Supported by his spear, he climbed wearily back. A few Vandals followed him. He vanished in the darkness of the night.
Hilda sat silent with the head of her lifeless husband in her lap, and the staff of the banner resting on her shoulder. She had no tears, but groped in the thick gloom for the beloved face. At last she heard a Vandal, returning from the King, say to Markomer:
"This was the final blow. To-morrow--I am to announce it to the enemy--Gelimer will submit."
Now she sprang up, and asking two of the men to help her--she would not release the dear head from her clasping hands--carried the dead Prince to the top of the mountain. In a little grove of pines, just outside the city, a small wooden hut had been built which had formerly contained stores of every kind. Now it was half empty except for a large pile of the wood used for fires. In this hut she spent the night and the dark morning alone with the dead. When it grew light she sought the King, whom she found in the basilica on the spot where formerly--the remains of some steps showed it--the altar had stood. Here Gelimer had placed in a crack between two stones a wooden cross, roughly made of boughs laid across each other. He lay prone on his face before it, clasping the cross with both arms.
"Brother-in-law Gelimer," she said in a curt, harsh tone, "is it true? Do you mean to surrender?"
He made no reply.
She shook him by the shoulder.
"King of the Vandals, do you mean to give yourself up as a captive?" she cried more loudly. "They will lead you through the streets of Constantinople as a spectacle! Will you shame your people--your dead people--still more?"
"Vanity," he answered dully. "Vanity speaks from your lips! All that you are thinking is sinful, vain, arrogant."
"Why do you do this so suddenly? You have held out for months."