The Casque's Lark; or, Victoria, the Mother of the Camps

"As many as he can capture and feed – the same as he has as many horses as he can buy."

"What! Does not a sacred and eternal union join the husband to the mother of his children, as with us Gauls? – What! Sisters, wives and mothers – all are slaves? Blessed of the gods is Gaul, my own country, where our mothers and wives, venerated by all, proudly take their seat in the nation's councils and where their advice, often wiser than that of their husbands and sons, not infrequently prevails."

Palpitating with cupidity, Elwig made no answer to me, and resumed the thread of her dominant thoughts.

"You will, accordingly, not mention the jewels to Neroweg. He would keep them all for himself. You will wait until it is dark to leave the camp. I shall accompany you. You will give me the jewels, all the presents – to me alone!"

And again bursting into almost insane peals of laughter, she added:

"Gold bracelets! Necklaces of pearls! Ear pendants studded with rubies! Diadems full of precious stones! I shall look grand as an empress! Oh, how beautiful I shall be in the eye of Riowag!"

Elwig thereupon cast disdainful glances at the copper bracelets that she rattled as she shook her arms, and repeated:

"I shall look very beautiful to Riowag!"

"Woman," I said to her, "your advice is prudent. We shall have to wait until it is night for us to leave the camp together and regain the river bank."

And, to the end of still further enlisting Elwig's confidence in me by seeming to take an interest in her vainglorious greed, I added:

"But if your brother sees you decked with such magnificent ornaments, will he not take them away from you?"

"No," she promptly answered with a strange and sinister look. "No, he will not take them!"

"If Neroweg the Terrible Eagle is of as violent a temperament as you claim, if he came near cutting off your arm for having wished merely to touch part of his booty," I suggested, surprised at her answer, and anxious to fathom her thoughts, "what will prevent your brother from seizing the jewels?"

Elwig held up to me her large knife with an expression of calm ferocity that made me shiver, as she answered:

"When I shall have the treasure – to-night, I shall enter my brother's hut – I shall share his bed, as usual – and when he is asleep I shall kill him – "

"Your own brother!" I cried with a shudder and hardly believing what I heard, although the insight that the priestess gave into the shocking immorality prevalent among the Franks was nothing new to me. "How! You share your own brother's bed?"

The priestess seemed no wise disconcerted by my question, and answered with a somber mien:

"I have shared my brother's bed since the day that he violated me. It is the fate of almost all the sisters of the Frankish kings who follow them in war. Did I not tell you that their wives, their sisters and their mothers are the first slaves of the warriors? What female slave is there who, willingly or unwillingly, does not share her master's bed?"

"Hold your tongue, woman!" I cried interrupting her. "Hold your tongue! Your monstrous words might draw a thunderbolt upon our heads!"

And without being able to add another word I contemplated the creature with horror. Such a mixture of debauchery, greed, barbarism and, withal, stupid frankness, seeing that Elwig unbosomed herself to me, a man whom she then saw for the first time in her life, upon her fratricidal intentions – that fratricide, preceded by incest, which this priestess of a sanguinary cult was subjected to and who shared her brother's bed while she at the same time surrendered herself to another man – all that filled me with horror, notwithstanding I had often heard accounts of the abominable morals of the barbarians beyond the Rhine.

Elwig seemed not to concern herself about the cause of my silence nor of the evident disgust that she filled me with. She mumbled some unintelligible words, and counted the copper bracelets that her arms were loaded with. She presently said to me pensively:

"Do you think I shall have nine fine bracelets studded with precious stones to replace these? Could they all go into a little bag that I shall keep concealed under my robe when I return to the hut of the king, my brother? Why do you not answer my questions?"

The cold, I should almost say naïve, ferocity of the woman redoubled the disgust that the monster inspired in me. Again I remained silent, and she cried aloud:

"Why do you not answer me? You promised me the jewels!"

But seeming to be suddenly struck by a new thought she added with terror:

"I told him all! Suppose he tells it all again to Neroweg! My brother would kill us both, me and Riowag! The thought of the treasure bereft me of my senses!"

And again she started to call, turning her face towards the cavern.

A second old hag, no less hideous than the first, hobbled out holding in her hand the bone of an ox from which hung a partly boiled shred of meat at which she gnawed with her toothless gums.

"Come quick to me," the priestess said to her, "and leave your bone there."

The old hag obeyed unwillingly, grumbling like a dog whose meat is taken away from him. She laid the bone on one of the projecting rocks at the entrance of the grotto, and drew near, wiping her lips.

"Gather some dry, good branches and roots of trees and kindle a fire with them under the brass caldron," the priestess said to the old woman.

The latter returned into the cavern, and brought out all the things that she was ordered. Soon a bright fire burned under the caldron.

"Now," Elwig said to the old woman, pointing her finger at me as I lay stretched out upon the earth at the feet of the statue of the subterranean deity, with my hands pinioned behind my back and my feet bound fast, "kneel down upon him."

I could make not the slightest motion. The old hag planted herself on her knees upon my breast-plate, and said to the priestess:

"What must I do next?"

"Make him put out his tongue."

I then understood that, carried away at first by her savage greed into making dangerous confidences to me, Elwig now reproached herself for having heedlessly mentioned her amours and her fratricidal intentions, and could think of no better way to compel my silence on these subjects towards her brother than to cut off my tongue. The project was more easily conceived than it could be executed. I clenched my teeth with all my might.

"Tighten your fingers on his throat!" Elwig commanded the hag. "He will then open his mouth and stick his tongue out. I shall then cut it off."

With her knees firmly planted upon my cuirass, the hag leaned forward so close to me that her hideous face almost touched mine. I shut my eyes with disgust. Presently I felt the crooked yet nervous fingers of the priestess' assistant tighten at my throat. For a while I struggled against suffocation and did not unlock my teeth; but, as Elwig had foreseen, I soon felt almost smothered and unconsciously opened my mouth. Elwig immediately thrust in her fingers in order to seize my tongue. I bit her so savagely that she withdrew her hand screaming with pain. At that moment I saw the black warriors and Riowag reissue from the wood whither they had withdrawn at the priestess' orders. Riowag approached on a run, but he stopped undecided what to do at the sight of a troop of Franks who arrived from the opposite side and stepped into the clearing. One of these called out in a hoarse and imperious voice:

"Elwig! Elwig!"

"The king, my brother!" gasped the priestess, who was on her knees beside me.

It seemed to me that she looked for the knife that she had dropped during her struggle with me.

"Fear not! I shall be dumb. You shall have the treasure all for yourself," I whispered to Elwig, fearing lest, in her terror, the woman plunge the knife into my throat. I sought to secure her support at all hazard, and to contrive a means of escape by inciting her cupidity.

Whether Elwig trusted my word, or whether her brother's presence stayed her hand, she cast a significant glance at me, and remained on her knees at my side, with her head drooping upon her chest as if absorbed in revery. The old hag having risen to her feet, my breast-plate was relieved of her weight; I could again breathe freely; and I saw the Terrible Eagle standing before me, escorted by several other Frankish kings, as the chiefs of those marauding hordes styled themselves.

CHAPTER V

NEROWEG THE TERRIBLE EAGLE

The Frankish chief who stood before me was a man of colossal stature. Due to the use of lime-water, his beard as well as his greasy hair, that rose in a knot over his forehead, had turned coppery red. His hair, tied with a leather thong on the top of his head, fell behind his shoulders like the flowing crest of a casque. Above each of his bushy red eyebrows I saw an eagle's talon tattooed in blue, while another scarlet tattoo mark, representing the undulations of a serpent, spanned his forehead. His left cheek was also ornamented with a red and blue tattoo that consisted of transverse rays. On his right cheek, however, the savage ornament disappeared almost wholly in the cavity of a deep scar that began below the eye and was finally lost under his shaggy beard. Heavy and coarsely-wrought gold medals, that hung from and distended his ears, dropped upon his shoulders. A heavy silver chain, wound three times around his neck, reached down to his semi-bare breast. Above his cloth tunic he wore a jacket of some animal's hide. His hose, of the same quality and as soiled as his tunic, were fastened by a leather belt from which, on one side, hung a long sword, on the other an axe of sharp stone. Wide strips of tanned skin criss-crossed upward over his hose, from the ankle to the knees. He leaned upon a short pike that ended in a sharp point. The other kings who accompanied Neroweg were tattooed, clad and armed more or less after the same fashion. The features of all bore the stamp of savage gravity.

Elwig, who remained on her knees at my side, sought to conceal her face from Neroweg. He rudely touched his sister's shoulder with the point of his pike, and addressed her harshly:

"Why did you send for me before boiling the Gallic dog for your auguries? My flayers have promised me his skin."

"The hour is not favorable," answered the priestess abruptly with a mysterious air. "The hour of night – of dark night is preferable to sacrifice to the gods of the nether world. The Gaul, moreover, says, oh mighty king, that he has a message from Victoria and her son."