IV
IV
Many things happened that day which the villa and the world came to know too well. The sun was scarcely an hour high when mounted men rode to the villa, demanding to see its lord. Of these, one was Aurelius Menotus, one of the two duumviri or governors of Anderida; and with him was his son Felix, small and fair of skin, with weak eyes and a loose, stubborn mouth, who wore no sword and whose arm was in a sling. Slaves brought them to Eudemius, and he welcomed them, and they told their tale. Aurelius was a shrunken man, with a baboon face, straggling gray hair, and hands perfect as those of a god. He had ridden hard all night, and was pasty pale with fatigue and trouble; and his staff, mostly old men, were in hardly better plight. Two of the servants with them were wounded; it was told that a third had died on the road. They were cared for and given food and wine, and Eudemius sent for Marius to hear also what they had to tell. No other guests were stirring.
"Two nights ago men came upon us," Aurelius said, in his thin and nervous voice. "They come, men say, from Gaul, driven thence by Attila the Hun, and seeksafety among their kinsfolk who are already here. No man can tell how the trouble first began. The first that we in the palace knew, a soldier of the watch came and warned the guard that there was fighting in the lower quarters of the city. For long no one could tell what was the trouble; it was dark, and there was much confusion. I sent out milites stationarii to quell the tumult; these reported that the insurgents, who have given much trouble of late, had joined openly with the barbarians; had overthrown the temple of Jupiter and slain the Flamen Dialis. Two hours before midnight, that night, the public baths were blown up in their own steam, and fire broke out in various parts of the city. The barbarians, inflamed with wine and the example of the insurgents, began to plunder. Thou knowest my forces have been steadily diminished these last three years, and together the barbarians and the insurgents outnumbered the Augustans five to one. My colleague in office, Titus Honius the Abulcian, going out to pacify the people, was slain. I and my companions fled just before daybreak yesterday. Many people have taken to the forest. The city is now a very hell of drunkenness, rapine, fire, and smoke. And this, it seems to me, is but the beginning. Those barbarians who have long been settled here, upon the Eastern Shore, and those who still keep coming, will together outnumber us, insurgents and Augustans both. It is in my mind to propose that we, the lords of the cities, send again to Ætius, proconsul in Gaul, for help, even as we did two years ago."
"I fear that is what it must come to," said Eudemius, thoughtfully. He turned to Marius. "Think you that Ætius can spare us a legion again?"
Marius shrugged his shoulders.
"It is hard to say," he answered. "I think it likely that he will, if he be not himself too hard pressed."
"Marcus Pomponius and Quintus Fabius are here, with many others of the lords," said Eudemius. "We celebrate this day the betrothal feast of my daughter and Marius here,—" he laid a hand on the young tribune's shoulder,—"and in three days the marriage. If you will stay, we may talk of this together."
"I feel scarce in humor for marriage feasts and gaiety," said Aurelius. "My people are dead, my city falling to ashes. But I will stay at least long enough to discuss what plans we may think of for relief. If aught is to be done it should be done quickly."
"Rest now," Eudemius said, "and to-night, if you will, join us at the feasting." He clapped his hands, and when slaves came, ordered that his new guests be taken to rooms and baths prepared for them. They went away, a weary and dejected set of men. Eudemius and Marius paced the gallery together.
"If Ætius cannot send help—" said Eudemius, following his own train of thought.
"Have you arms in the house and slaves who can use them?" said Marius, following his. "Anderida is but sixty miles away, and if these barbarians be, as Aurelius thinks, inflamed with wine and blood, they will not stop to think whether or not they attack those who have attacked them."
Eudemius stopped in his stride.
"You think—that?" he said with worried brows. "It had not occurred to me. There have been uprisings, of course, but for the most part the Saxons havebeen peaceful. It is the insurgents who have given most trouble. But you are right; no man can foresee what may happen these days. I will call Hito and bid him number the slaves who are capable of bearing arms."
Hito received his orders, and in turn called Wardo, and bade him release all prisoners sentenced to the mines save those suspected of anti-Augustan sympathies. These, it was considered, would be most likely to take sides with the barbarians, as the insurgents had done at Anderida, and it would be as well to get them out of the way. The villa, being some miles off both the Noviomagus road and the Bibracte road, might remain unmolested; the fury of barbarians and insurgents might spend itself on the towns nearer the coast,—Regnum, Portus Magnus, and the like. Still, their lord had decided that they must be prepared for whatever might come to pass, and prepared they must be. Wardo said little during Hito's peroration, smiled once or twice at its commencement, and at its close expressed his willingness to obey. He stated that he knew of but a half dozen of those sentenced to punishment who might be suspected of sympathy with the insurgents, and declared that two men would be quite sufficient to act as guard. He was given full permission to arrange the matter as he chose,—Hito stipulating only that he and his men should return as promptly as possible,—and went off whistling softly between his teeth. That day there was much activity in the armory and in the slaves' quarters; and rumors flew darkly, and men believed all that they were told.
Toward evening, Aurelius, unable to rest for the burden of apprehension that was on him, begged that thelords might meet in council without delay, that measures should be taken for the relief of the harassed island. Therefore, while slaves were busy in the Hall of Columns, where the betrothal feast was to be held, while Varia, amid stormy tears, was arrayed by her servants for the ceremonies, and the women guests were absorbed in toilet mysteries, those of the men who were governors or who were possessed of greatest power in their own cities, were summoned to the library of their host.
Eudemius spoke first, gravely, with Aurelius, pale and silent, on his right hand, and on his left Marius, thin-lipped and alert, all the soldier in him roused. And Marius, of all the men present, was the youngest.
"Friends," said Eudemius, "I have gathered you here together on a matter of much moment. You all know Aurelius Menotus, governor of Anderida. He hath a tale to tell you, which I doubt not will prove startling. When it is told, we should take counsel together, those of us who are here, without waiting for the lords and governors who for one reason and another are not with us. With some of these we are, as you know, not on good terms. There hath been jealousy and strife, much rivalry and more ill-feeling, between the cities. Now, if we hope to save ourselves, all this must be forgotten. If we never agreed before, we must agree now, for a common foe threatens us, against whom nothing short of our united strength will avail."
He ceased; and Aurelius rose and faced a silent room, standing beside the table, with nervous fingers feeling at a scroll which lay there.
"Half a dozen young beauties had taken possession--girls of the haughtiest blood in Britain.""Half a dozen young beauties had taken possession—girls of the haughtiest blood in Britain."
"Friends," he began, and cleared his throat and hesitated, "I am here before ye, a man without a home, a governor without a city. Two nights ago Saxons landed on our coasts, among the marshes, and entered Anderida. The details of the whole I have not yet learned; whether they assaulted first, or were provoked by some real or fancied injury of the citizens. However this may be, they set upon us, and slew us, and were joined by certain of the insurgents, who, it seems, have only awaited a chance to rise in open revolt against the Empire, as represented in us. United, they outnumbered those who were loyal to me by ten to one, and I and mine, being all unprepared, were forced to flee. We fought our way out of the city, and fled with others into the forest, leaving the barbarians and the insurgents in possession. The temple of Jupiter is destroyed and his priests are killed; the statues of the Emperor in the Forum are wantonly shattered. One of the flamens who escaped joined our party as we fled, and said that those who have committed these outrages are not Goths nor Vandals, nor yet Saxons in revolt, but Romans, men of our own blood, who should be of our religion. They it was who destroyed, and incited the barbarians to greater excesses. Now I am come to you to plead for help. We stand on the brink of great danger, and we are in no position to help ourselves. It is to others that we must look. Where are our troops? We have none, or next to none. Daily these barbarians encroach upon us; our seas swarm with pirates, and we cannot resist."
Marcus Pomponius, the Count of the Saxon Shore, raised his head and looked at him.
"You are right, but you have not told all,—not so much as the half of it," he said. His voice was low and deep, and resonant as a trumpet. "You, living here inthe South, in Britannia Prima, can have no idea of how things are in Maxima Cæsariensis, in Flavia Cæsariensis, or on the Eastern Shore. One month ago, Constantine, my son, came from Deva. He says that these provinces are no longer Roman, but Saxon, and that for the most part without force or bloodshed. As for me and those who were before me, year by year we have seen our power weakening, our troops drawn off, cohort by cohort, until our ward of the Eastern Marches is but an empty mockery. It is simply that, as we have retreated, Saxons have advanced, inch by inch, until now they have gained a foothold from which I believe no power that we may bring can dislodge them. They have settled in our towns, mingled with us, married our women, obeyed our laws—but they are here; and they are not of us, but alien, and they will stay. I hold that this, the beginning of the end, began twenty-seven years ago, when Fabian Procinus, the consul, abandoned Eboracum and moved to the southern provinces with his forces. We can all remember that day, I think. What happened? Saxons entered that deserted city and established themselves there. When they became crowded, they moved, not back to their northern fastnesses, but down to other cities and towns of ours. And they are there still. The towns which we destroyed, hoping thus to stay them, they rebuilt. It is true that for the most part they have been peaceable and orderly; but it is also true that when fresh bands have come upon us, these settled ones have sided with them against us. This is where blood is spilled. They may be trying to find peace for themselves, and a land to rest in, but slowly and surely they are either absorbing us ordriving us into the sea. This is what we must face to-day."
Two or three nodded, half reluctantly, as though they recognized a fact long known, and held aloof so far as might be. Pomponius glanced from grave face to grave face. His voice dropped a note lower. Not for nothing had he been trained to speak in the Forum before men.
"Friends, the fault of the whole matter lieth with us, in Roman hands. If Romans lose Britain, and if Saxons win it, it will be the fault of none but Romans."
A murmur went through the room, wordless, speaking more plainly than words. Pomponius raised his hand.
"Have patience, I pray you, and hear me! What I shall say is, in a manner, treason against our divinity, our lord Emperor, yet before now truth hath been found in treason. The crux of the whole matter lieth in the fact that we, Romans, lords paramount of Britain, have divided ourselves into two sects—religious, if you will; but when was not religion used for State purposes, or State purposes for religion? You cannot divide the two. We are polytheists, worshipping the ancient gods of our fathers, or we are Augustans, worshipping the divinity of our lord Emperor. And of the two, which is the true faith hath nothing at all to do with the matter. The point lieth in the fact that there are two. Beset as we are by outer dangers, it needs small wit to see that our sole hope is in unity of thought and purpose. This division, for ourselves, was bad enough. It was worse when we found pitted against us two other religions, of two separate peoples here with whom wehad to deal. One, the religion of the ancient Gaels, which we found here, and which was druidical and wholly abhorrent in our eyes; the other, the religion of the Goths and Saxons, which, like our own elder faith, was polytheistic.
"You know that Rome's policy hath ever been to absorb, to make bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh what she hath taken for her own. And herein lies her true greatness. But Gaelic or British gods would never unite with Roman gods; it was an alien creed, with no single point in common. Gothic gods would so unite,—mark you that,—for Gothic religion differed from Roman only in the names of its gods and in a coarser fibre which with us had been refined away. What did we, therefore,—we, that is the Romans our fathers,—for the furthering of our purposes and for the glory which was Rome's? We took the Goths unto ourselves and gave them our religion. We taught them that their Hesus was none but Bacchus, their Freya our Venus, their Thor our Jupiter Tonans. But could we do this with the Gaels, who had nothing in common with us, whose meaningless rites could have no part in the beliefs of the commonwealth? No. Did we therefore give them the privileges of citizenship, the right to hold offices of priesthood and State, which we gave to those Goths and Saxons who came among us peaceably? No. We made Saxons our allies against alien gods, and we did wisely. They fought side by side with us, they tilled our lands, and were our equals. And so long as the old faith was among us, all was well. For to my mind, what I shall tell you, and nothing else, is the secret of Rome's power. Armies alone can hold a captive people for no longerthan steel is bared, and Rome knew this. But her religion took up the work where her armies had left it. Being eclectic, it embraced all gods,—although this is not to say that every Roman worshipped all of these,—and those peoples whom she conquered were not ravished with violence from their creeds and forced to kneel at unlike altars. Each nation might find a parallel for its gods in Rome's pantheon, and so might be brought without shock into Rome's fold. For, take a man's gods from him, whatsoever they may be that he worships, and give him nothing in return to which he can hold, and at once you take from him all that anchors him to the rationalities of life.
"Therefore I say that so long as the old faith endured, it was well with us. But the worship of the Emperor's divinity was instituted; and it was something in which these people could find no parallel to their own gods. They said: 'Why should we worship one of whose powers we know nothing? Your gods, which it seems after all are our gods under new names, are well enough. We want no other, who is no god of ours. How may this Emperor of yours be god as well as man?' But we Romans upheld this new religion, with powers of government, with grants of land, with the erection of new temples, with all manner of benefices, for those who would think as we thought. To those who would not, we said: 'Worship as we worship, or it will be the worse for you.' Who reaped the benefits of this change? We, the Augustans, who had conformed to it. Who paid the penalty? Those who clung to the old order, and so defied us, becoming insurgent. Romans became divided even as Goths, taking part with them againsttheir own people. And herein were we in grave error, for we needed all our strength, not to fight each other, but to fight our common foes. Now it is our turn to pay the penalty for this, and it shall be a heavy one.
"The insurgents, few in number as they were, and not powerful, bribed the Saxon chieftains, who would else have lived peaceably enough among us, by promises of plunder if they would join with them. And the chieftains were the more readily persuaded to this, since it was a righteous thing to uphold the old gods, and if there was reward for doing it, in the way of booty, so much the better. The Romans who set them on were pleased; the gods were pleased; the chieftains were pleased. So here you have it, friends, the prime cause of our undoing. It is our own people, of our blood and our speech, who, rebelling against law and order, are stirring these Saxons against us. It is they who have razed Augustan temples, destroyed holy relics, and slain Augustan priests—they, and not the Saxons. I say again: when Britain passes from our hands, it will not be by Saxon means, but primarily by Roman treachery. And Saxons, profiting by our internal strife and their own position, will reap the benefits."
He ceased; and his words hung in the silence of the room. They looked at him, grave bearded men; and the truth of what he said was in their faces.
"You speak as though we were in fault," said an old man, querulously, far down the room. "Our fathers, not we, have done these things."
"Our fathers were Romans, and we are Romans, and their mistakes are our heritage," said Pomponius, sternly.
"Let us have care that we leave no such heritage to those who shall call us fathers."
"Britain is not out of our hands yet," said Aurelius. "And it is for us to keep her there.—How?"
Again there fell a silence. Out of it a musing voice spoke.
"No troops in Britain; Gaul, our nearest help, beset by Huns.... But Gaul is our only hope. We must ask Ætius for a legion as we did two years ago."
A shrug went around the assembly. Plainly it said: "There is no other thing to do."
"If we could but agree to act together in this!" said the old man. Men called him Paulus Atropus, and bore with his senility for sake of what he had been. "It would seem that in this matter there can be no room for argument; we all must think alike for once. But should we not wait to hear from those of our colleagues who are absent, before we move?"
"What need?" Aurelius asked feverishly. "As you say, they can but think as we do. There is nothing else to be done; and if we wait to hear from them, and to discuss pro and con, we shall gain nothing and lose time. It is for their safety, as well as ours."
"I think we should wait until they can join with us," said Paulus stubbornly. The talk eddied over his head.
"Who will go?" said Caius Valens; and men turned their eyes to Marius. He was the only man in active service there, though not the only one who had seen it. "It needs one swift and sure."
"Why not Marius?" Pomponius said, with a friendly glance at Marius. "Once before he hath come fromGaul to our aid; he can win to Ætius quicker than any of us; he is a soldier, and knows conditions, and what to ask for."
Eudemius made a gesture of protest.
"Friends, believe that I, too, have the best interests of our country at heart," he said quickly. "But Marius, who shortly becomes my son, is the one hope of my old age. I would not call him back from what is his duty; if this mission falls to him I shall be the first to speed him. But what need is there for such frantic haste? There have been attacks before, as severe as this one. Also this is not the first time we have thought of appealing for help. The need is no more imperative now than many times before. Therefore, if he be chosen, I pray you a little time. To-day is his betrothal; in three days his marriage. Until then, leave him to me!"
Few of the lords present but knew Eudemius's story and the conditions under which his daughter's marriage would take place; and none who knew did not sympathize.
"A week would be time," said Pomponius, and one or two nodded. But Aurelius struck his clenched fist upon the table.
"Nay!" he shouted. "I say that he should start this day! It ismycity that burns!"
"I am ready," said Marius. "You all know that I shall start this night if you will it so. But I promise you that this delay shall harm us nothing, since I shall send ahead at once to post relays to the coast, and give command for a vessel to be in waiting at Rutupiæ. As to whether I shall be successful, that is anotherquestion. It seems to me that Ætius will have need of all his men for himself. They are none too many."
"Do the best you can, and it will be all we ask," said Pomponius.
Old Paulus, at his end of the table, leaned his face forward upon his hand.
"Friends, this is the first time in the history of the world that Rome hath withheld aid from her sons who needed it, and cast them off to shift as best they could. And I have lived to see it! I have indeed lived too long!"
Again heads nodded, gravely and sombrely. Paulus was not alone in his bitterness. For the first time in the history of the world men stood aside and watched their country falling into ruins before their eyes with a swiftness greater in proportion to its mighty length of life than ever country had fallen before; and it was a bitter sight.
Pomponius, courtly, ever mindful of others, was first to shake off the gloom to which Paulus had given voice.
"Friends, we must not make this a solemn betrothal feast!" he said. "We have agreed—the most of us—that the danger is not over pressing. Let us then set aside care while we may, for these few days, at least. Our host did not bring us together to see long faces. While we live, let us live!" He turned to Marius. "For sake of thee and thy bride, friend, we will forget as we may the clouds which threaten us. Look to it that when shortly we call on you, we find no cause to regret it."
"You shall find no cause," said Marius.
That afternoon Aurelius departed with his people.He would see for himself what damage had been wrought upon his city, and whether or not it was still in the hands of the insurgents and barbarians. He was in no humor for betrothal feasts and merrymaking when his city was lost. He had come there hoping to obtain help and prompt concerted action on the part of his colleagues. He could not get it; so he would go away again.
But he left behind him Felix, his pale-eyed son, who was wounded and wore his arm in a sling, and for doing so gave no man his reasons.
V
V
Wardo, the tall Saxon, sword-girt and muffled in his cloak, lighted his torch at the cresset which burned at the head of the passage behind the storerooms, and started down the slimy steps leading to the dungeon levels. Evening had fallen, fragrant with warm earth-scents and the odors of flowers; a silent night of Spring, when Earth slept and gathered strength for the new life she should bring forth.
All that could be heard of the high feasting going on in the great house was a haunting snatch of music drifting now and again into the night on the soft air. Yet Wardo knew that in the Hall of Columns, with its rare frescoes, its lights and perfumes and flowers, men and women, robed in the splendor of their wealth and station, were drinking the health of the betrothed pair from cups which each had cost ten times its weight in gold; that wrestlers, brought from the arena at Uriconium, were striving with sweat and strain for the purse of twenty sestertii offered to the winner; and dancing girls from far Arabia were posing to the plaintive wail of reeds and the thin tinkle of cymbals. But of all this the rear courts knew nothing. Here was onlyhurrying to and fro of jaded slaves laden with amphoræ of wine and oil and honey; the smell of roasting meats, the clash of pots and kettles. Here, behind the scenes, were the ropes and pulleys which set the stage that the actors might strut through their lordly parts; here was no relaxation and luxurious ease, but labor stern and unremitting, since always pleasure must be paid for by toil.
But Wardo, on his special mission, was exempt from menial tasks. He descended the steps, from level to level, in a stone-bound stillness, the nails in his sandals striking at times faint sparks of light from the uneven flagging he trod. Near the door of Nicanor's cell he paused.
His light, flung upon rough-hewn walls, showed down three steps the grated doors of the wine-cellars. Away to his right, down a narrow pitch-black tunnel, were the walls of the hypocausts behind which fires roared and ravened. Through these tunnels, in Summer, the furnaces were approached to be repaired and cleaned.
"If the light fall upon him too suddenly, it may blind him," said Wardo. "And perhaps he sleeps. I will go softly and make sure."
He thrust his torch into an iron socket in the wall, and went to the door of Nicanor's prison hole. Here he felt with stealthy hands for the small wicket, to be shut or opened only from the outside, built in every cell-door that a warder might hear or see what his prisoner did within. This he pushed back an inch, carefully, without noise, and bent his ear to the opening.
So he heard a voice issuing out of the eternal darkness within; a voice steady and resonant, and sustainedas though it had been speaking for some time. Out of the darkness it reached his ears as a thing disembodied, seeming scarcely of the earth or of human lips. In it was a thrill born of the pure joy of creation; prisoned, it yet was free with a freedom whose limits were the limits of earth and sky and thought, unchained, recking not of dripping walls nor aching darkness, for these things were nothing.
"Out of the East three Kings came riding, on padded camels with harness of gold. One was lord of the kingdom of life, and one of the kingdom of love, and one of the kingdom of death, and each one had said: 'Behold me! I am supreme.' But they heard that there lived one mightier than they; and first they scoffed, and next they marvelled, and then they came to see. People ran to watch them as they passed upon their journey, and called them great and mighty; and to himself each said: 'They speak of me.' Each wore about his neck a torques of gold; and in the first was set a diamond, and in the second was set a ruby, hot as passion, and in the third was set a pearl. Slaves walked behind them, bearing hampers filled with gifts for that one who was mightier than they; forty and four were the slaves that walked behind them, and the hampers were covered with cloth of gold.
"So came they to their journey's end at nightfall, when the weary earth was sinking into rest; and they looked about them for a palace more splendid than their own, fitting for that one who was mightier than they. But there were only the houses of the town, and stables. They asked of strangers where such a palace might be, and none could tell them. Then asked they if a verygreat and mighty king had been there, and folk shook their heads and answered nay. There were many strangers, and all the inns were full, but there was no mighty king that they had seen. One said: 'It may be that he goeth in disguise,' and the others answered: 'That may be so.' So they alighted and went into an inn; and across the courtyard of the inn, in the stalls under the house where cattle stood, they saw a group of people, three or four.
"And in the centre of the group a bearded man was kneeling, and beside him, upon clean straw, lay a Woman and her Child. The Kings stood within the stable, and their greatness was as a glory of light upon the place. Chains of gold they wore upon their necks, and rings upon their hands, and the crowns upon their heads were bright with jewels. They looked at the Woman that lay upon the straw against her man's knees; and she was fair and young and tender, and her eyes were full of joy and pain. And one whispered to them: 'Behold, but now she hath brought a man-child into the world, here in this place, among sweet-breathing oxen and lowing kine.' So they looked upon the Child that lay on his Mother's arm."
The voice stopped short, and silence reeled down upon the world once more. Before Wardo could move or speak it came again, changed this time and strained, all the thrill gone out of it and only weariness left, the voice of one again in chains.
"Eh, thou little Christus, thou hast been brother and comrade both to me in this my loneliness! But now am I indeed fast stuck in a quagmire of uncertainty. Wherein did lie thy power? This I must know or ever the tale can end. I have the Kings, their might and majesty,their robes, and the gifts they bring. I have thy Mother, young and fair and tender, with holy eyes. I have her man, who was not sire to thee, his care for her, his human doubt and questionings. I have the servants of the inn, the shepherds.—Thou great bully Rag, thou hast stood model more often than thou knowest!—I have the cattle dozing in the stalls, the tumult and the shouting of the inn. All this I can paint so that it shall stand forth quick with life; for give me a word, a thought, an action, and I can find the tale in it. But on my life I cannot find why men should worship thee, thou little helpless Child. And until I can, I have no motive for my tale; a thing eludes me which I cannot catch. What power didst hold over men that they should bow to thee? Wherein did lie thy strength? For men will worship only that which is stronger than they—and how wert thou stronger? Was it through fear?—who would fear a babe?—A child, little and ugly and very red, as I have seen babes in the arms of slave-women in the mart at Londinium, with a crumpled mouth wet with his mother's milk—in the name of the high gods, what should men see in such a thing to worship? Thus ever do I question, and until I find my answer the tale is not complete."
There was a restless movement in the dark, a soft shuffle of sandalled feet pacing up and down, endlessly up and down. The voice dropped to a broken mutter in which but a word now and then was to be caught.
"Oh, for a ray of sun or moon to tell if it be day or night! The darkness beats upon mine eyelids like a thousand hammers, until my brain is sick and reeling.... Hath one ever made of this a tale before me, Iwonder? The girl did not say. Where is she now, that black-haired love of Hito's? Is she caught and brought back like a rabbit to the kennels of the hounds? That is quite likely, and will be no fault of mine."
Again the voice stopped, and with it the pacing footsteps.
"Thou here, Momus?" Nicanor said suddenly. "So then; it must be time for food. Thou canst tell that, graybeard; if thou couldst tell whether day or night time, I'd carve an ivory figure of thee and hold all thy kind in honor. Maybe they will forget us again, as they have forgot us before. If so, soon I must eat thee, friend, and this will grieve me, less for thy sake than for mine own."
"Who hath he here?" Wardo muttered in perplexity. He placed his lips to the slit and spoke aloud.
"Nicanor!"
Instant silence fell, while one might have counted ten. Then Nicanor's voice, keen and quiet, said:
"Who calls?"
"I, Wardo," answered Wardo, feeling for his eight-inch-long key. "I will get my light and enter, for I have news for thee."
He got his torch, unlocked the door, and entered, locking it behind him, for his orders were strict. The light fell upon Nicanor, sitting on the floor, back against the wall, hands clasping his knees, and glistened in his eyes, untamed beneath their shaggy thatch of brow. He was leaner than ever, and his face was gaunt. He blinked uncertainly at the flare and turned his head from it.
"I begged Hito that he let me be the one to bring thy food," said Wardo, and spoke as one in self-excuse. "But not until to-day could I win him to it. Now Ihave come to tell thee—" He hesitated; started again with a rush of words. "Thou art sentenced to the mines, with certain others, and I am ordered to convey thee thither."
"So?" said Nicanor.
"It seems to hold scant interest for thee!" said Wardo curiously, half piqued.
"At this moment, little man, bread and a bone hold more of interest for me than all the mines in Britain," said Nicanor, with a laugh. "Give me these, and I'll show thee how much I have of interest."
Wardo found himself falling into the half ironic raillery of his prisoner's mood.
"There should be plenty of both when this night's feasting is over. I'll see thou hast thy share—"
"What feasting? Is it night?" Nicanor asked.
"True; I forgot thou couldst not know," said Wardo. "To-night is held the betrothal feast of our lady and the lord Marius."
The careless figure on the floor stiffened, as it seemed, into stone as it sat. Nicanor turned his head, slowly, and looked up at his gaoler. The movement had in it something of the stealthiness of an animal crouching to spring.
"Betrothed—to-night?" he muttered. The hands about his knees tightened until their muscles strained under the brown skin; but the light was bad, and Wardo's eyes were not over keen to see what he was not looking for.
"Why, yes," said Wardo. "It is held in the Hall of Columns. By this time, without doubt, the kiss is given and taken, the pledge is passed, and our little lady byrights is in another's keeping. It wants only the marriage three days hence."
Nicanor rose lithely to his feet, pressing back his mane of hair with both hands.
"Wardo, we two have been friends, have we not, ever since we put each the other to sleep with blows over the baker's black-eyed daughter?"
Wardo looked at him.
"Ay, that is so," he said sincerely.
"Then I shall ask of thee a thing which will put all thy friendship to the test," said Nicanor. His voice was rapid and tense, and Wardo began to look at him in surprise. "Let me go free and unhindered from here for two hours. I give my word that when that time is over I will be at any place thou shalt name, to go with thee willingly thy prisoner. If aught untoward befall, no blame shall come to thee. It will be easily done; the stewards are busy, and I shall have care not to be seen."
"But—body of me!—this is impossible!" Wardo cried, confounded. "I am friend to thee, but I am my lord's gaoler, for the time, and it would betray my lord for me to do this. Wherefore dost desire it? What will it avail thee—freedom for two hours?"
"It will avail me much," Nicanor answered. "Have I ever broken faith with thee or any man?"
"Nay," said Wardo. "Thou wilt steal, as I have known, but thou wilt not lie, and I would have thy word as soon as another's bond. Sure never was there such a strange fellow—"
"Then believe that I will not break faith now. How may our lord be the worse for it? Thou hast everbeen friend to me, man; we have drunk together and feasted together and starved together; we have fought together and clasped hands together. Dost remember a day of freedom we two spent together, in the wine-shop to which I took thee, on the island in the fords, when we and the five drunken gladiators fought until the watch fell upon us, and how we escaped, both battered and bloody, and left the gladiators in their hands?"
Wardo grinned regretfully.
"Eh, that was a great day! I have the scars yet. We have seen good days together, thou and I."
"And they are gone over now, and done with. Here we part, I to the mines, thou to the arms of thy fat Hito, I wish thee joy of him! Comrade, dost remember that when we say farewell here it will not be for to-day, nor to-morrow, but for all long time to come? I to the mines, and who enters there comes not forth again."
Wardo clenched his fists.
"I know—I know! I'd give a finger if it had not to be!" He stood a moment, his flaxen head bent, lost in troubled thought. Quite suddenly he turned upon Nicanor, who, lynx-eyed, watched. "See then; I owe fealty to my lord, but thou art my friend, and this thing I cannot do. We have starved together and fought together, thou and I! The gods judge me, but thou art my friend! I have money—not much, but more than nothing. Take thou it—I'll leave the way open—and escape. Or, if thou wilt, overpower me on the road to Gobannium—there'll be but two men with me, and I'll see to them. Save thyself, and leave the rest to me."
Nicanor laid his left hand on Wardo's shoulder. Their eyes were on a level; tall men they were, both,one dark, lean, steel-muscled as a great cat; the other fair, more fully fleshed, massive in bulk as a tawny bull.
"Leave thee to face double punishment, mine as a runaway slave, and thine as his abettor?" said Nicanor, and laughed softly. "Nay, thou artmyfriend, and the gods judge me if I put thee in this plight. I did not know I had such a friend in the world. Many things have I learned in this time of darkness, and this have I also found."
Wardo hung his head, without speech. He thrust out his hand abruptly, and Nicanor's hand closed over it. They stood a moment, in a silence which needed no words from either.
"By the soul of my mother, I shall do it!" Wardo said then, huskily.
"By the soul of my mother, thou shalt not!" said Nicanor. "When I escape, it shall be when thou canst not be brought to task for it. But if thou wouldst prove true friend, leave the way open for two hours. More will not help me now."
"So be it," said Wardo. "Here is the key. When we go, let us lock the door behind us. Return here, then, and await me within. But, Nicanor, if thou art not here, I shall make no search."
"I shall be here," said Nicanor, briefly.
Wardo took his torch; they left the cell. Nicanor locked the door, thrust the key into his belt, and without a word started up the passage into the darkness. Two hours speed swiftly when they hold life and death and all that lies between.
VI
VI
Nicanor gained the passage behind the storerooms, at the head of which the cresset flared, and reached the court, meeting no one. The cool air flooded him, and he raised his head and breathed it deeply. For eight long months his lips had panted for it. As he had foreseen, the court was deserted; all the household slaves were busy in this way and that about the feast. He cast a calculating glance upward at the crescent moon, struggling through banking clouds.
"Till she touches the top of the stunted lime," he muttered, and crossed the court with his long noiseless stride.
A distant strain of music wandered out across the night; and at all it whispered of that which was not for him he set his teeth with a smothered groan. Past silent courts he went, avoiding the teeming kitchens, and through narrow passages and empty rooms. A slave boy with a trayful of broken meats passed him where he hung concealed in the deep shadow of one court. He made a motion forward, his hungry eyes gleaming; drew back in silence and let the boy pass on.It was many hours since he had tasted food, but he dared not risk betrayal.
So he gained a certain small doorway in one of the lesser courts, a deep recess, merely, in the wall, which led to no room. Just inside it steep steps showed in the moonlight, leading upward. Nicanor listened a moment to make certain that all was still, and, as one sure of himself and what he meant to do, ran up them,—past where a landing opened on the stairs, with glimpses of a pillared gallery beyond; and still up, until the flight ended in a long and bare passage. Here it was very dark, with only the moonlight coming through narrow windows of thick and muddy glass. Nicanor looked about him as one who would know if all was as he had left it last. A ladder lay upon the floor beneath the square of an opening in the roof. This he leaned against the wall, mounted it, and slid back the hatch, which ran in wooden grooves. The ladder creaked beneath him as he swung his long body forward and gripped the edges of the opening. Until he had made sure of his hold he did not leave the ladder; then swung clear, shifting his hands one by one into better position, and raised himself slowly, by sheer practised strength of wrist and arm, until his head and shoulders rose above the opening. With quick effort, then, he flung himself forward upon the roof, writhed himself through, and stood erect.
Around him were the roofs of the separate apartments of the villa, silvered gray where moonlight touched them. Flat and sloping and towered were these, and broken by the intervals of the courts, where was massed the heavy blackness of foliage. The night air swept coolaround him; above him was the high vault of heaven, cloudless now, where a young moon rode in the loneliness of space. To his left as he stood was the squat dome of the Hall of Columns, with light showing through the series of narrow windows which encircled it. And these windows were barely four feet above the level of the roof from which the dome sprang.
Nicanor started across the tiles, black against the moonlight, clawing his way along steep and treacherous slopes and gliding along the leads, sure-footed as a cat, toward the nearest window in the dome which would look down into the hall below. This he gained in safety, and found that it had been left half open, for ventilation. He leaned over the ledge, gazing downward; and a ripple of music from hidden players rose to him above a humming undercurrent of sound.
Below him, the great hall was a riot of color. On its hundred columns of polished marble, veined in green and rose, light played in sliding gleams from great lamps of wrought bronze hung by chains around the dome and between the pillars, each with many lights floating in cups of perfumed oil. The floors, of white marble, were overlaid with silken rugs of glowing colors, with silver matting and with tawny skins of beasts. The walls were wide panels of mosaics set in stucco, vivid with red and blue, green and azure, picturing scenes of hunting and carousal. Perfumes burned in silver jars set on pedestals of black marble at intervals along the walls, sending forth faint spirals of smoke on the heated air. The long table, lined on either side with men and women, was directly beneath the dome.Looking down upon it Nicanor saw only a confusion of gold and silver dishes, with the ruby glow of Samian plates and cups, gleaming among strewn leaves and blossoms. The garments of the guests were as a fringe of color about the table's edge; purple, saffron, and gold, crimson, green, and white.
At the head of the board, raised somewhat above the other seats, three figures had risen,—one, in the centre, tall, spare, stooping somewhat, in spite of his brave attire; at his left, another as tall as he, but broader, more compactly built, with the square shoulders of a military man, richly dressed also in a scarlet tunic embroidered in gold, with heavy bands of gold about his arms. And at the right of the central figure, the third, young and slender and all in white, with a head-dress of gold in which two poppies flamed upon either temple, and from which long jewelled ends hung to her knees. A veil fell behind her, over her dark hair, of Persian gauze, filmy as mist, in which threads of gold like prisoned sunbeams were woven. Her face, upheld proudly as though she scorned to give way before the eyes upon her, was white, but her lips were scarlet as the flowers she wore. A jewelled girdle fell about her hips, but on her bare arms were neither gems nor gold. The central figure was speaking, but his words could not be heard. He took the girl's hand, and laid it in the man's hand, and held them so; and the tones of the man's voice repeating after him rose to Nicanor's eyrie, although the words were lost. There followed a pause, in which the girl drooped her head, but all faces were turned toward her, and Nicanor knew that her lips were whispering the solemn "Where thou art, Caius, theream I, Caia"; and he clenched his teeth, and for a moment the scene below him swam in blood-red mist.
She was lost to him,—always he had known it, known the hopelessness of his passion, all the sweeter for the bitterness which was in it,—but never until then had the knowledge so come home to him. He would have liked to force his way in among them, these smirking, soft patricians, and tear her away from them by right of his savage strength; in his hot eyes was murder, and in his heart raging hate and a love as raging. He could have killed her, even; if she might not be his, he would have her no man's. His hand shot out as though in fact the knife were in it; in fancy he saw himself driving it home straight and true above the heart whose throbbing he had watched—the heart that had throbbed for him only, the slave, out of all the world of men. He could feel his dagger bite through her white breast as he had felt the soft slice of flesh under his blade before; he could see the blood well up around the knife, slowly at first, with a quick, hot spurt when the steel was withdrawn. So she would remain all his, and none might take her from him. His thoughts maddened him. He groaned aloud and dropped his face in his hands on the stone ledge of the window, and the moonlight touched him, a strange figure of desperate longings, desperate bewilderment and rebellion and pain. He shook to the primal passions of love and hate that tore him,—love for one, hate for all that had gone to make the conditions of his life what they must be; according to the measure of his untamed strength he suffered, in fierce revolt against the mocking Fates who were stronger than he.
A clapping of hands, sharp and crackling, roused him. He brushed the hair from his eyes, and again looked down upon them, so far below, so far above him. The central figure had withdrawn, but the betrothed couple, hand clasped in hand, still stood together. The table was in commotion; women pelted the two with flowers, and men were on their feet and shouting. Nicanor saw Marius bend his head and kiss Varia upon the lips. So was their covenant sealed before the law; in sight of all the world her lord had claimed her, and she was no longer all her own.
High in his eyrie Nicanor laughed, with a flash of his old lawless triumph.
"Thy lips are not the first on hers, sir bridegroom! Her head hath lain on another breast than thine; other arms than thine have held her, O my lord! What if this also were to be known? Where then would be thy triumph?" He raised his clenched hands fiercely, sending forth his empty challenge to the heedless stars. "Thy wife is not all thine, my lord! Her body thou mayst purchase and possess, but her soul is mine, mine, mine, for all time and all eternity! I, who waked it from its empty sleep—I, who taught it first to live and love—I am her soul's lord even as thou art her body's master—I, the slave!"
His voice stopped on the words, changed, and grew strained with infinite love and longing, all its fierce triumph gone.
"Eh, thou very sweet, we dreamed awhile, and the dream was sweeter than ever was dream before, and it is over! The wound in thy child's heart will heal, for thy love is a child's love, and when it may grow nomore will fade and die. Yet it may be that it shall be never quite forgotten; that in after days a word, a song, the fragrance of a flower, will bring to thee dim memories of what is gone. But my love must last, to burn and sear since it may not bless me, for it is not a child's love, beloved! We had no right to happiness, thou and I. But wherefore not? And who decreed it so? I may not have one last look from thee, one touch of thy tender hands,—O little hands that have clung to mine!—and all my heart is a tomb where my love lies buried. Long months have I lain in darkness, but in my heart was light, for I dreamed of the time when I should come to thee. Now all is dark, and my strength hath gone from me; I am a child that cries for a stronger hand to lean on and can find none. The dreams which I had are gone from me, and my tongue is lead. In all the earth is none so lonely as am I!"
Again he buried his face in his hands, crouching against the wall beneath the window. The music rose to him like a breath from that scarcely vanished past, playing upon him,—calloused body and sensitive tortured soul,—conjuring forth visions of dead golden hours, weaving its own poignant spell. Voices from the hall mingled with it, in talk and heedless laughter; healths were drunk and speeches made. When life was gay and careless, when wine was red and eyes were bright and faces fair, who would pause to give a thought to sorrow?
Minutes dropped away, link by link, from the golden chain of Time. All at once Nicanor raised his head, slowly, like one unwilling to meet once more what must be met. The loneliness of the moonlight revealed thescarring passion in his face, signs visible of the chaos of inward tumult which tore him, of the slow forces gathering for the inevitable battle waged somewhen, somehow, by every mortal soul. And that face, gaunt, with haunted, shadowed eyes, looked all at once strangely purged of the heat of its lawlessness, for on it was the first presage of the fierce slow travail of spirit rending flesh.
"What is this that I have done!" he said unsteadily. "I have boasted unworthily, ravening like a brute beast in my triumph over thee, and by my boasting have I shamed thee, thou lily among women. Was I blind, that I could not see that thine is the triumph, over my passion and over me? Thou art another's, O my Lady whom I love so well; and every thought I hold of thy caresses doeth thee dishonor. For thou art pure and holy, and though it puts all worlds between us, yet I would not have thee otherhow. Yet I cannot but remember thy voice, thine eyes, thy little clinging hands, the perfume of thy hair; they are all that is left to me—dear memories, bitter sweet! But I may not boast of them, for thy fair fame, which thou first didst teach me to honor, is thus much in my hands, and I, even the outcast and despised, have it still to guard thee in this little thing. Once was I filled with base pride for that I had made thee love me in answer to my love; and oh, a blind, blind fool was I, not knowing that my love for thee was then no love at all! But thou, in thy white innocence, didst place thine hands upon mine eyes, and the scales fell from them, and I saw thee and myself, and was humbled. Now never while I live shall thy dear name pass my lips, lest through me one breathof evil blow upon thee. I cannot die for thee, beloved, since that were a fate too easy for the sport of thy high gods; I may not even live for thee. This is all that I can do! This is what we have done, each for the other: thy soul I wakened; thou in turn didst give to me a soul within my soul, wakening it to what it never knew before,—new dreams, new ambitions, new desires. For I saw through thee the great world which is thy world, wherein lieth all for which men long and strive. One glimpse I had; and now the gates are closed, and the light is gone, and I am thrust back into outer darkness. And it all is finished!"
A peal of laughter rose to him; a burst of music; a half-hundred voices shoutingVivasto Marius and his bride. He looked down once more into the light and color of the great hall, seeing one there, only, out of all the brilliant throng,—one fair and drooping, with scarlet poppies framing her white face. Long and long he looked, as though he would burn her image upon his heart and mind forever, his lady whom he had lost and who was never his. So he turned away, back into the outer darkness, and crossed the roofs again, and the blackness of the manhole swallowed him.
Wardo, cloaked and spurred and ready for the start, opened the cell door and thrust his torch within. The light fell upon a bowed figure sitting on the floor, motionless, with face hidden in its folded arms, and nothing showing save a crown of rough black hair.
"Thou here?" said Wardo. "Well, I am sorry."
Nicanor looked up. His face, white with more than its prison pallor, was drawn as though by bodily pain.
"Ay," he said dully, "I am here."
"I would thou wert not," Wardo muttered. "Come, then."
"I have a friend here, whom I would take with me," Nicanor said, without rising. "Stand still, and I will call him."
He whistled softly through his teeth, a gentle hissing, until a shadow seemed to stir from the far corner of the cell where the torchlight did not fall. Forth into the light hobbled a great gray rat, gaunt, and scarred, and lame. At sight of Wardo it whisked back into the gloom; again Nicanor whistled; again it appeared, and again vanished. A third time, emboldened, it essayed, and came to Nicanor warily, dazed in the unwonted light. Nicanor threw a bit of cloth torn from his tunic over its head, fastening it so that the beast could neither bite nor see, tied its forelegs together, and without more ado thrust it inside his tunic. Wardo gaped.
"Well, of all playmates! Will he not scratch thee?"
"Not while the cloth is about his head," Nicanor answered. There came an odd note of pride into his voice. "Momus and I are old friends. I maimed him; he hath bitten me. Now we understand each other. I have taught him to fight,—he is quite as intelligent as Hito,—and there is not a rat in the dungeons that can beat him. Man, you should see him fight!"
"I'd like to!" quoth Wardo, promptly. "Maybe, at Cunetio or Corinium we shall find some trainer to try a main with thee. Now come; we have tarried long enough."
In the slaves' court Hito was fuming over the departure of his deputy and the half dozen prisoners. AsWardo and Nicanor approached he leered upon them balefully.
"So, white-face!" he taunted. "Art recovered from thy madness?"
"Ha, fair Julia, how art thou?" Nicanor greeted him imperturbably, so that Hito cursed him. For word of Hito's dance had spread, and even his lords had laughed at him.
"Oh, ay, I remember!" he snarled. "This is to teach thee not to call thy betters names. Were it not for thy insubordination, I should have cancelled thy sentence to the mines. It is not well to laugh at Hito! I have a doubt in my mind that thou wert not so mad as it seemed."
"I have no doubt in mine that I was not so mad as thou," said Nicanor, with all cheerfulness.
Hito glared, and Wardo mounted and made haste to get his party under way. His assistant snapped the chains on Nicanor's wrists which bound him to his fellows, and got on his own horse. They went out through the gate, opened by a sleepy porter, and took the road.
All through that night they plodded steadily. Once a horseman overtook them, riding furiously; shouted something which none could catch, and was gone in darkness. Their road led them over the downs and through the heather by the little station of Bibracte to Calleva, where four roads joined; and on through the level and open country around Corinium, where, to south and west, among shaded groves, they caught glimpses of palaces and stately homes. So, in time, they came to the scarred hills of the great iron district of the west.
At each station where they stopped for rest and refreshment on their three days' journey, Wardo was taken aside by strangers, who talked earnestly. "The state of the country," he told his men, with his tongue in his cheek. Most of these strangers were fair-skinned Saxons, like himself; indeed, the number of these was significant. Wardo, coming from the south, had to tell what he knew of recent happenings there. This was not much; his interlocutors, it would seem, knew more than he. Especially did they inquire to whom he belonged, and what he was doing with his charges.
They crossed the Sabrina in a flat-bottomed barge, and were in Britannia Secunda, the ancient country of the Silures. Here, from Uriconium to Glevum on the Sabrina, and south to Leucarum on the Via Julia, were scattered the iron mines from which their owners drew inexhaustible wealth. The one controlled by Eudemius lay five Roman miles west of the river, and was reckoned one of the largest and richest in the section. In it were said to be employed over five hundred men, mostly prisoners from the various estates of Eudemius, and overseers.