The Count of the Saxon Shore; or The Villa in Vectis. Alfred John Church
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was periodically overrun. Britain, or at least the southern district of Britain, was certainly safer, and it was this that for the last ten years he had been accustomed to traverse, till he had become a well-known and welcome visitor at every villa and settlement along the coast.
Here then chance, or, as Carna preferred to think, Providence, had provided an interpreter; and it so happened that, whether by another piece of good fortune, or an additional interposition, his services were made permanently useful. The old man had found his journeys becoming in the winter too laborious for his strength, and it was not very difficult to persuade him to make his home in the villa for two or three months till the severity of the season should have passed. Every one was pleased at the arrangement. Antrix was an admirable teller of tales, and his had been an adventurous life, full of incident, with which he knew how to make the winter night less long. The Count saw a rare opportunity, such as had never come to him before, of learning something about the hardy freebooters whom it was his business to overawe; and Carna had the liveliest hopes of making a proselyte, if she [pg 62]could only make herself, and the message in which she had so profound a faith, understood.
The young Saxon’s resolution and pride did not long hold out against the unexpected delight of being able once more to converse in his own language, and he soon began to talk with perfect freedom—for, he had no idea of having anything to conceal—about his home and his people. He was the son, they learnt from him, of the chief of one of the Saxon settlements near the mouth of the Albis.21 The people lived by hunting and fishing, and, more or less, by cultivating the soil. But life was hard. The settlements were crowded; game was growing scarce, and had to be followed further afield every year; the climate, too, was very uncertain, and the crops sometimes failed altogether. In short, they could not live without what they were able to pick up in their expeditions to richer countries and more temperate climates. On this point the young Saxon was perfectly frank. The idea that there was anything of which a warrior could possibly be ashamed in taking what he could by the strong hand had evidently never crossed his mind. To rob a neighbour or fellow-tribesman he counted shameful—so much could be gathered from expressions that he let drop; as to others, his simple morality was this—to keep what you had, to take what others could not keep. [pg 63]The Count found him curiously well informed on what may be called the politics of Europe. He was well aware of the decay of the Roman power. Kinsmen and neighbours of his own had made their way south to get their share in the spoil of the Empire. Some, he had heard, had stopped to take service with the enemy; some had come back with marvellous tales of the wealth and luxury which they had seen. About Britain itself he had very clear views. The substance of what he said to the Count was this: “You won’t stop here very long. My father says that you have been weakening your fleet and armies here for years past, and that you will soon take them away altogether. Then we shall come and take the country. It will hardly be in his time, he says. Perhaps it may not be in mine. It is only you that hinder us; it is only you that we are afraid of. We shall have the island; we must have it. Our own country is too small and too barren to keep us.”
Of his own adventures the young Saxon had little to say. This was the first voyage that he and his brother had taken. Their father was in failing health, and their mother, who had but one other child, a girl some ten years younger, had kept them at home, till she had been unwillingly persuaded that they were losing caste by taking no part in the warlike excursions of their countrymen. “We had a fairly successful [pg 64]time,” went on the young chief, with the absolute unconsciousness of wrong with which a hunter might relate his exploits; “took two merchantmen that had good cargoes on board, and had a right royal fight with the people of a town on the Gallic coast. We killed thirty of them; and only five of our warriors went to the Walhalla. Then we turned homeward, but our ship struck on a rock near some islands far to the west,22 and had almost gone to the bottom. With great labour we dragged her ashore, and set to work repairing her; but our chief smith and carpenter had fallen in the battle, and we were a long time in making her fit for sea. This was the reason why we were going home so late, and also why we lagged behind our comrades when you were chasing us. By rights we were the best crew and had the swiftest ship, but she had been clumsily mended, and dragged terribly in the water.”
The Count listened to all this with the greatest interest, and plied the speaker with questions, all of which he answered with perfect frankness. He found out how many warriors the settlement could muster, what were the relations with their neighbours, whether there had been any definite plans for a common expedition. On the whole, he came to the conclusion that though there was no danger of an overpowering [pg 65]migration from this quarter such as Western and Southern Europe had suffered from in former times, these sea-faring tribes of the East would be an increasing danger to Britain as years went on. Personally the prospect did not concern him greatly; his fortunes were not bound up with the island. Still he loved the place and its people; it troubled him to see what dark days were in store for them. And taking a wider view—for he was a man of large sympathies—he was grieved to see another black cloud in an horizon already so dark. Would anything civilized be left, he thought to himself, when every part of Europe has been swept by these hosts of barbarians?
Before long another source of interest was discovered in the young Saxon. The Count happened to overhear him chanting to himself, and though he could not distinguish the words, he recognized in the rhythm something like the camp-songs that he had often listened to from German warriors in Stilicho’s camp. Here again the peddler’s services as an interpreter were put in requisition, and though the old man’s Latin, which went little beyond his practical wants as a trader, fell lamentably short of what was wanted, enough was heard to interest the villa family, which had a literary turn, very much. What the young man had sung to himself was an early Saga, a curious romance23 of heroes fighting with monsters, [pg 66]as unlike as can be conceived to anything to be found in Roman poetry—verse in its rudest shape, but still making itself felt as a real poet’s work.
Lastly, Carna, now that she had found a way of communicating her thoughts, threw herself with ardour into the work of proselytizing the stranger. Here the peddler was more at home in his task as interpreter. Carna used the dialect of South Britain, with which he was far more familiar than he was with Latin—it differed indeed but little from his native speech. The topics too were familiar, for he had been brought up in the Christian faith, and though he scarcely understood the girl’s zeal, he was quite willing to help her as much as he could.
Carna found her task much more difficult than she had expected. She had thought in her simple faith that it would be enough for her to tell to the young heathen the story of the Crucified Christ for him to fall down at once and worship. He listened with profound attention and respect. This, perhaps, he would have accorded to anything that came from her lips; but, beyond this, the story itself profoundly interested him. But it must be confessed that there was a good deal in it which did not commend itself to his warrior’s ideal of what the God whom he could worship should be. He was a soldier, and he could scarcely conceive of anything great or good that was outside a soldier’s virtues. The gods of his own [pg 67]heaven, Odin and Thor and Balder, were great conquerors, armed with armour which no mortal blow could pierce, wielders of sword and hammer which were too heavy for any mortal arm to wield. He could bow down to them because they were greater, immeasurably greater than himself, in the qualities and gifts which he most honoured. Now he was called upon to receive a quite different set of ideas, to set up a quite different standard of excellence. The story of the Gospels touched him. It roused him almost to fury when he heard how the good man who had gone about healing the sick and feeding the hungry had been put shamefully to death by His own countrymen, by those who knew best what He had done. If Carna had bidden him avenge the man who had been so ungratefully treated, he would have performed her bidding with pleasure. But to worship this Crucified One, to depose for Him Odin, Lord of Battles—that seemed impossible.
Still he was impressed, and impressed chiefly by the way in which the preacher seemed to translate into her own life the principles of the faith which she tried to set forth to him. She had told him that this Crucified One had died for him. He could not understand why He should have done so, why He should not have led His twelve legions of angels against the wicked, swept them off from the face of the earth, and established by force of arms a kingdom of justice. [pg 68]Still the idea of so much having been given, so much endured for his sake touched him, especially