When Eleazar and Miriam had left, Fabricius took Baithene and the dog into quarters of their own; whilst Damaris led Ethne within into her own rooms.
“My child,” she said, “you have been used to be served by others, not to serve. The change must have been hard.”
“The service of our own people was always willing,” replied Ethne, the colour deepening on her fair cheek. “And I have tried to make my service willing; and then it is not hard.”
“You have heard of the Lord of all, Who became servant of all?” said Damaris, tenderly; and Ethne replied, her whole face lighting up—
“Patrick told us of the King of men, Who saw that all men were in bondage, and gave His life a ransom for all; and he told us how He came to serve us all, and that His sacrifice and His service were all willing. And our Patrick was himself once a slave, and knows what it means. Besides,” she added, “it could never be hard to serve Miriam, she was so good to us, and so sad.”
“Her name is Miriam?” Damaris asked.
“Yes,” said Ethne; “and I thought that name was the same as the blessed Mother’s name, and that made it sweeter to serve her.”
Damaris took the girl’s hand and pressed it to her heart as she replied—
“Thy Miriam looks very worn and sad.”
“Yes; and that, of course, makes me love her more. She has lost her only child, and she does not seem to have quite found our Christ.”
“Child,” said Damaris, “our Christ is everything to thee?”
“Yes,” replied Ethne, simply, “He is everything. We are Christians.”
“Could you not tell Miriam of Him?” said Damaris.
“I tried,” was Ethne’s answer; “and she wept, and said she saw I had found the Messiah, who is called the Christ, and that it gave me a wonderful joy. There was no need to say much. She saw. But,” she added, “Patrick told us there are two Testaments of God. And Miriam seems only to know the first, the beginning; she has not learned the end yet.”
“The Testaments of God are all your learning?” Damaris said.
“They are the only books we know,” Ethne replied.
“Happy child,” said Damaris, “to have had only the fountains to drink from.”
“But here, where the fountains have been overflowing, they say, so long,” replied Ethne, “we are hoping to learn so much! And then, if ever we go home again——” But there she stopped; the words would not come.
“You have a home, father and mother?” Damaris asked.
“We had,” sobbed Ethne; “and oh! I trust we have still! If only we could know! Patrick said in his letter, that the pirates killed many when they took us captive; and Dewi, the British sailor, who was one of them, promised to go home and tell our people of us, and then to come back and find us out, and tell us of them. And if God helps him he will.”
Damaris laid the fair head on her shoulder, and gradually the whole story came out. They were interrupted by a bell sounding from the oratory which had belonged to Marcella and the Ecclesia Domestica of the Aventine; and they all went thither, and knelt together for the morning prayer.
Afterwards, while the brother and sister had their morning meal together, Damaris and Fabricius consulted what should be done with them. It was clear from what Miriam had said, and Baithene confirmed, that the eyes of one of the officers of the Emperor’s household had rested covetously on the three, that is, the youth, the maiden, and the dog, and that they must as little as possible for the present be seen in public together.
It was decided, therefore, that Fabricius should take Baithene and the dog to a country house belonging to the family among the Sabine hills, near Nero’s villa of Sublacum (Subiaco), whilst Ethne should remain with Damaris and Lucia on the Aventine. To restore them to their home in the far-off Western isle, while so much of the intervening continent was ravaged by barbarian tribes, or infested by Imperial armies and officials, often worse than the barbarians, was at present out of the question. The safest course for the captives, it was concluded, was to treat them as part of the property and household of Fabricius, under such protection as his patrician and senatorial rank could give. This decision was communicated to the brother and sister as the only possible course to be taken at the moment.
“But peril is nothing to us,” Baithene said appealingly, “if only we could reach our own land again.”
“It is for your sister that the peril involved in such a journey cannot be encountered!” Fabricius replied.
“But surely,” Ethne ventured to plead, “if it is His way, God will guard us in it.”
“It is not the Divine way,” rejoined Fabricius, with Roman imperiousness. “For it is not ours for you. God has committed you to us, and we have to guard you as our own.”
And Damaris added—
“Who knows how soon your friend the British sailor may find you out, and bring you tidings which may guide us all?”
Baithene acknowledged the right of ransom and the law of honour, whilst Ethne felt the claim of gratitude and the persuasion of hope and loving-kindness. And so the two were gathered under the sacred patria potestas of the father of the Roman household.
It was a wonderful time for Ethne, those months with Damaris and Lucia. From the limited past of her own Irish clan she was suddenly transferred into the past of the whole civilized world, Greek and Roman, besides the link with the ancient East through Miriam, whom she often saw.
And not less wonderful were those months to Damaris and Lucia. It was as if through a cleft in the far-off mountain walls of some Norwegian fiord they saw the sunset melting into dawn, the fading glory of the old world kindling into the fervent glow of the new.
“I understand what thou hast written,” Lucia wrote to Marius, still detained in Gaul. “I also have found the Fountain of Youth.”
The past of ancient Rome—Republican, Imperial, Pagan, Christian—stood visibly before the young Irish girl. On the Capitol, around the Forum, throughout the city, still rose the ancient temples, despoiled indeed of many of their statues and shrines, and no longer devoted to the worship of the ancient gods, but still standing, not turned to other uses. The temple where the Vestal Virgins had kept the fire of Vesta ever burning, the sacred hearth-fire of Rome, and the cells where they had lived, were still there. Only forty years before, the last of the Vestals had cursed, with a curse of which most men still believed the power, Serena, niece of the great Theodosius, when she dared, in the temple on the Capitol, to take the jewelled necklace from the neck of Rhea, Mother of the Gods, and place it on her own. The Vestal Virgins, the ancient gods and goddesses, all were gone, but the sacrilegious Serena, alas! people still said with awe, had been put to a violent death.
The palaces on the Palatine were still Imperial dwellings. The Pantheon was not yet consecrated to Christian worship. They were indeed empty of shrines and worshippers, those grand old temples; but they were still there, whether awaiting the return of the old gods, or the consecration of Christian worship, or mere destruction, not a few still doubted. August presences seemed to many still to hover round them, whether good or evil, still mighty to avenge if not to save.
And there stood the Coliseum, a continual gathering-place of all Rome, attracted thither day by day by the tumultuous excitement of the games and races.
Early one morning Damaris took Ethne there. With triumph she pointed out how that arena was never more to be stained with the blood of martyrs or gladiators. Eagerly Ethne drank in the stories of the Christian martyrs, rejoicing to go by any path to Christ, fearlessly awaiting the opening of the cages of the lions. Especially she delighted in the last martyr story of the Coliseum, which had closed the gladiatorial games for ever.
“I was a little child of seven,” Damaris said; “but I remember to this day how my father came back, and told us of the unknown Egyptian monk who had suddenly flashed on the world from the solitudes of his African deserts, and had stood in the arena between the combatants with outstretched arms pleading for the slaughter to cease; how for the moment there was a pause in the onset of the gladiators, a hush in the fierce shouts of the spectators; and then a fiercer yell than ever, showers of stones hurled at the monk, until he fell, crushed to death, until the last Christian martyr had fallen at what his martyrdom made the last gladiatorial show. The cry of wrong from the great city had pierced the monk’s heart in his African solitudes, and driven him, alone, across desert and sea, to stop it; and that great sacrifice of pity had pierced the heart of the Emperor. And so one more great wrong was swept out of the world for ever.”
“Do all the great wrongs die in that way,” asked Ethne, “by some one dying under them?”
“The Cross is on our Christian banners!” said Damaris. “Of what wrongs were you thinking?”
“I was thinking of Troyes,” Ethne replied, “of the young deacon falling under the spears of the Huns, of the aged Bishop Lupus giving himself up to Attila, and of the city being saved. And,” she added, softly, “I was thinking also of the great wrong of slavery, and of Patrick, who brought the freedom of Christ to our country, having been himself once a slave.”
Damaris looked at the girl very tenderly, but as if a new light had suddenly dawned on her. Slavery was so essential a part of that old civilization, Greek and Roman, that even to her it had scarcely occurred that it was anything but an inevitable natural evil, like earthquakes and storms; but she said nothing.
A very close sympathy bound these two to each other; they seemed so often to read each other’s thoughts, and in doing so to find their own grow clearer. Many were the galleries of the past through which Damaris led Ethne. The great poems of the ancient world were unlocked at her touch, one palace chamber after another; especially the great poems of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the poems of the Battle and the Wandering. Ethne would say they explained so much, since the battles and the wanderings seem always there.
And Lucia would answer—
“Does not that make you sad?”
And Ethne would say—
“Why should it? We have the key, now! We know that the wanderings are pilgrimages to the home, and the battles may always be victories.”
“But we cannot always see the victory,” Lucia said.
And Ethne—“How could it be a battle still if we did?”
Then there was the story of Prometheus, the bound Titan, with its mighty entangled reverberations of the great revolt and the great redemption. So Ethne’s world of thought grew into order to the music of the great voices. Of the feeble, imitative echoes of the present happily she heard little.
Also in that memorable winter Ethne accomplished the great elementary step of learning to read. And the gentle strains of Virgil went deep into her heart, as afterwards into the hearts of so many of the saints of her own race. Fortunately for her there was only one literary language then to learn, and it was something to learn Latin as a household speech from those to whom it was the natural language of their infancy.
But dearest of all to Ethne was the translation of “the Testaments of God” into the vulgar tongue by Jerome, the Jerome who had written letters to the kindred of Damaris, and had prayed and preached in the oratory on the Aventine, where they worshipped every day.
One day Lucia entering Ethne’s chamber found her kneeling by a table entirely absorbed in a manuscript.
“What new treasure have you found?” Lucia asked.
“Another of the great poems,” said Ethne, with a smile in her luminous eyes. “Miriam told me something of it. It is about a great chieftain who was good to every one, and honoured by his clan and all the clans around, and beloved by God; and yet he lost everything, and every one he loved, because the devil hated him, and God listened to the devil, and seemed to forsake him.”
“You mean Job,” said Lucia, rather drearily. “We have all heard of the patience of Job.”
“But that is the interest of it,” Ethne said. “He must have been patient really, for God said so at the end. But there was no dullness in his patience. He said terrible things about the world and even about God in his anguish—just the things that come into every one’s heart in great anguish.”
“So it always seemed to me,” Lucia observed with some hesitation. “But how does that help us? We are not allowed to say such things.”
“It is all the help in the world,” said Ethne. “That old chieftain could not be untrue. The other chiefs preached at him in all his pain and anguish, and kept saying, ‘The world is all right, and every one gets what he deserves.’ And Job said, ‘The world is anything but right, and people don’t get what they deserve.’ And the delight is to see that God was pleased not with the chiefs who meant to flatter Him by saying His world was going on all right, but with poor tortured Job, who found fault with it—even, it almost seemed, with Himself. We do dare sometimes to say the hardest things to those we love best.”
“But,” said Lucia, coming out with a problem which had vexed her in secret long, “how can that comfort us? God did not explain. He only said, ‘I am strong, and wise, and eternal, and you are frail and blind, and but for a moment.’ Is that any comfort?”
Ethne was silent for a time, and then she said—
“I suppose it is, if we love Him enough! It seems to me God never does explain. But He said that poor old chieftain had spoken right for Him and understood Him, and He must have known. That certainly must have comforted Job. And God told Job to make sacrifices for his friends who were so pleased with themselves. And it is a comfort to have people who are too much pleased with themselves set right; and the greatest comfort of all to be able to do good to those who have hurt us. Perhaps also it put the friends right too at last.”
“Job had also his riches back, and other children instead of those he had lost,” said Lucia.
“I do not see much comfort in that,” said Ethne; “the lost things may be replaced, but we always want the same lost people back, not new ones.”
“Hast thou no room for any new people?” Lucia said. “Have you no room for us?” and she clasped Ethne’s hands.
Ethne returned the caress, but rather parenthetically; and with a far-off look in the deep grey eyes she resumed—
“Poor old chieftain! That poem does not seem finished; but we have the end, you know,” she added.
“The end!” said Lucia. “Where?” wondering if Ethne had discovered a new book of the Holy Scriptures in her far country.
“In the Four Gospels,” said Ethne, “in the Cross. We do not need, of course, that God should explain Himself. He has sent His Son.”
The winter passed rapidly away. At first they did not venture to take Ethne amongst the great congregations in the basilicas; but occasionally, as time went on, and also her Latin grew stronger, learned naturally in the every-day speech of the home, they took her to some quiet corner of the great churches, to hear one of the great sermons of Leo; and so, gradually, the conviction dawned on her as she stood among the hushed multitudes, and listened to the strong, plain words of the great Bishop, that Rome, like Troyes, had also her great living saint. The heresies he refuted were indeed unknown to her; to her his eloquent, clear exposition of the Faith in the Incarnate Lord was but an unfolding of what she had been taught in the simple creed and hymn of Patrick, guarded, as she felt, against foes she knew not; but guarded by simply strengthening wall and buttress of the great fortress of truth, within which she had already found rest.
The Christian catacombs also had the deepest interest for Ethne; they never seemed to have any gloom for the young girl. The radiance of the presence of the Good Shepherd, painted on the walls, seemed to make them warm and bright for her. The Shepherd with the sheep and lambs gathered around his feet, and in one place with the lost kid of the goats on His shoulder; the music of the young Orpheus (also on those frescoed walls), in his immortal youth, filled all the silent chambers.
“Christ, our Orpheus, is for ever gathering the living stones into the Holy City by His music,” Damaris said; “from the wildernesses of the far West, from the ruins of Rome, from the Egyptian deserts of Telemachus.”
“And for ever making the world young again,” said Lucia; “as He has now sent you into our old world to make it new again for us.”
“It does not seem old to me,” said Ethne.
“How should it?” said Lucia. “Does the spring-tide ever leave the world old? Do the fountains of living water ever know what drought means?”
They read to her from the rough old Greek letters the inscriptions, “In peace,” “Thou livest,” “Mayest thou live in God.”
“It is the story of the princesses of our race, the story of our Ethne the Fair and Fedelma the Ruddy. They said to Patrick, ‘Give us to see the Son, our Spouse,’ and they received the Eucharist of God, and they saw the Son, their Spouse, and they slept in peace.”
Once Miriam took the girl into one of the catacombs of her own people; and there also she saw in the square, strange characters the word which Miriam told her meant “Peace” in the Hebrew; also the dove with the olive branch as in the Christian tombs, and the rocky couch or ledge like that on which the angels called the Magdalene to look and see where they had laid the Lord.
“No more a tomb, but only a night’s resting-place for us since He laid there,” Ethne said.
And Miriam answered with mournful hesitation—
“They said the disciples stole Him away.”
“They did not steal Him away,” Ethne replied; “nor did He steal away from death! He met death and conquered it for us, for all, for ever.”
For Ethne, nothing was in the realm of death; there was no dead past for her; back through all the ages lived that immortal life of the living Word. There was no world of shades for her; the world of the dead had become “the land of the living.”
While Ethne was thus becoming at home in the Aventine palace, a true daughter of the heart to Damaris, Baithene had become a stay and companion to Fabricius, such as he had scarcely known before. Baithene came to them from a simpler world than theirs, which seemed to bring back to the old Roman the nobleness and simplicity of old Rome. These children came to them both unperplexed by the confused voices of the later civilization, so feeble and so corrupt; and, moreover, without weighing on them with the responsibility which they felt anxiously with regard to their own children. And therefore they could fill up gaps and voids in their own life and thought as none brought up under the same influences could have done. The simpler world of the Sabine farm was also home-like to Baithene.
Of the great empire, so tangled, so chaotic, with the germs of a new world no one could then foresee struggling into life through the decay of the old world crumbling to corruption, he could understand little. The miles of pasture and forest, the lakes and torrents among those Sabine hills, were to him like the hills and valleys of his own land. Every day there were trees to be felled, or fields to be tilled; and there was also the chase, of the beasts of prey, wolves and bears, with Bran in his element as an aide-de-camp. There were also men and women to be governed and employed. But here came in a dreary difference. Instead of men and women bound to him and his with the loyalty to chieftainship and the affection of kinship, those who had to be governed here were all slaves, of many races, linked to each other and their owner by no organic tie, but merely as mechanical atoms welded together by frost and fire. The worst evils of slavery were indeed mitigated there. Fabricius and Damaris were Christians; the estate was not too large for the servants of the household to be attached personally to them, and many of the labourers had wives and families held together, as in olden days no slaves could be, by the sanctity of Christian marriage.
The evils of the Latifundia, the enormous farms, with the Ergastula, the workhouses inhabited by great gangs of celibate slaves under a slave-driver, were greatly modified on Fabricius’ land. But nevertheless the relations between employer and employed were those of slavery; and whether worked out mercifully or not, it was from Roman households that forty thousand Gothic slaves had fled forty years before to Alaric, at the first chance of liberation.
Baithene felt, in a dim way, that however rude and undeveloped might be the social life in his own land, it was living and organic, and therefore capable of growth; whereas this was a mere mechanical conglomeration, always inwardly crumbling away, and ready at any blow from without to be shattered in a moment into ruin. Yet, not being responsible for it himself, and being in his small way royal, the largeness of heart and the habit of caring for others remained with him, so that he contrived to diffuse a good deal of life and interest and even gaiety around him, and thus greatly to relieve Fabricius.
When in a few months it was deemed safe for Baithene to return to the Aventine with the dog and Fabricius, the company of slaves who came with them had become eager to render him willing service, knowing that he would demand nothing but what was right, and that he would give all that was possible; they had also become responsive to his gay words and smile, knowing that he had not only that light-heartedness which took troubles lightly, but also the faculty of flashing into lightnings of indignation against injustice and wrong. He found his sister also, in her place, the depositary of the joys and sorrows of the household, old and young; both of them having conquered the hearts around them by their old princely way of considering what every one needed and liked, and by their new Christian way of ruling, not by dividing but by uniting, of reigning by serving.
The return of Fabricius and Baithene brought Ethne and the whole family more into the outer world. The life of Damaris, loving and natural as it was, had become essentially a life of religion; her pleasures were in her works of mercy, visiting the sick, helping the destitute, lifting up the fallen—services in which Ethne delighted to share.
“The world,” in the Rome of those days, was for the most part so undeniably wicked and unlovely, its amusements so ugly, its vices so putrefying, that to come out of it seemed not merely the only safe, but the only cheerful and tolerable road to take. And to Lucia and Ethne, the mere gaiety of their youth, the beauty of flowers, the mere joy of living, singing like birds, dancing like young fawns, especially now that they danced and sang and lived together, were quite pleasure enough.
But when Fabricius came there had to be entertainments, visits, attentions to and from the great houses connected with them; and this necessarily made the position of the Irish captives more complicated and difficult.
It was a great joy to the brother and sister to be together again; and the rapture of Bran (the dog) at finding his young mistress again as he crouched at her feet, and bounded round her, and gravely placed his great paws on her shoulder, expressing his feelings with every possible movement of tail and ears, and every possible variety of bark, and cry, and whine, quite raised him out of the category of dumb beasts.
Baithene and Ethne had much to compare. All kinds of new questions, social and ecclesiastical, had arisen before them; the world divided itself so differently here from the old classifications of their childhood. “City” and “country” were in themselves new words to them, never having before their capture beheld any collection of houses worthy to be called a town. The terms “master” and “slave” were not so altogether new, since in Ireland also captives were held in bondage, and their own Patrick had been once a slave. But that the whole class of owners and employers should be slave-owners, and the whole class of labourers and servants slaves, with no natural human links between them of clan or race, was indeed new. As to the Church, there was less to perplex them, since from the beginning they had been brought face to face with the great perplexity of all times, that so many Christians were not in the least Christ-like. Heretics indeed they heard of, of various degrees and names—Arian, semi-Arian, Pelagian, semi-Pelagian, Nestorian, Eutychian, Manichean; but these seemed to them mostly of foreign growth: the Arians chiefly Gothic; the Eutychians (whatever that might mean) chiefly from the East; the Manicheans chiefly from Africa; the Pelagians from their own West, from the Britanniæ, the land of the pirates who had captured them. Rome had seldom originated the great heretics or the great theologians. And, moreover, of all these confusions the brother and sister had chiefly heard through a voice ringing clear, simple, sonorous above all the tumult like the voice of their own Patrick; and that was the voice of Leo, Bishop Leo, Pope Leo, Leo the Great of Rome. Lupus they knew was called Pope at Troyes, and Anianus at Orleans; but this Leo it seemed was pope and father of a wider world. Rome herself, many years before, they were told, the restless, divided city, had waited in peace for forty days, during his absence after his election, united in the unanimous choice of him as her shepherd and guide. And ever since in all perplexities she had always turned to him, never absent, as her defender and real lord; rock of strength amidst all the tossings of the waves and all the crumblings of the strongholds. Ethne said to Baithene—
“It seems as though God had sent Leo to Rome, as He sent Patrick to Ireland. If ever thou, beloved, were to take Holy Orders in this strange land, surely it would be Leo’s hands that would consecrate thee.”
“Leo’s hands would never consecrate me!” he replied, with a slight touch of bitterness unusual with him. “Have I not been, and am I not still, a slave? And Leo does not admit slaves to the priesthood. They told me amid the Sabine hills that he wrote to the bishops of Campania, that ‘a servile meanness made some slaves seek the honour of the priesthood, seeking that they who found no approval from man might find approval from God; but the sacred ministry,’ he said, ‘would be polluted by the meanness of such association. None who are bound to the service of others’ (qui originali aut alicui conditione obligati sunt), he wrote, ‘or in any way not free by birth or station, was fit to serve in the camp of God.’”[2]
“But Patrick was a slave!” she exclaimed.
“Patrick was born free,” he replied.
“But thou also wert born free!” she said, her face brightening. “Leo could never mean to exclude such as thee!”
“I know not, little sister,” he replied. “Many indeed of the slaves of the Romans are captives born free, but the Roman law gives the purchaser indelible rights over the purchased.”
Ethne’s eyes filled with tears.
“Does Christianity itself, even the Heavenly City, which is free, and the mother of us all, turn against us? Is there no refuge at all in this world for the wronged?”
“As thou sayest,” he replied, “the heavenly Jerusalem is free; we shall all be free there. And here we can always be free in soul! Moreover,” he added, “slavery does often indeed degrade the slave, and make him through all his being slavish and unfit for any high office. And on me, beloved, this does not weigh heavily after all. God helping us, we have another calling, the old reigning and serving for our own people.”
“At all events,” said Ethne, “we may add Leo’s prayer to Patrick’s hymn—‘Grant us the spirit to think and do always such things as be rightful, that we who cannot do anything that is good without Thee, may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy will.’ It is the great Bishop’s prayer for us, and for himself,” she added; “let us say it together for him as well as for ourselves.”
The entertainments, banquets, and visits of state occasioned by the return of Fabricius to Rome, necessarily made the position of the Irish captives more difficult. Although their being members of the Aventine household was their best protection, Fabricius and Damaris could not bear to have them regarded as in bondage; and yet as guests the world could not receive them.
Christmas was drawing near, with many of the old pagan festivities, as well as those of the Christian Church, gathered around the season. But to the Irish captives it brought no festive home gatherings—this their first Christian Christmas, their first homeless New Year. To them, therefore, all that was festive in the season was concentrated entirely in the great Festival of the Nativity. Their home was in the home of the Holy Childhood of the Child Jesus and the Mother Mary. The great stately basilicas were as a family hearth to these fatherless and motherless exiles, and the words of Bishop Leo on the Incarnation were as a father’s welcome to them.
“You know well, dilectissimi,” Leo said, “and have frequently heard the things which belong to the sacred observance of this day’s solemnity. But as this visible light affords pleasure to uninjured eyes, so do sound hearts receive perpetual joy from the Nativity of the Saviour. Wherefore we must never be silent, though we cannot set it forth as it deserves.”[3]
Then he spoke of “the general Confession common to all, whereby the whole body of the faithful say they believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, Who was born of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary; by which three clauses,” he said, “the engines of attack of all the heretics are shattered.”[4]
And Ethne and Baithene, who knew the Confession well, although they knew little of the heretics, felt warm and safe as birds in their own nest within the sacred walls, which kept them safe from all these battering-rams.
Again Leo said—
“Lowliness was taken up by Majesty, weakness by Power, mortality by Eternity; and in order to pay the debt of our corruption, the inviolable nature was united to that which could suffer.
“In the entire and perfect nature of very man was born the very God; whole, in what was His; whole, in what was ours. By ours we mean what the Creator formed in us at the beginning, and what He assumed in order to restore. For of that which the demon brought, which man, by him deceived, admitted, there was not a trace in the Saviour; and the fact that He took on Himself our infirmities did not make Him partaker of our transgressions. He took on Him the form of a servant, of a slave” (at these words Ethne gently touched her brother’s arm), “without the defilement of sin, enlarging the human and not diminishing the Divine; for that emptying of Himself whereby the Invisible made Himself visible, and the Creator of all things willed to be one among mortals, was the stooping of compassion, not the failure of power.
“The infancy of the Babe is exhibited by the swaddling clothes; the greatness of the Highest is declared by the voices of angels. To hunger, to thirst, to be weary, is evidently human; but to supply five thousand men with five loaves, and to give to the Samaritan woman that living water of which to drink is never to thirst again,—to walk on the back of the sea with feet that sink not, and to allay the liftings up of the waves tossed by the storm, is unquestionably Divine. To weep over a dead friend is human; by a voice of command to raise him to life again is Divine. It belongs to our nature to hang on the wood of the Cross; and to another to make all the elements tremble when day had been darkened into night. It belongs to humanity to be transfixed with nails; it belongs to Deity to open the gates of Paradise to the faith of the robber.[5]
“Our Lord, the true Shepherd, Who laid down His life for the sheep, and Who came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them, wills us to imitate His own loving-kindness.”
Such words as these made that season indeed a festival to the captives, rich with the joy the world could not give nor take away, a joy in which they and Damaris and Lucia, and every slave among the hundreds in that great patrician household, could rejoice alike.
Then came the great Festival of the Epiphany, which these children from the Isles of the Gentiles felt to be especially their own. And again the clear, strong words of Leo rang through the crowded basilica.
“The last holy day which we celebrated was that on which a pure Virgin brought forth the Saviour of mankind. And now, beloved, the venerable Festival of the Epiphany gives us a continuation of joys.
“For the salvation of all men is interested in the fact, that the infancy of the Mediator between God and man was clearly manifested to the whole world whilst it was still detained in an insignificant little town.
“For although He had chosen out the Israelitish nation, and one family of that nation, from which to take on Him the nature of universal humanity, yet it was not His will that the beginnings of His life should be concealed within the narrow limits of his mother’s abode; but as He was pleased to be born for all, He willed to be speedily recognized by all, and accordingly the star appeared to the Magi.
“Lift up, dearly beloved, your faithful minds to the faithful grace of the everlasting light. Follow after that humility, clothe yourself with the strength of patience, that in it you may be able to make your souls your own; for He Who is the redemption of all is Himself the courage of all.”
“Brother,” said Ethne that evening, as they sat alone together, while Fabricius held a great banquet for his kinsmen, “I think I understand about Leo and the slaves. It is only because he has never had the gift of being himself a slave. Thank God, our Patrick had been a captive, and so learnt the heart of a captive and a slave. And you see even the All-Merciful had to become one of us, that He might be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.”
Baithene was silent a few minutes, and then he said in a low, deep voice, taking his sister’s hands in his own—
“If ever we are lifted back to our place among the few, little sister, God grant we may never lose the lessons learnt by living down among the many!”
One winter morning, not long after the Epiphany, when Damaris and Ethne were sitting together quietly reading in a room opening on the long pillared corridor, they were surprised by the angry barking of a dog, followed by cries of pain from a human voice. In a moment Ethne was away.
“It is Bran!” she said; “he is killing something, or some one is killing him; perhaps both.”
In a few minutes she returned, with the dog crouching penitently beside her, with apologizing ears and tail, whilst behind her came Marius, leading a roughly-clad stranger, who was slightly limping. It was Dewi, the British sailor.
When the joyful greetings between Marius and his mother and sister were over, they all re-entered the portico, and Dewi threw himself down at Ethne’s feet and kissed the hem of her garment. In his arms he carried a large package, which he laid at her feet with every possible expression and gesture of homage.
“What is he saying?” Lucia asked.
“He is only giving me great titles in our own language,” said Ethne, “princess, and lady, and I know not what else, and saying we have saved his life now for the second time.”
Meantime Bran continued giving out low growls, evidently endeavouring to awaken his friends to danger, with a desponding conviction that his remonstrances were not likely to be attended to.
“What is the dog saying?” Lucia asked, “as you seem to know everybody’s language.”
“He is reminding us, I suppose, how Dewi gave him a blow with a club when the pirates took us captive.”
Then Marius intervened—
“Excuse me, lady!” he said to Ethne and his mother and sister. “The dog hurried the introduction. But to you, mother, I see this lady needs no introduction of mine.”
At that moment Fabricius appeared from another door with Baithene. Ethne arose, and clasping her brother’s hands, said with quivering voice—
“They live! they are well!” and again Dewi’s homage was repeated to Baithene; and then he placed in his hands a large bag which he had kept closely wrapped in his plaid.
“What does it all mean?” Fabricius asked, much perplexed by these sudden appearances, and by the various languages, human and canine.
Gradually the explanation came. Marius had found the British sailor on the quay at Marseilles (where he had been staying with his friend the Presbyter Salvian). The poor Briton was vainly endeavouring to make himself understood, and Marius took compassion on him; something in the cadences of his voice made him think of Ethne and Baithene.
After a time an Armorican Breton was found to interpret, and between them at last they came to understand that Dewi had just come from Ireland, and was now on his way to Rome, and was trying to find some vessel to take him to Ostia, the port of Rome. He had a message from an Irish prince or chieftain to his son and daughter, who had been captured by British pirates, and were supposed to have been taken in bondage to Rome.
“When I understood this,” said Marius, turning to Baithene and Ethne, “I ventured to question him further, and soon I felt sure that his message was for you, so I took ship with him, and have brought him hither.”
Damaris ordered refreshment to be brought, and left the stranger alone with Ethne and Baithene.
When they were alone Dewi knelt again and kissed their hands, and could scarcely be induced to say or do anything but gaze on them rapturously, as on a priceless treasure unexpectedly recovered. But Ethne insisted that the wound on his ankle should be looked to at once, for the blood was flowing fast. Baithene unfastened his sandals. Fortunately the wound, though serious, was not very deep.
“He remembered the place of his old bite,” said Dewi, with a grim smile, “and he nearly did it this time.”
When the wound was washed and bandaged by Ethne’s gentle hands, Dewi was persuaded to sit down and partake of the food provided for him. The questions that could scarcely be asked at first in the tumult of fear and joy and welcome, came out one by one, and brought out the tidings and messages from home. The father and mother were well, Dewi said. But he spoke of them as grey-haired and old, and Baithene and Ethne could only think of them as in the prime and vigour of life. Could it be possible that grief for the loss of their children had thus aged them?
“They welcomed me like a prince, like a brother,” Dewi said, “when I told them I came from you—I, who deserved so ill of them! The dog’s welcome was what I deserved!” he added in a choking voice.
“You risked your life to serve us and them,” said Ethne; “and what welcome could be too warm and thankful for that?”
Dewi acknowledged that he had run many risks, and had many toilsome journeys, but on these he would not dwell. He had seen Patrick also, the great Bishop Patrick. He had received his pardon and his blessing, and he had brought Patrick’s blessing for them, their father’s and mother’s blessing, and Patrick’s.
“Did they say what they would have us do?” Baithene asked.
“They long above all to see your faces once more, but they know how perilous the journey is, even if you could be free. And they entreated you for their sake, and your own, and your people’s, not to come unless it is safe.”
“But we are not free!” said Baithene; “do they know that? Do they think any toils or perils could ever have kept us from them if we were free to go?”
Dewi’s eyes sparkled with a consciousness of having good tidings to bring, a remedy, as he thought, for all their woes.
“When you open the packet and empty the bag,” said he, “you will see that you have freedom in your own hands.” And he began to untwist the ropes around the packet, while Baithene opened the bag. In the bag there were coins, gold, silver, and copper; in the packet were costly silks, and store of fine linen and woollen raiment. Finally Dewi drew from another hiding-place a box, which he presented to Ethne; it contained her mother’s jewels, carefully wrought gold and silver torques and bracelets and armlets, with clasps of gems and precious stones.
When Ethne saw the precious things she had clasped around her mother’s neck, and her mother around her own from childhood, she hid her face on her brother’s shoulder and burst into a passion of weeping. When she could speak she turned to Dewi, fearing to seem ungrateful to him.
“You have been all but starved many a time, I know,” she said, “whilst you were keeping sacredly all these treasures to bring to us!”
Then one by one she recognized other humbler ornaments, priceless to her heart from the very smallness of their value, coming as she knew they did from the poverty of those who in giving them had given the best they had.
“This is old Brian’s,” they said, “who died by the pirate’s spear in trying to save us; and this is his mother’s; and this is from our own old nurse, the one precious heirloom of her house.”
“Yes,” replied Dewi; “everything precious your people possessed they insisted on my bringing, till I could carry no more. What were gold and silver to them, they said, when you, the jewels of the hearts of all, were lost?”
A pang shot through Ethne’s heart that they could for a moment have been interested in any one or anything else while these faithful hearts were thus mourning and wearying for them. Something of this she said to Baithene.
“Yet what could we have done?” she added; “how could we live anywhere for anytime without loving?”
“Surely you could not, darling,” he replied. “The Heavenly Father made you that way.”
After a time Damaris returned with Fabricius.
“What are all these treasures?” Fabricius asked; and Dewi answered through Baithene—
“These, my lord, are the ransoms sent by the Irish king and his people to the prince and princess, their son and daughter, that they may be restored to their home and their land.”
“I require no ransom,” Fabricius said. “I have always thought of these noble captives as free-born, and high-born as myself;” and going to a chest he drew out a parchment. “This is the deed of manumission,” he said, “setting free according to our law those who have been taken captive. It is merely a form. I only held it back until the moment seemed to have come when it would be safe for them to return to their country.”
Ethne and Baithene were much moved at the generous intentions of the old Roman; but yet Marius felt they were not satisfied, and could not be, to receive their freedom as a gift from any one.
“Father,” he said, “and you our guests of patrician descent, though of another race, pardon me if I misunderstand you and say what you do not like. But it seems to me the ransom of the chieftain and his people should be accepted. It must be sweeter and truer for our guests that they should be delivered from unjust captivity by the willing sacrifices of their own kindred, rather than by any gift from us. I suggest that the ransom be accepted, and these victims of the misrule of the country we Romans have abandoned, should be declared to be what they have always in justice been—free by Divine and human right always and for ever.”
Ethne’s eyes were full of grateful tears as she raised them for a moment and met his. Fabricius demurred a little.
“There must, I fear,” he said, “be a deed of manumission, or something to that effect, to satisfy our law. And how is it possible for me to accept a ransom for doing an act of justice and reparation to foreigners, for wrongs committed by Roman law? to Christians, for wrongs inflicted by apostate Christians?”
“It is best as Marius says,” interposed the soft voice of Damaris decisively.
“Take money for restoring rights to these our friends and honoured guests!” the old man exclaimed indignantly.
“Let it be a gift all round,” Damaris replied; “your gift to Eleazar for them, the generous gift of their kindred for these children to thee and me.”
But after a short consultation in low tones between the brother and sister, Baithene interposed with an objection.
“Should not everything be true between us all, lady?” he said to Damaris. “Let it be simply a debt repaid for the ransom so generously given. Let the illustrious Fabricius graciously receive the sum he most graciously gave for us to the Jew. Thus I think will our parents and our people be content.”
And Ethne added—
“Our people would not take back what they have given. We must not rob them of the joy of their sacrifices, for theirs are all offerings of loyalty and love.”
“Then, that mercy and truth may meet together, fair maiden,” replied Fabricius, “so be it; you shall have your way.”
Accordingly the bagful of Roman coin, received for Irish merchandise, was poured out on the table, and every coin was carefully counted against the ransom paid by Fabricius to Eleazar.
To the satisfaction of Fabricius, there was found to be a considerable amount over. Baithene would have thrown it all in, but Fabricius replied, laughing—
“Nay, my friend, we also can be wilful. Let truth have her rigid rights, as you demand; and besides,” he added, “think of the misery of our friend the Jew in having made such a bad bargain.”
At this Ethne’s colour rose, and with a tearful voice she said—
“Eleazar and Miriam could have made a far higher price to the officers of the Imperial household, but they had pity on us. I shall tell them all at once.”
“And we will give them the rest of the coins,” suggested Baithene.
“We will give them nothing,” replied Ethne, decisively. “They had pity on us; and nothing shall rob them of the grace of their compassion, or us of the right to be grateful.”
Thus the friendly contest ended, and the gathering dispersed—Damaris to have the quiet interview she had been longing for with Marius; Fabricius and Lucia to settle Dewi into comfortable quarters; Ethne and Baithene, with the dog, to the house of Eleazar. There they found Miriam, and claimed her sympathy in their good tidings.
“It is surely a good augury for thee,” Ethne said. “I have found my mother! And thou shalt surely yet find thy daughter! The Good Shepherd knows indeed where every one of His flock is; and therefore He will know how to restore your lost lamb to you.” And as she left, she fastened round Miriam’s wrist the most costly and beautiful of the gold bracelets. “Give that to your daughter when you find her,” she said; “it is my mother’s; let me give it from her to thy child.”
Eleazar came in as she spoke. Miriam was softly weeping, and the old man was moved to the heart. As a son of Aaron, he laid his priestly hands in benediction on the heads of the Irish captives.
“May the blessing of the God of our fathers rest on you, my son and daughter,” he said; and then solemnly he pronounced the ancient priestly benediction committed to the sons of Aaron: “The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. And pray thou to our God for us,” he afterwards added sadly and humbly to Ethne; “it seems that He hears thee.”
When Marius and Damaris were alone together, it was some time before they said anything. They sat hand in hand on the couch, whilst Marius placed his other hand before his eyes. At length she gently withdrew her hand from his, and then withdrawing his from his forehead, took both his hands with a gesture of tender, motherly command into her own, and looked into his eyes.
“It is thou who hast made the real sacrifice to-day,” she said very softly. “Thy lady and princess, being free, will go back as soon as possible, thou well knowest, at any cost or peril, to her father and mother, her country and her people.”
“Would not that be right for her?” he said. “If it is, she is sure to see and do the thing that is right.”
“She will think this right,” Damaris replied.
“And what ought we to do?” he asked, in an anguish of suspense.
“Pray Leo’s prayer,” she replied, “all of us. Teach us to think and do the things that are rightful.”
“It is an excellent prayer,” said Marius very respectfully, but not, apparently, at all consoled, “and prayer always comforts thee.”
Then the mother threw her arms around her son, and a radiant smile illumined her face as she looked up into his.
“Ethne’s heart will surely turn to thee, my son,” she said. “God has chosen her out of all the world for thee, and led her to thee, as He led Eve to Adam. Trust Him, and trust her.”
“Mother,” he said, “may I say anything to her?”
“You may say what you will,” she replied, “or what you can, whatever thy heart feels free to say, and she is willing to hear. Thou art free, and she is free. Let her choose what she will, and in her own time.”
“But my father?” he asked.
“Leave him to me,” smiled Damaris. “We have understood each other long enough.”
Marius had not long to wait. Soon after, Lucia joined them, and they waited in the porch for the return of Ethne and Baithene. It was evening before they came back, with a happy repose in their look and manner. This newly acknowledged freedom seemed to make little difference to Ethne; but Baithene’s step was light with a new spring, and his whole being had a new power, not so much as if he had been ransomed from bondage, but as if he had sprung at a bound into full and princely manhood, prepared to take his place in the world.
Fabricius drew near and greeted him with a smile.
“You have been to your friends the Israelites. Doubtless,” he added with some malice to Ethne, “you, lady, have kept your rigid determination to bestow nothing on them.”
“She has given Miriam the treasure she values most—an ancient heirloom of our house,” replied Baithene.
Ethne could not defend herself; and Lucia kissed her hand, laughing, and said—
“Of course; I knew—we all knew what thou wouldst do!”
Had Lucia spoken thus but yesterday, Baithene would have retorted with a jest; but with the recognition of their freedom and true place in the world, and all the happy possibilities the breaking down of any barrier between them might involve, had come also an indefinable distance between them, and he only said—
“I had thought that very jewel might be accepted by thy mother or by thee, little as our poor barbarian treasures must seem to you.”
Damaris expressed a wish to see the Irish treasures again, and whilst the others went into an inner chamber to look at them, Marius remained alone with Ethne in the portico, the soft perfume of lilies and roses coming to them from the gardens. Whilst he was hesitating what to say, she began—
“Tell me,” she said, “about Lupus, the good old Bishop of Troyes. Is he back in his own city again?”
Marius hesitated a moment, and then he replied—
“Thy judgment of Attila was just: he did not fail. Bishop Lupus came back unharmed. But his own people failed, incredible as it seems. His own flock, the city he had saved at risk of his life, when he returned from his perilous sojourn among the Huns, received him coldly, indeed would scarcely receive him at all. Mean slanderers had been there poisoning the minds of the citizens during his absence. They said he must have treacherously flattered and fawned upon the barbarians, and be in league with Attila; and they gave him but a cold welcome.”
“What did the Bishop do?” she asked indignantly.
“He quietly retired to a mountain not far off,” Marius replied, “and there to this day he is living in exile, poor and solitary and neglected.”
“Yet surely praying and hoping still for his misguided flock!” Ethne said; and with her victorious smile she added, “He is sure to win in the end. But why, oh, why is it we, we Christ’s Christians, seem so often most to fail Him and His?”
“All do not fail,” he said, seeking to comfort her. “My friend Sidonius Apollinaris writes to Bishop Lupus as ‘father of fathers, as old well-nigh as Moses, but also as great.’”
“But ah,” she said mournfully, “what a world this might be if only all the Church were one, and true!”
“You are weary,” he said sadly, “of this decrepit, decaying old world of ours. You are longing to go home to your own young world of hope—to your Patrick, and your own people, who understand and honour their saint so well!”
“When we may,” she said. “I am the only daughter of my house, and my father and mother are aged.”
“I know well what that means,” he replied. “We also are only children of our house. Dost thou not know, lady, that always, with all my power, at any cost to myself, I would fain help thee to what thou deemest best?”
“You have always helped us,” she said, “always understood—at Orleans, at Troyes—always.”
“If you decide on leaving Rome,” he said, after a pause, in a low, deep voice, “I would try and help you at any cost.”
Did she understand, he wondered, at what a cost it might be to himself? Did either of them understand what a pang of conflict it might cost to her? Her eyelids fell before his passionate gaze, the dark lashes shaded her cheek. But at that moment he felt he would not, need not question her further. A trembling hope came into his heart that he had won his answer; and with the hope came the response to his mother’s words about Leo’s prayer, and he said softly—
“Help us to think and to do the things that are rightful.”
Then the frank, grey eyes were raised once more to his with an expression of rejoicing and entire trust.
“What is rightful?” she said. “That must always mean what He Who loves us best sees is best for us, must it not?”
And for the first time he seemed to see into the clear depths of her soul, and to be sure that she was no longer apart from him to be questioned, but close beside him, sharing his very soul, and questioning herself. He felt as if the pleading for him with her was in higher hands, and quite safe there. And suddenly he felt constrained to open the depths of his own heart and mind to her.
“Leo and his prayers are so much to my mother and to you,” he said. “Can you bear all these debates and controversies about the deepest things of all? They seem to me like troops of Huns wheeling around within the very Holy of Holies. They make everything like a mere word-battle and empty show to me. Or they did make it so till lately,” he added, glancing at her with a new light in his eyes.
“I don’t know all the mistaken things other people have been thinking,” she answered quietly, “but to me Bishop Leo always seems simply unfolding into full, beautiful blossom the faith Patrick taught us in the Creed and the Hymn. He always seems building a fortress and stronghold for us all. But the fortress is for us also a home; for we are children, inside. He makes me think often of the words they chant in church: ‘The Lord is my Rock and my Fortress,’ the sweet voices say; and the others answer, ‘He shall defend thee under His wings, and thou shalt be safe under His feathers.’ Stone buttresses of a fortress to the enemy outside; to those within, a warm nest with the soft feathers and downy breast of a mother-bird brooding over us. For the stronghold is not anything Bishop Leo builds, but God Himself, to Whom he leads us, and God is love.”
“And you yourself have led me within, and we are together.”
“We are together,” said Ethne.
And that evening they said no more.
The days sped quickly away in the palace on the Aventine. Dewi’s wound was rather slow in healing; and until their faithful messenger could return, there was a suspense as to the possibility of decisions for the future.
Day by day as it passed drew the little company closer to each other.
In those days it was an unquestioned right and duty of parents to dispose of their sons and daughters in marriage. It was a responsibility and a power not to be set aside.
“There must be two marriages,” Fabricius said decisively to Damaris. “These four are clearly made for each other.”
“Dost thou see what that would mean for us?” she replied.
“Thou wouldst gain a daughter-in-law after thine heart,” he said.
“But our own Lucia!” she sighed.
“Lucia,” he answered, “would win a husband worthy of her. Where in this corrupt city could we find a son-in-law so good and true, such a man, such a Roman, as Baithene? A new life and order come into the farm, the forest, the household, wherever he is.”
“But Baithene will not be for our household,” she said, with some hesitation, fearing he had not counted the cost.
“I know that too well,” he said. “Our Luciola will be for his home, his kingdom, his people. But is that a new lot for our race? Is it not our ancient destiny and calling to send forth men and women trained to bring light and order everywhere throughout the world? I am old, beloved, and cannot long be here to care for her or thee in these evil times. Thou art younger, at least always young to me. Canst thou be content to give the child to Baithene?”
“We are Christians, my beloved!” she replied, “and, in the old time-honoured words, ‘to us all countries are a fatherland.’ We have given the children to the Lord Christ from the first; and if He calls them to the ends of the earth they must go. All lands are His; this land of theirs seems even now to be beginning to listen to His call, and to need them more than any.”
Thus in simple patriarchal or Roman fashion it happened, that by the paternal power the union already in the hearts of their children was sanctioned and brought into the region of acknowledged fact. Fabricius decreed that there should be two betrothals. Baithene had no question that his father and mother would welcome as a priceless treasure such a bride. But Ethne stipulated that before a marriage could be, they must receive the consent and benediction of their own father and mother. To procure this was no easy matter, with the broken communication brought about by the decay of the Empire, the breaking up of the grand old system of Roman roads, and the interposing of nations of unsettled invaders throughout Gaul and Britain.
But before their plans could be matured a new peril burst in on the harmony of the peaceful home on the Aventine from the chaotic world outside. It was reported that Attila was once more on the march to ravage Italy and capture Rome.