Charles Kingsley - Hypatia. or New Foes with an Old Face

‘A well-grown lad and a brave one, Wulf the son of Ovida,’ said the giant to the old hero of the bearskin cloak; ‘and understands wearing skins, in this furnace-mouth of a climate, rather better than you do.’

‘I keep to the dress of my forefathers, Amalric the Amal. What did to sack Rome in, may do to find Asgard in.’

The giant, who was decked out with helmet, cuirass, and senatorial boots, in a sort of mongrel mixture of the Roman military and civil dress, his neck wreathed with a dozen gold chains, and every finger sparkling with jewels, turned away with an impatient sneer.

‘Asgard—Asgard! If you are in such a hurry to get to Asgard up this ditch in the sand, you had better ask the fellow how far it is thither.’

Wulf took him quietly at his word, and addressed a question to the young monk, which he could only answer by a shake of the head.

‘Ask him in Greek, man.’

‘Greek is a slave’s tongue. Make a slave talk to him in it, not me.’

‘Here—some of you girls! Pelagia! you understand this fellow’s talk. Ask him how far it is to Asgard.’

‘You must ask me more civilly, my rough hero,’ replied a soft voice from underneath the awning. ‘Beauty must be sued, and not commanded.’

‘Come, then, my olive-tree, my gazelle, my lotus-flower, my—what was the last nonsense you taught me?—and ask this wild man of the sands how far it is from these accursed endless rabbit-burrows to Asgard.’

The awning was raised, and lying luxuriously on a soft mattress, fanned with peacock’s feathers, and glittering with rubies and topazes, appeared such a vision as Philammon had never seen before.

A woman of some two-and-twenty summers, formed in the most voluptuous mould of Grecian beauty, whose complexion showed every violet vein through its veil of luscious brown. Her little bare feet, as they dimpled the cushions, were more perfect than Aphrodite’s, softer than a swan’s bosom. Every swell of her bust and arms showed through the thin gauze robe, while her lower limbs were wrapped in a shawl of orange silk, embroidered with wreaths of shells and roses. Her dark hair lay carefully spread out upon the pillow, in a thousand ringlets entwined with gold and jewels; her languishing eyes blazed like diamonds from a cavern, under eyelids darkened and deepened with black antimony; her lips pouted of themselves, by habit or by nature, into a perpetual kiss; slowly she raised one little lazy hand; slowly the ripe lips opened; and in most pure and melodious Attic, she lisped her huge lover’s question to the monk, and repeated it before the boy could shake off the spell, and answer....

‘Asgard? What is Asgard?’

The beauty looked at the giant for further instructions.

‘The City of the immortal Gods,’ interposed the old warrior, hastily and sternly, to the lady.

‘The city of God is in heaven,’ said Philammon to the interpreter, turning his head away from those gleaming, luscious, searching glances.

His answer was received with a general laugh by all except the leader, who shrugged his shoulders.

‘It may as well be up in the skies as up the Nile. We shall be just as likely, I believe, to reach it by flying, as by rowing up this big ditch. Ask him where the river comes from, Pelagia.’

Pelagia obeyed.... and thereon followed a confusion worse confounded, composed of all the impossible wonders of that mythic fairyland with which Philammon had gorged himself from boyhood in his walks with the old monks, and of the equally trustworthy traditions which the Goths had picked up at Alexandria. There was nothing which that river did not do. It rose in the Caucasus. Where was the Caucasus? He did not know. In Paradise—in Indian Aethiopia—in Aethiopian India. Where were they? He did not know. Nobody knew. It ran for a hundred and fifty days’ journey through deserts where nothing but flying serpents and satyrs lived, and the very lions’ manes were burnt off by the heat....

‘Good sporting there, at all events, among these dragons,’ quoth Smid the son of Troll, armourer to the party.

‘As good as Thor’s when he caught Snake Midgard with the bullock’s head,’ said Wulf.

It turned to the east for a hundred days’ journey more, all round Arabia and India, among forests full of elephants and dog-headed women.

‘Better and better, Smid!’ growled Wulf, approvingly.

‘Fresh beef cheap there, Prince Wulf, eh?’ quoth Smid; ‘I must look over the arrow-heads.’

–To the mountains of the Hyperboreans, where there was eternal night, and the air was full of feathers.... That is, one-third of it came from thence, and another third came from the Southern ocean, over the Moon mountains, where no one had ever been, and the remaining third from the country where the phoenix lived, and nobody knew where that was. And then there were the cataracts, and the inundations-and-and-and above the cataracts, nothing but sand-hills and ruins, as full of devils as they could hold.... and as for Asgard, no one had ever heard of it.... till every face grew longer and longer, as Pelagia went on interpreting and misinterpreting; and at last the giant smote his hand upon his knee, and swore a great oath that Asgard might rot till the twilight of the gods before he went a step farther up the Nile.

‘Curse the monk!’ growled Wulf. ‘How should such a poor beast know anything about the matter?’

‘Why should not he know as well as that ape of a Roman governor?’ asked Smid.

‘Oh, the monks know everything,’ said Pelagia. ‘They go hundreds and thousands of miles up the river, and cross the deserts among fiends and monsters, where any one else would be eaten up, or go mad at once.’

‘Ah, the dear holy men! It’s all by the sign of the blessed cross!’ exclaimed all the girls together, devoutly crossing themselves, while two or three of the most enthusiastic were half-minded to go forward and kneel to Philammon for his blessing; but hesitated, their Gothic lovers being heathenishly stupid and prudish on such points.

‘Why should he not know as well as the prefect? Well said, Smid! I believe that prefect’s quill-driver was humbugging us when he said Asgard was only ten days’ sail up.’

‘Why?’ asked Wulf.

‘I never give any reasons. What’s the use of being an Amal, and a son of Odin, if one has always to be giving reasons like a rascally Roman lawyer? I say the governor looked like a liar; and I say this monk looks like an honest fellow; and I choose to believe him, and there is an end of it.’

‘Don’t look so cross at me, Prince Wulf; I’m sure it’s not my fault; I could only say what the monk told me,’ whispered poor Pelagia.

‘Who looks cross at you, my queen?’ roared the Amal. ‘Let me have him out here, and by Thor’s hammer, I’ll—’

‘Who spoke to you, you stupid darling?’ answered Pelagia, who lived in hourly fear of thunderstorms. ‘Who is going to be cross with any one, except I with you, for mishearing and misunderstanding, and meddling, as you are always doing? I shall do as I threatened, and run away with Prince Wulf, if you are not good. Don’t you see that the whole crew are expecting you to make them an oration?’

Whereupon the Amal rose.

‘See you here, Wulf the son of Ovida, and warriors all! If we want wealth, we shan’t find it among the sand-hills. If we want women, we shall find nothing prettier than these among dragons and devils. Don’t look angry, Wulf. You have no mind to marry one of those dog-headed girls the monk talked of, have you? Well, then, we have money and women; and if we want sport, it’s better sport killing men than killing beasts; so we had better go where we shall find most of that game, which we certainly shall not up this road. As for fame and all that, though I’ve had enough, there’s plenty to be got anywhere along the shores of that Mediterranean. Let’s burn and plunder Alexandria: forty of us Goths might kill down all these donkey-riders in two days, and hang up that lying prefect who sent us hereon this fool’s errand. Don’t answer, Wulf. I knew he was humbugging us all along, but you were so open-mouthed to all he said, that I was bound to let my elders choose for me. Let’s go back; send over for any of the tribes; send to Spain for those Vandals—they have had enough of Adolf by now, curse him!—I’ll warrant them; get together an army, and take Constantinople. I’ll be Augustus, and Pelagia, Augusta; you and Smid here, the two Caesars; and we’ll make the monk the chief of the eunuchs, eh?—anything you like for a quiet life; but up this accursed kennel of hot water I go no farther. Ask your girls, my heroes, and I’ll ask mine. Women are all prophetesses, every one of them.’