ESCAPE
At Tibur I put up at a clean little inn I had known of since boyhood, but
which I had never before entered or even seen, so that I felt safe there
and reasonably sure to pass as a traveller of no rank whatever. My
knowledge of country ways, too, enabled me to behave like a landed
proprietor of small means.
After a hearty lunch I pushed boldly on up the Valerian Highway and
covered the twenty-two miles between Tibur and Carseoli without visibly
tiring my mount. He was no more winded nor lathered than any traveller's
horse should be at the end of a day on the road. At Carseoli I again knew
of a clean, quiet inn, and there I dined and slept.
Thence I intended to follow the rough country roads along the Tolenus.
Stream-side roads are always bad, so I allowed two days more in which to
reach home, and I could hardly have done it quicker. The night after I
left Carseoli I camped by a tributary of the Tolenus in a very pretty
little grove. From Carseoli on the weather was fine.
About the third hour of the day, on the fifth day before the Kalends of
September, of a fair, bright morning, I came to my own estate. On the road
nearing it I had met no one. I met no one along the woodland tracks
leading into my property from that side: on my estate I met no one save
just as I was about to enter my villa. Then I encountered Ofatulenus,
bailiff of the Villa Farm. He, of course, was amazed to see me. I bade him
mention to no one, not even to his wife, that I had returned home.
"Be secret!" I enjoined.
He nodded.
I believed he would be dumb. Give me a Sabine to keep a secret; I'd back
any Sabine against any other sort of human being.
Ofatulenus took my horse and swore that no one outside of the stable
should know it was there or suspect it. I told him to lock the trappings
in the third locker in my harness-room, which locker I knew should be
empty.
I got from the stable to my villa without encountering any human being.
Outside I found Agathemer, as I had hoped I would, sunning himself on the
terrace.
He was even more amazed than Ofatulenus and began to exclaim. I silenced
him and questioned him as to his health. He told me that his back was
entirely healed and that, while any effort still caused him not a little
pain, he was capable of the customary activities of his normal life.
I then told him why I had returned home. He listened in silence, except
that he here and there put in a query when I omitted some detail in my
excitement.
When he understood my situation thoroughly he asked:
"And what do you propose to do?"
"I propose," I said, "to live here unobtrusively, visiting no one,
receiving no one and, by all the means in our power, arranging that as few
persons as possible may know of my presence here. There is not the
faintest scintilla of hope in my doing anything whatever. But if I merely
exist without calling attention to my existence there may be some hope for
me. No man accused as I am is ever allowed an opportunity to clear
himself: but it has often happened that, by keeping away from Rome for a
time, a man in my situation has given his friends a chance to use their
influence in his behalf, to gain the ear of someone powerful at Court, to
get an unbiassed hearing for what they had to say, to prove his complete
innocence and rehabilitate him. Vedia and Tanno will do all they can for
me. I have hosts of friends, not a few of whom will aid Vedia and Tanno as
far as they are able. By keeping quiet here I shall give my friends a
chance to save me, if I can be saved. If not, I shall here await such
orders as may be sent me, or my arrest, if I am to be seized."
"Is that your whole plan?" Agathemer queried.
"All," I said.
"May I speak?" he asked. "May I speak out my full mind?"
"Certainly!" I agreed. "Speak!"
"If you stay here as you propose," he said, "you will be arrested not
later than tomorrow and haled to your death, if not butchered at sight. At
most the centurion in charge might allow you an hour in which to commit
suicide. But if you remain here inactive your death is certain, you will
never see two sunrises.
"But I agree with you that your friends will do what they can and I
heartily believe that Opsitius and Vedia will move sky, earth and sea and
Hades beneath all, as far as their powers go, to save you. If they have
any chance of succeeding they will need more time than Perennis will give
them. If you stay here you will be dead before they can so much as lay
plans to gain them the ear of Saoteros and Anteros or some other Palace
favorite, let along groping through all the complicated intrigues
necessary to arrange for an audience with the Emperor when he might be in
a compliant humor.
"Your plan means certain death for you. I think I can save you if you will
put yourself in my hands. Will you?"
"I most certainly will," I said, "and without reservation. If you think
you can save me, tell me what you want me to do and I shall do it. I shall
follow your suggestions implicitly."
"Well," said Agathemer, "since remaining here means certain death and
since there seems a chance of final salvation for you through the efforts
of your friends and especially those of Opsitius and Vedia, since they
will need plenty of time to save you, if you can be saved, from every
point of view the right course of action is not merely inaction, not
merely hiding, but an immediate and complete disappearance. If you are
found you will be ordered to kill yourself or will be put to death. If you
cannot be found you cannot be killed or made to kill yourself. Since you
cannot be found you will stay alive until you can be rehabilitated with
the Emperor. If that cannot be done or is not done, at least you will be
alive. My deduction is, disappear at once and completely. You have many
times, for a lark, disguised yourself as an ordinary country proprietor or
small farmer and mingled with the crowd at a fair without being
recognized. What you have done for an evening in jest now attempt in
earnest and for as long a period as is necessary. And to begin with,
vanish from here at once and completely."
"But how?" I queried.
"If you are to disappear," said Agathemer, "why should I waste time in
explaining how. Let us disappear together, leaving no trace and let us do
it at once."
"But," I cried, "I could never consent to anything like that! You are not
in any danger. You will be manumitted by my will and you can live safely,
comfortably and at ease. Why should I drag you into I know not what
miseries, hardships and privations along with me? Tell me what to do and I
will proceed to do it. But do you stay here."
"If I told you my plan," said Agathemer, "you could not carry it out
alone. My scheme for your escape and vanishment pivots on my disappearing
along with you. If you agree, as I beg that you will, we shall both be
safe, I hope and trust; alive, able to return here if it can be arranged,
able to live elsewhere, somehow, if it cannot be arranged. If you refuse
your assent, I shall die with you or soon after you; I am resolute not to
survive you."
"I agree," I said. "I am under your orders henceforth, not you under
mine."
Agathemer at once guided me into the house and upstairs to his rooms, for
he inhabited the guest-suite next my rooms, which had been my uncle's.
"The first thing to do," he said, "is for both of us to eat heartily, for
we do not know when we shall eat again. I have been choicy and whimmy
about my eating since I came back here and mostly my meals have revolted
me and I have left the _triclinium_ practically unfed, whereas I have
often been seized with imperative hunger between meals. I have an
overabundant supply of all sorts of tempting cold viands up here."
And, in fact, in the room he used as a reading and writing room, on a side
table, I found an inviting array of cold meats, jellies, cakes, and fancy
breads, with an assortment of wines. We ate till we could eat no more,
masticating our food carefully and taking wine in moderation.
Then Agathemer put up a liberal supply of bread and relishes in a small
linen bag, obliterated all traces of our meal and presence and went into
his dressing-room, where he stripped stark naked and rubbed himself down
with a rough towel, carefully disposing of his garments in his wardrobes.
From one of his tables he took a small silver case containing flint, steel
and tinder. Then we went into my rooms, where he stripped me, rubbed me
down, and disposed of my garments as he had of his. My wallet he took
pains to hide in the bottom of a chest, after emptying it and putting the
contents about so that each article was hidden in a different place and
none could be connected with the others or with the wallet. The little
horn case with flint and steel he retained.
The ante-room to what had been my uncle's bed-room and was now mine, had
on its walls trophies of hunting-spears and other weapons of the chase.
Agathemer selected two knives for killing wounded stags, dependable
implements, blade and shank one piece of fine steel, the handles of stag-
horn, fastened on with copper rivets.
With the bag of food, the two knives and the two tinder boxes we went up
my uncle's private stair to his library and reading room.
My uncle had had his own ideas as to nearly everything, usually much at
variance with other people's ideas. As to building his ideas, perhaps,
were less aberrant than his opinions on other subjects, but, certainly he
was as tenacious of them as of his other notions.
He held, in the first place, that sleeping-rooms on the ground-floor of
any house were unhealthy and a relic of primitive barbarism. He was
equally positive that, in the country, where there was ample room for a
building to spread out, it was folly to construct a dwelling of three or
more stories: such villas he railed at as exhibitions of silly
extravagance and of a desire to appear different from one's neighbors. His
villa, therefore, was of two stories only.
But, on the other hand, he loved fresh air, light, and wide prospects from
his windows; also he spent most of his daylight reading or writing, or
both. To gratify to the full all his chief tastes at once he included in
the plans of his villa a sort of tower, at the northwest corner, rising
well above the remainder of the structure, so that the floors of its third
story were on a level higher than that of the ridge-poles of the roofs of
the other parts of the villa and from the wide windows of its rooms there
was an unobstructed view over the tiles of the villa upon the farm-
buildings and beyond them across the fields to the woodlands and the
forested eastern and southern horizon as well as a fine outlook down the
valley northward and across it westward.
In this third story of this tower he housed his library and there he spent
most of his time. It was reached by three stairs. One was connected with
the villa in general and was used by him when going down to meals in his
_triclinium_, or when escorting visitors up to his library, as he
sometimes did with his particular favorites; and this stair was also used
by such servants as he might summon to him while in his library or as
might have to go up there to attend to it in his absence. The second stair
connected with his living-rooms on the second floor, which rooms looked
northwestward, as he detested being waked early by the rays of the rising
sun and loved basking in the mellow radiance of afternoon sunlight. The
third stair is not easy to describe and was one of my uncle's oddest
eccentricities. It was inside a sort of minor tower built against the
tower in which his library was set aloft, which minor tower extended far
up towards the sky, like a great chimney. What was the primary purpose of
this minor tower I shall explain later. In it, however, was a narrow,
cramped, spiral stair, unlit by any window or loop-hole, unconnected with
the second or first floor of the villa, opening at the top into the
library and at the bottom into a cellar, a cellar so far down the hillside
that its vault was below the level of the floors of the cellars under the
villa in general. This stair my uncle had had constructed to enable him to
apply his idea that a master could ensure the diligence of his tenants and
slaves only if he was known to be in the habit of coming upon them
unexpectedly at any hour of the day, only if they never knew when he might
appear and so were spurred to continual diligence for fear he might catch
them idling. For my uncle, though he habitually spent his entire daylight
in his library, might at any hour slip down this stair, slip out onto the
northwestern slope from the villa through a door locked to all but him and
of which he kept the key, or might slip out southeastward or southwestward
or northeastward, through similar doors on the ground floor, reached by
passages built between the many cellars of the upper level of cellars
under the ground floor of the villa. By this plan and by popping out
sometimes many times a day, sometimes after an interval of many days, he
kept his underlings alert.
My uncle's tastes in respect to books were as peculiar as in all other
respects. He had a really magnificent library, including all the Greek
poets, all our own, and other noble works of literature, such as the
historians in both the Greek and Latin tongues; the orators, and the
writers on painting, sculpture, architecture and music.
But he paid more attention to his personal fads. He had a creditable
collection of all works on divination, a similarly inclusive assemblage of
works on the theory of government, and an almost complete array of the
writings of the Emperors, from the Divine Julius to the Divine Aurelius,
whose meditations he extolled.
But he extolled above all other Princes and authors the Divine Julius.
"Caius Julius Caesar," he was never tired of saying, "was, in all
respects, the greatest man who ever lived on earth. He was also the
greatest author earth has ever produced. His poems, his mimes, his
comedies, his dramas, compare favorably with the best of their kind. His
accounts of his wars, whether against the Gauls or against his domestic
adversaries, are models of narration, of lucidity, of terseness and of
style. His astronomy is the best manual of that subject in Latin. His
works on Engineering surpass anything of their kind in clearness and
preserve for the benefit of future generations more useful and original
ideas than ever before came from the brain of any one man. His works on
divination, particularly that on Auspices, excel everything previously
written on that most important of all human arts.
"But his two books against Cato are his masterpiece. It is wonderful that
any man could have, in the space of eight days, written, with his own
hand, so fiery an invective, so compelling of the attention of any reader,
so completely annihilative of his antagonist's pretensions and
contentions, so convincingly establishing his own: to have made of it, in
the course of composition so rapid and totally unrevised, such a jewel of
Latinity, in a style not only pure and impeccable, but glowing and
charming, is astonishing. But it is downright miraculous that he should
have embodied in it the whole theory of government with all its principles
marshalled in their array with the most perfect subordination of
considerations of lesser importance to main principles. The two
Anticatones contain all that a ruler or any minister of a ruler need know
to guide him aright in his tasks. The First Book displays a complete
theory of internal policy, the Second of external policy. The two together
form a whole which is the most brilliant product of Rome's literary and
political genius."
In accordance with his high esteem for Caesar's masterpiece he had
possessed himself of a beautiful copy of it, written by the celebrated
calligrapher Praxitelides, upon papyrus of the finest quality. It was in
seven rolls, each book of Caesar's text occupying two rolls, the index a
fifth, and the commentaries of grammarians two more. The rollers inside
the rolls were of Nubian ivory, their ends carved into pine cones, each of
the fourteen representing the cone of a different variety of pine. Each
roll was enclosed in a copper cylinder made accurately to be both
watertight and airtight. The seven cylinders were housed in an ebony case,
inlaid with mother of pearl. I have never seen any literary work more
beautifully enshrined.
When Agathemer and I were in the library he shut and locked the door at
the top of my uncle's private stair, as he had the door at the bottom of
it. The two keys he hid far apart, where neither was at all likely to be
found easily or soon. He had laid the knives, tinder-boxes and bag of food
on a table. He went to the case containing my uncle's most highly prized
treasures. From it he took the ebony box, opened it and took out two of
the cylinders. From these he removed the rolls embodying the grammarians'
comments. These rolls he put back in the box, shut it, returned it to the
case and closed the case.
The two cylinders he had laid on the table by the things which he had
brought up stairs. Inside each cylinder he placed a knife, a tinder-box,
and a selection of the food. The bag, with what remained of the food, he
tied up again. He handed me one cylinder.
"Now," he said, "we are prepared to escape. My idea is to leave no trace
of how we leave this villa, to have no one see us leave, to have nothing
with us which could identify us after we have left. We are to go down the
secret stair, crawl out through the big lower drain pipe, hide in the
bushes till dark, take to the woods, hide by day, creep northward by
night, and, if we succeed in reaching a district where no one would
recognize us, press on northward boldly, passing ourselves off as runaway
slaves if anyone encounters us."
"We'd be locked up as runaway slaves," I said, "advertised, sold to the
highest bidder if unclaimed and henceforth kept in slavery."
"I'm in slavery now," said Agathemer. "You, if kept in slavery, would at
least be alive and in no danger of being recognized."
"Let us go," said I.
We looked at each other and burst out laughing. We made a sufficiently
absurd spectacle, each stark naked, each holding a copper cylinder, as we
stood in that elegant and luxurious room. According to the fashion of the
time, which aped the ways of the young Emperor, we wore our hair
moderately long and as both had hair naturally curly, were perfectly in
style as to hair. Our beards, also, we wore clipped but not shaved, and
long enough to show a tendency to curl, as the Emperor wore his.
Our laugh over I gave a farewell glance about my little-used library. It
was then about the fifth hour. Agathemer gazing rather outside at the
landscape than inside at the room remained frozen stiff, staring northward
down the valley.
"We are barely in time," he said. "Mercury is with us and Fortune."
"Before I left Rome," I said, "I prayed to Fortune and sacrificed to
Mercury."
"Time well spent," he said. "Look there!"
Peering where he pointed I saw, where the road was first visible in the
distance, fully two miles away, a dozen or more horsemen, manifestly, even
at that distance, of military bearing: I caught, against the sunrays, a
gleam of crimson and a glint of gold; I conjectured a detail of Praetorian
Guards coming to arrest me or to put me out of the way.
Agathemer opened the upper door of the secret stair, which unlike most
doors, could be locked on either side, for my uncle always wanted to lock
the doors he used, whichever way he passed through them. After we had
passed this door Agathemer closed it behind us, and, as we stood in the
pitch dark, locked it.
We groped our way down the dizzying turns of the steep stair, Agathemer
going first and, at the bottom, whacking his knee-cap on the lower door.
This he unlocked and I found myself in a dim-lit cellar which I had
visited but twice before. Agathemer locked the stair-door behind us.
Now the minor tower, in which was the spiral stair, was built as a vent to
carry up into the air, far above the roofs of the villa, any miasma,
effluvium or exhalation from the drainage-water of the villa's baths,
kitchen and latrines. On the subject of harmful vapours from drains my
uncle was fanatical and to bear out his contentions he quoted from the
works of many celebrated philosophers and physicians, including those of
Galen.
Pursuant with his notions as to how to get rid of the exhalations from
drainage and to make certain that no whiff of any such vapours ever found
its way up any offset into his kitchen or any latrine or bathroom, he had
built in this small high tower a shaft reaching its top and full six feet
square all the way up. At its bottom it widened out into a chamber fully
twelve feet square, carried down below the level of the cellar floor to
form a cemented tank, vat, cistern or cesspool fully as deep as it was
wide. The outfall from this trap was by a terra-cotta pipe of considerable
size, its opening at such a point that the drain-water in the trap never
reached higher than a foot or so below the level of the cellar floor. The
various drainage-pipes from different parts of the villa were so led into
this trap-room that their lower ends were always under water, so that no
exhalations could ever pass up any of them.
To the bottom of the trap settled the solid matter and sediment from the
drainage-water. The trap was cleaned by slaves so often that the ooze in
it never rose high enough to escape down the outfall pipe and befoul the
Bran Brook. For cleaning out the trap-room had an outer door, of heavy,
solid oak, carefully locked, which when opened enabled the slaves
entrusted with this task to dredge or bale or scoop out the filth and
convey it off to be used as garden manure. There was also an inner door,
as heavy and solid as the other, opening from the cellar, which enabled my
uncle to inspect the trap at his convenience. This door Agathemer opened.
I peered in and, after my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, descried
the opening of the outfall drain opposite me. It was large enough for lean
men like me and Agathemer to crawl through, but certainly barely large
enough. I could see, after some moments, the lower ends of the drain
pipes, two dozen or more, dipping into the foul liquid which filled the
cistern. It was very foul, for since my uncle's death the cleaning out of
the trap had been neglected and the ooze came almost to the top of the
water.
Agathemer hunted about the cellar, found some bits of stone about the size
of apples, put them in the bag of food, tied up its neck again, and threw
it into the trap, where it sank out of sight. After it he threw in the two
keys.
Now was the moment for our plunge into the unknown. Agathemer's plan
implied that we must crawl a full furlong through the outfall drain. We
might be drowned, at any point of the crawl, by a rush of water from the
bath-tank. We might suffocate in the foul vapours of the drain. But,
plainly, Agathemer had pitched upon our only chance of escape, and we must
escape that way and at once or not at all.
Agathemer threw the two copper cylinders, one after the other, neatly and
deftly into the mouth of the outfall drain.
"Now," he said, "one of us must jump for that opening, and must cling to
it, his arms inside, his body in the ooze of the trap. The other must
stand on the narrow stone ledge inside this door, must contrive to slam
the door behind him so that it will shut fast and stay shut, must then, in
the pitch dark, jump for the shoulders of the other. If the drag of his
weight pulls the other down, both of us will drown in this deep trap in
the vile ooze. If the under man clings on, the upper must crawl over him
into the drain, pass back to him one of the cylinders and then we shall be
ready for our crawl down. Which goes first?"
"You choose," said I.
"Can you slam the door?" Agathemer queried.
I considered the door, the sill, the ledge inside, the jambs of the door,
its edges; stood on the ledge, went through the motions and concluded that
I could slam the door shut and not be knocked off into the ooze by its
impact or topple off because of the sill's narrowness. I said so.
"Then I'll go first," said Agathemer. "You are, even yet, far more
impaired in strength by your beating than I by my flogging. If I came
second you might not be able to hold on to the opening of the drain. I
know I can hold on, no matter how much filth is plastered over my head as
you crawl over me. I should not like the idea of defiling your head with
filth in crawling over you. Jump so that your clutching hands just reach
my shoulders; so that your weight will come on me gradually as you sink
into the ooze. Take your time about crawling over me. Be sure to pass back
to me one cylinder."
Then he drilled me as to the signals he would give me by pinching my feet.
When he was sure we both knew them he grinned a wry grin, and made a
whimsical boyish gesture with his uplifted right hand, took a careful
stand on the sill, balanced himself and jumped.
"I'm all right," he called back, "and ready for you."
Three times I tried to slam that door and failed to shut it. The fourth
time I found myself, my back against the shut door, my toes sticking out
over the edge of the stone sill, balanced in the pitch dark on a too
narrow ledge.
"Lean back against the door," Agathemer called, thickly. "If it gives it
is not shut."
It did not give.
I said so.
"Then no one will ever know how we got out," said Agathemer; adding: "Jump
when you are ready, but say 'now.'"
I jumped and my fingers caught his shoulders. He held on. My body sank
slowly through the ooze, which gave way with a sickening sliminess, until
I was in contact with Agathemer all the way to my toes. Then I began to
try to crawl up over him. I found it far harder than either of us had
anticipated.
All slippery as we were with the foul ooze it was a fearful struggle for
me to scramble up over him, I slipped back so often. After what seemed an
hour of effort and apprehension I had my head, shoulders and most of my
body in the drain and knew I had succeeded. I wriggled forward till I felt
my feet beyond the opening, then about as far ahead, pushing before me the
cylinders. When Agathemer touched my foot I pushed a cylinder past my body
and felt, with my ankle, that he pulled it back.
After that, escape was a matter of wriggling on down the drain. And
wriggling was not impossible, though excessively difficult and exhausting.
The drain was nowhere choked with silt, but all along was furred with ooze
and there was more than an inch of ooze along its bottom. In this,
hitching myself forward on my elbows by violent contortions, I slipped
back almost as much as I heaved forward.
Agathemer seemed to have as much trouble as I had and to find the effort
as exhausting. For he had instructed me that I was not to crawl forward
until he pinched my foot. One pinch was to mean "advance," two pinches
"rest." More than once he had signalled me to rest.
Our worst moment came somewhere near half way down the sewer. There I
encountered a cracked drain-pipe, the ragged edge of the broken terra-
cotta projecting into the sewer, its point toward me. I wriggled my
shoulders by it, though it gouged my shoulder-muscle on that side; but, at
my hips, it stuck into me so that I could not get past it.
Agathemer, behind, kept pinching my foot, signalling for me to go forward.
I bellowed explanations, but could not suppose that he could hear them in
that horrible tube. But he either heard or guessed, he never could be sure
which. Anyhow, he felt that we must get forward or perish. In desperation
he sunk his teeth into the soft part of the inner side of the sole of my
left foot. The pain made me give a convulsive wriggle and I scraped past
the obstacle, tearing my hip badly in getting clear.
From there on we wriggled frantically till I could see ahead a round patch
of light at the lower outfall of the drain.
It seemed an age before I reached the opening, but reach it I did. I lay
there, my head just inside, panting and guzzling clean air in great
gulping gasps. Agathemer pinched my foot. I slipped out into the oozy pool
below the outfall, slid out as quietly as I could and kept myself
submerged up to my chin, clutching my cylinder with one hand, pulling
myself clear of the drain and keeping my head out of the drainage by
holding to the stem of an alder bush growing by the brook's edge.
I came to rest, the sunlight dazzling my eyes, though the outfall was
shaded by willows above the alders, and looked for Agathemer. He, his face
purple, kept his head inside the sewer and I could see him suck in the
clean air in long gasps as I had.
At that instant there was a squawking above us and, through the alders,
came, quacking and flapping their wings, a hundred or more of my uncle's
valued white ducks. Their alarm made me peep through the alder stems. I
saw, not ten yards from my face, the legs of horses, heard their hoofs
thud on the roadway, descried men's feet against their bellies, recognized
the gilded edges of the boot-soles, the make of the boots, the gilt scales
on the kilt-straps, the gilded breast plates, the crimson tunics and
short-cloaks, the gilded sword-sheaths and helmets. There, just above us,
was passing the detachment of Praetorian Guards sent to arrest or despatch
me.
They clanked by us, never suspecting our proximity, though the ducks
resented our presence in their favorite pool and quacked at us
protestingly. They continued, in fact, to quack at us most of the time
until sunset, so that both of us were in an agony of dread for fear that
some passer-by might notice their voluble expressions of displeasure and
might take a notion to investigate to discover what was exciting their
wrath.
But no one was attracted by the ducks' noise and, if anyone passed up or
down the road we, where we were, did not know it.
We talked, at intervals, in whispers. Agathemer said that he had been
barely grazed by the broken drain-pipe and hardly noticed his scratches.
I, on the other hand, was in great pain from the gouge along my hip, and
hardly less pained by the tear in my shoulder. The water, under which I
had to keep up to my chin, dulled the pain of my wounds, but chilled me
till my teeth chattered, though the weather was hot; so hot in fact, that
the sunrays on my head seemed to scorch my hair, even through the willows
and alders. I was devoutly glad when the sunrays became more slanting and
the daylight began to wane, and the ducks, still quacking protestingly,
departed.