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

"One word more on your royal brother. – Does he not carry on his forehead the identical symbols that you carry on your arms?"

"Yes," she replied with increasing impatience. "Yes, my brother carries an eagle's talon over each eye-brow, and the red serpent on a head-band over his forehead. Kings wear a head-band. But we have spoken enough of Neroweg – quite enough – "

I thought I noticed on Elwig's features an ill dissembled sentiment of hatred when she pronounced his name. She proceeded:

"If you do not wish to die, write to Victoria to come to our camp ornamented with her most precious jewels. She shall repair alone to a place that I shall designate to you – a secluded spot that I know – I shall come for her and shall lead her to my brother to solicit your life from him – "

"Victoria to come alone to this camp? – I have come hither, relying upon the sacredness of the truce; – I carried the bough of peace in my hand, and yet one of my companions was killed, another was wounded, and to cap the climax of treachery, I am delivered to you bound hand and foot to be put to death – "

"Victoria may bring a small escort with her."

"Which would be unquestionably massacred by your men! – The scheme is too transparent!"

"You, then, wish to die!" cried the priestess gnashing her teeth in actual or simulated rage, and threatening me with her knife. "The fire will be shortly kindled under the caldron. – I shall have you plunged alive into the magic water, and you shall boil in it until you are dead. – Once more, and for the last time, make your choice. – Either you shall die in tortures, or you will write to Victoria to repair to our camp decked in her richest ornaments! – Choose!" she added with redoubled fury and again threatening me with her knife. "Choose – or you die!"

I knew there was no more thievish, covetous or vainglorious race than this breed of Franks. I noticed that Elwig's large grey eyes glistened with cupidity every time she mentioned the magnificent ornaments, that, as she imagined, the Mother of the Camps surely possessed. The ridiculous accoutrement of the priestess; the profusion of valueless gewgaws that she wore with a savage woman's coquetry, in order, no doubt, to appear pleasing to the eye of Riowag, the captain of the black warriors; above all, her persistence in demanding of me that Victoria come to the Frankish camp covered with rich jewels; – everything justified the conclusion that Elwig aimed at drawing my foster-sister into an ambush in order to slay her and rob her of her jewels. The clumsy scheme did not do credit to the ingenuity of the priestess of the nether regions. Nevertheless, her cupidity might be turned to my service. I answered her in a tone of indifference:

"Woman, you mean to kill me if I do not induce Victoria to come here? You are free to kill me – boil my flesh and bones – you will thereby lose more than you think for, seeing that you are the sister of Neroweg, the Terrible Eagle, one of the greatest kings of all your hordes!"

"What would I lose? – "

"Magnificent Gallic ornaments!"

"Ornaments! – What ornaments?" cried Elwig doubtfully, although her eyes snapped with greed.

"Do you imagine that, in sending her foster-brother to convey a message to the kings of the Franks, Victoria the Great did not prepare, as a pledge of truce, rich presents for the wives and sisters who accompany them, and for those whom they left behind in Germany?"

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."