Sometimes the forest was dark and heavy with gloom, and sometimes it was wholly an airy gold. Sometimes it stood breathlessly silent, and sometimes it whispered and spoke. Alleda, the young maiden, hostage from a Vandal tribe, brought up since childhood in the house of Terig, liked it silent and liked it speaking. She and Alaran, the son of Terig, old to a day with her, liked it in all its ways. They wandered together in its aisles and caverns, purple and green and brown and gold, and, kneeling, drank from its springs and streams, he for pleasure drinking from her cupped hands, and she from his. They lay in the sunshine, they fled from storms; in the open glades or from the bare hilltop they looked for the rainbow.
Alleda wore a chemise of white linen and a skirt of woollen dyed gentian blue. She had shoes of doeskin and a mantle of the wool. Now her hair hung loose, and now she braided it in two long thick braids that fell to her knees. Alaran had a tunic of soft leather, brown like the wood in autumn, and leather shoes with thongs that crossed and recrossed and were tied at his knee. He had a cloak of red, and a woollen fillet around his head to hold an eagle feather, and in his belt a sheathed knife. Alleda had been given by the Vandal chief her father to Terig when she was little, pledge of quietude on the part of the Vandals. For ten years she and Alaran had roamed the forest in company. It seemed to them that they had been always together. Sometimes they quarrelled, but oftener they were good friends.
Terig, looking at them upon a time, said to himself, “If the Goths and Vandals marry there may be a son who, one day, shall rule them both!” The idea pleased him, and he turned it over and over, drinking mead out of a great silver cup that, passing from hand to hand, had come to him from Rome, sitting beneath his oak tree of whose age no bard had record. That was when Alleda and Alaran were very young. Terig, hunting and fighting and judging, sleeping and eating and drinking, let several years go by. Terig’s wife was dead, but his sister, Fritha, headed the women and gave him, when he asked it, good advice. Terig, a good giant two thirds of the time, and the other third a monstrous, ravening wild boar, went his ways and let Alleda and Alaran play another while. When they were children no longer, but boy and girl, Terig sent an embassy to the Vandal chief. His wisest warrior went and the bard who ate at Terig’s table, and with them a band of shield-clashing young men. When they returned, bringing with them certain great ones from among the assenting Vandals, Terig summoned a folk-meet. Alleda and Alaran were betrothed, under the Terig Oak, in the presence of Goths and Vandals. When they were eighteen they should be wed.
Alleda and Alaran, now youth and maiden, roamed the forest or sat beside the river and bending over saw two fair creatures in the glassy flood. They had a boat named Black Swan, and they rowed in this where they would. They fished together, they found the honey hives in rocks and ancient trees, they told each other all their adventures of body or spirit. At sunrise they might be heard singing: when evening came, or on weather days when men and women crowded into the hall and the fire was heaped with wood, they sat as near each other as they might. Emberic the bard sang loudly of Gothic glory, Gothic heroes and heroines. Alleda and Alaran, listening, kindling, sought eyes with eyes, soul with soul.
Terig, chancing to observe them one day, said to himself: “He is too much with her, too little with the young men. That is not as it should be. I cannot live forever, and he must learn to be king in his turn.”
Terig turned it over before he slept that night. In the morning he summoned Alleda and Alaran and gave his Gothic commands. Henceforth they were less and less alone together.
Alaran hunted with the young men, played at games of war with the young men, went with chief men on Terig’s errands to neighbouring constellations. He grew in stature and breadth of shoulder and strength of arm. His voice deepened, his mind changed. Terig Oak saw in him leader, saw in him king, when Time should beckon Terig.
Alleda sat beside Fritha and span, or walked beside the river with young women, or roamed with them the forest, or roamed alone. More and more she went alone. Thrown back upon herself she found within herself companions. But she loved Alaran and missed him. And once they met unawares by a forest stream, and all the woods were full of light, and a thrush was singing like a freed spirit. Moved they knew not how, they fled each to the other’s arms. “Alleda!”—“Alaran!” Then came Terig, hunting with his son, and they sprang apart. And, presently, sitting alone, she heard, deep in the wood, Alaran’s horn.
In the autumn of that year Terig, hunting afar in savage woods, had a boar’s tusk driven through his thigh. His men brought him to Terig Oak on a litter of boughs. There he must lie abed, the wound doing ill. It continued unthriving, though Fritha had healing wisdom, and though the priests came from the sacred grove and made incantations above it. Terig lay upon bear-skins, swearing and fevered and growing weak, and the wise women tried and the wise men, but none could heal the wound. Terig saw an ox-death before him, and shut his eyes in a sick distaste.
At this moment came Victorinus to the Goths.