“You have a hero,” said the Roman, “in your ranks, of whom I would fain learn something, loving him as I do like a son. Our men call him the Yellow Hostage; and there is not a warrior among all the brave champions of Jerusalem whom they regard with such admiration and dread. I myself saw him but yesterday save your whole army from destruction beneath the walls.”
“It is Esca!” exclaimed Calchas. “Esca, once a chief in Britain, and afterwards your slave in Rome.”
“The same,” answered Licinius; “and, though a slave, the noblest and the bravest of men. A chief, you say, in Britain. What know you of him? He never told me who he was, or whence he came.”
“I know him,” replied Calchas, “as one who lives with us like a kinsman, who takes his share of hardship, and far more than his share of danger, as though he were a very chief in Israel—who is to me, indeed, and those dearest to [pg 347]me, far more precious than a son. We escaped together from Rome—my brother, my brother’s child, and this young Briton. Many a night on the smooth Ægean has he told me of his infancy, his youth, his manhood, the defence his people made against your soldiers, the cruel stratagems by which they were foiled and overcome, how nobly he himself had braved the legions; and yet how the first lessons he learned in childhood were to feel kindly for the invader, how the first accents his mother taught him were in the Roman tongue.”
“It is strange,” observed Licinius, musing deeply, and answering, as it seemed, his own thought. “Strange lesson for one of that nation to learn. Strange, too, that fate seems to have posted him continually in arms against the conqueror.”
“They were his mother’s lessons,” resumed Calchas; “and that mother he has not forgotten even to-day. He loves to speak of her as though she could see him still. And who shall say she cannot? He loves to tell of her stately form, her fond eyes, and her gentle brow, with its lines of thought and care. He says she had some deep sorrow in her youth, which her child suspected, but of which she never spoke. It taught her to be kind and patient with all; it made her none the less loving for her boy. Ay, ’tis the same tale in every nation and under every sky. The garment has not yet been woven in which the black hank of sin and sorrow does not cross and recross throughout the whole web. She had her burden to bear, and so has Esca, and so hast thou, great Roman commander, one of the conquerors of the earth; and so have I, but I know where to lay mine down, and rest in peace.”
“They are a noble race, these women of Britain,” said Licinius, following out the thread of his own thoughts with a heavy heart, on which one of them had impressed her image so deeply, that while it beat, a memory would reign there, as it had reigned already for years, undisturbed by a living rival. “And so the boy loves to talk of his childhood, and his lost mother—lost,” he added bitterly, “surely lost, because so loved!”
“Even so,” replied Calchas; “and deep as was the child’s grief, it carried a sharper sting from the manner of her death. Too young to bear arms, he had seen his father hurry away at the head of his tribe to meet the Roman legions. His father, a fierce, imperious warrior, of whom he knew but little, and whom he would have dreaded rather than loved, had [pg 348]the boy dreaded anything on earth. His mother lay on a bed of sickness; and even the child felt a nameless fear on her account, that forbade him to leave her side. With pain and difficulty they moved her on her litter to a fastness in their deep, tangled forests, where the Britons made a last stand. Then certain long-bearded priests took him by force from his mother’s side, and hid him away in a cavern, because he was a chief’s son. He can recall now the pale face and the loving eyes, turned on him in a last look, as he was borne off struggling and fighting like a young wolf-cub. From his cavern he heard plainly the shouts of battle and the very clash of steel; but he heeded them not, for a vague and sickening dread had come over him that he should see his mother no more. It was even so. They hurried the child from his refuge by night. They never halted till the sun had risen and set again. Then they spoke to him with kind, soothing words; but when he turned from them, and called for his mother, they told him she was dead. They had not even paid her the last tribute of respect. While they closed her eyes, the legions had already forced their rude defences; her few attendants fled for their lives, and the high-born Guenebra was left in the lonely hut wherein she died, to the mercy of the conquerors.”
When Calchas ceased speaking, he saw that his listener had turned ghastly pale, and that the sweat was standing on his brow. His strong frame, too, shook till his armour rattled. He rose and crossed to the tent-door as if for air, then turned to his guest, and spoke in a low but steady voice—
“I knew it,” said he—“I knew it must be so; this Esca is the son of one whom I met in my youth, and why should I be ashamed to confess it? whose influence has pervaded my whole life. I am old and grey now. Look at me; what have such as I to do with the foolish hopes and fears that quicken the young fresh heart, and flush the unwrinkled cheek? But now, to-day, I tell thee, warworn and saddened as I am, it seems to me that the cup of life has been but offered, and dashed cruelly away ere it had so much as cooled my thirsty lips. Why should I have known happiness, only to be mocked by its want? What! thou hast a human heart? Thou art a brave man, too, though thy robes denote a vocation of peace, else thou hadst not been here to-day in the heart of an enemy’s camp. Need I tell thee, that when I entered that rude hut in the Briton’s stronghold, and saw all I loved on earth stretched cold and inanimate on her litter [pg 349]at my feet, had I not been a soldier of Rome my own good sword had been my consolation, and I had fallen by her there, to be laid in the same grave; and now I shall never see her more!” He passed his hand across his face, and added, in a broken whisper, “Never more! never more!”