A Captive of the Roman Eagles Part 16

"Where shall I send you?"

Bissula remained silent a short time. Her face was deeply flushed.

"Where? To the place where you always gaze in your reveries? Out yonder?"

"No," she replied, setting her teeth; "eastward, to my home. Then I will take care of myself."

"Child, you must stay till the war is over."

"No, I must go," she answered. "I belong to my people, not to you. It is not right, it is abominable, for me to sleep safe here in your protection, drink Roman wine from golden goblets, while my kindred are suffering want and danger. Let me go!" She raised her hand. The gesture was meant to be an entreaty, but it resembled a threat.

"Cease this folly, little one," Ausonius now said, more seriously. "My nephew's idle, unseemly words offended you; I reproved him for them; he will beg your pardon,"--Bissula made a contemptuous movement,--"and everything will be forgotten."

"Shall I forget my people?"

"Forget? No; but gradually become alienated from them. You look amazed.

Well, let this trivial incident hasten the important disclosure I have to make. Are you thinking of leaving me? Give it up, sweet girl!" He controlled himself and went on more calmly: "My little daughter, you will never leave me again."

Bissula opened her eyes in the utmost astonishment, gazing at the Roman with the expression of a captured deer. The iron tramp of a marching cohort was heard close at hand, but the tents still concealed it from their gaze.

"What do you mean?" she stammered.

"I will tell you," said Ausonius in a firmer, sterner tone than he had ever used. The opposition he now suspected irritated him, and he was determined to execute his will. "I will tell you that I have resolved to fulfil my former plan. I shall take you as my guest for an indefinite time. As my little daughter," he added cautiously, "with me to Burdigala."

"Never!" cried Bissula, raising both arms in the wildest terror.

"Yes, most certainly."

"But I will not go. I--away from the lake--from--from my people? No, no, no!"

"Yes, yes, yes! This is not tyrannical nor cruel, as you think now."

"Who will compel me to go away?"

"I. We compel children whom we are educating to do what we desire, for their own good. You do not understand your real welfare: I will force you to do so."

"But I am no child; I am--" She advanced toward him defiantly.

"You are a captive. Do not forget that. You must obey your master, and he--"

"Is here," said a deep voice.

Saturninus stepped between them. With a firm hand he held Bissula, who had turned, reeled as though giddy, and tried again to scale the wall.

"Do not forget that, Ausonius."

Angered by the interruption, perplexed, and half ashamed, the other drew back. "What are you doing?"

"I am protecting my captive."

"Against whom?"

"Against every threat: against wiles as well as compulsion--even though well meant."

Both gazed at him in silence, but the girl's grat.i.tude was blended with a slight thrill of fear--fear of this protector too.

Ausonius was the first to find words. In tones which revealed wrath, jealousy, and suspicion, he exclaimed: "And who will protect her against you?"

"Nothing and no one, except my own will."

"Oh, set me free!" cried Bissula, raising her clasped hands despairingly to the Tribune.

"That you may tell the Barbarians all you have seen and heard in our camp? No, little maid. You will stay--perhaps forever. Have no thought of escape! Here, countryman!" He beckoned to a soldier. "Take her to the new tent; keep guard there until I leave tonight; then Rignomer the Batavian will relieve you. And listen: tell my scribe that during the day he must see that she--" The rest was whispered in the ear of the Illyrian, who led the wondering, bewildered girl away by the arm.

Ausonius and Saturninus parted without exchanging a single word: the latter saluted respectfully; but the angry Prefect did not, or would not, see the farewell.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Ever since the preceding day the rain clouds, which had so long densely veiled the mountain peaks and hung in gray curtains to the sh.o.r.e of the lake, had grown lighter and lighter. Scattered fragments still floated over the forest; but the mists were dispersing from Sentis and Todi.

And before the sun of that day sank behind the wooded heights of the western sh.o.r.e, it burst through the cloud rack for the first time in a long while, illumining lake and country for a few minutes with a blood-red glow. The fishes leaped greedily after the flies which were sunning themselves in the beams and flew feebly, with damp wings, close to the surface of the water: then the radiant ball disappeared behind the long cloud curtain.

The herons flew screaming from the rushes toward the land. The wind seemed to be rising. The clouds swept across the sky, sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another. The waves of the lake, obeying the former course of the wind, rolled in a direction opposite to the clouds above them.

The Batavian mercenaries of the Lower Rhine were encamped outside of the northern gate of the camp, the Porta Praetoria, but a little toward the west. The centurion, a man about forty years old, long in the service of Rome, who was adorned with neck-chains and various badges of honor on his breast-plate bestowed for gallant deeds, was fanning the smoking fire, which they were loath to have die out in the cold damp woods.

"There!" he muttered, "there it goes. I invoked both G.o.ds, Vulcan and Loki, in vain. Vulcan won't help me, because I am a Barbarian; Loki because I serve the Romans. We mercenaries no longer have any G.o.ds to aid us, because we belong to no nation."

"Ha, Rignomer," laughed another in the group, a youth whose downy red beard was just beginning to grow, "I care for only one G.o.d among them all--the G.o.d of victory."

"And he, Odin, is the very one who has deserted us, Brinno. Everywhere the Germans are conquering; that is, the peoples who are fighting against Rome, not we German mercenaries, who battle for the Caesar. And in every conflict the men who bleed are we mercenaries."

"Because these cunning Romans always put us in the place which is most severely threatened," Brinno cried angrily.

"Because Odin is hostile to us," whispered the centurion. "We must no longer fight for Rome against the other Germans. He no longer wills it."

"What do you mean by Germans? That's a word like Barbarians. The Romans invented it, not we. What do I care for these Alemanni? I am a Batavian; a Frank, if you prefer the name."

"Yes, I do prefer it."

"It's newer."

"But stronger, because it is larger."

"What do I care, I ask again, for these thick-skulled Suabians? I can hardly understand what they say."

"But all we blue-eyed, yellow-haired men are sons of the dwellers in Asgard. We have all come here to the great waters front the East. So our forefathers teach us; so the harpers sing. And everywhere, on the Rhine and the Danube, the districts and peoples who formerly had such bitter feuds are gathering. This is Odin's work. He is summoning the descendants of Asgard to war against Rome. This is my last campaign under the dragon standard. In a few days my time of service will expire; then I shall go home and till my land on the Issala, where my mother and my brother and sisters live; till it with a better plough, a Roman one. And if I must fight again, I will fight for my land, against Rome. We Franks have too little room down there in the swamps of the Rhine; we must go into beautiful Gaul."