'When I said his business was secret, I lied not,' said the Hun, picking up with avidity the coins she flung to him—'but he has not kept it secret from me! The Huns are cunning! Aha, ugly and cunning!'
Suspicion, the only refined emotion in a criminal heart, half discovered to Goisvintha, at this moment, the intelligence that was yet to be communicated. No word, however, escaped her, while she signed the barbarian to proceed.
'He has gone to a farm-house on the plains beyond the suburbs behind us. He will not return till daybreak,' continued the Hun, tossing his money carelessly in his great, horny hands.
'Did you see him go?' gasped the woman.
'I tracked him to the house,' returned the barbarian. 'For many nights I watched and suspected him—to-night I saw him depart. It is but a short time since I returned from following him. The darkness did not delude me; the place is on the high-road from the suburbs—the first by-path to the westward leads to its garden gate. I know it! I have discovered his secret! I am more cunning than he!'
'For what did he seek the farm-house at night?' demanded Goisvintha after an interval, during which she appeared to be silently fixing the man's last speech in her memory; 'are you cunning enough to tell me that?'
'For what do men venture their safety and their lives, their money and their renown?' laughed the barbarian. 'They venture them for women! There is a girl at the farm-house; I saw her at the door when the chief went in!'
He paused; but Goisvintha made no answer. Remembering that she was descended from a race of women who slew their wounded husbands, brothers, and sons with their own hands when they sought them after battle dishonoured by a defeat; remembering that the fire of the old ferocity of such ancestors as these still burnt at her heart; remembering all that she had hoped from Hermanric, and had plotted against Antonina; estimating in all its importance the shock of the intelligence she now received, we are alike unwilling and unable to describe her emotions at this moment. For some time the stillness in the room was interrupted by no sounds but the rolling of the thunder without, the quick, convulsive respiration of Goisvintha, and the clinking of the money which the Hun still continued to toss mechanically from hand to hand.
'I shall reap good harvest of gold and silver after to-night's work,' pursued the barbarian, suddenly breaking the silence. 'You have given me money to speak—when the chief returns and hears that I have discovered him, he will give me money to be silent. I shall drink to-morrow with the best men in the army, Hun though I am!'
He returned to his seat as he ceased, and began beating in monotonous measure, with one of his pieces of money on the blade of his sword, some chorus of a favourite drinking song; while Goisvintha, standing pale and breathless near the door of the chamber, looked down on him with fixed, vacant eyes. At length a deep sigh broke from her; her hands involuntarily clenched themselves at her side; her lips moved with a bitter smile; then, without addressing another word to the Hun, she turned, and softly and stealthily quitted the room.
The instant she was gone, a sudden change arose in the barbarian's manner. He started from his seat, a scowl of savage hatred and triumph appeared on his shaggy brows, and he paced to and fro through the chamber like a wild beast in his cage. 'I shall tear him from the pinnacle of his power at last!' he whispered fiercely to himself. 'For what I have told her this night, his kinswoman will hate him—I knew it while she spoke! For his desertion of his post, Alaric may dishonour him, may banish him, may hang him! His fate is at my mercy; I shall rid myself nobly of him and his command! More than all the rest of his nation I loathe this Goth! I will be by when they drag him to the tree, and taunt him with his shame, as he has taunted me with my deformity.' Here he paused to laugh in complacent approval of his project, quickening his steps and hugging himself joyfully in the barbarous exhilaration of his triumph.
His secret meditations had thus occupied him for some time longer, when the sound of a footstep was audible outside the door. He recognised it instantly, and called softly to the person without to approach. At the signal of his voice a man entered—less athletic in build, but in deformity the very counterpart of himself. The following discourse was then immediately held between the two Huns, the new-comer beginning it thus:—
'Have you tracked him to the door?'
'To the very threshold.'
'Then his downfall is assured! I have seen Alaric.'
'We shall trample him under our feet!—this boy, who has been set over us that are his elders, because he is a Goth and we are Huns! But what of Alaric? How did you gain his ear?'
'The Goths round his tent scoffed at me as a savage, and swore that I was begotten between a demon and a witch. But I remembered the time when these boasters fled from their settlements; when our tribes mounted their black steeds and hunted them like beasts! Aha, their very lips were pale with fear in those days.'
'Speak of Alaric—our time is short,' interrupted the other fiercely.
'I answered not a word to their taunts,' resumed his companion, 'but I called out loudly that I was a Gothic ally, that I brought messages to Alaric, and that I had the privilege of audience like the rest. My voice reached the ears of the king: he looked forth from his tent, and beckoned me in. I saw his hatred of my nation lowering in his eye as we looked on one another, but I spoke with submission and in a soft voice. I told him how his chieftain whom he had set over us secretly deserted his post; I told him how we had seen his favoured warrior for many nights journeying towards the suburbs; how on this night, as on others before, he had stolen from the encampment, and how you had gone forth to track him to his lurking-place.'
'Was the tyrant angered?'
'His cheeks reddened, and his eyes flashed, and his fingers trembled round the hilt of his sword while I spoke! When I ceased he answered me that I lied. He cursed me for an infidel Hun who had slandered a Christian chieftain. He threatened me with hanging! I cried to him to send messengers to our quarters to prove the truth ere he slew me. He commanded a warrior to return hither with me. When we arrived, the most Christian chieftain was nowhere to be beheld—none knew whither he had gone! We turned back again to the tent of the king; his warrior, whom he honoured, spoke the same words to him as the Hun whom he despised. Then the wrath of Alaric rose. 'This very night,' he cried, 'did I with my own lips direct him to await my commands with vigilance at his appointed post! I would visit such disobedience with punishment on my own son! Go, take with you others of your troop—your comrade who has tracked him will guide you to his hiding-place—bring him prisoner into my tent!' Such were his words! Our companions wait us without—lest he should escape let us depart without delay.'
'And if he should resist us,' cried the other, leading the way eagerly towards the door; 'what said the king if he should resist us?'
'Slay him with your own hands.'
CHAPTER 18.
THE FARM-HOUSE.
