It was not necessary. There had been few truer or more forceful spears than mine in the old times; and there lay the great white monster on his side in a crimson pool of blood, essaying in vain to lift his head, and dying in mighty tremors all among the pretty things the servants had thrown down. The gush of red blood from his chest was wetting even the silken fringes of the comely dame’s skirts and wrappings, while she, now at last on her feet, frowned down on him, with angry triumph rather than fear in her countenance.
Though there was hardly a change of color on her face or a tremor in the voice with which she thanked me, yet I somehow felt her ladyship was in a fine passion behind that disdainful mask. But whether it were so or not, she was civil enough to me, personally evincing a condescending interest in a trifling wound that was staining my bare right arm with crimson, and sending her “good youth” away in a minute or two to the house to get it bound. As I turned to go, the stately lady gathered up tunic folds and skirt in her white fist and moved down upon the group of trembling servants, who were gathering their wits together slowly under the nervous encouragement of the seneschal. What she said to them I know not, but if ever the countenances of men truly reflected their sensations, her brief whispers must have been exceedingly unpleasant to listen to.
The damsel who bound the scratch upon my shoulder told me something of this beautiful and wealthy dame. But, in truth, when she called her Lady Electra, I needed to hear little more. It was a name that had circulated freely in the city yonder, and especially when wine was sparkling best and tongues at lightest! I knew, without asking, the lady was niece to an emperor, and was reputed as haughty and cruel as though she had been one of the worst herself; I knew her lawful spouse was away, like most Romans, from his duty just then, and she stood in his place to tyrannize over the British peasants and sweep the taxes into his insatiate coffers. I knew, too, why Rome was forbidden for a time to the vivacious lady, as well as some stories, best untold, of how she enlivened the tedium of her exile in these “savage” places.
In fact, I knew I had fallen into the gilded hold of a magnificent outlaw, one of the worst productions of a debased and sinking State, and, being wayward by predestination, I determined to play with the she-wolf in her own den.
No fancy of mine is so rash but that Fate will countersign it. When Electra sent for me presently in the great hall, where the fountains played into basins of rosy marble, it was to inform me that the destruction of the bull, and my bearing thereat, had caught her fancy, and I was to “consider myself for the present in her private service, and attached to the body-guard.” This decision was announced with an easy imperialness which seemed to ignore all suggestion of opposition—a suavity such as Juno might use in directing the most timorous of servitors—so, as my wishes ran in unison, I bowed my thanks, and kissed the fringe of my ladyship’s cloak, and thought, as she lay there before me on her silken couch in the tessellated hall of her stately home, that I had never before seen so beautiful or dangerous-looking a creature.
Nor had I long to wait for a sight of the Vice-Prefect’s talons. While she asked me of my history, the which I made up as I told it (and, having once balked the truth, never afterward told her the real facts), a messenger came, and, standing at a respectful distance, saluted his mistress.
“Ah!” she said, with a pretty look of interest in her face, and rising on her elbow, “are they dead?”
“One is, madam,” the man responded: “one of your bearers fled, but the other we secured. We took him into the field and tied him, as your ladyship directed, to the horns of the strongest white cow. She dragged him here and there, and gored him for full ten minutes before he died—and now all that remains of him,” with a wave of the hand toward the vestibule, “most respectfully awaits your ladyship’s inspection in the porch!” And the messenger bowed low.
“It is well. Fling the dog into a ditch! And, my friend, let my brave henchmen know if they do not lay hands on the other villain before sunset to-morrow, I shall come to them for a substitute.”
The successful termination of this episode seemed to relieve my new mistress.