“Why do you look so happy?” Fritha asked Alleda. “Have you dreamed that Terig scatters the Heruli, and that Alaran can hardly be told from Terig?”
Alleda laughed. “I have dreamed that Terig and Alaran both shall come into a kingdom!”
She came still to the glade by the church to be further taught of Victorinus. He had great power over her; she gave him devotion who had brought her soul bread. If her reason murmured at aught he said, she reproached herself and rocked her reason to sleep. To so much her reason said, “It is so,” and she would give faith to the rest. He exalted faith, and she learned so to exalt it. He held it above all virtues, and she gave her hands, too, to holding it so.
Victorinus had now for her an affection, a solicitude. He found that she was too ready to laugh, too admiring of mere light and sun and motion, too filled with earthly life. “Lord, Lord, I confess to Thee that my lower man doth find pleasure in her so, but not my higher man, Lord! Let me teach her horror of this world, thought only of Thy Heaven! Let me show her the blackness of any here, the blackness of woman here, whom the Tempter first approached, knowing her weakness! Let me show her the filth and smallness of her soul, which yet Thou lovest and hast saved! Lord, Lord, let me make her only, solely, beggar for her soul and the soul of him who will be her husband, and the souls of this people!”
Now he taught of the Fall and Condemnation and of the Fire of Hell and Eternal Loss. Nor did he give what he taught metaphysical being, for here he erred himself, nor saw with any clearness what his words figured. But he used his eloquence, his age and subtlety, to press back her mind as his own was pressed back, to erect before hers as before his own an image of Consternation. The Vandal woman paled and stood transfixed. Hell ... Eternal Loss!
Back through the forest, shouting to victory, bringing spoil from the Heruli, came Terig and Alaran and the fighting men. All was rude joy at Terig Oak, joy and drinking, feasting and rest. Fighting men crowded into the hall or lay strewn like acorns around the oak; home people made a surrounding ring or pressed in and out. Emberic chanted deep and strong that victory, its incidents and its heroes. Now one warrior and now another shouted corroboration, or made a point and amended the song. Men, women and children held festival. The priests, coming from the grove, claimed sacrifice. Terig gave it from among the captured herds and prisoners. Terig Oak went in rude procession to the grove and circled the stone while the priests slew the victims, then returned to the tree and the mead-drinking. But Alleda did not go.
Alleda said to Alaran, “I will not!”
“If evil come to Terig Oak they will say, ‘Because one stayed away.’”
“Say as they will, I will not!”
“What reason?”