run along a withered branch towards
them. A stone struck him on the shoulder.

“Cravens!” he said, “they will stone or burn us!”

Elgiva was examining the surface of the rock against which they stood;
drawing her hand over it through its veil of thick leaves. She gave
a little cry of joy as she entered a crevice in the stone, and drew
Cormac after her. The passage was so narrow he was forced to leave his
shield behind him. They pressed onward for a few feet, hand in hand,
until they felt they were in the heart of the rock.

“On!” cried Cormac, “on!” and slipping his arm around the girl forced
her forward--till the light behind them had disappeared and the rock on
either side had given place to damp earth.

“This path leads to the cliffs!” exclaimed Elgiva. And then she gave a
sudden cry.

“I slip! I fall!”

Their path descended with terrible rapidity, but she did not fall, for
Cormac’s arm prevented her.

“On!” he cried, “on! Though escape lead us to a second death!”

They were almost running now; pitch-dark around them; a slippery and
treacherous foothold beneath; thick about them a sudden swarm of
startled bats.

Day seemed, in a strange manner, to be dawning from beneath them.

The quick movement, the strange flight, and weird surroundings brought
cries and laughter both from Elgiva’s lips--the first sign of weakness
she had shown.

“Ah me!” she cried, “we have flown from the pikes and knives of men
to the awful dwellings of gnomes and mermen. I can stay my feet no
longer--I faint, I fall!”

Full daylight flashed upon them; a rush of earth and stones accompanied
them, as they slid, suddenly, into a shell-strewn cave.

They found themselves in the heart of a grotto; a ledge in the
steep cliff-side with the wild sea below; inaccessible, save by the
subterranean passage through which they had entered.




CHAPTER XIII.

MAN AND WOMAN.


Now that the danger was past and they felt themselves secure from
attack, Cormac and Elgiva had no thought save for each other.

Their eyes met, and there was a long silence; neither spoke; then
Elgiva turned, blushing, and tried to smooth into order the long,
tangled masses of her golden hair; she shook the sand and dust from her
dress and veil.

“You are changed, Elgiva!” said Cormac.

Throughout the excitement of the attack and the tumult of their escape,
he had been conscious of the girl’s beauty.

“Changed!” said Elgiva. “In one short year--is that possible?”

Changed--of course she had changed. It was the same fair, blue-eyed
face. But she was no longer ungainly and awkward. Her skin was smooth,
her hair glossy; her dress as fragrant and dainty as Ethne’s. Now as
she moved about the cave he saw that the frame had softened into
curves of womanly beauty.

Cormac stood struggling with a thousand varied feelings.

“Changed--ay, changed! Thou art grown beautiful--a woman--but thou art
Saxon!” Then, with one of the swift changes natural to him, he suddenly
grew furious. “Curse thee, thou art as Saxon as any Saxon among
them--and shall I wed a Saxon?”

The girl was startled by his sudden fury; she answered proudly.

“Have no fear of that, Cormac of Fail. Thou did’st refuse to do thy
father’s bidding. The Saxon would have wed with thee to obey those
commands, but now she will abide by thy words.”

“Ay, shall I harden my heart against thee--shall I hate thee, as
never maid was hated before?” Suddenly his voice broke. “Shall I not
hate thee because thou art Saxon? Ay, and in hating thee, love thee
more--with a love that has smitten me, like the lightning smites the
oak!” He had drawn near to her.

“Saxon, alas, I am,” said Elgiva, “and thou art true Celt, to talk of
love and hate together.”

He looked at her softly.

“Yet I find in thee the old Elgiva, in spite of thy womanhood and
beauty.”

Then he remembered, in some bewilderment, that he had not thought of
Elgiva’s appearance, at all, in the years gone by. And when he had
thought of her at times, in the last few months, he had a vision of her
as he had last seen her--the swollen features, the smoke-bleared eyes
and mouth surrounded by half-healed scars.

He remembered how he had struck her, and set those half-healed scars
bleeding afresh. The remembrance came on him like a blow.

Elgiva’s thoughts, too, had gone back to that last scene. She
remembered how she had blurted out that he must wed her, and that he
should wed her. With the remembrance came the wish that she had bitten
out her tongue before the words were said.

“Why are you in Britain?” he asked. “How did you come here?”

She had come with Ethne of the Raven Hair, she told him, and they had
travelled purposely to the place of the Fair, as Ethne hoped to meet
him there; and trusted he would join his army with one she had brought
with her from Tara.

At this Cormac fell into a rage.

“Never!” he cried, immediately. “I will fight no longer with Ethne. I
stand alone. I will not see her face.”

“But how came you--you two who hated each other--how came you here
together?”

Elgiva’s colour rose.

“Because we love each other,” she said. “You tell me that I have
changed--but I tell you that Ethne has greatly changed! She is not the
same woman! It is a long story how she came back from Druimceta and
lived and worked amongst us at Glendalough--she won all hearts. She
has gathered many warriors around her to help towards the rescue of my
mother. Ah!” The girl’s eyes softened. “We no longer hate each other,
as you say we did once. She loves me and I love her!”

“Loves you!” exclaimed Cormac, looking at the girl pityingly. “No, no,
poor fool, she deceives you!”

Tears came into the Saxon’s eyes.

“She does not deceive me--I am dear to her as a sister. She is never
happy if I am out of her sight. She is a Christian.”

He laughed and tears came into her eyes.

“I hoped it would have pleased you that I had learnt to love her.”

Her bosom rose and fell with a long, quivering sigh. Cormac looked at
her with a new light in his eyes. He came a step nearer to her.

“And do you wish to please me, Elgiva?” he asked.

“Why should I wish to please you?” she asked, pettishly. Then a quick
blush swept over her face; knowing, as she did, that a wish to find
favour in his eyes had been the desire of her life ever since they had
parted. She had sobbed herself to sleep the night after he had struck
her. And then, as the months passed by and womanhood began to dawn on
her, she realised how uncouth and ugly she must have appeared in his
eyes--and she had done all in her power to improve the comeliness that
was really hers, but in her raw youth had hardly shown itself.

Cormac, in thought, had again gone back to their parting scene; he
longed to ask for her forgiveness, but a strange shyness and restraint
came upon him.

“And how did you get into the Men’s Airecht at the Fair?” he asked,
after a time.

“I lost Gelert,” said Elgiva, with a new look of trouble in her eyes.
“I missed him suddenly and ran at once to look for him. I could not
find him, and when I came back to the place where I had left Ethne and
our women, they were gone! I went about looking for them, and wandered
in my confusion without noticing--into the Men’s Airecht.”

“Are you sure Ethne had left the place where you had last seen her?”

“I am certain, because it was marked with a wooden cross--the only
wooden cross on the grounds. I could not be mistaken.”

“I know the place,” said Cormac, “and all the paths from there lead
into the Men’s Airecht! You could scarcely fail to wander in----”

He considered for some minutes--then a strange bitter expression
crossed his face.

“I see it all!” he exclaimed. “It was a design on her part--she left
the place purposely. She knew, if you wandered about at all, you could
not fail to wander in there--it was a trick to be rid of you, once and
for all.”

The girl looked at him in horror.

“Cormac, we are Christians, and our Christian boast is Love and
Charity. Yet you have not sufficient charity to grant the conversion of
one poor soul. I tell you Ethne is changed--she is a Christian!”

Cormac was frowning, pacing up and down the cave, scarcely listening
to his companion. He gave no thought to Ethne--all his thought was for
Elgiva. He paused.

“You are beautiful, Elgiva--and you, I know, are as virtuous as only
a Christian maid can be. I will not take you back to a woman, vile,
infamous and treacherous as a serpent.”

“Then will I walk back alone--ay, through a thousand daggers!”
exclaimed the Saxon. “Ethne is not vile and treacherous, and she is as
a sister to me--as desirous as I myself of rescuing my mother. You are
ungenerous, Cormac of Fail--unworthy the name of your father. Ah! I
wish I had men and warriors--I wish I had an ancient name to which to
rally followers--and that I might go and rescue my mother without your
help.”

Cormac stared at her.

“Why--why did I leave Ethne’s side to-day, and why could not some other
come and rescue me instead of you?”

It was seldom Elgiva gave way to tears. Now she threw herself down on a
heap of stones and sobbed.

Cormac turned and walked up and down the cave with frowning, averted
eyes. She disliked him, of course, and he deserved it, he said to
himself--but he did not deserve this!

Elgiva soon controlled her sobs. Furious that she should behave like
a child again on their first meeting--when she had determined to be a
woman for Cormac’s sake.

She stole one or two glances towards him as he passed and re-passed her.

After the British manner his hair was parted in the middle and floating
freely about his neck; it was as black as night with a gleam on it
like steel, where the ends curled into rings, his blue-black eyes were
deeply set and fringed with black lashes. Under the bronze of his skin
his cheek was pale and thin, showing the lines of the muscles beneath.
The alert carriage of the small head, the play of the mobile nostrils,
reminded the Saxon irresistibly of some untamed mountain horse.
When Cormac was a child these characteristics had been noticed by
Griffith--in particular a certain movement by which he tossed back his
black locks as a horse throws the mane from its eyes--and he had given
the boy the title of The Black Horse. A horse had in generations past
been the totem of Griffith’s family. The old chieftain had hoped to see
the day when the Black Horse should be pitted against the White Horse
of the Saxons--he had seen the day, and died!

Cormac had ceased to walk up and down the grotto. He approached
Elgiva--threw himself down beside her.

“Oh, Elgiva,” he cried, “wife that will be--beautiful, adored! Forgive,
forgive all--I mean at Glendalough. Come with me in safety from
Ethne--at dawn the priest can unite us. Gift of my father to me--my
beloved--my spouse!”

She had recovered from her passion and was quite calm.

“My wife, my spouse!” she repeated. “The last time I heard such words
from your lips they were addressed to Ethne, not to me!”

“That evil woman!” he said. “Name her not with thyself!”

“She is my sister,” returned Elgiva. “And tell me, Cormac, have you no
sin that you should thus cast stones at Ethne?”

His head drooped.

“I am not fit for thee,” he said. “I have sinned often; above all, at
the place of Fire--but ’tis past--I repent!”

“Ay, yet you deny repentance to Ethne!”

“I speak not of Ethne now--only of thee. Come with me, my father’s
darling, and I will soon teach thee to love me.” She hid her face.
“Come with me and leave Ethne!”

“I will return to her. And when you have forgiven her you may speak of
love to me.”

“That will never be,” said Cormac, rising. “Yet will I do as I am
asked, and take thee back.”

The grotto filled with shadows. Evening was falling. Cormac suggested
that it was a fitting time to escape from the cave and make their way
to Ethne’s house. Elgiva thought that his voice sounded harsh and cold.
She turned without a word to the steep ascent that led them to the open
ground above.

The upward, winding tunnel was dark and difficult; but a few minutes’
climbing brought them to the top and to the scene of the tumult of the
afternoon.

They stole, unperceived, from the shadow of the great Monolith that
marked their exit, and found themselves in the stir of the multitude
still assembled on the spot. All around them were horses and cattle
with their accompanying horse-boys and cow-herds. On every side
camp-fires twinkled. It was a fine night and the stars shone. A rich
dim scene spread itself before their eyes--moving herd and glittering
camp fires, long lines of tents and newly-built wattled cotes, ancient
temples looming in the distance, and sumptuous Roman villas dotting
the valley; a white Roman road gleamed in the darkness of the forest
beyond, and close at hand was a light tapering minster that was being
built by Greek workmen.

Mingled with the murmur of the sea and the tumult of the flocks, and
their attendants, was the sound of monks’ chant, the clash of swords;
and the shrieks and brawl of mead-drinkers and revellers.

On the way they paused in a little wood and bowed themselves at a mossy
shrine, where a hermit filled the priestly office for some kneeling
Christians.

Once, from a hollow oak-tree, the beautiful face of a girl-hermit
looked at them; her white hands, clashed on a robe of sack-cloth, had
bloody marks upon them, like the print of nails; she spoke to them, as
she spoke to every passer-by, in a voice clear and pure and high like
the final peal of a hymn of praise.

A little further on were masons working by torch-light at a wayside
cross; twenty feet in height, and all wreathed with scroll work that
was carved, not for money, but for love of God and beauty.

The banners of the festive town danced gaily as they entered the
city walls. Cormac obtained directions from a watchman. Their road
led them to a magnificent Roman villa; built almost on the walls,
and overlooking the rushing stream that flowed from the surrounding
mountains.

It was difficult to gain admittance even to the outer courts of
the dwelling. They were obliged to wait, standing in a recess of a
triangular bridge which formed part of the walls and spanned the
torrent beneath. A deep dyke separated them from the forest; in whose
depths they could plainly hear the gnarling of wolves and scream of
swine. The forest grew from the very edge of the dyke and the trees,
overhanging the stream, swept the side of the arch on which they stood.
As they stood waiting a dark disordered mass came towards them along
the river banks. The light broke on lance and javelin, and here and
there, on the white face of a horse. A reckless party of jostling
race-horses, crying beagles, and huge hounds came into view, and
galloped towards them along the rough, pebbly path that skirted the
torrent.

The leader of the party was bare-headed, his beard streaming in the
wind; he flourished a mead-horn in his hand from which he drank
repeatedly; at times he rose to his feet on the bare back of his
stallion, and played at cup and ball as he rode along--by means of the
end of his drinking horn and a handful of pebbles he had dexterously
swept from the ground over which he galloped. As he drew nearer the
light showed a gruesome object swung on the neck of his horse.

“A Druid, a juggling Druid!” cried Cormac, pointing with scorn and
horror at the rider. “The sorcerers have been at their vile rites--they
have slain their victim and have been divining by his entrails.”

The man and woman drew closer into the niche in which they stood--for
the wild party, leaping a small creek, swept up the approach and on to
the bridge. The great portals swung open. The wind from the horses’
nostrils, the clamour of men and hounds swept by them, and the whole
party passed into the outer court.

Cormac thought he distinguished the light form of a woman on one of the
foremost of the race-horses.

“Ethne!” he exclaimed in angry-excitement. “Ethne! She has gathered her
horde around her even here!”

“Ethne--it was not Ethne!” exclaimed the Saxon. “And even so--because
you see the body of a dead man carried on the saddle of a bard, why
should you believe he has been the victim of unholy rites--are dead
bodies so uncommon in these days? But it was not Ethne, I tell you!”

“It was Ethne!” returned Cormac.

“Then she has been searching for me,” cried Elgiva, in tones of
conviction.

“Ah, poor fool, you will believe she loves you,” said Cormac,
contemptuously. “As though Ethne loved anything in the world save her
lost possessions in Damnonia.”

“You are a stone, Cormac. Ethne has told me how harsh and unforgiving
you were to her at Druimceta,” said Elgiva. “Now you will not believe,
though I tell you again and again, that Ethne loves me.”

“If Ethne loves you,” said Cormac, with the same contempt, “then indeed
she hath changed, and my opinion may change also.”

At that moment admittance was given them to the vestibule of the
mansion. Passing through the atrium they were ushered into a large
court; with clustered pillars and frescoed walls--otherwise it
resembled one of the ordinary halls of the Britons, for it was hung
with wicker shields and rude pikes--a fire of yew-logs blazed in the
centre. The big room was full of people; thronged with Bret and Pict
and Scot--monks and warriors. There were minstrels, harpers, jesters,
clowns with them, their accompanying creatures--beagle and hound
and dancing bear; everywhere hopped tame wrens and, here and there,
spreading their dark wings on the arms of soothsayers were talking
ravens. The usual places of honour were being given to workers in gold
and silver, to master-carpenters, and to the healers of mankind--the
leeches.

The room was so full that the entrance of Cormac and Elgiva closely
cloaked was unnoticed.

Upon a slightly raised platform they could see Ethne standing among
her waiting women. They could see her plainly, and hear her voice
distinctly. She had but just lately alighted from her horse. Her hair
was dishevelled with the wind, and her purple riding cloak was still
around her.




CHAPTER XIV.

LEADER OF THE KYMRY.


Cormac had never seen Ethne in anguish before; for anguish was the only
word to express the condition in which he now beheld her.

Her grief and tears appeared to him so unnatural that for a few seconds
he had looked and listened without comprehending the scene before him.

“I have lost her!” Ethne was saying. “I have searched everywhere and I
cannot find her. Neither seer nor soothsayer can aid me--I have lost
her whom I would not have lost for all the world!”

Her grief was quite unfeigned. Her limbs trembled so much that she
could not stand. Her face was white as death.

Cormac’s heart beat fast. The remembrance of his words to Elgiva came
back to him.

He saw Ethne wring her hands in despair. She gave one mournful cry,
“Elgiva! Elgiva!” and fell fainting into the arms of her women.

Cormac had a strange, choking sensation. The old passionate admiration
for Ethne stirred in his heart once more, mixed with a flood of remorse
and shame and doubt.

Elgiva had flown from his side. She had torn her way through the
crowd. He could see her kneeling beside Ethne, holding her in her arms
and calling upon her by name. Ethne had recovered from her momentary
faintness, but was still so weak that Elgiva was obliged to support
her. The two women laughed and cried together. There was a wild scene
between them--Elgiva explaining, Ethne expostulating. Cormac could see
that Ethne’s present joy was as unfeigned as her past grief.

The Saxon helped Ethne to her seat, and then knelt at her feet, holding
one of the small white hands in a tender grasp. At sight of the two
women a murmur of applause came from the people assembled in the hall.

Cormac stole up quietly and stood behind Elgiva, his sparkling eyes
fixed on Ethne’s face; her face looked soft and gentle with the traces
of grief still upon it. She looked up at him, not surprised at his
appearance--having just heard from Elgiva that he had rescued her.

Ethne held out her hand.

“You would not let me go with you,” she said, gently, “but I have
followed you.”

He said nothing in reply; but bending down knelt on one knee before her
and placed her hand upon his head.

It was the very scene to appeal to the hearts of the people. Cormac
was recognised, in spite of his shrouding cloak. Cry after cry to his
honour rang through the room. Weapons flashed, and clashed aloft.

“The Black Horse!” they cried, “Cormac of Fail! Cormac and Ethne!
Children of Tuathal! Twigs from the tree of Tara! All hail! All hail!”

They were the same battle cries, in the same Hibernian voices, as those
which had greeted him when he rode through Ireland with Ethne many
months before.

Cormac stood upright and threw aside his cloak. One of Ethne’s slaves
drew a scented saffron robe around him, another placed a golden hoop on
his head.

The applause grew louder. Trumpets and timpans almost deafened the
people. Cormac’s eye flashed, his cheek glowed.

He walked up and down the raised platform; smiling and responding to
the people.

“The Black Horse! The Black Horse!” they cried. “The Black Horse
against the White!”

Then an old man--so old men had forgotten the year of his birth--rose
and asked for a few minutes’ silence, that he might be heard.

“I call on you all to witness this thing,” he piped, “that one has come
among us from over the seas mightier than Hengist or Horsa. Here is the
Avenger! Here is the Black Horse! And though Britain lies white with
the cold ash of the White Horse she shall be blackened, in time, by the
scorch of the Black!”

The tumult was so great, after this, that although Cormac was seen to
speak, his voice could not be heard.

Again he walked up and down with the easy, spirited motion that
reminded Elgiva so irresistibly of the fleet mountain steeds. Often had
she seen such springing, quivering movements as she had watched them,
eager for the race.

In the confusion of sounds, Cormac’s quick ear detected the first
chords of a war-dance struck from the harps around him; and responding
to the music, he leapt forward and broke into the first movement of the
beloved sword-dance.

A half-halo of light glanced round him as he drew his sword like
lightning from its sheath. A band of warriors immediately gathered
about him and joined with him in the mazes of the dance.

Elgiva watched him with a beating heart. She realised now the truth of
what Ethne had told her--that Cormac drew men around him as a flower
gathers bees. Who could resist him, this darling of the people? He had
the grace and fire of an untamed animal, as he responded, with voice
and limb, to the music. More than mortal he seemed. His feet were
winged, surely; they did not hurry, but went on ever, swift and light
and even. To watch him--with a battle-song on his lips and sword and
feet ever in time to the music--was to see the very personation of
youth and fire.

Once, as he passed by her seat, he paused for an instant; then wove
one of the figures of the dance around her. The spirit of mischief
shone in his eyes. Bending towards her, as though in the measure of the
dance, he whispered teasingly:

“Do you remember your words to me at Glendalough? Tell me, Elgiva, are
you as ready now as then to wed me?”

The dance carried him away from her before she could reply. She flashed
a look at him. A ripple of teasing laughter came to her ears in return.

Again when he passed her--his eyes challenged hers. It was new to
her this wild assertive mood of his. She watched him with a vague
wonder--this personification of her mother’s race who turned so easily
from one note to another in the scale of human passion and played upon
its gamut with the ease their fingers played upon the harp.

Who could resist him, she asked herself, this darling of the people?

Ethne watched him, well-pleased; knowing that, to these simple
people--children of the soil--a stronger appeal could be made by dance
than by speech.

“Ahoi! Ahoi!” came Cormac’s battle cry once more. He tossed his locks
from his gleaming forehead; his thin nostril quivered; his sword
shimmered constantly in a half-arc of light. Swifter and swifter flew
his feet, as sword and shield gleamed in the warrior dance. He chanted
as he sang:

“Dance on! dance on: let us dance on! Dance on for aye! Till sword, and
foot, and tongue doth yield. The magic sense from rhythm born! Dance
on: dance on: let us dance on!”

Warrior after warrior fell out and gave place to others in the charmed
circle of the sword-dancers--either too fatigued or too confused and
giddy to observe the figures of the dance. But still the light, swaying
figure of the young chieftain flew on--till the eyes of the whole
assembly filled with wonder at him.

All present were so intent upon him that, for a time, they were
unconscious of uproar and confusion outside the hall.

Suddenly every entrance was flooded by a sea of white, agonized faces.

The faces, for the greater part were those of old men and women and
children, but amongst them were warriors’, blanched with fear; they
looked more ghastly because of the flaring torches they carried. A
confused murmur accompanied them--not the voices of men, but rather
the passionate sighs of those whom fear had turned to mutes.

The leader of the dance continued though all around the attention
was falling from him, and men were gazing upon each other in growing
excitement--knowing the tumult must mean battle--but not knowing the
quarter from whence it came.

In the moment of suspense Bret and Pict and Scot were stirred to the
very depths of the fount from which they drew their war-passion. Hands
leapt to knife and pike and Roman blade as, with paling faces, they
turned involuntarily towards each other. Shrill voices, at length,
broke yelling into the assembly.

“The Heathen--the Saxons--are upon us! They close in upon us from
either side!”

The leader of the sword-dance had halted--the flashing marvel of shield
and sword and winged feet had stopped, statue-like, for a minute.

And then again he was leader of men--not of revellers.

Suddenly at the head of every warrior, every chief in the hall--as they
banded themselves together in passionate devotion to him.

In a moment of time he became chief and leader of all about him. Not,
as it were, of his own free will, but of some power that emanated from
him--mysterious--intoxicating. All flocked towards him. The popular
cries of Cunedda and Kymry were yoked with those of Cormac and The
Black Horse. Men’s hearts kindled anew--Bret and Pict and Scot vowed
brotherhood for aye! But when they went forth, it was to confront
rumour of battle instead of battle itself!

The wild alarm that two bodies of Saxons were closing upon the Fair,
had arisen at the news that two bands of men, in the darkness, were
approaching on either side. Panic often seized the people, at the least
cause, since that fearful day when the Saxons had burst on the southern
plain like an angry sea; and, beating around the walls of Sarum, had at
length overcome the mighty fortress.

The approaching men proved to be serfs and herdsmen of Celtic race; but
they were the bearers of ill tidings.

From two directions came the grave news that the Roman city,
Viriconium, had fallen into the hands of the Saxons, under the two
dread brothers--Cutha and Ceawlin; that its inhabitants had been put to
the sword, and its buildings to the flame.

The awful tidings seemed to inspire Cormac with new hope and courage.

“To the South!” he cried. “To the Saxons!”




CHAPTER XV.

THE BLACK HORSE.


Cutha was slain! The Saxons were defeated!

These were the magic words that men were repeating to each other.

Cutha was slain, the Saxons were defeated--these were the two first
acts of the Black Horse--cried the followers of Cormac; the rest would
follow, and Britain would soon be again in the hands of its own people.

Cormac’s great army settled down to rest and make merry in the peaceful
valley of the Severn. His soldiers recked not that they were shut off
from retreat by hill and forest; that they were dangerously easy of
access to the West Saxons, and to those fierce Angles--the men of the
Merce.

South-south-east they had journeyed. They had swept, triumphantly,
across the land as though the victories they sang of were already
behind them. Their leader, they said, was to take all before him and
drive the Saxons from the shores. Revenge was to be taken at last on
the Jutish conquerors who had been the first of the savage stock to set
foot in Britain; the two brothers bearing the strange titles signifying
the Horse and the Mare--Hengist and Horsa, who had left the emblem of
the White Horse as a sign of conquest.

But it was the Black Horse now against the White. On all sides the
emblem of a black steed was displayed--on samite, and on coarse flax,
and hemp; this was to put utterly to shame, to destroy entirely, the
dread sign of Hengist.

The popular cry of the Black Horse appealed to all men. On all sides
chieftains had flocked forward to fight under the boy-leader--among
them Brochmael, Prince of Powys, who had united with him in defeating
the Saxons. And, just as on Southern slopes, the Saxons cut their white
horse on the chalk soil--so Cormac’s hosts burnt their hostile symbol
black on moss and heather.

The Severn valley was scorched in many places with the forms of
sprawling monsters that bore no more resemblance to a horse than to any
other quadruped. A huge banner, bearing the same device, flapped over
Cormac’s tent on the left bank of the river.

The wreck of a princely Roman mansion had been hastily fitted for the
reception of Ethne and her maidens. Ruined though it was, it was a
fitting palace for the splendour-loving Ethne. Gilt bronze mingled with
the oak shingles and stone of the roofs; and in the nobler portions
of the house, were tiles of gilt bronze; the baths were of a size for
royal use, and the walls were richly gilt, or lined with sheets of
brilliant glass. Glass in place of mica or shell filled the windows,
and brilliant glass was inlaid, jewel-like, in the walls and in the
mosaic of the floors; the rich metal-work was by Byzantine workmen.

Ethne herself was clad, royally, in purple and ermine; bare arm and
brow and neck clasped by Celtic torques. For ornaments she seldom wore
the amber, rock-crystal and coloured glass with which most women were
content, and now the long brooch that clasped her brat flashed with
encrusted emeralds, set in by cunning Roman workmanship.

“Here let us winter,” she said, one brilliant autumn day as she sat
in state on a carved golden chair. Above her, like a baldichino, hung
an embroidered peplos of great worth and beauty--so old it had once
decked the shrine of a temple to Apollo.

The marred walls about her had been hastily patched by fresh-hewn oak
and beech from the surrounding forests; the gleaming trunks and red
autumn leaves showed, side by side, with walls covered by sard and
jasper and amethyst.

As protection from the wind skins of sheep and goats were hung around,
mingled with tapestries that might, in their beauty, have been woven at
the loom of Penelope; they were embroideries from Egypt--that country
so lavish in her embroideries, that they worked on the sails of the
galleys she sent to Tyre!

“Winter here? Not a doubt of it,” said Elgiva, bluntly. “And the crows
will winter likewise. They will feast the winter long upon our flesh,
and our blood will warm the winter rain.”

She was sitting on a low stool beside Ethne of the Raven Hair; with
the old hound, Gelert, stretched at her feet. The creature scarcely
left her side--night or day. He had never wavered in his devotion to
her since the day she had saved his life. And just as much as he loved
Elgiva, he detested Ethne; and though at Elgiva’s command he would try
and curb his hatred, he would burst out into a low snarl if, by chance,
Ethne touched him, or her draperies passed over him. Elgiva tried hard
to break him of this habit and to teach him to love Ethne--but without
avail; nor was he to be gained over by any advances that Ethne would
make to him.

The affection between the two women seemed to increase each day; Ethne
now professed Christianity, and declared she owed her conversion to
Elgiva.

Cormac’s suspicions against Ethne had vanished; he took her advice on
all points. It was upon her suggestion that he had chosen the Severn
Valley as a camping-ground.

During the campaign Elgiva, with her more sober judgment, had opposed
the descent into the plains. Nor could she see that it aided their
plans--for Redwald and his men, it was believed, lay further to the
south and the west.

She pointed gravely to the hills beyond.

“Forests and mountains stretch between us and our refuge,” she said.
“We have crossed the barrier that earth herself has built between us
and our enemies.”

“Fair mother-earth helped us in our need with hill and forest,” said
Cormac. “Then were we the vanquished, now are we the victors. Is not
Cutha slain and Ceawlin loathed and detested by the Saxons themselves?”

He was smiling and triumphant, as his eye swept the scene of the
river-banks before him--the motley array of Kymry, who owned him
for their leader. British legions, still manifesting the polish and
discipline of Rome, woad-dyed savages, blue on the russet landscape;
bands of Hibernian Fili--their sleek race-horses, slight and frail,
beside the stout cavalry of the Romanised Brets; Picts from boundless
Caledonia--the swing of their sheep-skin garments never ceasing
in their restless masses; and warriors also from weems and caves
with arrows tipped with stone, or bearing leaf-shaped swords as in
days of old. Near at hand were workers inspecting and repairing the
scythe-edged chariots of early days--ever the pride and stay of the
Britons. From peak and wind-swept down came the hum and shriek of
bagpipes. Above all, great swarms of kites hovered in the air--for the
hosts of the great army yielded rich store for nest and maw.

On the hills beyond--sinister background for the reckless
warriors--burnt black on ling and heather was the conquering symbol,
the Black Horse. To Cormac’s ears came in uncouth, primitive verse a
weird refrain, sung continuously in his honour, a battle song that had
been in his family for unknown generations, descended from that dim
past whence sprang the origin of his forefathers’ totem, the Horse.
A vague, formless kind of verse, difficult of translation and, when
translated, shaping itself into words akin to these:

  “In days of Eld, when men choose birds and beasts around them,
  To bear their name and race and station,
      I sought and chose the swift, free horse!
  Into his silken, mobile ear my lips have slipt their whisper.
  Bear me away--away with the wind and the lightning and storm.”

“You say we have crossed the barrier between ourselves and our
enemies,” said Ethne, in reply to the Saxon’s words. “But I tell you,
my Elgiva, that we need no barrier against friends.”

“You speak in riddles,” said Elgiva, looking in wonder at the
bright-eyed and smiling woman.

“I speak in riddles, say you? And I can show you a riddle, too, as well
as speak one. Behold!”

At a sign from her some slaves drew apart two great pieces of tapestry
that covered a gap in the ruined walls; they saw that a great feast was
under preparation.

Not a flower-crowned banquet such as Ethne had loved to spread before
her friends in her Roman villa in Damnonia--but a feast of the rudest
fare. Rude in its fare and rude in its abundance--hogs and oxen,
roasted whole, mingled with cakes of meal as big as shields; hogsheads
of cheese and curds, and stacks of onions. Such a feast as would have
gladdened the roughest of the Picts and Scots; or have laden the board
of their enemies--the rude Saxons.

“Shall I aid you both to the reading of my riddle?” said the smiling
Ethne, “when I tell you that to-morrow morning we feast not with our
warriors but with our enemies--not indeed with our enemies, but with
our allies? That side by side the servers lay wine-cup and bottomless
drinking-horn!”

There was silence, whilst Cormac and Elgiva grasped the meaning of
these words. And then a torrent of words from both assailed Ethne’s
ears.

“We feast with the Saxons!” cried Elgiva. “Remember Vortigern, and
how he feasted with them, and beware! How when Bret and Saxon were
drinking side by side Hengist cried, ‘Draw your daggers!’ and each
Saxon smote the Briton at his side and slew him.”

“We are allied with the Saxons!” cried Cormac. “Without my knowledge?
How? When?”

“What matter if we knit our noose ourselves!” continued Elgiva,
scornfully. “Better die meadful and feasting than in drought and famine
on the battle-field. Curd and flesh to-day--cow-berry and toad-stool
to-morrow!”

Ethne clapped her hands lightly to her ears.

“Listen! Listen!” she cried, smiling. “For I have wonderful news to
tell you!”

“Great news, indeed!” exclaimed Cormac, with rising fury, “that we
should be the allies of that villain, Ceawlin of Wessex! No, Ethne----”

“Ceawlin of Wessex--never!” cried Ethne, interrupting him. “But what do
you say to Ethelbert of Kent?”

“Ethelbert of Kent!”

Cormac’s face changed. An alliance with the Kentish over-lord was
entirely different, for it was said his wife was a Christian--Bertha,
daughter of the Frankish king, Charibert.

“Yes, we are allied with him against Ceawlin!” cried Ethne, with
sparkling eyes; while Cormac breathed hard, and gazed at her between
friendly anger and admiration. “It is a thing of years ago, the feud
between the two; since Ethelbert was woefully beaten at Wibbesben by
Ceawlin. Ethelbert was but a stripling then, but he means now to have
his revenge!”

She paused, smiling.

“I will show you,” she said, “the pathway there is to be cut among
our enemies. There is discussion among them, and one Saxon wars upon
another. Last night, and the night before, when you little dreamed of
what I was doing, I had secret interviews with one of the most powerful
of the Saxon thanes, and I soon learnt that Redwald is no longer with
Ceawlin, but has left him and gone over to Ethelbert. That a thane
should leave his chief is one of the most terrible things that can
happen among the Saxons--but Ceawlin of Wessex, as these Saxon dogs
have named this side of Cæsariensis, is hated by his own people as well
as by his enemies, and some of our allies, the Hwiccan, are part of
the West Saxons. Ethelbert, king of erstwhile Cantii, has come round
by Mercia to join us here and has seized upon the moment to unite with
the Hwiccan, as well as with us and the Mercians; he wishes to depose
Ceawlin and place himself in power. To reward us for our support, he
will----” She turned, with outstretched hands to Elgiva. “He will force
Redwald to deliver up your mother to us!”

Elgiva fell, with a low sob, at Ethne’s knee, and placed her lips on
the hands that held hers.

“He knows, then, where Redwald is?” said Cormac.

“Redwald is, at this moment, in Ethelbert’s camp. By this time
to-morrow Elgiva and her mother will be together.”

Cormac stood before his foster-sister with bowed head, looking at her
with soft, grave eyes. For a moment his gaze wandered to the great
motley army, basking in the autumn sunlight, and then returned to her.
For the time his wild hopes of dominion over the Saxons were nothing to
him, before the fact that his father’s last injunctions were about to
be fulfilled--and through Ethne!

He might have fought twenty battles and yet been as far as ever from
the chief object of the campaign--here, at the very beginning, Ethne
had accomplished it.

“Do you blame me now that I kept the thing secret from you?” asked
Ethne, softly. “When so much depended on it, it seemed cruel to rouse
your hopes until I was certain.”

For a time he could not answer; speech failed him as he remembered his
words to Elgiva against Ethne.

At last he murmured in broken tones, as he knelt before her:

“I can never repay you, Ethne--I am unworthy even to thank you.”

He turned to Elgiva and said:

“It is finished, Elgiva--my father’s wishes are fulfilled. You
remember, in the grotto, you said you wished you might owe your
mother’s rescue to another rather than to me. You have your desire now.”

The girl made no reply.

“And yet--in spite of all my gratitude to Ethne, I should have liked
you to have owed it all to me. It is sweet to fight for those--we love!”

A quick blush flamed on Elgiva’s face. Her eyes met Cormac’s. Her hands
fell into his outstretched to her.

Ethne threw her arms round both.

“How say ye, my love-birds? Shall we have feast first and marriage
after? Shall the priest at eve join ye two in wedlock?”




CHAPTER XVI.

ETHELBERT OF KENT.


The day of the feast had dawned. Ethne had long left her bed, and
was now surrounded by her women at her toilet-table. She slipped the
bronze case from her mirror and looked at herself attentively. The
days of warfare and anxiety had left no impression upon her; the
white skin was as fair as ever, the lips as red, the hair as glossy
in its blue-blackness. Fresh from the bath, satin-like from delicate
unguents, never had the fair and beautiful skin appeared to greater
advantage--this she believed she owed to the elaborate system of
bathing Roman Britain had taught her to love, and which she could now
enjoy to the utmost; for she had put the baths of the villa into order
after much trouble. In her bathing she was a true Sybarite--luxuriating
in hot air and vapour, and in summer in sun-baths--spending much time
in passing, by almost imperceptible degrees, from cold to the utmost
degree of heat she was capable of enduring; after which she plunged
into new milk, or was anointed with costly and perfumed oil. She could
endure hardship and privation, but her love of luxury and wealth was a
passion with her. The toilet table at which she sat was scattered with
accessories of the most perfect kind. The silver unguent vases, filled
with Celtic spikenard, were in the form of the sacred lotus-flower; the
caskets and mirror-cases were ornamented with beautiful honeysuckle
pattern, and her own portrait was supported by cupids of priceless
workmanship.

Ethne’s magnificent toilette was almost completed--one woman was tying
some dusky British pearls about the throat, and another was staining
the fingers with henna when Gelert rushed into the room searching and
sniffing into every corner and behind every hanging; whining piteously
meanwhile. He pushed against the tiring-woman engaged on painting the
fingers, and the vase of henna was thrown on Ethne’s robe.

Ethne flew into a rage immediately; she rose and kicked the creature
so savagely that it became necessary to change her embroidered shoe as
well as repair the damaged robe.

“Ah, brute!” she cried. “Always at hand to annoy me--why did you not
follow your mistress?”

Contrary to his usual custom, the hound showed no ill-feeling to Ethne,
in spite of her treatment of him; and stretched himself on the ground
beside her, although she tried to beat him off. When she rose to leave
the room he still hung about her; when her women would have driven him
away he snarled and bit at them savagely.

He had been seeking for Elgiva and, unable to find her, was determined
to remain by Ethne’s side, where he hoped his mistress would, sooner or
later, return.

There was no time for delay; the candle-bearers stood waiting outside
the door--for Ethne, doing all things in royal state, had ordered
that a great candle, six feet in height, should precede her in the
procession.

She knew that all was in readiness. The hall of the feast was swept,
and garnished, and sprinkled with vervain-water; ivy wreaths to
ward off the effects of drinking were ready for each feaster. The
door opened, the great candle shed its rays on her, the procession
waited--she rose and followed.

She glanced exulting over the scene as she sank into her seat of
honour.

The leaders of the party, both Briton and Saxon, occupied an elevated
position; the dishes and plates from which they ate were of pure
gold; all fashioned, as Roman taste had demanded, from ancient and
beautiful Greek models. The stage on which they sat had once been an
upper chamber of the Roman villa, but its walls had suffered in the
Saxon destruction, and it now stood open to the halls and courts below.
From her position Ethne had a view of much of the great banquet she
had prepared. The half-ruined mansion had lent itself readily to her
purpose. In their ravages the heathen had thrown down so many of the
walls that the lower rooms and halls formed, with the outer courts, an
almost continuous apartment; in many places there was no roof at all,
but this proved an advantage in the eyes of the rude chieftains on
either side; in the open air they found greater space for the hounds
and body-slaves it was their pleasure should attend them. Clad in skins
of goat and sheep, hot with mead and gluttony, the warriors gave no
thought to autumn gust and passing raindrop; and cared not that wasp
and bee mingled with the viands before them.

Ethne’s eye travelled proudly over the scene before her. To her
feet the throng of feasters swept; and on through broken courts and
halls--branching off here and there to fill unseen side-aisles--and
on again to the great opening arch where their figures showed clear
against the distant dusk of the forest. A mighty feast even in those
days. Where it overflowed into the outer air it gained a fringe of
slaves, with here and there a favourite horse called by his master to
partake of Roman pulse or oaten cake; to the uproar would be added
the shrill neigh of some Hibernian racer, or the deep note of a Saxon
war-horse.

But in the midst of her triumph Ethne was moved to disgust. In days
gone by she had entertained her guests--polished Greeks and Romans--at
flower-strewn tables to the music of singing maidens; the air sweet
from perfumed fountains and the wine-flagons garlanded with roses.
Now her guests fought with their food as animals with their prey;
they scrambled together for the possession of tit-bits, and swallowed
great junks of flesh with the ease and rapidity of the hounds at their
feet; to the perpetual discord of dirk on platter there was a harsh,
pervading accompaniment of men munching their food as animals munch
their corn. Like animals, too, she thought they looked, clad wholly in
sheep and goat-skins--even their trews of hide; their yellow hair swart
from neglect, their fine skins chafed and roughened by sun and air;
with grass and hay bound round their feet. And to these savages she
must sue! Filthy, unwashed, barbarous--feasting in the ruins they had
made.

“A goodly sight, O King!” she said, turning to the Anglo-Saxon
in a seat of honour at her side. “These fine warriors are the
admiration of the Britons, even on our only meeting-ground, the
battle-field--therefore, a thousand times more at festival!”

“And yet I thought but just now, from your manner of looking at them,
and from your nostrils’ twitching that you would sooner my warriors
were at battle-distance than with you at cup and meat!”

Many of the Saxon thanes at the upper table had added a unique ornament
to their appearance--the waving length of a peacock’s feather. For
when the servers had entered bearing aloft these dainties with their
gorgeous tails outspread--a wild scramble had ensued that each might
obtain one of the feathers.

“Now, indeed, O King, you wrong me!” returned Ethne, in her sweetest
manner, “and for your words you must needs at once pledge me in this
loving-cup, and pledge me in the ale you love so well.”

From a beautiful slave she took a golden bowl that glittered with
emeralds, and drinking from it first, held it herself to the lips of
her companion.

But he took it coldly into his own hand, turning it with particular
care that he might drink from the very spot which her lips had pressed.
He returned it to the slave--spilling clumsily the remainder on Ethne’s
sweeping robes.

A sound between a chuckle and a grunt escaped him.

“I drink from the same spot with you,” he said, “but I give you no
fair words, but the truth, as my reason. You look at me so honey-sweet
and mouth your words so smoothly--and I have heard full many tales of
sweet words and poisoned cup!”

Ethne sighed audibly; she leaned towards him with seductive grace.

“Let us continue, then, as we have begun, O King Ethelbert! Give me the
truth only, or what you deem the truth--and leave me to find the sweet
words myself.” She smiled and her ugly tusks showed themselves.

He had seized upon a dish of rosy apples and was devouring them,
shredding the floor and her dress with pip and core. His eyes,
narrowed with the relish of the fruit, glanced sideways upon
her--half-contemptuously, half-suspiciously. He knew it was through
this woman, and not through her foster-brother, that the alliance
with the Kymry had been formed. To his stern Saxon mind it seemed a
meaningless prelude to the business in hand, thus to bandy what seemed
to him baby speeches. Ethne’s beauty also was not altogether to his
liking; her small and slender proportions, the blue-black of her hair,
and the ivory pallor of her skin were far removed from his ideal of
womanly beauty; and to him her delicate manner and bird-like appetite
were unnatural. He glanced from her to the scene below, at the Saxon
women--large, fair, and feasting bravely.

His Thor and Odin religion of terror supplied him with a host of
elves and sprites--pale, dark-haired, bright-eyed--and he could not
dissociate the thought of them from this small, dark woman at his side.
Instinctively, he said a charm to himself, and muttered incantations
between each mouthful.

As to Ethne, she was experiencing some disappointment in this meeting
between herself and the great Ethelbert of Kent.

She looked on him with more favour than he on her. He had not yet grown
coarse from overfeeding and drinking; and his figure had the majesty of
the gods, to whom he traced his origin. His long hair and golden beard
sparkled, almost as brightly as the massive crown upon his head. Much
of his dress was of a splendour Ethne had seldom seen surpassed; but
through the openings of his upper garments she could see that, under
rich robes embroidered and jewelled, he wore the close-fitting dress
of sheep-skin that was the garb of the meanest serf; the thongs, which
bound the sandals together, were pointed with jewels and gold, and gold
formed every fastening of his garments.




CHAPTER XVII.

ETHNE’S ERROR.


Cormac’s seat at the banquet had been placed at some distance from
Ethne. This he thought strange, for Ethne, so anxious to identify
herself with him, generally insisted on sitting beside him; it was
her custom to lavish attention upon him, but now she showed herself
indifferent to his presence.

He could not overhear her conversation with Ethelbert, had he
wished--he had no desire to do so. He trusted to her to make all
necessary arrangements--his whole mind for the time was given to love
and Elgiva. It had been a disappointment when Ethne, meeting him at the
entrance to the hall, had told him that Elgiva would not appear at the
feast. He marvelled greatly why she had absented herself and why the
old hound Gelert had not stayed with her.

The time wore on slowly. The Anglo-Saxon minstrels broke into
coarse, jigging tunes; their fellows feasted more heartily when thus
accompanied; beating time with wagging heads and shouting between their
mouthfuls to the jerky numbers. The Celtic pipers joined in--the wild
Hibernians adding their piercing note; the hounds followed with dismal
howls. The smell of sheep-skin clothing was strangely mingled with the
steam of the coarse feast.

The great Bretwalda addressed Ethne suddenly.

“And your warriors lady, I hope are ready to march with me at this
week’s end?”

In a moment she was upright, smiling.

“Ah!” said she, “it is time we spent a minute in these troublesome
matters. Our aid is ready at any moment against this villain, Ceawlin
of Wessex. And the conditions I ask will not, I think, be hard!”

The Bretwalda paused with his whittle in a mass of goats’ flesh.

“The conditions!” he repeated. “The conditions!”

“Yes, the conditions, my liege,” she said, still smiling. “Is it
strange we ask aught in return?”

“Aught in return!” again he repeated her words, “aught in
return!”--half in contempt, half in anger. What right, he wondered, had
women to do anything but stitch trews and bake bread, and lend a hand
occasionally in battle? He went on eating his goats’ flesh.

Ethne felt sick at heart. She took a draught of her favourite Greek
wine. Then turned on him a smiling face.

“You remember, O King, my conditions?”

He said nothing--only looked, far off, through an arched opening past
the dusk and blue of the low-lying forest to where the cattle strayed
upon the hills; the hills that separated them from mountainous Cambria.

Then he pointed silently to the heights with one hand, and with the
other grasped his long rune-covered sword.

“My lord?” she questioned, with paling lips but with an attempt at
mirth. “Your gestures, I doubt not, are deemed most eloquent, but I
would fain have speech as well!”

“Those hills, lady,” he said, looking at her steadfastly, “are the
chain wherewith you and your warriors are bound to me--this sword is
the fate that awaits those who refuse to ally with me against Ceawlin
of Wessex!”

Ethne half rose to her feet. A fit of rage seized her which she could
scarcely repress but she kept silent, although two vivid spots of
colour suddenly showed on her white cheeks, and her eyes glittered
strangely.

Ethelbert helped himself to some virgin-honey from the board; and as he
ate it continued to gaze on Ethne.

With these strange glittering eyes the Celtic woman was dangerously
akin to sprite and elf. The fear came upon him that she might beguile
him. Such haunting fears were Ethelbert’s throughout his life--in his
meeting with Saint Augustine he bargained that it should take place in
the open air, for he believed the danger from incantation was greater
within four walls. He recalled the scene in which he had seen her on
the battle-field; in the din and heat of the fight with men falling
like leaves around her, her charioteer had rushed upon the dying Cutha
whilst she stood upright, uttering incantations in a piercing, unknown
tongue.

Again Ethelbert muttered a charm; and this time, as a further
precaution he made the sign of the cross, as he had seen his Christian
Bertha do.

“I must remind you, noble Ethelbert,” said Ethne, with forced calmness,
“of the terms of our agreement. To begin--it is not necessary to tell
you of the value you set upon the services of Ceawlin’s former thane,
Redwald; nor of Redwald’s great desire to obtain possession of my
companion, the Saxon maid, Elgiva! And can you deny that the compact
between you and me was that you should cede my former possessions in
Damnonia to me for our services against Ceawlin, and the restoration of
Elgiva to her Saxon kinsmen?”

Ethelbert turned with some dignity to his companion.

“You forget one thing, lady,” he said, “of great importance--and that
is that your negotiations were not with me at all, but with Redwald.
He is my best soldier, but I cannot recognise any wild promises he may
have made to you even should Damnonia fall into my hands. I am willing
enough that he should obtain the maid and thank you, queen, for your
kindly gift to him.” Ethne here bit her lip until the blood appeared.
“But it seemed to me you were over-anxious to part with the fair Saxon.
So anxious that you could not wait for the reply of my emissaries. Ha,
ha! Wit you have, in plenty, and fine speech--but you are hot and hasty
like all Welsh--and heat and haste err oft!”

Ethne continued to control her wrath. She tried to smile.

“I cannot tell you all the difficulties that beset me,” she said,
“but I ask you to think of me as less witless than I seem. My plans
concerning the maid demanded the greatest secrecy even from my own
councillors!”

“Tut, tut,” said the blunt Saxon. “What care I for your plans and your
councillors--and I come not here to bandy words over maids and their
quarrels with their kinsfolk! I come here to direct you, and yonder
stripling-chieftain about our plans for our next week’s campaign!”

Ethne became as pale as death in her effort to control herself.

“You are over-sure of your claims upon us,” she said, in a slow,
trembling voice. “What of Ceawlin? He may, perhaps, offer fairer
conditions for our aid against you.”

Ethelbert laughed shortly, and swore scornfully.

“By Thor and Odin and the tail of the mare of Hengist--these Welsh
outfool themselves. Know you not that I lie betwixt your host and
Ceawlin?”

Ethne laughed also--a weak, forced laugh.

“A jest--a jest, Sir King! Pardonable, surely, at least and
merry-making!”

“A jest!” repeated Ethelbert. “And if one be pardonable, likewise a
second. What then of Ceawlin! He also might find my terms easier if I
ask his aid against you.”

“Well said, King Ethelbert! Your jest hath given mine its death-blow.
Men do belie you Saxons when they call you witless. A very subtle wit,
indeed, you seem to me to have.”

She laughed--again the same forced laughter.

Then suddenly she broke down--she burst into one of her paroxysms of
rage, as some women burst into tears. The pent-up wrath escaped.

“You Jutish churl!” she shrieked. “Do you treat us like slaves--to be
used and then cast off like clouts? Fight we will--but against you, not
with you. I will not rest till your bloody head be brought me and I
have hacked out your sneering tongue myself.”

Her angry voice rang through the hall. She could be plainly seen, as
she stood upright in her glittering robes. She drew her sword from her
girdle and it flashed above her head.

She had feared a bloody break-up to the banquet--and now she herself
had brought it about.

The brawl spread, quick as lightning. Within three minutes after
Ethne’s voice had rung through the hall, ten men were slain and thirty
wounded. The alarm was sounded on both sides--and within an hour a
desperate battle between the Kymry and Saxons was in full course.
Before nightfall Ethne and Cormac had been taken prisoners.




CHAPTER XVIII.

ENGLAND’S FIRST CHRISTIAN QUEEN.


The foster-brother and sister were imprisoned in one of the rooms
of the Roman villa, in which the feast had been held. They were not
fettered, but were carefully watched by a strong body of soldiers.
They were to be put to death upon the following day. Their great army
had scattered in every direction; a great number of prisoners had been
taken by the Saxons. The Black Horse had failed!

The man and woman sat as far from each other as the room would allow.
Cormac sat with his face buried in his hands. Ethne crouched like
a wild animal caught in its lair; her body still quivered with the
war-passion of the evening before; her face was swollen from the blows
she had received; her beautiful hair was matted with blood, and blood
stained her white skin and her tattered finery.

Cormac could not bear to look at her. He knew now the part she
had played with Redwald. During the long night she had told him
everything--told it him fiercely--with wild, heathen oaths. In her
despair and rage there was still some pleasure in letting him know of
Elgiva’s fate.

In all the tumult and distress of Cormac’s mind Elgiva’s loss seemed
scarcely harder to bear than that Ethne should prove so treacherous and
vile.

“We shall die together,” said Cormac, taking his hands from his face
and looking at Ethne solemnly. “It is fitting--that I who tied myself
so blindly to you in life, should not be parted in death!”

Ethne made no reply.

“And yet,” he said, after a time, as though continuing some thought
aloud, “I could have sworn at the Fair that you loved Elgiva and
lamented her loss.”

“Lamented her loss!” repeated Ethne, gloomily. “Ay, her loss meant
all lost in those days--long ago I promised you should hear what the
diviners told me at the Beltane festival, and now you shall hear it.
They told me I should gain my lost possessions in Damnonia, in exchange
for a Saxon maid. Now you know why I brought the great, fawning wench
with me to Britain.”

She started up, raging again.

“Did the stars tell me right? Did they divine aright? Ah!” she turned
on Cormac, “it was your silly calf-love for the Saxon gawk that stood
in the way! I feared to delay lest you should discover my plans and
prevent them--then I acted too quickly, and lost everything. I should
have kept her with me until I was certain that Ethelbert would do as I
wished.”

Her rage was horrible to witness.

As she stormed up and down the chamber there was a rustle in one of the
corners, and the hound, Gelert, ran into the room.

Ethne rushed upon him immediately--here was something on which to vent
her fury. The creature crouched down in supplication before her--but
she kicked and trampled him underfoot.

“Beast!” she roared. “You haunt me like an evil genius; why did you not
go with your mistress? Ah! curses upon her--she is safer now than I!”

The animal shrank under her blows, with a strange moan that was almost
a murmur of expostulation. After all he had gone through, and the
battles in which he had fought, there was something almost human about
the old hound.

It was strange how, in his grief and search for Elgiva, he seemed
determined to control the deep resentment he had always nursed against
Ethne. He endured all her ill-usage patiently in the hope that, by her
means, he might yet find Elgiva. He whimpered now like a whipt child.

Cormac rose and thrust Ethne away from the creature. Gelert was now
specially dear to him because of the lost Elgiva.

Ethne turned on her foster-brother. In her rage she was a
mad-woman--forgetting that the Saxons had bereft her of her weapons
she sprang backward, fumbling at her girdle for her dagger; her face
horribly distorted, showed to their full her beast-like tusks.

The hound, looking on, understood the familiar action. He had lived
too long among fighters not to know that she sought her sword; and
that sword, he knew, was to be used against his master. He was an old
warrior, well-trained in his work--many a man on the battle-field had
received his death-wound from Gelert. With one spring his whole weight
was hurled on Ethne; one short snap of his iron jaws and his old fangs
had torn a fatal wound in her thin white throat.

The next moment all was tumult in the chamber. Several of the soldiers,
who were on guard, rushed in on hearing Ethne’s death-cry. Cormac was
seized by the soldiers, who believed he had been attacking the woman.
Ethne was carried into an adjoining room.

Gelert gave a loud bark of joy, and rushed forward to meet two women
who appeared at the door, accompanied by a Saxon who wore the dress of
a priest.

To Cormac’s entire bewilderment, Elgiva stood before him.

“You, too!” he moaned. “Are you to suffer also for all this sin and
treachery? Your life, I hoped, was safe.”

“And yours, too, Cormac,” she answered, solemnly. “You owe it to a
fellow-Christian!”

Then, after a time, she told him what had happened to her after her
departure from Ethne’s side on the preceding morning.

When Cormac had heard her story, he remembered the words of Saint
Columba--the Cross and not the Sword will subdue the Saxons!

Elgiva said that at dawn on the day of the feast, Ethne awoke her
saying that her mother was on her way to the British camp, and that
Elgiva was to ride with some waiting Saxons to meet her. Elgiva set
forth immediately, and rode some distance before she discovered Ethne’s
treachery, and that she was being taken, as a prisoner, to Redwald. She
endeavoured to escape, but found it useless. She then appealed to the
men who accompanied her; and in her explanations and expostulations,
she discovered that one of them had a wife who had lately adopted
Christianity, and was now in the service of Queen Bertha. She persuaded
this man to let her see his wife.

The interview she craved brought her more than she had dared to hope.
Her mother’s story and long resistance to Paganism had already reached
Queen Bertha’s ears; she now prevailed on Ethelbert to allow her to
purchase the liberty of both women from Redwald--a difficult matter to
arrange, even at the great price she offered; but Redwald was loath
to refuse anything to the wife of the king to whom he had just vowed
fealty.

“And so, Cormac,” said Elgiva, “I am sent back to you, and my mother
with me, on the one condition that we depart to-morrow at dawn.”

Afterwards they looked down on the body of Ethne of the Raven Hair. The
mother of Elgiva gently closed the staring eyes and said:

“Judge not, that ye be not judged! This woman was a Druidess, and a
daughter of Druids, and they are reared in vice and cruelty. Their
mothers are naught to them; when they marry it is not with one
man, but with many; the children they bear are sent at once to the
foster-mother. Love and honour are closed books to them.”


THE END.


_William J. McKenzie, The Devonshire Press, Torquay._




Transcriber’s Notes

In a few cases, errors in punctuation have been corrected.

The word Chapter was added before VI.

Page 46: “Cond of the Hundred Battles” changed to “Conn of the Hundred
Battles”

Page 82: “he gratefuly accepted” changed to “he gratefully accepted”

Page 95: “the hounds and man” changed to “the hounds and men”

Page 167: “Ceawlin and Wessex” changed to “Ceawlin of Wessex”

Page 178: “mouthe your words” changed to “mouth your words”



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