“I was taken prisoner during the siege of my village. The man who cut down my parents and my brothers claimed me as his wife.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth, as startled that the Roman should relate this with a smile as I was by her words. She dropped her stone and brushed her fingertips against the hem of my robe. “Sit,” she said. “Tell me how you came to serve Attila.”
Now it was my turn to look beyond the wagons, for it occurred to me that the Roman might be a scout planted by Attila to learn from me all that Edeco had failed to learn. But I saw in the next instant how ridiculous the notion was, and I sank down beside her saying, “I wandered too far from home. Some Huns found me and brought me here. At first I stayed alone in my hut. But then one of Attila’s men, a man who calls me his friend, pressed Attila to take me into service.” I looked away, marveling at how easily deceit came to me now that I had become so practiced at it. When I looked back again, the Roman was clutching her leg. She groaned, then closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth until the pain passed. “What is it?” I asked.
She rolled her skirt up quickly and I saw the huge open gash across her thigh. It was swollen and red at the edges and black in the middle with puddles of pus. “You must get help,” I exclaimed.
She pulled her skirt down over the wound. “It is not so bad. The pain comes and goes. It is worse today than usual. It will likely heal on its own.”
“But it will not. I have seen men die of lesser wounds.” I was already getting to my feet, but the Roman put her hand up to stop me. I stared at her palm, for I thought I felt some power—some energy emanating from it—almost like the energy emitted by the war sword. Frightened and intrigued, I sat down again and stared at her.
“I cannot go for help,” she stated calmly. “The man who inflicted it, my husband, forbade it. If he learned I went for help, he would do worse to me, I am certain.”
“But how could he do such a thing?”
She laughed. “I suspect he was jealous. He does not mind when I speak to Hun women because he could not bear it early on when I knew nothing of his language. But one day he caught me speaking to another Roman, the wife of a Hun like myself, in our own language, which he would have me forget. This wound was meant to remind me of my error. I have had it for some time and it has not killed me yet. So you see, you need not worry.”
“But I must go,” I cried. “Suppose he learns that you spoke to a Thuet and wounds you again on my account?”
“No,” she cried, her dark, almond-shaped eyes flooding with petition. Then she smiled and said more gently, “It has been so long since I have had anyone to talk to like this. The Hun women do not trust me and never speak to me of personal matters. Besides, no one will notice us here. And even if someone did, who would tarnish such a glorious day with such an evil purpose?”
We both looked up at the sky instinctively, and I said to myself, I am no better than the Huns. Because she is no Thuet, I did not trust her either.
“You must have noticed,” the Roman added, “everyone seems more at ease now that Attila is gone for a time.”
Now I felt an impulse to overturn my distrust by telling her of the scheme that Edeco and I had devised, and that, consequently, Attila might never return. But I remembered that I had been played once before by a beautiful woman who appeared, briefly, wise and congenial. “Has your husband gone with him?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “I cannot think how you can be so pleasant when you are married to such a monster. I thought my own miseries the worst until now.”
The Roman looked at me with her head cocked and one of her long, finely-arched eyebrows ascending. “I have had to learn to forgive him. Otherwise I should have died of despair long before now.”
I could not help but laugh. “Forgive him? How is that possible?”
The Roman smiled warmly. “Have you never had to forgive someone yourself?”
“Aye,” I answered. “But that was my brother. And even that was a difficult task which I should never have accomplished without a great deal of help.”
“All men are brothers,” the Roman responded.
I stared at her quizzically.
“But you asked me about my husband,” she went on. “Forgiving him was not easy at first, but time passed and gradually I managed it. I have come to realize that he does not see that his ways are wrong. Right and wrong have no meaning for him. He can distinguish only between the Hun way and the way of others. It is sometimes necessary for me to remind myself that had I been raised among the Huns and taught early on that glory comes from domination, it is likely I should be much the same.” She hesitated, her milk-white finger at play on her lower lip. “Would you like me to tell you the story I keep in mind to drive off my anger when it comes?”
“Indeed, I am most curious.”
“It is a story Jesus told.”
“Jesus?”
“The son of God made man and sent to earth.”
“Then you are a Christian?”
“Yes. Now listen. There was once a king who decided that he had better bring his accounts up to date. And in the process, he came across the name of a man who owed him twenty pounds of gold. He sent for the man and demanded payment. But the man fell to his knees, and after telling the king of his woes, he begged the king to be patient until he could find the means to repay his debt. Now the king, who was as rich in empathy as he was in gold, said to the debtor, ‘Go. Your debt is forgotten.’ And the man left immediately. But as he was heading home, musing over his good fortune, he encountered a man who owed him four pounds of gold, and thinking that now that he was debt-free he might use the four pounds to get himself ahead, he insisted that his debtor pay him on the spot. The debtor fell to his knees and begged his creditor to give him more time. But the creditor, who had already forgotten the king’s leniency, had his debtor sent to prison.”
“I fail to understand,” I said. “What has all this to do with forgiving the man who killed your family and wounded you?”
“There is not a day that passes when God does not forgive me for my debts. And so who am I to refuse to forgive the debts of another, whether he asks or not?”
I shook my head. “I do not grasp it. One is obligated to forgive his own. But one’s enemies? It makes no sense to me.”
“Have you an enemy, friend?”
“Aye, and his name is Attila. He and his brother cut my people down when I was very young. There were some eighty thousand of us before they came. Now we number—” I broke off, startled to see how easily I could forget myself. And when the Roman lay her fingertips on my arm, I began to cry and had to hide my face in my hands. “I have been here so long,” I mumbled. “And I never before said those words—”
“Cry, my friend. I will comfort you,” the Roman whispered.
“I lied before,” I went on. “I did not wander too far from home. My home is far away, across the plain and over the mountains to the west. I came to the City of Attila freely and with a purpose. I came to find the means to cut Attila down. And I may have succeeded. I will know when this campaign is done.” I searched her face for some sign of alarm but saw none. “I detest him,” I continued. “I shall never forgive him for what he did to my people—and yours either, for that matter, for I never knew a Roman before, but now I see that you Romans are not at all what I once thought.”
She laughed. “I am not representative of all Romans, friend, though I promise you, I am no better than most. Still, there are some among my people who are worse. In the village where I grew up, for instance, there were a great number of unjust men. These men were councilors, and their task, once, was to see to our civic lives. But they were also the city tax-collectors, and when they found that through bribery and corruption they could grow in wealth while the rest of us declined, they were quick to forget about our civic lives and concentrate on th
eir own needs. We were lucky to have the church to turn to. It protected the poorest among us, until Attila came and tore it down.”
“Then you must understand why it is right that Attila—and these tax-collectors too—be cut down before more people are harmed by their actions.”
The Roman smiled. “I should like to tell you another of Jesus’ stories, if you would not mind too much.”
“I invite you to do so.”
“Then here it is: There was a man who had two sons, and one day he asked each of them to go into the fields and work them. The first said no, but later he reconsidered and went to work. The second son said yes to his father, but he had no intention of going. And as soon as his father’s back was turned, he went back about business of his own. Which would you say was the better son?”
“Why, neither. It seems to me that if this Jesus wanted to set an example, he would have invented a third son, one who said yes and then went right off to the fields.”
“But you see, the point of the story would have been lost then, for the people he intended it for were either like the first or the second son.”
“Then the point is lost on me as well. I can only make sense of it if a third son is included. If the listeners were more like the first and the second, then the compliance of a third would have given them something to strive for.”
“Perhaps. But let me explain it the way my father once explained it to me. The corrupt among us are often like the first son, who said no but later changed his mind. Perhaps he changed his mind so late in the day that he could hardly be of use in the fields. The point is that he did change his mind. Time is God’s gift, friend. He doles it out as He sees fit. Until night falls, who is to say that it is too late for a corrupt man to change?”
“But what of the second son who was more cunning and had no intention of doing as his father bade? I can think of at least one person as corrupt as he.”
“He, too, may change his way of thinking.”
“Now I understand,” I said, but in truth I was still perplexed.
Perhaps the Roman saw through me, for she set her gaze on me sternly and said, “I hope to meet with you again, friend, and I do not mean just here in the City of Attila. Do not poison your thoughts with notions of harming Attila.”
I grunted. “If Attila comes to rule the world, you will change your thinking fast enough.”
The Roman clapped her hands together. “Then let us pray to Jesus that never comes to pass.”
“Forgive me, but I cannot think what would happen if my gods learned that I had prayed to another.”
We stared at each other in silence for a moment, and then I turned away. I was thinking, and not for the first time, how godless the world had come to seem since my coming to Pannonia. I could not understand the folly of the Roman’s god, who would have folk turn their backs on their enemies even as they drew their swords on them. But her talk of this Jesus, as it put me in mind of Wodan and the others, was a boon for me. My mind drifted off on its own, far away, so that all at once I seemed to hear the voices of my fellow Burgundians rising up to stir the ears of the gods. I seemed once more to see the sacrifice, the blood-stained altar, the blood-smeared trees—and all the time our voices reaching up and up to Valhalla, becoming one voice, the voice of a people bound together by blood and custom and hearts that are full. That was an uplifting like no other. And it grieved me to think that my existence in Pannonia had put it at such a distance, for whether my people had come together to mourn or to rejoice, to plead or to praise, our connection to one another and to the gods was so pure and so profound then that it transcended the event that had assembled us. And when we went our separate ways, we took something of that holy connection away with us.
I turned to the Roman. “It would please me to tell you about my people and our gods,” I said. And I proceeded to tell her all that I had been thinking and more. She smiled sweetly throughout, and afterwards we said nothing for a long time.
“No one is all bad,” she finally whispered.
I came bounding down to earth and turned to look at her.
“My husband, for example. For all the evil that he has done, he has grown fond of me. As long as I obey him, he treats me with kindness. And he allows me privileges which the other Huns would scorn him for if they knew.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for one, he allows me to write as I please, as long as I do it in his language.”
I sat forward excitedly. “I know of writing. My friend, he told me. What is it that you write?”
The Roman drew a circle in the sand with her finger. “Letters, mostly.”
“And he permits you to send them forth with messengers?”
She laughed. “I do not write them to be sent. The people they are written to are all dead.”
“When I first came to the City of Attila,” she continued, “I found myself thinking the same thought over and over again: If only I could speak to my family. If only I could tell those who loved me about my ordeal with the Huns. I felt I was losing my mind by keeping my sorrows all to myself.”
“Aye,” I interrupted, “I know the feeling well enough.”
“Then I began to write the words of discontent which I had carried around so long in my head. And as I described each of my miseries, the pressure they had exerted when I had only been able to think of them was relieved some. I suppose I was really only writing to myself. Even so, the writing of those matters made them less somehow. Now, when I look back on them…” She sat forward suddenly so that we were shoulder to shoulder. “Do you know how to read at all?”
“No. But I saw some writing once, on a parchment made of goatskin.”
The Roman smiled. Then she sat back and sighed. “I was going to say that if you knew how to read a bit, you might take my letters should anything happen to me.”
“But nothing must happen to you!” I exclaimed.
“I am not afraid to die.”
“You must live for my sake. I will not do without you. Though our ways are different, I find that I love you already.”
The Roman turned to look at me. “How are you called, friend?”
“Here in the City of Attila I am known as Ildico. On my own lands, I am called Gudrun.”
“I am called Sagaria.”
“Sagaria,” I repeated, looking up and noting that the line for the food tent was now extended outside of it.
She had followed my gaze. “We should go,” she whispered. “The whole village will be coming now. It is that time.”
Her hand came up to fondle her green stone, and again I missed my own stone sorely. “It is lovely,” I said, indicating it with a flick of a finger.
She smiled. “It is very special. See here.” She slipped the chain over her head and held the gem with both hands. Then she twisted it, and as I watched in amazement, the stone divided and became two. It was hollow inside, and the bottom part seemed to be connected to the upper by an invisible hinge. “My father gave me the gem when I was still a babe. I kept it full of rose petal. After he was gone, I used to open it and think of him. But I made the mistake of telling my husband about it, and the next time I opened it, it was empty. He must have emptied it while I slept, for I never take it from my neck. Smell. The scent remains.”
I bent my head and sniffed. But the lengthening line before the food tent caught my attention again and I looked up at Sagaria with apprehension.
“We must part,” Sagaria said hastily. “As soon as these villagers have eaten, the Thuets will take their wagons and go.”
“We must meet again tomorrow,” I cried, and I grabbed hold of her wrist. To my astonishment, it was burning. And then I understood the nature of the force which I had felt issuing from her hand.
Sagaria saw my look. “I have had the fever for some days,” she said. “It will pass.”
I thought
of Eara, of the disappointed look she had given me when I left her. “I have an idea,” I whispered. “I think I can find someone who may be willing to give us something for your leg. No one need know about it.”
But Sagaria’s eyes were all for the crowd now, which was becoming noisy. “You go first,” she said. “I will be a long time getting away myself, and we should not be seen to leave together.”
“No, you go. I will not rest until I know you have returned safely.”
Sagaria put her burning lips to my cheek and kissed me softly. Then she got up clumsily, and dragging her bad leg, she went out between the wagons in the direction opposite the throng. When she passed from my view, I lay down and searched for her from beneath the wagons. With her awkward limp, she was easy enough to pick out. When she disappeared again, I rolled under one wagon and came up on the side of the next in time to see her entering a hut not too far off in the distance.
* * *
That night my imagination was a wild, uncontrollable thing. I fancied that I would heal Sagaria, and—as I had forgotten all about Edeco in the excitement of having found a friend, and such an intriguing one—that Sagaria and I would find the means to escape. Then, remembering Edeco all at once, I imagined that Sagaria and I would wait together for his return and to learn that Attila was dead, and that then the three of us would steal off together to begin a new life, picking up my sweet daughter and her caretaker, on our way. Then I thought of Edeco’s sons and included them in my fantasy—and then my young Hun friend too. And I laughed aloud to think how my brothers’ faces would pucker and fold when they saw me coming with my daughter and her nurse, three Thuets more, a Roman and a Hun.
* * *
I went to Eara’s hut directly in the morning. Once again, she was sitting outside, but this time there were no children about. I was frightened, for other than a smile and a look of longing, I had no reason to think that I could trust Eara any more than I could trust anyone else in the City of Attila. But when Eara spotted me and called out, “Did you find the food tent all right?” I was encouraged.
The Last Wife of Attila the Hun Page 28