In a few days, at early dawn, the journeys of Baithene and Ethne began again.
Eleazar hired a boat, and they went up the Loire to the city of Tours, where they landed.
This was the first city the captives had ever seen, and it impressed them greatly; the high walls, the tall houses, the villas of the Roman officials and rich citizens, in which it was set as if in a cluster of gems. They wondered how much more magnificent the great Rome itself could be. They were still among people of their own race, and language not quite unfamiliar was around them; but being on the south side of the river, in the kingdom of Theodoric, the Visigoth, the town had escaped the ravages of the other Gothic tribes, and also, now, of the Huns in northern and eastern Gaul. There, also for the first time, they saw a cathedral, the only sacred building they had yet beheld having been the round cell of hewn stones in Ireland, and the little chapel with the bell-tower on the sandy shore in Cornwall.
It was Friday evening when they arrived, and again the ritual of the Jewish Sabbath began in Eleazar’s home with the lighting of the seven-branched candlestick, and ended with the fragrance of the spices from the silver box, and the reading from the Hebrew manuscript. This Miriam had explained to Ethne. It was a thanksgiving to God for creating all sweet and pleasant things, a consecration of beauty, and a diffusion, symbolically, of the fragrance of the rest and worship of the Sabbath through the week. The words of the thanksgiving were, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who createst diverse kinds of spice, and all sweet and pleasant things.”
The next day Miriam and Eleazar remained at home, and the brother and sister were suffered to go together round the city. It was understood they were prisoners on parole; that day, therefore, was a memorable holiday to them.
Their first expedition was to the cathedral. It was still early morning when they entered. The loftiness of the vaulted roof, the vastness of the dimly-lighted spaces, the lights at the altar, the rich dresses of the officiating priests, the sweet and solemn singing of the choir, struck them with such awe and wonder, that they did not venture more than a few steps beyond the porch. Then, seeing the font, they felt that this at least belonged to them; that there they had the children’s right to stay; and they knelt down close beside it, and reverently crossing themselves, lifted up their hearts in prayer.
It was an early Mass, and when it was finished, and the congregation dispersed, the youth and maiden still knelt on beside the font.
In one of the chapels there was a tomb which seemed to receive much honour. Many of the worshippers paused beside it as they went out, and knelt there a few minutes in prayer. But when the last of the people had left, and the acolytes had finished their last services at the altar, and the brother and sister were left alone, they still lingered on. It felt more home-like to them than any place they had been in since they were swept away from their own Irish shores. It was indeed to them the Father’s house; and it was delightful to them to be together there for a while, quite alone. Ethne felt as if their mother might step in at any moment, with the radiant look she had on her face when she rose from the baptismal waters at Tara.
At last an aged monk came in, and went straight up to the tomb where so many had knelt. After a time they went up and knelt beside him. When he arose he looked kindly at them, and spoke to them in Latin, to which they responded as best they could. He evidently perceived at once that they were foreigners, and tried them with two or three languages; but they only shook their heads in perplexity, until, to their unspeakable delight, he said a few words in some Celtic tongue resembling their own, enough for them to understand and answer.
“You are from the Britanniæ,” he said. “I have been there with the holy bishops Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes, to combat the Pelagian heresy;” and with some anxiety he asked, “You are not Pelagians?”
They had never heard of the Pelagian heresy, which was at all events negatively satisfactory. But when he asked them from which of the seven provinces of Britain they came, he found they did not know anything about the seven provinces of Britain, which perplexed him not a little.
“Whence then do you come?”
“From the island beyond Britain,” Baithene replied; and he added with a mixture of apology and pride, “From the island the Romans never conquered.”
“A heathen land!” exclaimed the monk, with some agitation. “How come you then to be Christians?”
For he had seen them make the sign of the Cross, and make it in the orthodox Latin way. The sign of the Cross had significance in more than one way, then, as the sound of church bells and many other symbols.
They told him about Patrick, and by degrees a light came into his face. He had heard a rumour of some new mission in that wild, far-off island, and also a rumour that the missionary bishop was in some way connected with their own sainted bishop, Martin of Tours. This he told them, and also that it was by the tomb of St. Martin they were standing. Both of their faces grew radiant at this new link with Patrick and home. Ethne knelt down again beside the tomb, and pressed her lips to the cold marble as if it had been a mother’s hand.
The monk questioned them about themselves, and listened with tender interest and strong indignation to their story.
“Kidnapped by Christians, and sold to a Jew!” he exclaimed, in a climax of horror. “In our Martin’s time we would have ransomed you at once at any price, if we had had to sell the vessels of the altar for it, as the blessed old man did himself when his young deacon moved too slowly to fulfil his bidding; in his impetuous eagerness taking off his own sacerdotal robe when he was about to celebrate Mass, and throwing it around a wretched, naked beggar! Just as in his eager youth, when he was a soldier, he had cut his military cloak in two to give it to a beggar at Amiens!”
They listened eagerly. That was indeed a saint worth hearing about.
The old monk was launched on an endless subject when he began with St. Martin.
“But, alas!” he sighed in conclusion, “times are changed. The ravages of the barbarians and the exactions of the Romans have impoverished us all; and now the frightful hordes of these savage Huns may be on us any day. Perhaps also we are poorer in ourselves; we care more for the splendour of our churches than for the poverty of our brothers. We want Martin’s poverty of spirit to make us rich as Martin to help and save. We want his love and faith before we can see the visions he saw. Have you ever heard of them? of how, in the night, he saw our Lord among His angels, clothed in the garment he had given the beggar, and heard Him say to them, ‘Know ye who has thus arrayed Me? My servant Martin!’” Then seeing the intense interest in their eyes, the old monk said—“Would you come and see the hovel where Martin lived?”
They followed him eagerly to a collection of huts and cells between the river and the cliffs, where, like the monks in Egypt and the East, he and many of his brethren still lived in community, but in separate caves and cells. And there he showed them Martin’s wooden hut, still carefully preserved.
“Here the saint lived and prayed,” he said. “And here, as some think, he had the loveliest vision of all.”
Then they listened with rapt attention, as he told how, “while Martin was praying in his cell, the Evil Spirit stood before him, clad in a glittering radiancy, by this purposing the more easily to deceive him; clad also in royal robes with a golden jewelled diadem, with shoes covered with gold, with serene face and bright looks, so as to seem nothing so little as what he was. Martin at first was dazzled by the sight, and for a long time both kept silence. At length the Evil One began. ‘Acknowledge,’ he said, ‘O Martin, whom thou seest. I am Christ. I am now descending on earth, and I wished first to manifest myself to thee.’ Martin still kept silence and made no answer. The Devil still continued to repeat his bold pretence. ‘Martin, why hesitate to believe, when thou seest I am Christ?’ Then Martin understood, by the revelation of the Spirit, that it was the Evil One and not God; and answered—‘Jesus the Lord said not He would come in glittering clothing and radiant with a diadem. I will not believe that the Christ is come save in that form in which He suffered; save with the wounds of the Cross.’ At these words the Evil One vanished in smoke, leaving a horrible, hellish stench and fumes behind him.”
The old man would have kept them till nightfall, but they felt bound in honour to return. Before they left the cells he gave them two small tablets, as letters of commendation to Anianus, Bishop of Orleans, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, who would, he said, be sure to help them if possible. “But,” he added, in a desponding tone, “who knows whether Anianus and Lupus will be still living? or their cities, Orleans and Troyes, still standing? From all sides come the news of this army of locusts, these myriads of monstrous savages, ravaging and burning and destroying. Surely the end of the world is at hand. Yet these tablets may do you service; keep them carefully.” And Ethne wrapped them in the folds of her plaid.
The old monk accompanied them to the door of Eleazar’s lodging.
“Kidnapped by Christians, purchased by a Jew!” he murmured, as he turned reluctantly away and left them. “Would to God our Martin were here!”
Miriam received them affectionately, and not without a look of triumph at her husband, who had not been sure they would ever return. Ethne was somewhat perplexed at the good monk’s last words.
“Why should we wish to call Martin down again?” she said. “Do not the saints always go on helping us in heaven? And does not God go on making saints on earth?”
“I wonder if we shall ever find a living saint again on earth!” said Baithene.
And Ethne returned to her “lorica,” her breastplate, Patrick’s Irish hymn—
The morning after his conversation with Lucia on the way from the catacombs, Marius went on his way northward. Away from the corruption and lassitude of the Imperial Court, then resident for a time at Rome; away from the decrepitude of Rome itself; from the luxurious idleness of life among the rich in their palaces, among their thousands of slaves; from the beggarly idleness of the pauperized populace; from the aimlessness of life amongst all; northward among the barbarians, to beat back the lower elements among them by means of the higher; to find some battle worth fighting, some hero worth following, some new life worth living among these new races, who were pouring in on the decrepit old world. Three hundred years before, Tacitus had written with enthusiasm about the Teutons, their courage, their chastity, their fidelity to wife and children and chieftain. In Rome it had seemed to Marius impossible to find anything but childishness and senility, or both combined; childhood without innocence, old age without experience. Perhaps in the north he might find manhood and youth.
The alliance Aetius was endeavouring to effect for the Empire was with one of the noblest and most civilized of the Goths, with Theodoric, king of the Visigoths of Aquitaine. Marius travelled through the region of the Italian Latifundia, the enormous farms which some said were ruining Rome; wide spaces with no habitations except the huge Ergastula, or workhouses, full of celibate slaves, ruled by freedmen who had learned from slavery not sympathy, like Patrick, but only slavishness, and a terrible ingenuity how to wring out the last drop of slave-labour.
He wrote first to his mother from Ravenna—
“Ravenna seems full of two great names, the Augusta Galla Placidia, and Aetius. You remember the death of the Augusta last year at Rome, and the solemn funeral procession which bore her remains hither. For the moment Ravenna seems transformed from a court into a mausoleum of the Augusta. Her mausoleum is a palace of the dead, gorgeous with gold, and gems, and marble mosaics, with brilliant frescoes covering the domed roofs.
“Never surely in the tragic stories of Imperial houses can there have been one more tragic than that of the great Augusta, as they tell it here. Daughter of the great Theodosius; taken captive in her beautiful youth at Alaric’s siege of Rome; in her captivity winning the heart of the noblest of the Gothic princes, the young Ataulfus, and in return giving her whole heart to him,—her marriage seemed a bridal not only of two royal hearts, but of two civilizations, of two races, of the north and the south, of the old world and the new. It seemed as if all that is highest and noblest in the old and in the new were united in it and through it. What hope might not dawn out of it for the world? And in one year the fair vision had vanished like a morning dream! The babe born of it, and welcomed with such rapture as a promise for all the world, died in infancy. The brave and generous young Gothic king lay dead in his palace, stabbed in the back by a slave in revenge for the death of his former master. The Augusta was driven out of Barcelona, the city where they were reigning, compelled to go on foot as a conquered captive before the chariot of her husband’s successor, and afterwards constrained to marry the General Constantius, a man with no qualifications for her hand but those of an able soldier and a jovial comic actor at camp banquets. He died in a few years, apparently of dullness, from the constraint of the court life.
“She bore herself nobly in her second widowhood, ‘the one man,’ they say, ‘of her family’; ruled the Empire diligently, chose her ministers wisely, steadfastly upheld the Christian faith, and strove to live by its laws; and her son is the Emperor we all know too well! The whole tragedy of her life is compressed in those three relationships: daughter of such a man as Theodosius, wife of such a man as Ataulfus, mother of such a thing as Valentinian!
“I send this by a trusty hand; if for safety’s sake thou makest it into a palimpsest, write over it these words—Placidus semivir amens.
“The whole of this Imperial city, the whole Empire, at this moment seem but a mausoleum for the Augusta, last of the Romans. For Aetius, alas! the other name of which Ravenna is full, seems no leader likely to preserve the noblest in the old world or the new. He is indeed capable of ruling every one, and capable of understanding everything. To him come ‘the groans of the forsaken Britons’; to him the embassies of the conquering Hun. Living as a hostage three years among the Huns, he knows Attila and his people intimately. Chief minister of the Augusta for seventeen years, he knows the Empire to the core of its corrupt heart. He has conquered the Franks, defended the Empire, and will, it seems, conciliate the Goths. But here they cannot forgive or forget his base treachery to Boniface his friend, Count of Africa, tempting him to rebel by false representations of the enmity of the Augusta, and throwing him into alliance with the Vandals in Africa; thus losing Rome her noblest general in Boniface, her richest granary in Africa, and the Church the whole province of Africa, the home of Perpetua, Cyprian, Monica, Augustine.
“Yet there is no one to follow but Aetius; and I am going northward to Gaul. There is hope of an alliance with the Goths, and with their aid we may beat back the Huns.
“Tell our Luciola I have no drops as yet from the Fountain of Youth for her. How indeed could we expect any from Ravenna, this city of mud and marshes—of every kind of mud and every kind of marshy malaria, where water they say is often scarcer and dearer than wine? Fleets of merchant ships, crowds of sailors of all nations, splendid palaces and more splendid churches; but Living Water, the Fountain of Youth; scarcely here!”
His next letter was from Aquileia, the great port of the north of the Adriatic, where his family had had friendships from the days of Jerome, who was born there.
“This is a very great city, great with the natural greatness of its commanding position, guarded by the mountains, guarding the frontier, and commanding the Adriatic; great with the natural growth of its world-wide commerce, no mere artificial product of a heated court.
“I feel better here than at Ravenna. Aquilo, the north wind from the mountains, cools and revives me. I can breathe, and bathe. Perhaps also there is a bracing north wind from the past, from the days of our forefathers, who came here six hundred years ago, when Rome was young, to form an outpost on the frontier against the barbarians of those days. These churches also have reverberated to great voices, even in thy days. Jerome perhaps gathered strength here for his fight for his translation of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue, and his many other battles. And, moreover, the Lady Digna, to whom thy letter has introduced me, is herself as a fresh breeze from the mountains, and a revival of the old Rome my father loves, in her noble simplicity of life. Her palace is near the walls, with a lofty tower looking on the crystal waters of the river Natiso and towards the blue mountains of the north. She reminds me of the Aventine, and of thee and of my father and his old Rome. One feels she might have been one of the grand, pure matrons of the Republic.”
From Aquileia Marius went through the plains of Lombardy by the south of Gaul to Lyons. Thence he wrote—
“I think of thee continually here, and how in our childhood was engraven on our hearts, from thy lips, the story of the Passion and the Victory of the martyrs of Lyons and Vienne; of the ninety-years-old Bishop Pothinus dying, beaten with the iron rods, in prison; of the mistress and the slave Blandina (like the African Perpetua and Felicitas) suffering the same tortures, sustaining each other in the same conflict, crowned with a similar crown. Blandina the slave maiden kept alive to the last, and, ‘as a noble mother animating her children, and sending them home to the Great King,’ after the torture from the tossing by the wild beasts, ‘going forth as to a marriage-feast to her death,’ with the simple confession of faith, ‘I am a Christian; no wickedness is done among us.’
“Ah, beloved, what a golden time that seems to look back on! None of these dividing names, these heresies and schisms, but one glorious name, ‘Christian.’ None of these degraded lives among His followers. To be a Christian meant then to be good, ‘to do no wickedness.’ Who would not win back such a time of faith and courage, of love and purity, at any cost? If it were only the Huns that ravaged the Empire! If it were only the heathen that did wickedness! If it were only the heretics who persecuted! But I must not write a Book of Lamentations. We have, as our Luciola always says, to live here and now.
“I am more content than I expected to be with my gracious and learned host, Sidonius Apollinaris. In the first place, he is my host, a relationship in itself demanding loyalty in return, and he is the kindest of hosts. My two mother-tongues are a recommendation for me to him; the kind of natural inability to talk bad Greek and Latin derived from our father and from thee. I cannot, however, even from loyalty to a host, admire his style of poetry, much lauded as it is. The gods and goddesses, the heroes and nymphs, stalk about in it so like second-rate actors in a theatre. They seem at once so childish, poor dears, and so old-fashioned, so shadowy and so wooden; the real world having been long possessed by heroes so much more living, by saints so much more original and interesting than these faded modern pictures of a world ill understood and so long passed away.
“Why Venus and all the faded troop should be called back to bless a Christian marriage, or all Olympus to crown and glorify a modern senator, who at all events, whatever he believes or disbelieves, does not believe in them, one cannot see. Moreover, there are the false quantities which jar on one’s ear so curiously! But I must not grow cynical. It must be a lack in me that I have no taste for the wit of acrostics or the pomp of panegyrics. And there is always the relief of turning from these to the simple old music of thy Homer, the earnest thought of thy Aeschylus, the pure limpid verse of our own Virgil. But I hear my host’s pleasant voice, and am stopped in good time by his gracious kindness.”
“I resume:—We assembled yesterday morning at the sepulchre of Saint Justin, and had Matins and Tierce with all the city. And then when the ordinary people had dispersed, we of the first families of Lyons made a rendezvous at the tomb of Syagrius the Saint. There, on the green sward under the trellised vines, was much merriment, and many good stories were told,—good happily in the sense not only of being witty, but of not being low or bad. And then, when, weary of this idleness, the young men played at tennis, and the old ones at backgammon, witty verses were composed and recited (one set in honour of a towel which had the privilege of wiping the perspiration from the face of an ‘illustrious old gentleman,’ who had somewhat rashly ventured on tennis rather than on the more tranquil sport of backgammon).
“But ‘what of the Huns?’ perhaps you will ask. The Huns are some scores of miles away at present, and we are safe in Lyons. I suppose near the frontier they are so used to the roar of this advancing tide of the barbarians that they cease to hear it, like people who live close to a torrent, and only make their merriment a little louder to drown the tumultuous noise. Besides, all the time some of us, and among these my host, are doing what we can to keep off the Huns. Aetius is doing his best to cement the alliance with the Gothic king Theodoric, and we hope he is prospering.”
The next letter was from a country house near Arles.
“This villa reminds me of our palace on the Aventine. The vestibule is full of statues. There are books in all kinds of ornamental cases. The ladies read, and seem to love best the sacred Scriptures. At least I found these on the chair where the young daughter of the house had been sitting, a new copy of the Gospels in Jerome’s version. Also the relations between the master and his hundreds of slaves are pleasant and friendly.
“Moreover, I am more in touch with Sidonius Apollinaris, who brought me here. I have seen him glow with a genuine passion of indignation against an oppressive Roman governor, who seems to have been ruining his district by exorbitant taxation, starving the labourers, grinding down the farmers, filling the prisons with the wretched victims of the paid informers—a worse invasion than that of the barbarians. I shall be able to endure the tinsel of his panegyrics now that I have seen him burn with a genuine fire against wrong.
“But I am perplexed about this Hilary, Metropolitan of Arles, who died here not long since. The people seemed to think him such a saint, and to be indignant with our Leo for supporting a bishop of his province against his authority. Some say Leo is seeking to found a spiritual autocracy, an empire to tower above patriarch or emperor, above all authorities, ecclesiastical and secular.
“I cannot understand the rights of the controversy. Leo, of course, feels intensely the necessity of unity. He has seen the ruin of the African Church through its own divisions, and seen it become the prey of the heretic Arians. He has seen the chilling of the temperature in the Eastern Church through endless metaphysical discussions and secular battles. He sees the whole Roman world crumbling into dust. And he believes the Church itself, as far as the Church is in the world, must crumble and fall if it is not kept at unity with itself. And also he believes that he himself is the Heir and Vicar of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and that he has to keep the Church one and indivisible amidst the crash and crumbling of everything else. Is not this what he means? Nevertheless it perplexes me about his dispute with the holy Hilary of Arles.
“I copy for thee a passage from Hilary’s Life of the Holy Honoratus, Bishop of Arles. ‘Great,’ he writes, ‘O illustrious Honoratus, is thy glory. Thy merit did not need to be proved by signs and wonders. Thy life, full of virtues, presented a perpetual miracle. Many miracles and signs indeed we saw, but of these thou thoughtest little. Greater to thee was the joy that Christ Himself should acknowledge thy merits and virtues than that men should observe thy miracles. Peace also has her martyrs, and thou, whilst thou didst remain in the body, wast a perpetual witness and martyr for Christ.’”
The next letter of Marius was from Marseilles.
“I am more at home here than since I left thee, with the Presbyter Salvian, his wife Palladia, and their daughter Auspiciola; at home and cheerful. Not that Salvian is an optimist, or takes a cheerful view of the world or of the Church. But he dares to look at things as they are. One feels, with him, no longer dancing on a crust of ice above an abyss of dark waters. Although the change is scarcely more than that of clinging to the side of a precipice at the edge of an abyss, there is the rock to cling to. In short, I have come out of that stifling artificial atmosphere and breathe again. Salvian says of our Rome, ‘Our own vices alone have conquered us;’ and to see that, if our Rome could indeed see it, would be to repent and live.
“He compares us with the barbarians in a way which recalls Tacitus and his Teutons, perhaps idealizing the barbarians, but scarcely, I fear, caricaturing the Romans. ‘You Romans and Christians and Catholics,’ he writes, ‘are defrauding your brothers, are grinding the faces of the poor, are frittering away your lives over the impure and heathenish spectacles of the amphitheatre; you are wallowing in licentiousness and drunkenness. The barbarians meanwhile, heathens or heretics though they may be, and however fierce towards us, are just and fair in their dealings with one another. The men of the same clan, and following the same king, love one another with true affection. The impurities of the theatre are unknown amongst them. Many of their tribes are free from the taint of drunkenness, and among all, except the Alans and the Huns, chastity is the rule.’
“His own home is like a monastery for austerity and regularity of life. His wife and daughter consecrate themselves to a religious life, and all the household are devoted to the service of the poor. He is a presbyter, but he is revered far and wide for his learning, secular and sacred; his counsel is sought by the highest and the lowest, and he has been called a teacher of bishops (Magister Episcoporum).
“His sympathies are with the down-trodden and the poor. He pleads fervently for those wretched peasants who revolted lately in Northern Gaul (called by their oppressors Bagaudæ, i. e. a mob). ‘They were despoiled, afflicted, murdered, by wicked and bloody judges, and shall we impute their misfortunes to them? We have made them what they are. Shall we call those rebellious and lost whom we compelled to be criminals? By what were they made Bagaudæ (a mob) but by our iniquities, by the injustice of judges, by the proscriptions, rapine, and exactions of those who turned the public revenues into emoluments for themselves?’
“Thank God for these days with Salvian; they make me hope once more.”
The last letter was from Toulouse, from the court of Theodoric, King of the Visigoths.
“Here at last! On our way to encounter the enemy at last, among these brave Goths, men at least, if barbarians; Christians in some sort, if Arians. Every morning before dawn the king and some of his household attend divine service in the church. At his banquets no women singers are admitted, no exciting, dissolute songs are allowed. The music, such as it is, is martial and manly.
“And in conclusion, the alliance between the Empire and the Visigoths is accomplished. To-morrow we shall be on our way to join Aetius, and to relieve the city of Orleans. Not a day too soon, they say; God grant it may not be too late. For the countless hosts of the Huns have gathered around the city for weeks; their battering-rams have been planted against the walls, and their unerring arrows have been slaughtering the garrison.
“I dispatch this hence. To-morrow we are to be on our way to the battle-field, wherever and whatever that may prove to be.”
The day after the interview of Baithene and Ethne with the monk, they left Tours, and rowed up the river in a small boat to Orleans. It was fresh life to Baithene to take his place at an oar, to feel delivered from the passive condition of following Eleazar about, interpreting bargains he detested, and picking up fragments of the talk around him in the streets. As he pulled up against the stream, straining every muscle in the contest with wind and water, he felt a man again, and something of a king.
The little boat made good way under his vigorous strokes. But at one point they ran some risk of being seized to act as a ferry-boat for a troop of fugitives, women and children, who were crowded together on the bank on the north side of the river.
“Have mercy on us, have mercy,” they cried, “and carry us across.”
Baithene laid up his oars for a moment and paused. Eleazar with violent gestures urged him forward, but having the power for the moment in his own hands, Baithene gave no heed, but still waited to listen.
They soon gathered that these were fugitives from the Huns, who were rapidly sweeping down on Aquitaine from the north. Their village had been burnt; they had friends in Aquitaine, and were seeking safety by putting the Loire between them and the foe. Miriam’s heart softened at once. Baithene thought the women and children might be ferried over in three or four crossings, while the few men among them must swim. This was accomplished, and the little rescued company, kneeling on the southern bank, showered benedictions on them as they again pulled up the river.
They had to halt twice for the night, and they took care to make their halting-places on the southern shore. On the third evening they reached Orleans.
The voyage had been a great rest and happiness to Ethne. The beauty of the wooded hills clothed with trees, many of them new to her—chestnuts, maples, and poplars; the vineyards with their promise of grapes, and the cultivated fields, delighted her. Here and there also in the cliffs under which they passed were arched doors of caves, which she imagined might be cells of holy hermits or monks like Martin.
When they came to Orleans they found the city in a tumult of apprehension. The walls were carefully guarded, and also the approaches by the river. Soldiers in Roman armour stopped them at the landing-place and forbade them to disembark.
“We do not want any more helpless people to guard or any more hungry mouths to feed,” they said.
It was an anxious moment; if they were turned back there was no other place of refuge. But suddenly Ethne remembered the letter the monk of Tours had given them for Anianus the Bishop. She reminded Baithene, and they told Miriam and Eleazar, who had heard the name of Anianus, and eagerly caught at this means of escape. They handed the tablet to the officer of the guard, and after a little further parley he agreed to let them land, and to have them conducted to the Bishop. Eleazar remained on the quay in charge of his precious merchandise. It was a reversal of relations for Ethne and Baithene to become the patrons and protectors of Eleazar and Miriam.
The Bishop was, as was so often the case in those tumultuous times, also the secular ruler (at all events in the moment of danger), and in a sense the military commander, as well as the spiritual head of the city; the representative of the only organization out of the ancient Roman world of law and order which remained substantially standing.
The name of Anianus was their passport everywhere. When after some delay they were admitted to his presence, it was a matter of no small difficulty, in many ways, to explain their complicated relation to each other and to the world in general. Captive princes or nobles of any kind from Ireland had something of a mythical sound, as if they had dropped out of fairyland, or some old legend, or some far-off fabled Atlantis. That these high-born captives should be also Christians was still more perplexing, the fact of Patrick’s mission having scarcely yet penetrated to Orleans. To expect Ethne or Baithene to define what kind of Christians they were was quite hopeless, they being in blissful ignorance of all heresies and schisms, Eastern or Western, Pelagian, Arian, Nestorian, Eutychian, or Manichean. Then came the other side of the perplexity, their being purchased by a Jew. An Edict of Theodosius had indeed many years before recognized an essential distinction between Jews and Pagans, and had decreed that the Jewish worship was to be respected, and that the Jewish synagogues were not to be destroyed. But that a Jew should own a Catholic Christian as a slave was a questionable thing. Slavery indeed, altogether, was to the Christian Church a questionable right, indeed essentially an unquestionable wrong. But according to Roman law, as an actual fact, it had to be admitted. Not long before, in Gaul, a free woman taken captive and made a slave, though the injustice was admitted, had to be left in bondage. Manumission had always been frequent among the Romans; the redemption of slaves and captives was a constant form of charitable work in the Church; but in the present distress there were no funds at hand for ransom, and, moreover, it must have seemed doubtful whether it would be any gain to these young friendless foreigners, especially to the fair young Irish maiden, to turn them adrift free and unprotected into the world of bloodshed and disorder, of violence and wickedness of every kind around them.
After much kindly consideration, it was decided that quarters should be assigned to the four, and that the question of freedom or slavery should be left in abeyance. But to Baithene’s great joy the condition was added, that no idle hands could be tolerated in the city, threatened as it was with siege and assault from the fierce hordes of Attila, who were fast advancing to cross the Loire, and make a raid on the kingdom of the Visigoths in Aquitaine.
That evening, therefore, the four were established in rooms near the walls of the city, with a sense of freedom for Ethne and Baithene greater than they had felt since they had been swept away from their home. The reversal of relations between the captives and their purchaser, though at first exceedingly displeasing to Eleazar, proved, thanks to the tender pity of Miriam, and the sweet serviceableness of Ethne, a bond of union; Baithene also being naturally ready to render in a princely way twice as much service as he would have done by constraint. Eleazar himself, moreover, was much softened when he saw that their honour was more to be trusted than the security of bonds.
The stipulation imposed on Baithene was no child’s play. Very soon the flames of burning villages were to be seen from the walls; then came troops of fugitives flying to take refuge in the country beyond the river, the citizens not daring to extend their hospitality to helpless, hungry strangers, who might not only find the walls of Orleans no shelter for themselves, but make the defence hopeless for all.
Night and day the walls had to be manned and guarded, and the fortifications strengthened as far as possible. Excursions had to be made into the neighbouring country to gather in fruits and corn and cattle while yet there was time to save anything from the plundering of the savage hosts. Thus between carrying stones for building, convoying expeditions for foraging, and guarding the walls, Baithene had little time at home, and was well content with such morsels of food or moments of broken sleep as could be snatched at intervals during his labours. The habits of command and direction, the training of hand and eye in chase, or foray, or skirmish among the clans at home, had given him faculties for military service which were soon recognized. He had a quickness in seeing and seizing opportunities, and a dash of daring courage which delighted the Roman officers, whilst to him the training in the Roman discipline was of the highest price.
Nearer and nearer drew the fierce nation of warriors and plunderers, numbered by hundreds of thousands. By their mere presence they would have eaten up the land like a cloud of locusts; and they came not as mere locusts devouring in order to live, but as a predatory army fearfully organized to destroy; bent on carrying away all the plunder they could, and also on leaving behind all the devastation they could; ravaging not merely to impoverish Gaul, but through impoverishing Gaul to ruin Rome.
Soon the fires of the burnt villages and towns smouldered and died out; and instead came the outposts of the terrible horde itself. Troops of Tartar horsemen dashed up to the walls of the city; little beardless brown men with long black hair, man and horse apparently grown into one, the riders waving their spears as they stood on the backs of their horses, or stooping underneath to pick up some dropped weapon; the man apparently an integral development of the horse, the horse not so much ridden as inspired and possessed by the man. Baithene, gazing at them for the first time from the walls, in the dusk of the evening, could not wonder at the rumours that they were not human at all, but the offspring of witches and demons. From time to time through the darkness came an unearthly combined yell, like the howl of a wild beast or malignant demon; and he crossed himself, thought of the exorcism in the baptismal service, and repeated his renunciation of the devil from the bottom of his heart. He had to watch through that night, and early in the first flush of the morning he saw that the horizon was dim with a great cloud of dust, whilst in the distance, through the silence of the dawn, was heard the grinding of huge wagon-wheels, with all the tumult of the movement of a vast multitude.
Slowly the huge host gathered in from all sides, until the confused hum and murmur began to define itself into various sounds—the creaking of wheels, the cracking of whips, the lowing of oxen, the neighing of horses, the harsh voices of men, the shrill voices of women, even the wailing of babes; and through all the deep under-hum of an enormous mass of human beings in motion. The hearts of the men on the walls quailed with a weird terror; for through all came the unfamiliar cadences of wild foreign speech, with a sense that this living mass which was closing in around them with deadly purpose, to plunder and kill, to burn and to destroy, was pouring forth from the unknown boundless spaces of savage wildernesses, an interminable tide of destruction swelling up as from some unfathomable abyss of hell.
A preternatural terror hung over these hordes, but more especially around Attila himself, the Scourge of God, the ally of demons, who was known now to be in their midst, directing the devastations with the deadliest skill of destruction, practised in ravaging the fairest lands into deserts, and in razing the stateliest cities into ruin so utter as never to be repaired. With a frightful faculty of appropriating from the civilization he sought to destroy just the very elements which enabled him to destroy it, from the courts of Ravenna and Constantinople he had learnt the art of conquering by dividing. And at this moment the chief anxiety in Orleans was the doubt whether he might not have succeeded by his cunning in breaking the alliance between Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, and the great General Aetius, who had promised Bishop Anianus some weeks before in his palace at Arles to relieve the city with the combined forces of Goth and Roman, at the latest, by the fourteenth of June. Attila was too shrewd to attempt to substitute Roman discipline and methods of warfare for the dash and fury of the charges and wheelings of his wild horsemen. But he had learnt something of the art of besieging from his foes, from the captives of the cities he had ruined; and in the dusk of the morning they saw the huge battering-rams being drawn up to the walls.
It was the combination of the mechanical weight of a vast multitude, a host not of men but of nations, of the wild swiftness and unexpectedness of their assaults, reckless of peril as a troop of wild beasts, with the preternatural terror of the unknown spaces from which they issued, and the unknown powers of darkness from which they were said to have sprung, that made the approach of these Huns so paralyzing. And in Attila himself the terror was concentrated. The terror of his name and the weight of his rule, if that could be called rule which was a disorganization of all existing order, were known from the borders of China and the great Tartar desert through Hungary to Constantinople, and to the coasts of northernmost Scandinavia. Thus these demon armies had for the moment a Satanic Majesty, a Prince of the power of the air, before whose crafts and assaults the feeble diplomacy of Constantinople and Ravenna was as the innocent cunning of a child.
As the end of Baithene’s watch was drawing near he heard a yell from the advancing host, which seemed a cry of welcome and triumph; and, straining his eyes, he caught sight of a multitude of horsemen whirling round a central point like a whirlpool. There were frantic cries from many of these Tartar horsemen; there was a wheeling and rushing to and fro of the nimble little horses, a waving of spears, a flaunting of rude banners, a metallic clashing of cymbals and shields. And through the still morning air the sound of one terrible name was borne to the besieged in countless shrill tones of exultation—“Attila! Attila!” The besieged repeated it to each other in hoarse murmurs and whispers, as those who think they see some gruesome preternatural phantoms in the dark. “Attila! Attila! the darling of the devil, the Scourge of God.”
The hour for relieving guard had arrived; silently the wearied men left the walls.
Baithene was angry with himself for the presentiments of evil which seemed to reduce him to the resignation of dull despair. But as they came near the cathedral, the little band of soldiers met a procession of white-robed priests, heading a multitude eagerly thronging to the church. He entered with them, and knelt in the stillness amidst the throng of silent worshippers.
Then came the solemnity of the daily Eucharist. Not lamentations and litanies, but hymns of joy and thanksgiving, in the sonorous Latin which was the common tongue, in some measure understood by all. Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonæ voluntatis. “We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, we give thanks to Thee for Thy great glory, O God, Heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.
“O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesu Christ, Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, Who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou Who takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer; Thou Who sittest at the right hand of the Father, have mercy upon us; for Thou only art holy, Thou only art the Lord, Thou only art most high, O Jesu Christ, with the glory of God the Father.”
And afterwards the great hymn of perpetual festival. “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty that we should at all times and in all places give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God, through Christ our Lord, through Whom the Angels praise Thy Majesty, Whom the Dominations adore, before Whom the Powers tremble, the Heavens and all the Powers therein, Whom the Blessed Seraphim with mutual exultation celebrate; with Whom we also would pray that Thou shouldst command our voices to take part, with humble confession, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory; Hosanna in the highest; Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
And as he listened, the mighty host of the barbarians, and the little company of the besieged, seemed to dwindle into a mere ship’s company on a stormy sea, whilst all around him were the open heavens with their victorious multitudes before the Throne. Whatever the result of this present conflict might be, the victory along the whole line was sure, the victory of good, of God, of the Lamb that was slain, of the Redeeming Lord conquering and to conquer. With a heart full of peace and courage he knelt at the close of the service, when the aged, white-haired Bishop, shepherd and father of the people, came forward and raised his hand in benediction. He lingered some time in the silence after the voices ceased, when a gentle hand was laid on his shoulder, and looking up he saw the radiant face of his sister, and the soft grey eyes, luminous with the joy and trust within. Then together they left the church and returned to Eleazar’s rooms.
“The church is never shut day nor night,” she said; “every hour without ceasing prayers go up to God to relieve the city.”
“The succour ought to be here soon indeed,” said Baithene, “if the city is to be saved.”
After that the brother and sister had little opportunity of speaking to each other for many weeks. Baithene was on the ramparts; whilst Ethne was with another army of succour organized by the Bishop within the city—a band of devoted women who took the wounded into places of shelter, dressed their wounds, and did all they could to relieve the starvation and misery all around.
All these weeks the terrible struggle went on, by assault, blockade, starvation. The battering-rams were drawn up to the walls; but these in the untrained hands of the Huns were more than matched by the catapults and fiery missiles thrown by the trained soldiers of the Roman garrison.
It was the arrows of the Huns, shot with unerring aim from their huge bows, which did the deadliest damage, clearing the walls of the defenders, as they fell one by one smitten to death. It was at the risk of life that the Bishop and his clergy came up on the ramparts, with chant of litanies, and bearing sacred relics, to reanimate the garrison.
More than five weeks had passed since Bishop Anianus had seen the General Aetius in the palace at Arles, and obtained a promise of speedy succour. The fourteenth of June, the day he promised at the latest to bring the relieving forces, was fast approaching, and the courage and hope of the besieged were failing. Not a few began to murmur against the Bishop, and to hint that he had deceived them with promises of imaginary succour. About the tenth or eleventh of June the bright sunshine was clouded over by a fearful storm. For three days the thunder rolled, the lightning flashed, heavy clouds darkened all the land, a tempest of rain and hail poured down, the battle of the elements giving a respite for the time to the battle with the barbarian host.
At last the sun broke forth again, only proving a signal for the renewal of the deadly strife. Once more Bishop Anianus sent forth a messenger to the Roman general, with the appeal, “If ye come not to-day it will be too late.”
The soldier never reappeared. Then it was rumoured that the Bishop himself had gone forth to negotiate with Attila, and had returned with the message that Attila would accept nothing but absolute surrender. Then came a tumult of despair, a crashing of walls, a dashing open of gates. There were countless contradictory rumours as to how it all happened; but one thing was certain, the gates were open, and the city was laid bare to her foes. The Huns were pouring in on that day, which was to have been the day of deliverance, in overwhelming numbers, with the fury of a savage host little accustomed to delay, and destitute of mercy; massacring unresisting women and children, sparing none and nothing except for the purposes of pillage or slavery.
Yet still the Bishop and the clergy, with many of the people, filled the cathedral, and poured forth prayers in their anguish to God, the aged Bishop prostrate before the altar, and bathing the steps with his tears.
It was said that at that last hour the aged Bishop sent forth a messenger from the cathedral to the walls, saying, “Look forth from the ramparts and see if God’s mercy will yet succour us.” The messenger came back and said he beheld no man. But still the Bishop commanded the people, “Pray in faith; the Lord will deliver you to-day.”
They went on praying. Again the aged voice they had trusted so long rose and bade one of them mount the walls and look out again. No help was seen approaching.
For the third time the Bishop said, “If ye pray in faith the Lord will yet be at hand to help you speedily!”
Then with weeping and loud lamentations they implored the mercy of the Lord. And when that prayer of agony had arisen, once more, for the third time, the old man bade them go to the wall and look. And back to that weeping multitude, waiting in breathless silence, came at last the glad tidings, “We saw from afar as it were a cloud rising out of the ground.”
And the Bishop said, “It is the help of God.”
Then through the city, from the top of the tower, resounded the cry, “The Romans! the Romans!” Aetius and King Theodoric with their troops dashed up to the gates; there was an encounter outside the walls; the Huns were defeated; the Roman and Gothic army poured into the city, and there were deadly encounters in every street.
Victory remained with the relieving force. Gradually the fierce brown men from the East were driven out of the gates; the whole army of Attila was thrown into disorder, and made a hasty retreat through the land they had ravaged into a wilderness, knowing well the deadly vengeance that awaited them from every fragment of the towns and villages they had ruined and despoiled.
Bishop Anianus did not forget mercy even in this moment of rescue and triumph. Many a fallen foe among the Huns was saved by his intercession, even in the city they had so nearly brought to destruction.
Baithene came eagerly into the Jew’s lodging to share the joy of deliverance with Ethne; but to his dismay she was not there. It was some little time before he found her in one of the streets, kneeling beside a dying boy left behind by the Huns, leaning the poor ugly brown head on her knee, moistening the parched lips with water, chafing the cold, quivering hands. “Brother,” she said softly, “it might have been thee!”
The death-pallor was on the lips, and soon the quivering limbs lay rigid on the ground beside them.
Then, looking up, the two saw a young Roman on horseback, with his eyes fixed on them. He had been watching Ethne for some minutes in silence. Ethne, raising her eyes to his, said, “Bishop Anianus told us to do what we could even for a wounded enemy.”
There was a glow of sympathy in his face as he replied—
“Pardon me, lady! I was thinking it was just what my own mother and sister in Rome would have done.” And with a gesture of reverence he rode on.
But that night in his dreams there came to Marius a vision of the fair kind face of the maiden with the soft dark-grey eyes, and the poor brown head of the dying Hun on her knee.
Could it have been a dim, prophetic vision of another siege of Orleans, and another Maid of Orleans, seeing a wounded Englishman dying by the roadside, alighting from her horse, and, like a tender sister, holding his head on her knee to the last? Or was it only the remembrance stamped into his heart of the young Irish maiden?