The Casque's Lark; or, Victoria, the Mother of the Camps. Эжен Сю

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      Elwig leaped to her feet with one bound, hurled her knife away, clapped her hands, and emitted loud peals of laughter that sounded like a crazy woman's transports. Thereupon she crouched down again beside me, and said in a voice broken with childish breathlessness:

      "Presents? You bring presents with you? – Where are they?"

      "Yes, I bring with me presents fit to dazzle an empress – gold necklaces studded with carbuncles, ear pendants of pearls and rubies, gold bracelets, belts and crowns that are so loaded with precious stones that they glitter in all the colors of the rainbow. – All these masterpieces of our most skilled Gallic goldsmiths I have brought with me for presents. – And seeing that your brother Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle, is the most powerful king of all your hordes, the bulk of all those riches – those bracelets, those necklaces and other jewels – would have fallen to you."

      Elwig listened to me open-mouthed, her hands clasped together, without endeavoring to hide either the admiration or unbridled greed that the enumeration of such treasures kindled in her breast. Suddenly, however, her features assumed an expression of mingled doubt and anger. She rose, ran to her knife, and returning with it in her hands, raised it over me crying:

      "You either lie, or you are mocking me! – Where are those treasures?"

      "In a safe place. – I foresaw that I might be killed and plundered before I was able to fulfil the orders of Victoria and her son."

      "Where did you put that treasure in safety?"

      "It remained in the bark that brought me to this side of the river. – My companions rowed back from the shore and cast anchor beyond the reach of the arrows of your hordes."

      "We also have barks moored at the other end of the camp. I shall order your companions to be pursued – I shall have the treasures!"

      "You deceive yourself! – As soon as my companions see the enemy's barks approach from a distance, they will suspect foul play. Seeing that they have a long lead, they will be able to regain the opposite shore of the Rhine without any danger whatever. – Such will be the only fruit of the treachery practiced by your people upon me. – Come, woman! Have me boiled for your infernal auguries! Perhaps my bones, bleached in your caldron, may be transformed into magnificent ornaments!"

      "I want the treasures!" replied Elwig struggling against her lingering suspicions. "Since you did not carry the jewels about you, when would you have given them to the kings of our hordes?"

      "When I left the jewels in the bark I expected I would be received as an envoy of peace, and that as such I would be escorted back to the river bank. My companions would then have returned to the shore to receive me, and I would have taken the presents out of the bark and distributed them among the kings in the name of Victoria and her son."

      The priestess looked upon me for a while with darkling eyes. She seemed to yield alternately to mistrust and to the promptings of cupidity. Finally, however, the latter sentiment evidently prevailed. She took a few steps away, and with a strong voice pronounced the bizarre name of a person who was not until then upon the scene.

      Almost instantly a hideous old hag with grey hair and clad in a blood-bespattered robe issued from the cavern. She was, no doubt, the active priestess at the inhuman sacrifices. She exchanged a few words in a low voice with Elwig and forthwith vanished in the surrounding wood, in the direction that the black warriors had followed.

      Again dropping on her haunches beside me, the priestess said in a low and muffled voice:

      "Since you wish to speak with my brother, King Neroweg, I have sent for him. – He will soon be here – but you shall not mention a word to him concerning the jewels."

      "Why keep him in the dark concerning them?"

      "Because he would keep them to himself."

      "What! – He! – Your own brother! – Would he not share the jewels with you, his sister?"

      A bitter smile contracted Elwig's lips. She resumed:

      "My brother came near cutting off my arm with a blow of his axe a few weeks ago, simply because I merely wished to touch part of his booty."

      "Is that the way brothers and sisters behave towards one another among the Franks?"

      "Among the Franks," Elwig answered with a face of deepening rancor, "the mother, sister and wives of a warrior are his first slaves."

      "His wives! – Has he, then, several?"

      "As many as he can capture and feed – the same as he has as many horses as he can buy."

      "What! Does not a sacred and eternal union join the husband to the mother of his children, as with us Gauls? – What! Sisters, wives and mothers – all are slaves? Blessed of the gods is Gaul, my own country, where our mothers and wives, venerated by all, proudly take their seat in the nation's councils and where their advice, often wiser than that of their husbands and sons, not infrequently prevails."

      Palpitating with cupidity, Elwig made no answer to me, and resumed the thread of her dominant thoughts.

      "You will, accordingly, not mention the jewels to Neroweg. He would keep them all for himself. You will wait until it is dark to leave the camp. I shall accompany you. You will give me the jewels, all the presents – to me alone!"

      And again bursting into almost insane peals of laughter, she added:

      "Gold bracelets! Necklaces of pearls! Ear pendants studded with rubies! Diadems full of precious stones! I shall look grand as an empress! Oh, how beautiful I shall be in the eye of Riowag!"

      Elwig thereupon cast disdainful glances at the copper bracelets that she rattled as she shook her arms, and repeated:

      "I shall look very beautiful to Riowag!"

      "Woman," I said to her, "your advice is prudent. We shall have to wait until it is night for us to leave the camp together and regain the river bank."

      And, to the end of still further enlisting Elwig's confidence in me by seeming to take an interest in her vainglorious greed, I added:

      "But if your brother sees you decked with such magnificent ornaments, will he not take them away from you?"

      "No," she promptly answered with a strange and sinister look. "No, he will not take them!"

      "If Neroweg the Terrible Eagle is of as violent a temperament as you claim, if he came near cutting off your arm for having wished merely to touch part of his booty," I suggested, surprised at her answer, and anxious to fathom her thoughts, "what will prevent your brother from seizing the jewels?"

      Elwig held up to me her large knife with an expression of calm ferocity that made me shiver, as she answered:

      "When I shall have the treasure – to-night, I shall enter my brother's hut – I shall share his bed, as usual – and when he is asleep I shall kill him – "

      "Your own brother!" I cried with a shudder and hardly believing what I heard, although the insight that the priestess gave into the shocking immorality prevalent among the Franks was nothing new to me. "How! You share your own brother's bed?"

      The priestess seemed no wise disconcerted by my question, and answered with a somber mien:

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