Part 47 (1/2)

'Will you follow me, children?'

'To death!' shouted they.

'I know it. Oh that I had seven hundred of you, as Abraham had! We would see then whether these scoundrels did not share, within a week, the fate of Chedorlaomer's.'

'Happy man, who can actually trust your own slaves!' said Raphael, as the party galloped on, tightening their girdles and getting ready their weapons.

'Slaves? If the law gives me the power of selling one or two of them who are not yet wise enough to be trusted to take care of themselves, it is a fact which both I and they have long forgotten. Their fathers grew gray at my father's table, and G.o.d grant that they may grow gray at mine! We eat together, work together, hunt together, fight together, jest together, and weep together. G.o.d help us all! for we have but one common weal. Now-do you make out the enemy, boys?'

'Ausurians, your Holiness. The same party who tried Myrsinitis last week. I know them by the helmets which they took from the Markmen.'

'And with whom are they fighting?'

No one could see. Fighting they certainly were: but their victims were beyond them, and the party galloped on.

'That was a smart business at Myrsinitis. The Ausurians appeared while the people were at morning prayers. The soldiers, of course, ran for their lives, and hid in the caverns, leaving the matter to the priests.'

'If they were of your presbytery, I doubt not they proved themselves worthy of their diocesan.'

'Ah, if all my priests were but like them! or my people either!' said Synesius, chatting quietly in full gallop, like a true son of the saddle. 'They offered up prayers for victory, sallied out at the head of the peasants, and met the Moors in a narrow pa.s.s. There their hearts failed them a little. Faustus, the deacon, makes them a speech; charges the leader of the robbers, like young David, with a stone, beats his brains out therewith, strips him in true Homeric fas.h.i.+on, and routs the Ausurians with their leader's sword; returns and erects a trophy in due cla.s.sic form, and saves the whole valley.'

'You should make him archdeacon.'

'I would send him and his townsfolk round the province, if I could, crowned with laurel, and proclaim before them at every market-place, ”These are men of G.o.d.” With whom can those Ausurians be dealing? Peasants would have been all killed long ago, and soldiers would have run away long ago. It is truly a portent in this country to see a fight last ten minutes. Who can they be? I see them now, and hewing away like men too. They are all on foot but two; and we have not a cohort of infantry left for many a mile round.'

'I know who they are!' cried Raphael, suddenly striking spurs into his horse. 'I will swear to that armour among a thousand. And there is a litter in the midst of them. On! and fight, men, if you ever fought in your lives!'

'Softly!' cried Synesius. 'Trust an old soldier, and perhaps-alas! that he should have to say it-the best left in this wretched country. Round by the hollow, and take the barbarians suddenly in flank. They will not see us then till we are within twenty paces of them. Aha! you have a thing or two to learn yet, Aben-Ezra.'

And chuckling at the prospect of action, the gallant bishop wheeled his little troop and in five minutes more dashed out of the copse with a shout and a flight of arrows, and rushed into the thickest of the fight.

One cavalry skirmish must be very like another. A crash of horses, a flas.h.i.+ng of sword-blades, five minutes of blind confusion, and then those who have not been knocked out of their saddles by their neighbours' knees, and have not cut off their own horses' heads instead of their enemies', find themselves, they know not how, either running away or being run away from-not one blow in ten having taken effect on either side. And even so Raphael, having made vain attempts to cut down several Moors, found himself standing on his head in an altogether undignified posture, among innumerable horses' legs, in all possible frantic motions. To avoid one was to get in the way of another; so he philosophically sat still, speculating on the sensation of having his brains kicked out, till the cloud of legs vanished, and he found himself kneeling abjectly opposite the nose of a mule, on whose back sat, utterly unmoved, a tall and reverend man, in episcopal costume. The stranger, instead of bursting out laughing, as Raphael did, solemnly lifted his hand, and gave him his blessing. The Jew sprang to his feet, heedless of all such courtesies, and, looking round, saw the Ausurians galloping off up the hill in scattered groups, and Synesius standing close by him, wiping a b.l.o.o.d.y sword.

'Is the litter safe'?' were his first words.

'Safe; and so are all. I gave you up for killed when I saw you run through with that lance.

'Run through? I am as sound in the hide as a crocodile, said Raphael, laughing.

'Probably the fellow took the b.u.t.t instead of the point, in his hurry. So goes a cavalry scuffle. I saw you hit three or four fellows running with the flat of your sword.'

Ah, that explains,' said Raphael, why, I thought myself once the best swordsman on the Armenian frontier....'

'I suspect that you were thinking of some one besides the Moors,' said Synesius, archly pointing to the litter; and Raphael, for the first time for many a year, blushed like a boy of fifteen, and then turned haughtily away, and remounted his horse, saying, 'Clumsy fool that I was!'

'Thank G.o.d rather that you have been kept from the shedding of blood,' said the stranger bishop, in a soft, deliberate voice, with a peculiarly clear and delicate enunciation. 'If G.o.d have given us the victory, why grudge His having spared any other of His creatures besides ourselves?'

'Because there are so many the more of them left to ravish, burn, and slay,' answered Synesius. 'Nevertheless, I am not going to argue with Augustine.'

Augustine! Raphael looked intently at the man, a tall, delicate-featured personage, with a lofty and narrow forehead, scarred like his cheeks with the deep furrows of many a doubt and woe. Resolve, gentle but unbending, was expressed in his thin close-set lips and his clear quiet eye; but the calm of his mighty countenance was the calm of a worn-out volcano, over which centuries must pa.s.s before the earthquake-rents be filled with kindly soil, and the cinder-slopes grow gay with gra.s.s and flowers. The Jew's thoughts, however, were soon turned into another channel by the hearty embraces of Majoricus and his son.