Attila and His Conquerors: A Story of the Days of St. Patrick and St. Leo the Great

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles

As he stood thus at bay, two figures, a man and a woman, detached themselves from the crowd, two faces were directed towards him and his sister with absorbing interest. They were of a different type to any Baithene had seen before: the man’s forehead was lofty though somewhat narrow, and further contracted by lines which seemed rather grooves worn by care than fruitful furrows of thought; the eyes were dark and deep-set, with flashes like the flicker of a fire in the depths of a cavern; the lips were prominent and expressive; the nose was aquiline, yet the whole countenance, if in any way eagle-like, was like an eagle’s in the eager intensity of its penetrating gaze, rather than in any look of power and command; and from time to time a pathetic and kindly expression passed over his face, especially when he turned toward the woman beside him, in response to any word or look from her. Her face, though of the same type as his, was softened into a refined beauty: the brow was in proportion wider; the eyes, though deep-set, were full of a gracious and tender light; the mouth, varying in expression, though not moulded into the Greek curves of Cupid’s bow, had in its greater fullness and longer lines a power and sweetness which did not need a smile to make you feel its sympathetic response. She made Baithene think of his own mother, and of the Mother they had learnt to think of as the type of all true maidenhood and motherhood combined. The complexion of both was darker than Baithene had seen, with a darkness that seemed to belong to the fire of more southern suns than he had known; not the mere fading or dimming as of the fair faces of the North, but rich with an original and mellow colour of its own. Both had hair black as the raven’s wing. Their dress also was slightly different from anything Baithene was accustomed to. Round the man’s head were twisted folds of coloured linen; from the woman’s fell a veil of creamy white gathered gracefully round her throat and shoulders.

As he looked, the two came forward, and at a signal to one of their British captors a conversation began which the brother and sister felt was an eager bargaining for their purchase.

The Briton seemed to be insisting on their being sold in one lot—maiden, youth, and dog. The stranger, on the other hand, seemed to be endeavouring to separate them, apparently saying, not so much “It is nought,” as “I have nought, or at least nothing equivalent to the value of the three together.” Unpleasant at it was to be thus haggled for, Baithene had a sense that the bargaining was more diplomatic than sincere. And at last, when the two dark-haired foreigners were turning away, and the British sailor laid his hands on Baithene and the dog to separate them from the maiden, the two turned back; and between the determination of the deer-hound and the pitifulness of the woman, the bargain was soon completed—Bran having expressed his opinion as to parting from Ethne in a way the British captor, remembering Dewi with “his leg bitten to the bone,” did not care to have repeated; whilst the dark-eyed woman, in a very unbusiness-like way, clasped the hands of both sister and brother appealingly in her own.

So it came about that Ethne, Baithene, and the dog were led away from the slave-market by the two strangers, the British sailor following to receive at their own home the stipulated coins, which the old man would not on any account display in public.

The dwelling of the strangers was in a remote corner of the city, with no appearance of wealth about it; and the purchaser seemed to draw the coins required reluctantly and with difficulty from a very limited store. The purchase, however, was duly completed, to the great relief of the captives, who might have been less reassured if they had heard the last words of the seller, when, after departing, he returned and said in a low voice to the buyer, “Only promise me one thing—that you will not eat these children!”

“Eat them!” was the indignant retort; “we are no Tartar savages.”

“Nevertheless,” was the sceptical reply, “I have heard a terrible story of some countrymen of yours who were driven out of a city in the far east for killing and eating a Christian child at some feast of theirs. If thou wilt solemnly promise me not to eat them,” he added (a spark of conscience suddenly flickering up from the ashes of his faith), “I will give thee back a hundredth part of the price.” And he held out some coins in his hand.

The purchaser made a gesture as if he would have flung the money in the sailor’s face, but the habit of his life gained the victory over his patriotic indignation.

“To reassure thy conscience, dog of a pirate,” he said contemptuously, satisfying at once his patriotism with an Oriental epithet and his ruling passion with the coin, “I promise to deal better with them than thou hast, at the worst.”