CHAPTER XVI.
BELEAGUERED AQUILEIA.
Attila the Hun had been nursing his vengeance and preparing his forces beyond the Danube all through that silent winter which had brought such peace and light to the palace on the Aventine. And early in the spring came the terrible tidings that he was coming with his hundreds of thousands, always, it seemed, to be renewed from the inexhaustible regions of barbarian life in the wilds of the East; and this time he was to be turned back by no diplomacy, nor turned aside by any intervening prey. Attila and his Huns were already at the frontier, besieging the great frontier fortress of Aquileia, on their way to capture and plunder Rome.
There was little time for consideration. It was no moment, they all felt, for a woman to venture into the perils of a journey across Europe. It was therefore decided that Baithene should go back with Dewi to Ireland. It was also a time, Marius felt, for every Roman who was able to devote himself to the defence of the Empire against a force whose triumph would mean the destruction of Christianity and civilization, the laying waste of all Europe into a Tartar wilderness, creation lapsing again into chaos.
And so the four, so recently drawn together, had to part. But the parting brought in some ways a new certainty of their inseparable union, like the ripening of a “sudden frost.”
Baithene said to Lucia—
“I am going to my Ireland, with no doubt in my heart as to the welcome my father and mother would have for thee. Only for thee, sometimes I scarcely dare to ask that thou shouldst come forth to share our rough life, to be exiled from such a home as thine.”
“My father,” was Lucia’s answer, “thinks of that island of thine as a haven of peace and simplicity, and my mother as an isle of saints, compared with our Rome.”
“But thou thyself?”