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

CHAPTER IV
THE PRIESTESS ELWIG

I expected to see some hideous old hag; I was mistaken. Elwig was young, tall and endowed with savage beauty. Her grey eyes, shielded under a pair of naturally reddish eyebrows of the same color as her hair, glistened like the steel of the long knife that she was armed with. Her eagle-beaked nose and high forehead imparted to her an aspect at once savage and imposing. She was clad in a long tunic of a somber hue. Her bare neck and arms were heavily laden with copper necklaces and bracelets, that clinked upon one another as she walked, and upon which she cast coquettish glances as she approached me. On her thick reddish hair, that fell upon and parted on both sides of her shoulders, she wore a scarlet coif that was a ridiculous imitation of the charming headgear used by the women of Gaul. In short, I thought I noticed in the strange creature the evidence of that mixture of puerile pride and vanity so peculiar to barbarous peoples.

Standing a few paces from her, Riowag seemed to contemplate the priestess with profound admiration. Despite his black dye and the red tattoo under which his face disappeared, his features seemed to me to betoken a violent love, and his eyes sparkled with joy when, twice in succession, pointing at me, Elwig turned her face to her lover with a smile upon her lips, in token, no doubt, of thankfulness for the offering that he brought her. I also noticed on the bare arms of the infernal priestess two tattoo marks that brought back to my mind some reminiscences of the war we had been waging with the Franks.

One of the two marks represented two talons of a bird of prey; the other, a red serpent.

With her knife in her hand, Elwig again turned towards me and fastened her large grey eyes upon me with ferocious satisfaction, while the black warriors contemplated her with looks of fear and superstition.

"Woman," I said to the priestess, "I came here unarmed, an oak branch in my hand, and bearing a message of peace to the grand chiefs of your hordes. – I was fallen upon and bound fast. – I am in your power – you can kill me – if such be your pleasure – but before you do, have me presented to one of your chiefs. – The interview that I request is of as much importance to the Franks as to the Gauls. It is Victorin himself and his mother Victoria the Great who have sent me hither."

"You are sent by Victoria?" cried the priestess with a singular air. "Victoria, who is said to be so very beautiful?"

"Yes, I am sent by her who is called the Mother of the Camps."

Elwig reflected, and after a long silence she raised her hands over her head, brandished her knife, and pronounced some mysterious words in a voice that sounded at once threatening and inspired. Thereupon she motioned to the black warriors to retire.

They all obeyed, walking slowly back towards the thicket that surrounded the clearing.

Only Riowag remained a few steps from the priestess. Turning towards him she pointed with an imperious gesture towards the wood in which the other black warriors had disappeared. Seeing that the captain did not obey her summons, she raised her voice, and again pointed to the wood.

Riowag then obeyed and left in turn.

I remained alone with the priestess. I was left bound, lying at the foot of the statue of the under gods. Elwig squatted down upon her haunches near me and asked:

"You were sent by Victoria to speak with the Frankish chiefs?"

"I said so before."

"You are one of Victoria's officers?"

"I am one of her soldiers."

"Does she cherish you?"

"She is my foster-sister, I am as a brother to her."

These words seemed to cause Elwig to reflect anew. She remained silent for a while, and then resumed:

"Would Victoria weep over your death?"

"As one would weep over the death of a faithful servant."

"She surely would give much to save your life?"

"Is it ransom you want?"

Elwig again relapsed into silence, and resumed with a mixture of embarrassment and cunning that struck me forcibly:

"Let Victoria come and ask my brother for your life. He will grant it to her. – But listen, Victoria has a great reputation for beauty; handsome women love to deck themselves with the Gallic jewelry that is so celebrated. – Victoria must have superb ornaments, seeing she is the mother of the chief of your country. – Tell her to cover herself with her richest jewelry; it will please my brother's eyes. – He will be all the more gracious, and will grant your life to her."

I immediately surmised the snare that the priestess of hell was laying for me with the clumsy cunning natural to barbarians. Wishing to make certain, I observed without referring to her last words:

"It seems that your brother is a powerful chief."

"He is more than a chief," Elwig answered proudly; "he is a king."

"We also, in the days of our barbarism, had kings. What is your brother's name?"

"Neroweg, surnamed the Terrible Eagle."

"You carry on your arms two figures, one representing a red serpent, the other the talons of a bird of prey. What do those emblems mean?"

"The fathers of our fathers in our royal family have always worn these signs of valor and subtlety. The eagle's talons denote valor; the serpent subtlety. But let us drop my brother," added Elwig with somber impatience. My digression seemed to displease her. "Will you induce Victoria to come here?"

"One word more on your royal brother. – Does he not carry on his forehead the identical symbols that you carry on your arms?"

"Yes," she replied with increasing impatience. "Yes, my brother carries an eagle's talon over each eye-brow, and the red serpent on a head-band over his forehead. Kings wear a head-band. But we have spoken enough of Neroweg – quite enough – "

I thought I noticed on Elwig's features an ill dissembled sentiment of hatred when she pronounced his name. She proceeded:

"If you do not wish to die, write to Victoria to come to our camp ornamented with her most precious jewels. She shall repair alone to a place that I shall designate to you – a secluded spot that I know – I shall come for her and shall lead her to my brother to solicit your life from him – "

"Victoria to come alone to this camp? – I have come hither, relying upon the sacredness of the truce; – I carried the bough of peace in my hand, and yet one of my companions was killed, another was wounded, and to cap the climax of treachery, I am delivered to you bound hand and foot to be put to death – "

"Victoria may bring a small escort with her."

"Which would be unquestionably massacred by your men! – The scheme is too transparent!"

"You, then, wish to die!" cried the priestess gnashing her teeth in actual or simulated rage, and threatening me with her knife. "The fire will be shortly kindled under the caldron. – I shall have you plunged alive into the magic water, and you shall boil in it until you are dead. – Once more, and for the last time, make your choice. – Either you shall die in tortures, or you will write to Victoria to repair to our camp decked in her richest ornaments! – Choose!" she added with redoubled fury and again threatening me with her knife. "Choose – or you die!"

I knew there was no more thievish, covetous or vainglorious race than this breed of Franks. I noticed that Elwig's large grey eyes glistened with cupidity every time she mentioned the magnificent ornaments, that, as she imagined, the Mother of the Camps surely possessed. The ridiculous accoutrement of the priestess; the profusion of valueless gewgaws that she wore with a savage woman's coquetry, in order, no doubt, to appear pleasing to the eye of Riowag, the captain of the black warriors; above all, her persistence in demanding of me that Victoria come to the Frankish camp covered with rich jewels; – everything justified the conclusion that Elwig aimed at drawing my foster-sister into an ambush in order to slay her and rob her of her jewels. The clumsy scheme did not do credit to the ingenuity of the priestess of the nether regions. Nevertheless, her cupidity might be turned to my service. I answered her in a tone of indifference:

"Woman, you mean to kill me if I do not induce Victoria to come here? You are free to kill me – boil my flesh and bones – you will thereby lose more than you think for, seeing that you are the sister of Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle, one of the greatest kings of all your hordes!"

"What would I lose? – "

"Magnificent Gallic ornaments!"

"Ornaments! – What ornaments?" cried Elwig doubtfully, although her eyes snapped with greed.

"Do you imagine that, in sending her foster-brother to convey a message to the kings of the Franks, Victoria the Great did not prepare, as a pledge of truce, rich presents for the wives and sisters who accompany them, and for those whom they left behind in Germany?"

Elwig leaped to her feet with one bound, hurled her knife away, clapped her hands, and emitted loud peals of laughter that sounded like a crazy woman's transports. Thereupon she crouched down again beside me, and said in a voice broken with childish breathlessness:

"Presents? You bring presents with you? – Where are they?"

"Yes, I bring with me presents fit to dazzle an empress – gold necklaces studded with carbuncles, ear pendants of pearls and rubies, gold bracelets, belts and crowns that are so loaded with precious stones that they glitter in all the colors of the rainbow. – All these masterpieces of our most skilled Gallic goldsmiths I have brought with me for presents. – And seeing that your brother Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle, is the most powerful king of all your hordes, the bulk of all those riches – those bracelets, those necklaces and other jewels – would have fallen to you."

Elwig listened to me open-mouthed, her hands clasped together, without endeavoring to hide either the admiration or unbridled greed that the enumeration of such treasures kindled in her breast. Suddenly, however, her features assumed an expression of mingled doubt and anger. She rose, ran to her knife, and returning with it in her hands, raised it over me crying:

"You either lie, or you are mocking me! – Where are those treasures?"

"In a safe place. – I foresaw that I might be killed and plundered before I was able to fulfil the orders of Victoria and her son."

"Where did you put that treasure in safety?"

"It remained in the bark that brought me to this side of the river. – My companions rowed back from the shore and cast anchor beyond the reach of the arrows of your hordes."

"We also have barks moored at the other end of the camp. I shall order your companions to be pursued – I shall have the treasures!"

"You deceive yourself! – As soon as my companions see the enemy's barks approach from a distance, they will suspect foul play. Seeing that they have a long lead, they will be able to regain the opposite shore of the Rhine without any danger whatever. – Such will be the only fruit of the treachery practiced by your people upon me. – Come, woman! Have me boiled for your infernal auguries! Perhaps my bones, bleached in your caldron, may be transformed into magnificent ornaments!"

"I want the treasures!" replied Elwig struggling against her lingering suspicions. "Since you did not carry the jewels about you, when would you have given them to the kings of our hordes?"

"When I left the jewels in the bark I expected I would be received as an envoy of peace, and that as such I would be escorted back to the river bank. My companions would then have returned to the shore to receive me, and I would have taken the presents out of the bark and distributed them among the kings in the name of Victoria and her son."

The priestess looked upon me for a while with darkling eyes. She seemed to yield alternately to mistrust and to the promptings of cupidity. Finally, however, the latter sentiment evidently prevailed. She took a few steps away, and with a strong voice pronounced the bizarre name of a person who was not until then upon the scene.

Almost instantly a hideous old hag with grey hair and clad in a blood-bespattered robe issued from the cavern. She was, no doubt, the active priestess at the inhuman sacrifices. She exchanged a few words in a low voice with Elwig and forthwith vanished in the surrounding wood, in the direction that the black warriors had followed.

Again dropping on her haunches beside me, the priestess said in a low and muffled voice:

"Since you wish to speak with my brother, King Neroweg, I have sent for him. – He will soon be here – but you shall not mention a word to him concerning the jewels."

"Why keep him in the dark concerning them?"

"Because he would keep them to himself."

"What! – He! – Your own brother! – Would he not share the jewels with you, his sister?"

A bitter smile contracted Elwig's lips. She resumed:

"My brother came near cutting off my arm with a blow of his axe a few weeks ago, simply because I merely wished to touch part of his booty."

"Is that the way brothers and sisters behave towards one another among the Franks?"

"Among the Franks," Elwig answered with a face of deepening rancor, "the mother, sister and wives of a warrior are his first slaves."

"His wives! – Has he, then, several?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I shall look very beautiful to Riowag!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What must I do next?"

"Make him put out his tongue."

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

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

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

"Elwig! Elwig!"

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

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

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

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