The Count of the Saxon Shore; or The Villa in Vectis. Alfred John Church
soul?”
“My daughter,” said the priest, “I am helpless. He knows nothing; he understands nothing.”
“Can you not baptize him?”
“Baptize him without a profession of repentance, without a confession of faith! Impossible!”
“Will you let him perish before your eyes without an effort to save him?”
“Child,” said the priest, with some impatience in his tone, “I have told you that I am helpless. It was not I that brought these things about.”
The girl cast an agonized look about the room, as of one that appealed for help, and seized a crucifix that hung upon the wall. She threw herself upon her knees by the bedside, and after pressing the symbol of Redemption passionately to her lips, held it to the mouth of the dying man. The Saxon, on his first entrance into the room, had removed his look from his brother and fixed it steadfastly on this beautiful apparition. Clad in white from head to foot, with a golden girdle about her waist, her eyes shining with excitement, her whole face transfigured by a passion of pity, she seemed to him a vision from another world, one of the Walhalla maidens of whom his mother had talked to him in days gone by. His lips closed feebly on the crucifix which she held to them; a smile lighted up his fading eyes, and he [pg 55]muttered with his last breath “Valkyria.” The girl heard the word and remembered without understanding it. The next moment he was dead, and one of the women standing by stepped forward and closed his eyes.
Carna burst into a passion of tears.
“He is gone,” she cried, amidst her sobs, “he is gone, and we could not help him.”
The priest was silent. He had no consolation to offer. Indeed, but that he recognized the girl’s saintliness—a saintliness to which he, worthy man as he was, had no pretensions—he would have thought her grief foolish. But the old physician could not keep silence.
“Pardon me, lady,” he said, “if I seem to reprove you. I pray you not to suffer your zeal for the salvation of souls to overpower your faith. Do you think that the All-Father does not love this poor stranger as well as you, nay, better than you can love him? that He cannot care for him as well? that you, forsooth, must save him out of His hands? Nay, my daughter—pardon an old man for the word—do not so distrust Him.”
“You are right, father, as always,” said the girl. “I have been selfish and faithless. I was angry, I suppose, to find myself baffled and helpless. You must set me a penance, father,” she added, turning to the priest.
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The Saxon meanwhile had contrived by his gestures to make his guards understand that he wished to take his farewell of his dead brother. They allowed him to approach the bed. He stooped and kissed the lips of the dead, and then, choking down the sobs which convulsed his breast, turned away, seemingly calm and unmoved. But as he passed Carna he contrived to catch with his manacled hands one of the flowing sleeves of her white robe, and to lift the hem to his lips.
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CHAPTER VI.
THE SAXON.
It was not easy to know what should be done with the survivor of the two Saxon captives. The villa had no proper provision for the safe custody of prisoners; and the problem of keeping a man under lock and key, without a quite disproportionate amount of trouble, was as difficult as it would be in the ordinary country house of modern times.
“I shall send him to the camp at the Great Harbour,” said the Count, a few days after the scene described in our last chapter. “It is quite impossible to keep him unless we chain him hand and foot, or set half a dozen men to guard him; and even then he is such a giant that he might easily overpower them. At the camp they have got a prison, and stocks which would hold him as fast as death.”
Carna’s face clouded over when she heard the Count’s determination, but she said nothing. The lively Ælia broke in—
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“My dear father, you will break poor Carna’s heart if you do anything of the kind. She is bent on making a convert of the noble savage. And anyhow, whatever else she may induce him to worship, he seems ready, from what I have seen, to worship her. And besides, what harm can he do? He has no arms, and he can’t speak a word of any language known here. If he were to run away he would either be killed or be starved to death.”
“Well, Carna,” said the Count, with a smile, “what do you say? Will you stand surety for this young pagan? Or shall I make him your slave, and then, if he runs away, it will be your loss?”
“I hope,” said the girl, “that you won’t send him to the camp, where, I fear, they hold the lives of such as he very cheap.”
“Well,” replied the Count, “we will keep him here, at all events for the present, and I will give the bailiff orders to give him something to do in the safest place that he can think of.”
Accordingly the young Saxon was set to work at the forge attached to the villa, and proved himself a willing and serviceable labourer. No more suitable choice, indeed, could have been made. That he was a man of some rank at home everything about him seemed to show—nothing more than his hands, which were delicate, and unusually small in proportion to his almost gigantic stature. But the [pg 59]greatest chief among his people would not have disdained the hammer and anvil. Was not Thor a mighty smith? And was it not almost as much a great warrior’s business to make a good sword as to wield it well when it was made? So the young man, whose mighty shoulders and muscular arms were regarded with respect and even astonishment by his British fellow-workmen, laboured with a will, showing himself no mean craftsman in the blacksmith’s art. Sometimes, as he plied the hammer, he would chant to himself, in a low voice, what sounded like a war-song. Otherwise he remained absolutely silent, not even attempting to pick up the few common words which daily intercourse with his companions gave him the opportunity of learning. There was an air of dignity about him which seemed to forbid any of the little affronts to which a prisoner would naturally be exposed; his evidently enormous strength, too, was a thing which even the most stupid of his companions respected. Silent, self-contained, and impassive, he moved quietly about his daily tasks; it was only when he caught a glimpse of Carna that his features were lighted up for a moment with a smile.
Cedric at the Forge.
The idea of opening up any communication with him seemed hopeless, when an unexpected, but still quite natural, way out of the difficulty presented itself. An old peddler, who was accustomed to [pg 60]supply the inmates of the villa with silks and jewellery, and who sometimes had a book in his pack for Carna, paid in due course one of his periodical visits. The old man was a Gaul by birth, a native of one of the States on the eastern bank of the Rhine, and in youth he had been an adventurous trader, extending his journeys eastward and northward as far as the shores of the Baltic. The risk was great, for the Germans of the interior looked with suspicion on the visits of civilized strangers; but, on the other hand, the profits were considerable. Amber, in pieces of a size and clearness seldom matched on the coasts of Gaul and Britain, and beautiful furs, as of the seal and the sea-otter, could be bought at very low prices from these unsophisticated tribes, and sold again to the wealthy ladies of Lutetia19 and Lugdunum20 at a very considerable advantage. In these wanderings Antrix—for that was the peddler’s name—had acquired a good knowledge of the language—substantially the same, though divided into several dialects—spoken by the German tribes; and, indeed, without such knowledge his trading adventures would have been neither safe nor profitable. As he approached old age Antrix had judged it expedient to transfer his business from Gaul to Britain. Gaul [pg 61]he found to be a dangerous place for a peaceable trader, having lost more than once all the profits of a journey, and, indeed, a good deal more,