Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face, Charles Kingsley [thriller novels to read TXT] 📗

‘Why not?’

‘Why should he, when we can save him and win his favour for ever? The men’s fingers are itching far a fight; it’s a bad plan not to give hounds blood now and then, or they lose the knack of hunting.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t take five minutes.’

‘And heroes should show that they can forgive when an enemy is in distress.’

‘Very true! Like an Amal too!’ And the Amal sprang up and shouted to his men to follow him.

‘Good-bye, my pretty one. Why, Wulf,’ cried he, as he burst out into the court, ‘here’s our monk again! By Odin, you’re welcome, my handsome boy! come along and fight too, young fellow; what were those arms given you for?’

‘He is my man,’ said Wulf, laying his hand on Philammon’s shoulder, ‘and blood he shall taste.’ And out the three hurried, Philammon, in his present reckless mood, ready for anything.

‘Bring your whips. Never mind swords. Those rascals are not worth it,’ shouted the Amal, as he hurried down the passage brandishing his heavy thong, some ten feet in length, threw the gate open, and the next moment recoiled from a dense crush of people who surged in—and surged out again as rapidly as the Goth, with the combined force of his weight and arm, hewed his way straight through them, felling a wretch at every blow, and followed up by his terrible companions.

They were but just in time. The four white blood-horses were plunging and rolling over each other, and Orestes reeling in his chariot, with a stream of blood running down his face, and the hands of twenty wild monks clutching at him. ‘Monks again!’ thought Philammon and as he saw among them more than one hateful face, which he recollected in Cyril’s courtyard on that fatal night, a flush of fierce revenge ran through him.

‘Mercy!’ shrieked the miserable Prefect—‘I am a Christian! I swear that I am a Christian! the Bishop Atticus baptized me at Constantinople!’

‘Down with the butcher! down with the heathen tyrant, who refuses the adjuration on the Gospels rather than be reconciled to the patriarch! Tear him out of the chariot!’ yelled the monks.

The craven hound!’ said the Amal, stopping short, ‘I won’t help him!’ But in an instant Wulf rushed forward, and struck right and left; the monks recoiled, and Philammon, burning to prevent so shameful a scandal to the faith to which he still clung convulsively, sprang into the chariot and caught Orestes in his arms.

‘You are safe, my lord; don’t struggle,’ whispered he, while the monks flew on him. A stone or two struck him, but they only quickened his determination, and in another moment the whistling of the whips round his head, and the yell and backward rush of the monks, told him that he was safe. He carried his burden safely within the doorway of Pelagia’s house, into the crowd of peeping and shrieking damsels, where twenty pairs of the prettiest hands in Alexandria seized on Orestes, and drew him into the court.

‘Like a second Hylas, carried off by the nymphs!’ simpered he, as he vanished into the harem, to reappear in five minutes, his head bound rip with silk handkerchiefs, and with as much of his usual impudence as he could muster.

‘Your Excellency—heroes all—I am your devoted slave. I owe you life itself; and more, the valour of your succour is only surpassed by the deliciousness of your cure. I would gladly undergo a second wound to enjoy a second time the services of such hands, and to see such feet busying themselves on my behalf.’

‘You wouldn’t have said that five minutes ago, quoth the Amal, looking at him very much as a bear might at a monkey.

‘Never mind the hands and feet, old fellow, they are none of yours!’ bluntly observed a voice from behind’ probably Smid’s, and a laugh ensued.

‘My saviours, my brothers!’ said Orestes, politely ignoring the laughter. ‘How can I repay you? Is there anything in which my office here enables me—I will not say to reward, for that would be a term beneath your dignity as free barbarians—but to gratify you?’

‘Give us three days’ pillage of the quarter!’ shouted some one.

‘Ah, true valour is apt to underrate obstacles; you forget your small numbers.’

‘I say,’ quoth the Amal—‘I say, take care, Prefect.—If you mean to tell me that we forty couldn’t cut all the throats in Alexandria in three days, and yours into the bargain, and keep your soldiers at bay all the time—’

‘Half of them would join us!’ cried some one. ‘They are half our own flesh and blood after all!’

‘Pardon me, my friends, I do not doubt it a moment. I know enough of the world never to have found a sheep-dog yet who would not, on occasion, help to make away with a little of the mutton which he guarded. Eh, my venerable sir?’ turning to Wulf with a knowing bow.

Wulf chuckled grimly, and said something to the Amal in German about being civil to guests.

‘You will pardon me, my heroic friends,’ said Orestes, ‘but, with your kind permission, I will observe that I am somewhat faint and disturbed by late occurrences. To trespass on your hospitality further would be an impertinence. If, therefore, I might send a slave to find some of my apparitors-’

‘No, by all the gods!’ roared the Amal, ‘you’re my guest now—my lady’s at least. And no one ever went out of my house sober yet if I could help it. Set the cooks to work, my men! The Prefect shall feast with us like an emperor, and we’ll send him home to-night as drunk as he can wish. Come along, your Excellency; we’re rough fellows, we Goths; but by the Valkyrs, no one can say that we neglect our guests!’

‘It is a sweet compulsion,’ said Orestes, as he went in.

‘Stop, by the bye! Didn’t one of you men catch a monk.?’

‘Here he is, prince, with his elbows safe behind him.’ And a tall, haggard, half-naked monk was dragged forward.

‘Capital! bring him in. His Excellency shall judge him while dinner’s cooking’ and Smid shall have the hanging of him. He hurt nobody in the scuffle; he was thinking of his dinner.’

‘Some rascal bit a piece out of my leg, and I tumbled down,’ grumbled Smid.

‘Well, pay out this fellow for it, then. Bring a chair, slaves! Here, your Highness, sit there and judge.’

‘Two chairs!’ said some one; ‘the Amal shan’t stand before the emperor himself.’

‘By all means, my dear friends. The Amal and I will act as the two Caesars, with divided empire. I presume we shall have little difference of opinion as to the hanging of this worthy.’

‘Hanging’s too quick for him.’