When they sought to leave their place of refuge, Esca and Mariamne found themselves hemmed in and drawn back by the continued tumult that was raging through the surrounding quarters. On all sides were heard the shouts of victory, the shrieks of despair, and the mad riot of drunken mirth. Occasionally, flying parties of pursuers or pursued swept through the very outskirts of the gardens themselves, compelling the Briton and his charge to plunge deeper into its gloomy solitudes for concealment.
At length they reached a place of comparative safety, under a knot of dark cypresses that had escaped the general conflagration, and here they paused to take breath and listen, Mariamne becoming every moment more composed and tranquil, while Esca, with a beating heart, calculated the many chances that must still be risked ere they could reach her home beyond the Tiber, and he could place the daughter in safety under her father’s roof once more. It was very dark where they were, for the cypresses grew thick and black between them and the sky. The place had probably in former times been a favourite resort in the noonday heat. There were the remains of a grotto or summer-house not yet wholly destroyed, and the fragments of a wide stone basin, from which a fountain had once shot its sparkling drops into the summer air. Several alleys, too, cut in the young plantations, had apparently converged at this spot; and although these were much overgrown and neglected, one still formed, so to speak, a broad white street of turf, hemmed in by walls of quivering foliage, dark and massive, but sprinkled here and there with points of silver in the moonlight.
Mariamne crept closer to her companion’s side.
“I feel so safe and so happy with you,” said she caressingly. “We seem to have changed places. You are the one who is now anxious and—no, not frightened—but ill at ease. Esca! what is it?” she asked with a start, as, [pg 261]looking fondly up in his face, she caught its expression of actual terror and dismay.
His blue eyes were fixed like stone. With parted lips and rigid features, his whole being seemed concentrated into the one effort of seeing, and backed by the dark shadows of the cypress, his face, usually so frank and fearless, was paler even than her own. Following with her eyes the direction of his glance, she, too, was something more than startled at what she saw. Two black figures, clad in long and trailing garments, moved slowly into sight, and crossed the sheet of moonlight which flooded the wide avenue, with solemn step and slow. These again were followed by two in white, looking none the less ghostly that their outlines were so indistinctly defined, the head and feet being alone visible, and the rest of the figure wrapped, as it were, in mist. Then came two more in black, and thus in alternate pairs the unearthly procession glided by; only, ere the half of it had passed, a something, not unlike the human form, draped in a white robe, seemed to float horizontally, at a cubit’s height, above the line. A low and wailing chant, too, rose and fell fitfully on the listeners’ ears. It was the “Kyrie Eleison,” the humble plaintive dirge in which the Christian mourned, not without hope, for his dead.
Fear was no familiar sentiment in Esca’s breast. It could not remain there long. He drew himself up, and the colour rushed back redly to his brow.
“They are spirits!” said he; “spirits of the wood, on whose domains we have trespassed. Good or evil, we will resist them to the last. They will sacrifice us to their vengeance if we show the least signs of fear.”
She was proud of his courage even then—the courage that could defy, though it had not been able to shake off, the superstitions of his northern birthplace. It was sweet, too, to think that from her lips he must learn what was truth, both of this world and of the next.
“They are no spirits!” she answered. “They are Christians burying their dead. Esca, we shall be safe with them, and they will show us how to leave this place unobserved.”
“Christians?” he replied doubtfully; “and we, too, are Christians, are we not? I would they were armed, though,” he added reflectively. “With twenty good swordsmen, I would engage to take you unmolested from one end of Rome to the other; but these, I fear, are only priests. Priests! and the legions are loose even now all over the city!”
[pg 262]He was but a young disciple, thought his loving teacher, and many a defeat must be experienced, many a rebuff sustained, ere dependence on his own courage is rooted out of a brave man’s heart, to be replaced by that nobler fortitude which relies solely on the will of Heaven. Yet a brave man is no bad material out of which to form a good one.
They left their hiding-place, and hastened down the alley after the departing Christians. In a secluded place, where the remaining trees grew thickest and most luxuriant—where the noontide ray had least power to penetrate, the procession had halted. The grave was already being dug. As spadeful after spadeful of loose earth fell with a dull grating sound on the sward, or trickled back into the cavity, the dirge wailed on, now lowered and repressed like the stifled sob of one who weeps in secret, now rising into notes of chastened triumph, that were almost akin to joy. And here, where Mæcenas, and his poets and his parasites, had met, with garland and goblet, to while away the summer’s day in frivolous disputations, arguing on the endless topics of here and hereafter, life and death, body and soul; groping blindly and in vain throughout the labyrinth for a clue—sneering at Pythagoras, refuting Plato, and maligning Socrates—the body of the dead Christian was laid humbly and trustfully in the earth, and already the departed spirit had learned the efficacy of those truths it had imbibed through scorn and suffering in its lifetime—truths that the heathen sages would have given goblets and garlands, and riches and empire, and all the world besides, but to know and believe in that supreme moment, when all around the dying fades and fails as though it had never been, and there is but one reality from which is no escape.
The Jewess and her champion waited a few paces off while the spade threw its last handfuls to the surface. Then the Christians gathered solemnly and silently round the open grave, and the corpse was lowered gently into its resting-place, and the faces that watched it sink, and stop, and waver, and sink again out of sight, even like the life of the departed, beamed with a holy triumph, for they knew that with this wayfarer, at least, the journey was over and the home attained. Two mourners, somewhat conspicuous from the rest, stood at either end of the grave. The one was a woman, still in the meridian of her beauty; the other a strong warlike man, scarcely of middle age. The woman’s face was turned to heaven, rapt, as it seemed in an ecstasy of prayer. She was not thinking of the poor remains, the [pg 263]empty shell, consigned beneath her feet to its kindred dust; but with the eye of faith she watched the spirit in its upward flight, and for her the heavens were opened, and her child was even now disappearing through the golden gate. But on the man’s contracted features might be read the pain of him who is too weak to bear, and yet too strong to weep. His eye followed with sad wistful glances clod after clod, as they fell in to cover up the loved and lost. When the earth was flattened down above her head, and not till then, he seemed to look inquiringly at the vacant space amongst the bystanders, and to know that she was gone. He clenched his strong hands tight, and raised his eyes at last. “It is hard to bear,” he muttered; “it is very hard to say, ‘Thy will be done.’ ” Then he thought of the empty place at home, and hid his face and wept.
A young girl, on the verge of womanhood, had been called away—called suddenly away—the pride and the flower and the darling of her father’s house. He was a good man and a brave, and a believer, yet every time his child’s face rose up before him, with its bright hair and its loving eyes, something smote him, sharp and cold, like the thrust of a knife.
When the grave was finally closed, the Christians gathered round it in prayer. Mariamne, taking Esca by the hand, came silently among them, and joined in their devotions. It was a strange and solemn sight to the barbarian. A circle of cloaked figures kneeling round an empty space, to worship an unseen power. On either hand a wilderness of ruin and devastation in the heart of a great city; above, an angry glare on the midnight sky, and the shouts of maddened combatants rising and falling on the breeze. By his side, the woman he loved so dearly, and whom he had thought he should never look on again. He knelt with the others, to offer his tribute from a grateful heart. Their prayers were short and fervent, nor did they omit the form their Master had given them expressly for their use. When they rose to their feet, one figure stood forth amongst the rest, and signed for silence with uplifted hand. This man was obviously a Roman by birth, and spoke his language with the ease, but at the same time with the accent and phrases of the lowest plebeian class. He seemed a handicraftsman by trade, and his palm, when he raised it impressively to bespeak attention, was hardened and scarred with toil. Low of stature, mean in appearance, coarsely clothed, with bare head and feet, there was little in his exterior to command interest or respect; [pg 264]but his frame, square and strongly built, seemed capable of sustaining a vast amount of toil or hardship, while his face, notwithstanding its plain features, denoted repressed enthusiasm, earnest purpose, and honest singleness of heart. He was indeed one of the pioneers of a religion, destined hereafter to cover the surface of the earth. Such were the men who went forth in their master’s name, without scrip or sandals, or change of raiment, to overrun and conquer the world—who took no thought what they should say when brought before the kings, and governors, and great ones of the earth, trusting only in the sanctity of their mission, and the inspiration under which they spoke. Having little learning, they could refute the wisest philosophers. Having neither rank nor lineage, they could beard the Proconsul on his judgment-seat or the Cæsar on his throne. Homely and ignorant, they feared not to wander far and wide through strange countries, and hostile nations, spreading the good tidings with a simple ungrudging faith that forced men to believe. Weak by nature it may be, and timid by education, they descended into the arena to meet their martyrdom from the hungry lion, with a quiet fortitude such as neither soldier nor gladiator had courage to display. It was a moral their Master never ceased to inculcate, that His was a message sent not to the noble, and the prosperous, and the distinguished, for these, if they wished to find Him, might make their own opportunities to seek Him out; but to the poor and lowly, the humble and forlorn, especially to those who were in distress and sorrow, who, having none to help them here, might rely all the more implicitly on His protection, who is emphatically the friend of the friendless.
Therefore, the men who did His work seem to have been chosen principally from the humbler classes of society, from such as could speak to the multitude in homely phrases and with familiar imagery; whose authority the most careless and unthinking might perceive originated in no aid of extraneous circumstances, but came directly from above.
As the speaker warmed to his subject, Esca could not but observe the change that came over the bearing and appearance of his outward man. At first the eye was dull, the speech hesitating, the manner diffident. Gradually a light seemed to steal over his whole countenance, his form towered erect as though it had actually increased in stature, his words flowed freely in a torrent of glowing and appropriate language, his action became dignified, and the whole man [pg 265]clothed himself, as it were, in the majesty of the subject on which he spoke.
That subject was indeed simple enough, sad, it may be, from an earthly point of view, and yet how comforting to the mourners gathered round him beside the new-made grave! At first he contented himself with a short and earnest tribute, clothed in the plainest form of speech, to the worth and endearing qualities of that young girl whom they had just laid in the earth. “She was precious to us all,” said he, “yet words like these seem but a mockery to some present here, for whom she was the hope and the joy, and the very light of an earthly home. Grieve, I say, and weep, and wring your hands, for such is man’s weak nature, and He who took our nature upon Him sympathises with our sorrows, and, like the good physician, pities while He heals. To-day your wounds are fresh, your hearts are full, your eyes are blind with tears, you cannot see the truth. To-morrow you will wonder why you mourn so bitterly; to-morrow you will say, ‘It is well; we are labouring in the sun, she is resting in the shade; we are hungry and thirsty in a barren land, she is eating the bread and drinking the waters of life, in the garden of Paradise; we are weary and footsore, wayfarers still upon the road, but she has reached her home.’
“Yea, now at this very hour, standing here where the earth has just closed over the young face, tender and delicate even in death, would you have her back to you if you could? Those who have considered but the troubles that surround us now, and to whom there is no hereafter, who call themselves philosophers, and whose wisdom is as the wisdom of a blind man walking on the brink of a precipice, have themselves said ‘whom the gods love die young’; and will you grudge that your beloved one should have been called out of the vineyard, to take her wages and go to her rest, before the burden and heat of the day? Think what her end might have been. Think that you might have offered her up to bear witness to the truth, tied to a stake in the foul arena, face to face with the crouching wild beast gathered for his spring. Ay! and worse even than this might have befallen the child, whom you remember, as it were but yesterday, nestling to her mother’s bosom, or clinging round her father’s knees! ‘The Christians to the panther, and the maidens to the pandar!’12 You have heard the brutal shouts and shuddered with fear and anger while you heard. And [pg 266]you would have offered her, as Abraham offered Isaac, beating your breasts, and holding your breath for very agony the while. But is it not better thus? She has earned the day’s wages, labouring but for an hour at sunrise; she has escaped the cross, and yet has won the crown!
“But you who hear me, envy not this young maiden, though she be now arrived where all so long to go. Rather be proud and happy, that your Master cannot spare you, that He has yet work for you to do. To every man’s hand is set his appointed task, and every man shall find strength given him to fulfil it when the time arrives. Some of you will bear witness before Cæsar, and for such the scourges are already knotted and the cross is reared; but to these I need scarcely speak of loyalty, for to them the very suffering brings with it its own fortitude, and they are indeed blessed who are esteemed worthy of the glory of martyrdom! Some must go forth to preach the gospel in wild and distant lands; and well I know that neither toil, nor hardship, nor peril, will cause them to waver an hair’s-breadth from their path, yet have they difficulties to meet, and foes to contend with, that they know not of. Let them beware of pride and self-sufficiency, lest, in raising the altar, they make the sacrifice of more account than the spirit in which it is offered; lest in building the church they take note of every stone in the edifice, and lose sight of the purpose for which it was reared. But ye cannot all be martyrs, nor preachers, nor prophets, nor chief-priests, yet every one of you, even the weakest and the lowest here present—woman, child, slave, or barbarian—is none the less a soldier and a servant of the cross! Every one has his duty to do, his watch to keep, his enemy to conquer. It is not much that is required of you—little indeed in comparison with all you have received—but that little must be given without reserve, and with the whole heart. Has any one of you left a duty unfulfilled? when he departs from hence let him go home and accomplish it. Has any one an enemy? let him be reconciled. Has he done his brother a wrong? let him make amends. Has he sustained an injury? let him forgive it. Even as you have laid in the grave the perishable body of the departed, so lay down here every earthly weakness, every unholy wish, and every evil thought. Nay, as these chief mourners have to-night parted and weaned themselves from that which they loved best on earth, so must you tear out and cast away from you the truest and dearest affections that stand between you and your service, ay, even though you rend [pg 267]them from the very inner chambers of your heart. And then, with constant effort and never-ceasing prayer, striving, step by step, and winning, inch by inch, now slipping back it may be where the path is treacherous, and the hill is steep, to rise from your knees, humbled and therefore stronger, gaining more than you have lost, you shall arrive at last, where there is no strife, and no failing, where she for whom you weep to-night is even now in glory, where He whom you follow has already prepared a place for you, and where you who have loved and trusted, shall be happy for evermore!”
Ceasing, he spread his hands abroad, and implored a blessing on those who heard him, after which the Christians breaking up their circle, gathered round the bereaved parents with a few quiet words and gestures of sympathy, such as those offer who have themselves experienced the sorrows they are fain to assuage.
“I am in safety here,” whispered Mariamne to the Briton, as she pointed out a dark figure, with white flowing locks, whom he now recognised as Calchas. In another moment she was in the old man’s arms, who raised his eyes to heaven, and thanked God with heartfelt gratitude for her deliverance.
“Your father and I,” said he, “have sought you with fearful anxiety, and even now he is raising some of his countrymen to storm the tribune’s house, and take you from it with the strong hand. Mariamne, you hardly know how much your father loves his child. And I too was disturbed for your safety, but I trusted—trusted in that Heaven which never fails the innocent. Nevertheless, I sought for aid among my brethren, and they have raised, even the poorest of them, such a sum as would have tempted the prætor to interfere, even against a man like Placidus. I did but remain with them to say a prayer while they buried their dead. But now you are safe, and you will come back with me to your father’s house, and one of these whom I can trust shall go to tell him at the place where his friends were to assemble; and Esca, thy preserver for the second time, who is to me as a son, shall accompany us home—though we shall not need a guard, for thy father’s friends, tried warriors every man, and armed, will meet us ere we leave the wilderness for the streets.”
It was a strong temptation to the Briton, but the words he had so lately heard had sunk deep into his heart. He, too, would fain cast in his lot amongst these earnest men. He, too, he thought, had a task to perform—a cherished [pg 268]happiness to forego. With a timely warning, it might be in his power to save the Emperor’s life, and his very eagerness to accompany Mariamne but impressed him the more with the conviction that it was his duty to leave her, now she was in comparative safety, and hasten on his errand of mercy. Calchas, too, insisted strongly on this view, and though Mariamne was silent, and even pleaded with her eyes against the risk, he turned stoutly from their influence, and ere she was clasped in her father’s arms, the new Christian was already half-way between the Esquiline and the palace of Cæsar.
Many had been the debauch at which, himself its chief originator and promoter, the tribune had assisted; nor had he escaped the penalties that Nature exacts even from the healthiest constitutions, when her laws are habitually outraged in the high-tide of revelry and mirth; but never, after his longest sittings with the Emperor, had he experienced anything to compare with the utter prostration of mind and body in which he came to himself, waking from the deathlike sleep that followed his pledge to Valeria. With returning consciousness came a sense of painful giddiness, which, as the velvet cushions of the couch rose and heaved beneath his sight, confused him utterly as to where he was, or how he got there; then, sitting up with an effort that seemed to roll a ball of lead across his brain, he was aware that every vein throbbed at fever-heat, that his hands were numbed and swollen, that his mouth was parched, his lips cracked, and that he had a racking headache—the latter symptom was sufficiently familiar to be reassuring; he sprang to his feet, regardless of the pang so sudden a movement shot through his frame, then seizing a goblet from the table, filled it to the brim with Falernian, and in defiance of the nausea with which its very fragrance overpowered him, emptied it to the dregs. The effect, as he expected, was instantaneous; it enabled him to stand erect, and, passing his hand across his brow, by a strong effort of the will, he forced himself to connect and comprehend the events that had led to this horrible and bewildering trance. By degrees, one after another, like links in a chain, he traced the doings of the day, beginning a long way back, somewhere about noon, till the immediate past, so to speak, came more and more tangibly within his grasp. It was with a thrill of triumphant pleasure that he remembered Valeria’s visit, and his own arm winding round her handsome form on that very couch. Where was she [pg 270]now? He looked about him vacantly, almost expecting to find her in the room; as he did so, his eye lighted on the two goblets, one of them half-emptied, still standing on their salver.
To say that Placidus had a conscience would be simply a perversion of terms; for that monitor, never very troublesome, had since his manhood been so stifled and silenced as to have become a mere negative quality, yet in his present unhinged state, a shudder of horror did come over him, as he recalled the visit to Petosiris, and the poison with which he had resolved to ensure the silence of his slave. But ere that shudder passed away, the dark secret Esca knew, the plot from which it was now too late to draw back, the desperate adventure that every hour brought nearer, and that must be attempted to-night—all these considerations came flooding in on his memory at once, and for a moment he felt paralysed by the height of the precipice on the brink of which he stood. With the emergency, however, as was always the case in the tribune’s character, came the energy required to encounter it. “At least,” he muttered, steadying himself by the table with one hand, “the cup is nearly empty; the drug cannot but have done its work. First, I must make sure of the carrion, and then it will be time enough to find Valeria.” Had he suffered less in body, he would have laughed his own low malicious laugh, to think how deftly he had outwitted the woman he professed to love. The laugh, however, died away in a grin that betrayed more pain than mirth; and the tribune, with chattering teeth and shaking frame, and wavering uncertain steps, betook himself to the outer court to make sure with his own eyes that the stalwart frame of him whom he feared was stiff and cold in death.
His first feeling would have been one of acute apprehension, had not anger so completely mastered that sensation, when he perceived the slave’s chain and collar lying coiled on the pavement. Obviously, Esca had escaped; and was gone, moreover, with his late master’s life completely in his power; but Placidus possessed a keen intellect and one familiar with sudden combinations; it flashed upon him at once, that he had been outwitted by Valeria, and the two had fled together.
The sting was very sharp, but it roused and sobered him. Pacing swiftly back through the corridors, and stopping for a few minutes to immerse his head and face in cold water, he returned to the banqueting-hall, and eagerly scrutinised with [pg 271]look and smell, and, notwithstanding all that had happened, even with a sparing taste, the cup from which he had last drunk. The opiate, however, had been so skilfully prepared that nothing suspicious could be detected in the flavour of the wine; nevertheless, reflecting on all the circumstances with a clearer head, as the strength of his constitution gradually asserted itself, he arrived at the true conclusion, and was satisfied that Valeria had changed the cups while his attention was distracted by her charms; that he had purchased a poison he never doubted for a moment, nor suspected that Petosiris could have dared, from sheer love of trickery, to substitute an opiate for the deadlier draught; but he exulted to think that his powerful organisation must have resisted its effects, and that he who had so often narrowly escaped death in the field must indeed bear a charmed life. If a suspicion haunted him that the venom might still be lurking in his system, to do its work more completely after a short respite, the vague horror of such a thought did but goad him to make use of the intervening time all the more ardently for business and pleasure, not forgetting the sacred duty of revenge. Dum vivimus vivamus! was the tribune’s motto, and if he had been granted but one hour to live, he would have divided that hour systematically, between the delights of love, wine, and mischief.
Rapidly, though coolly, he reviewed his position, as though he had been commanding a cohort hemmed in by the Jewish army. To-night would make or mar him. The gladiators would be here within an hour. Esca must, ere this, have reached the palace and given the alarm. Why had a centurion of Cæsar not yet arrived with a sufficient guard to arrest him in his own house? They might be expected at any moment. Should he fly while there was yet time? What! and lose the brilliant future so nearly within his reach? No—he would weather this as he had weathered other storms, by skilful and judicious steering. A man who has no scruples need never be deficient in resource. To leave his house now, would be a tacit admission of guilt. To be found alone, undefended, unsuspicious, a strong presumption of innocence. He would at least have sufficient interest to be taken into the presence of Cæsar. There, what so easy as to accuse the slave of treachery, to persuade the Emperor the barbarian had but hatched a plot against his master’s life; to make the good-humoured old glutton laugh with an account of the drugged goblet, and finish the night by a debauch with his imperial host?
[pg 272]Then, he must be guided by the preparations for defence which he observed in the palace. If they were weak, he must find some means of communicating with Hippias, and the attack would be facilitated by his own presence inside. If, on the contrary, there was an obvious intention of firm resistance, the conspirators must be warned to postpone their enterprise. If worst came to the worst, he could always save his own head by informing against his confederates, and so handing over Hippias and the gladiators to death.
Some slight compunction visited him at the thought of such an alternative, but he soon stifled it with the arguments of his characteristic philosophy. Should he be found, indeed, presiding at a supper-party composed of these desperate men, they might defend the gate whilst he fled directly to Cæsar, and sacrificed them at once. Under any circumstances, he argued, he had bought them, and had a right to make use of them.
In the meantime, Mariamne would be here directly. She ought to have been here long ago. Whatever the future threatened, an hour, half an hour, a quarter, should be devoted to her society, and after that, come what might, at least he would not have been foiled in every event of the day. It was when he had arrived at this conclusion, that Esca from his hiding-place saw the figure of the tribune, pale, wan, and ghostly, giving directions for the preparation of the supper-table.
The evening stole on, the sun-dial no longer showed the hour, and the slave whose duty it was to keep count of time by the water-clock13 then in vogue, announced that the first watch of the night was already advanced. He was followed by Automedon, who came into the presence of his master, with hanging head and sheepish looks, sadly mistrusting how far his own favour would bear him harmless in the delivery of the tidings he had to impart. It was always a perilous duty to inform Placidus of the failure of any of his schemes. He listened, indeed, with a calm demeanour and an unmoved countenance, but sooner or later he surely contrived to visit on the unfortunate messenger the annoyance he himself experienced from the message.
The tribune’s face brightened as the boy came into the [pg 273]hall; with characteristic duplicity, however, he veiled even from his charioteer the impatience in which he had waited his return.
“Have you brought the horses in cool?” said he, with an affectation of extreme indifference.
Automedon looked greatly relieved.
“Quite cool,” he answered, “most illustrious! and Oarses came part of the way home, but he got down near the Sacred Gate, and I had no one with me in the chariot the whole length of the Flaminian Way; and the slaves will be back presently; and Damasippus—Oh! my lord, do not be angry!—Damasippus—I fear I have left him dead in the street.”
Here the lad’s courage failed him completely; he had indeed been thoroughly frightened by the events of the night; and making a piteous face, he twined his fingers in his long curls and wept aloud.
“What, fool!” thundered the tribune, his brow turning black with rage. “You have not brought her after all! Silly child,” he added, controlling himself with a strong effort. “Where is the—the passenger—I charged Damasippus to bring here with him to-night?”
“I will tell you the truth,” exclaimed the boy, flinging himself down on his knees, and snatching at the hem of his master’s garment. “By the Temple of Vesta, I will tell you the truth. I drove from here across Tiber, and I waited in the shadow by Tiber-side; and Jugurtha wouldn’t stand still, and presently Damasippus brought a—a passenger in his arms, and put it into the chariot, and bade me go on fast; and we went on at a gallop till we tried to cross the Appian Way, and then we had to turn aside, for the houses were burning and the people fighting in the street, and Scipio was frightened and pulled, and Jugurtha wouldn’t face the crowd, and I drove on to cross a little farther down, but we were stopped again by the Vestals, and I couldn’t drive through them! So we halted to let them pass, and then a fierce terrible giant caught the horses and stopped them once more, and a thousand soldiers, nay, a legion at least, surrounded the chariot, and they killed Damasippus, and they tore the passenger out, and killed it too, and Scipio kicked, and I was frightened, and drove home as fast as I could—and indeed it wasn’t my fault!”
Automedon’s fears had magnified both the number of the assailants and the dangers undergone. He had not recognised the gladiators, and was altogether in too confused a state, as the tribune perceived at a glance, to afford his master any [pg 274]more coherent information than the foregoing. Placidus bit his lip in baffled anger, for he could not see his way; nevertheless the boy-charioteer was a favourite, and he would not visit the failure of the enterprise on him.
“I am glad the horses are safe,” said he good-humouredly. “Go, get some supper and a cup of wine. I will send for you again presently.”
Automedon, agreeably surprised, glanced up at his master’s face ere he departed, and observed that, although deadly pale, it had assumed the fixed resolute expression his dependants knew so well.
Placidus had indeed occasion to summon all the presence of mind on which he prided himself, for even while he spoke, his quick ear caught the tramp of feet, and the familiar clink of steel. The blood gathered round his heart as he contemplated the possibility that a maniple of Cæsar’s guards might even now be occupying the court. It was with a sigh of intense relief that, instead of the centurion’s eagle crest, he recognised the tall form of Rufus, accompanied by his comrades, advancing respectfully, and even with awkward diffidence, through the outer hall. The tribune could assume—none better—any character it suited him to play at a moment’s notice; nevertheless there was a ring of real cordiality in his greeting, for the visitors were more welcome than they guessed.
“Hail! Rufus, Lutorius, Eumolpus!” he shouted boisterously. “Gallant swordsmen and deep drinkers all! What! old Hirpinus, do I not see thy broad shoulders yonder in the rear? and Hippias too, the king of the arena! Welcome, every man of you! Even now the feast is spread, and the Chian cooling yonder amongst the flowers. Once again, a hearty welcome to you all!”
The gladiators, still somewhat abashed by the unaccustomed splendour which met their eyes on every side, responded with less than their usual confidence to their entertainer. Rufus nudged Lutorius to reply in polite language, and the Gaul, in a fit of unusual modesty, passed the signal on to Eumolpus of Ravenna—a beetle-browed, bow-legged warrior, with huge muscles and a heavy, sullen face. This champion looked helplessly about him and seemed inclined to turn tail and fly, when, to his great relief, Hippias advanced from the rear of his comrades, and created a diversion in his favour, of which he availed himself by slinking incontinently into the background. Placidus clapped his hands, an Asiatic fashion affected by the more luxurious [pg 275]Romans; and two or three slaves appeared in obedience to the summons. The gladiators looked on in awe at the sumptuous dresses and personal beauty of these domestics.
“Hand round wine here amongst my friends. I will but say three words to your captain, and we will go to supper forthwith.”
So speaking, the tribune led Hippias apart, having resolved that in the present critical state of affairs it would be better to take him entirely into his confidence, and trust to the scrupulous notions of fidelity to their bargains, which such men entertained, for the result.
“There is no time to lose,” observed he anxiously, when he had led Hippias apart from his followers. “Something has occurred which was out of all our calculations. Can they overhear us, think ye?”
The fencing-master glanced carelessly at his band. “Whilst they are at that game,” said he, “they would not hear the assembly sounding from all four quarters of the camp. Never fear, illustrious! it will keep them busy till supper time.”
The band had broken up into pairs, and were hard at work with their favourite pastime, old as the Alban hills, and handed down to the Roman Empire from the dynasty of the Pharaohs. It consisted in gambling for small coins at the following trial of skill:—the players sat or stood, face to face; each held the left hand erect, on which he marked the progress of his game. With the right he shot out any one or more of his four fingers and thumb, or all together, with immense rapidity, guessing aloud at the same time the sum-total of the fingers thus brandished by himself and his adversary, who was employed in the same manner. Whoever guessed right won a point, which was immediately marked on the left, held immovable at shoulder-height for the purpose, and when five of these had been won the game began again. Nothing could be more simple, nothing apparently less interesting, and yet it seemed to engross the attention of the gladiators to the exclusion of all other subjects, even the prospect of supper and the flavour of the Falernian.14
“They are children now,” said Placidus contemptuously. “They will be men presently, and tigers to-night. Hippias, the slave has escaped. We must attack the palace forthwith.”
[pg 276]“I know it,” replied the other quietly. “But the Germans are relieving guard at this hour. My own people are hardly ready, and it is not dark enough yet.”
“You know it,” repeated Placidus, even more irritated than astonished by his companion’s coolness, “you know it, and yet you have not hastened your preparations? Do you know, too, that this yellow-haired barbarian has got your head, and mine, and all the empty skulls of our intelligent friends who are amusing themselves yonder, under his belt? Do you know that Cæsar, true to his swinish propensities, will turn like a hunted boar, when he suspects the least shadow of danger? Do you know that not one of us may live to eat the very supper waiting for us in the next room? What are you made of, man, that you can thus look me so coolly in the face with the sword at both our throats?”
“I can keep my own throat with my hand,” replied the other, totally unmoved by his host’s agitation. “And I am certainly not accustomed to fear danger before it comes. But that the barbarian has escaped I saw with my own eyes, for I left him ten minutes since within a hundred paces of your own gate.”
The tribune’s eyebrows went up in unfeigned surprise.
“Then he has not reached the palace!” he exclaimed, speaking rather to himself than his informant.
“Not reached the palace certainly,” replied the latter calmly, “since I tell you I saw him here. And in very good company too,” he added with a smile.
The tribune’s astonishment had for once deprived him of his self-command.
“With Valeria?” he asked unguardedly; and directly he had spoken, a vague suspicion made him wish that he had held his tongue.
The fencing-master started and knit his brows. His head was more erect and his voice sterner when he answered—
“I have seen the lady Valeria too, within the last hour. She had no slaves with her beyond her usual attendants.”
Anger, curiosity, uncertainty, jealousy, a hundred conflicting emotions were rankling at the tribune’s heart. What had this handsome gladiator to do at Valeria’s house? and was it possible that she did not care for the slave after all? Then what could have been her object throughout? He marked too the alteration in manner betrayed by Hippias at the mention of this fair and flighty dame; nor did it seem [pg 277]improbable under all the circumstances that he entertained a kindly feeling, if nothing more, for his pupil. Judging men and women by his own evil nature, and knowing well the favour with which their female admirers regarded these votaries of the sword, the tribune did not hesitate to put its true construction on such kindly feelings, and their probable result. From that moment he hated Hippias—hated him all the more that in the tumult and confusion of the coming night he might find an opportunity of gratifying his hatred by the destruction of the gladiator. Many a bold leader has been struck down from behind by the very followers he was encouraging; and who would ask how a conspirator met his death, in the attack on a palace and the murder of an emperor? Even while the thought crossed his mind he took the other by the hand, and laughed frankly in his face.
“Thou art at home in the private apartments of every lady in Rome, I believe, my warlike Apollo,” said he. “But, indeed, it is no question now of such trifling; the business of to-night must be determined on—ay, and disposed of—without delay. If my slave had reached the palace our whole plan must have been altered. I wish, as you did come across him, you had treated him to that deadly thrust of yours under the short-ribs, and brought him in here dead or alive.”
“He will not trouble us,” observed the other coolly. “Take my word for it, tribune, he is disposed of for the present.”
“What mean you?” asked Placidus, a devilish joy lighting up his sallow face. “Did you bribe him to secrecy then and there with the metal you are accustomed to lavish so freely? Gold will buy silence for a time, but steel ensures it for ever.”
“Nay, tribune,” answered Hippias, with a frank laugh. “We have been fencing too long in the dark. I will tell you the whole truth. This young giant of yours is safe enough for the present. I saw him depart with a pale-faced girl, in a black hood, whom he promised to take care of as far as Tiber-side. Depend upon it, he will think of nothing else to-night. For all his broad shoulders the down is yet upon his chin. And a man’s beard must be grey before he leaves such a fair young lass as that to knock his head against a wall, even though it be the wall of a palace. No, no, tribune, he is safe enough, I tell you, for the next twelve hours, at least!”
[pg 278]“A pale-faced girl?” repeated Placidus, still harping on Valeria. “What and who was she? Did you know her? did you speak to her?”
“My people had some wild tale,” replied the fencing-master, “about a chariot with white horses, that had been upset in the street, and a girl all gagged and muffled, whom they pulled out of it, and for whom, of course, they quarrelled amongst themselves. In faith, had it not been for to-night’s business and the oath, you might have seen some sweet practice in your own porch, for I have two or three here that can make as close and even work with a sword as a tailor does with his needle. They said something about her being a Jewess. Very likely she may be, for they swam across Tiber since we have lost Nero. And the lad might as well be a Jew as a Briton for that matter. Are you satisfied now, tribune? By the belly of Bacchus, I must wash my mouth out with Falernian! All this talking makes a man as thirsty as a camel.”
Satisfied! and after what he had just learnt! Chariot! White horses! Jewess! There could be no doubt of it. These gladiators must have blundered on her, thought the tribune, and slain my freedman, and rescued her from my people, and handed her over to the man whom most I hate and fear on earth. Satisfied! Perhaps I shall be better satisfied when I have captured her, and humbled Valeria, and put you out of the way, my gallant cut-throat, and seen the slave scourged to death at my own doorpost! Then, and not till then, shall I be able to drink my wine without a heartburn, and lay my head on the pillow with some chance of sleep. In the meantime, to-night’s work must be done. To-night’s work, that puts Vespasian virtually on the throne (for this boy15 of his shall only keep the cushion warm till his father takes his seat), that makes Placidus the first man in the empire. Nay, that might even open a path to the purple itself. The general is well advanced in years; already somewhat broken and worn with his campaigns. Titus, indeed, is the darling of the legions, but all the heart black-browed Berenice has left him, is wrapped up in war. He loves it, I verily believe—the daring fool!—for the mere braying of trumpets, and the clash of steel. Not a centurion exposes himself half so freely, nor so often. Well, a Zealot’s javelin, or a stone from the ramparts of some nameless town in Judæa, may dispose of him at any time. Then there is but Domitian—a clever youth indeed, and an unscrupulous. So [pg 279]much the worse for him! A mushroom is not the only dish that may be fatal to an emperor, and if the knot be so secure as to baffle all dexterity, why, it must be cut with steel. Ay, the Macedonian knew well how the great game should be played. Satisfied! Like him, I shall never be satisfied while there is anything more to win! These being the tribune’s thoughts, it is needless to say that he assumed a manner of the utmost frankness and carelessness.
“Thirsty!” he repeated, in a loud voice, clapping Hippias on the shoulder. “Thirsty—I could empty an aqueduct! Welcome again, and heartily, my heroes all! See, the supper waits. Let us go in and drink out the old Falernian!”