THE HUNT
That day we met no one and made a long march north-westwards along the
flank of the mountain, camping at dusk by a spring. There we rehearsed our
rescue of Nona and marvelled at the ease with which we had disposed of
five burly ruffians. Agathemer agreed with me that it had been mostly the
effect of complete surprise. But he took a good deal of the credit to
himself. He reminded me how he had practiced me, ever since we began our
flight, at the art of fighting with knives, at knife attack in general. In
particular he had drilled me, as well as he could without a corpse or
dummy to practice on, at the favorite stroke of professional murderers,
the stab under the left shoulder-blade, the point of the knife or dagger
directed a little upward so as to reach the heart. By this stroke I had
killed both my victims, and he one of his. I acknowledged his claims, but
was inclined to thank the gods for special aid and favor. We discussed
that amazingly lucky fight until too sleepy to talk any more.
Next day we met some charcoal burners, who were both friendly and
unsuspicious and who gave us intelligible directions for making our way
towards Sarsina. The second night we again camped in the woods; the third
we spent at a farmhouse, thanks to Agathemer's flageolet.
The farmer, whose name was Caesus, told a grewsome tale of the horrors of
the plague and of the death of almost all his slaves. He was gloomy about
his future, as he, his two sons, and their surviving slave were too few to
work his farm. He seemed to regard us as fugitives from justice and as men
whom it was his duty to help and protect. As the season was too early for
comfortable travelling along byways or for safety from suspicion along
highways, and as he welcomed us, we spent a month with him, well fed, well
lodged and rather enjoying the hard farm work and the outdoor life, though
we spent also much time under-cover, working at what could be done under
shelter during heavy rains.
After he had come to feel at ease with us, our host, one day when we three
were alone, asked:
"Are you some of the King of the Highwaymen's men?"
On our disclaiming any connection with the King of the Highwaymen, or any
knowledge of such a character, he sighed and said:
"Oh, well! Of course, if you were, you would deny it, anyhow. You may be
or you may not be. Anyhow, if you are, tell him I treated you well and
shall always do my best for any man I take for one of his men.
"You don't look like his kind nor act like any I ever was sure of, but he
has all sorts. I thought it best to make sure. It is best to stand well
with him. He passes somewhere near here every spring or early summer on
his way north and again in the autumn on his way south."
We left this bourne only on the solstice, the tenth day before the Kalends
of July, and trudged comfortably to Sarsina, where we put up at the inn,
frequented by foot-farers like us. So also at Caesena and Faventia. There
we agreed that we had had enough of the highway, as we might encounter
some Imperial spies of the regular secret service department, and not a
few of these spies might know me by sight in any disguise. So we struck
off due north through the almost level open country, intending to keep on
northward until we came to the Spina and to follow that to the Po. As
Agathemer said, if we could not find ferrymen by day we could steal a
skiff by night.
Not far north of Faventia, after an easy-going day's march under a mild
spring sky, we came, just before sunset, to a forest of considerable
extent. As we could not conjecture whether to turn east or west, we camped
at its edge and slept soundly, comfortable in our cloaks, for the night
was warm and still.
Next morning the weather was so charming that we were tempted to plunge
into the forest and cross it as nearly due north as we could guide
ourselves by the sun. Since we reached the edge of the forest we had seen
no human-being near enough for us to ask in which direction we had best
try to go round it. We plunged into it and in it we wasted the entire day.
The country is very flat between Faventia and the Spina. I do not believe
that in any part of that forest the surface of the soil was four yards
higher than in any other part. And it was marshy, all quagmires and
sloughs, with narrow, sinuous ribbons, as it were, of fairly dry land
between them. We were hopelessly involved among its morasses before we
realized our plight and, after we did realize it, we seemed to make little
progress. We agreed that it would be folly to try to regain our camp: we
held to our purpose and tried to advance northwards. But we doubled right
and left, had to retrace our steps often and could form no idea how far we
had penetrated.
There was an astonishing abundance of game in that forest: hares
everywhere; does with fawns, young does, and not a few stags; wild boars,
which fled, grunting, out of their wallows as we approached; foxes of
which we three times glimpsed one at a distance; and we came on
indubitable wolf tracks. We had plenty of food and ate some at noon, for
we were tired. Then we spent the day threading the mazes of that swampy
forest. We were careful not to get bogged and we kept our tunics and
cloaks dry, though we were mired to the knees. But our very care delayed
us. The day was breezy and mild but not really warm, so that we did not
suffer from the heat. But by nightfall we were exhausted and had no idea
how far we had advanced northward. Just at dusk we came to reasonably firm
going and walked due north about a furlong. There, as the twilight
deepened, we encountered another stretch of ooze. We retreated from it a
dozen paces and camped under some swamp-maples on comfortably dry ground.
We ate about half of our food, bread, olives, and dried figs; and while
eating dried and warmed our feet and shanks at a generous fire of fallen
boughs, which Agathemer, who was clever with flint and steel, had made
quickly. When our feet felt as if they really belonged to us, we wrapped
ourselves in our cloaks and slept soundly.
We slept, indeed, so soundly, that it was broad day when, we waked. And we
waked to hear the wood ringing with the barking and baying of dogs and
with the cries of hunters and beaters. Instantly we realized that we were
in danger. For a hunt of such size as was approaching us must have been
gotten up by a coterie of wealthy land-owners; and such magnates, if they
caught sight of us, would at once suspect us of being runaway slaves. It
had been easy enough to pass ourselves off for farmerly cattle-buyers in
the Umbrian Mountains. But, habited as we were, camped in the depths of a
thick, swampy forest, we were sure to be suspected of being runaway slaves
by anyone who encountered us; and such gentry as organize big hunts with
swarms of beaters are always prone to suspect any footfarers of being
runaway slaves.
We hastily girded ourselves for flight, meanwhile reminding each other of
the story we had planned to tell if caught.
At first we seemed to have luck. We turned westwards away from the beaters
and found and passed the upper end of the morass which had stopped us the
night before. From there the going was good, through open underbrush,
beneath big beeches and chestnuts, over firm and gently rolling ground.
Stopping and listening we tried to judge by the sounds the location of the
line of beaters. We seemed to have a chance of getting beyond its western
end. We set off again; just as we started on nine deer dashed past us, a
big stag, two young stags and six does.
Then we did run, for we knew it was our last chance and, indeed, but
little further, a young wolf raced down a ferny glade, vanishing into some
alders on the further side of the glade. I nearly trod on a fleeing hare.
The beaters could not be far off.
Yet, for a bit, we seemed to be gaining on them, although we were
quartering their front on a long slant. The third time we stopped to pant
and listen we thought that our next dash would carry us where we might
crouch in the first thicket and let their line sweep past us.
But, some fifty yards or so beyond, when we came to the dancing red
feathers on the cord and thought we would be safe in a few breaths, there
rose at us, from behind the feathered cord, three stocky men, armed with
broad-bladed hunting-spears, who yelled at us:
"Halt! Stand! Surrender!"
We recoiled from them, amazed, threw away our wallets, threw off our
cloaks, and bolted, incredulous; and as we ran, we heard them yelling:
"Here! Here! Here they are! We see them! This way, all of you! We've got
them! Here they are!"
No bogs, no sloughs turned us or delayed us. The going was good, over firm
footing, through light underwoods, among wide-set, big trees. For our
lives we ran. There seemed a very slender chance of our crossing the whole
length of the line of beaters and escaping on the other side, but that
slender chance seemed our only chance. We ran fit to burst our hearts.
And the hunt was plainly converging on us. The noises of the beaters drew
nearer. We seemed in a swarm of fleeing hares: more deer and more deer
passed us, this time, I thought, does with young fawns. We caught a
glimpse of another wolf, of two foxes. And, in a moist hollow, we barely
avoided a nasty rush of eight panic-stricken, grunting wild swine.
We did run across the entire line of beaters, but little good it did us.
Again we saw before us the feathered cord, the scarlet plumes dancing in
the sun. At it we ran, sure of safety if we passed it unseen and
penetrated even ten yards beyond it into the underbrush. But we were again
disappointed.
This time only two huntsmen rose at us, but they, too, flourished hunting
spears with gleaming points, as big as spades. They too yelled at us and
yelled to their fellows:
"Halt! You are caught! Hands up! Give yourselves up!"
And:
"There they go! Both of them! Come on! Here they are!"
Off we went again, slanting back across the approaching line of dogs and
beaters, now closer together as they drew on towards the nets, and already
appallingly close to us. Again we crossed the whole line, now much
shorter. But this time we ran, not against part of the long stretch of
feathered cord, but against the outer yard-high net. Of course this was
well guarded and again we were yelled at and turned back.
Doubling back, now steaming, panting, gasping, with knees trembling under
us, we reached the net on the other side.
Turned again, we found the beaters so near us and so close together, that
we ran away from them rather than across their line. We ran, in fact, in
a sort of mob of hares, foxes, boars, deer and even wolves, for some of
each were in sight every moment.
So running we came where we could see the line of nets, now of six-foot,
heavy-meshed nets, on either side of us. We made a last, desperate dash at
one of the nets, I hoping to leap it or vault it or clamber over it and
escape, after all. But six keepers, all with broad-bladed hunting spears,
rose at us beyond it, rose with triumphant yells:
"We've got you now! We've got you now!"
From them we shied off and ran, half staggering with exhaustion and
despair, between the converging lines of nets, ran in a veritable press of
terrified game of all sorts, ran madly, since we heard now, not the
barking and whine of dogs straining at their leashes, but the exultant
yelping, barking and baying of great packs of dogs unleashed behind their
game.
Of course, although no single dog, however infuriated, would ever attack
me in daylight, when it could see my face, yet I could do nothing whatever
to protect myself, and far less Agathemer, against the massed onset of
more than a hundred maddened hunting dogs, each bigger than a full-grown
wolf.
So running, staggering, stumbling, at the end of our strength, we found
ourselves running into the battue-pocket at the meeting of the two long
converging lines of nets. Anything would be better than that. We tried to
double back and were met by a dozen big dogs, some Gallic dogs of the
breed of Tolosa, spotted black and white, others mouse-colored Molossians.
To escape them we dodged apart, each ran for a tree, each jumped, each
caught the lowest limb of a thick-foliaged maple, the two not much over
five yards apart. So thick were their leaves that I could hardly make out
Agathemer in his tree. The two maples were close to the beginning of the
pocket net. From my perch I could see plainly how cunningly the pocket had
been set.
It was of strong, close-meshed nets fully three yards high stretched on
sturdy forked stakes and well guyed back outside to pegs like tent-pegs.
These pocketing nets were set along the tops of the two banks of a gully
about twenty yards wide, sloping sharply downward from its top near our
trees and with sides three or four yards high and steep. Once in this
gully, between the pocketing nets along the upper edge of its sides, no
boar could scramble out, the lower meshes of the pocketing nets were too
fine for any hare to squeeze through; no doe, no stag even, could leap
such nets at the top of such banks.
I could just spy a part of the heaviest net across the gully at the end of
the pocket. It seemed a large meshed net of rope thicker than my knee,
with the large meshes filled in with smaller meshes of rope the size of my
wrist.
Hardly was I safe in the crotch of my tree when the last of the game swept
by below us, the dogs hot behind them, up came the press of beaters, and,
from each side, in rushed the hunters, a score of handsome nobles and
gentry, habited in green tunics, wearing small, green, round-crowned,
narrow-brimmed hunting hats and green boots up to just below their knees.
Each carried a heavy shafted hunting spear, tipped with a huge triangular
gleaming head, pointed like a needle, edged like a razor, broad as a spade
at its flare.
Even in my terror and exhaustion I could not but feel a certain pleasure
in the beauty of the scene, a sort of thrill at its strangeness. I had
participated in such hunts in Bruttium and Sabinum, but never as hunted
game.
The sun was not yet half way up the heavens, the dew had not yet dried
from the leaves, owing to the very late spring the freshness of springtime
had not yet passed into the fullness of early summer. Through the tender
green of the young leafage, starry with drops of moisture, the sunshine
shot long shafts of golden light. Under the beautiful canopy of blue sky
and golden green foliage was the amazing turmoil of the hunt.
More than a hundred large animals, pigs, fawns, sows, does, boars and
stags had fled before the beaters and were now jammed pellmell in the
gully, for the end-net held. There they frantically jostled each other and
the half dozen wolves caught among them which, indeed, snapped, slashed
and tore at everything within reach, but, cowed themselves, had no effect
whatever on the maddened victims which all but trod them under and
actually trampled on foxes and on the swarm of squeaking, helpless hares.
Upon this mass of terrified flesh the two hundred dogs flung themselves,
through the nets the huntsmen stabbed at the nearest victims, behind the
dogs the shouting hunters advanced to spear their game, the battue was on
and I watched it till the last animal was flat. The few which, frenzied,
doubled back through the dogs and hunters were met and killed by the
beaters. Not one escaped.
As the battue ended up came the rush of beaters and our trees were soon
surrounded by a crowd of eager, exultant, infuriated beaters and huntsmen.
Up the trees young beaters swarmed and we were plucked down, thumped,
whacked, punched, kicked and manacled, our tunics torn off, ourselves
mishandled till we streamed blood, all amid abuse, threats, epithets,
execrations and curses.
We stood, half fainting, utterly dazed, supported by the two or three
captors who held each of us, but for whose clutches we should have
collapsed on the earth.
We expected to be torn limb from limb, yet could not conjecture why we
were the objects of such infuriated animosity. A beater clutching either
elbow, a hand clutching my neck from behind, my knees knocking together,
naked, bruised, bloody, gasping, fainting, I, like Agathemer, was haled a
few paces to one corner of the pocket net. There we were held till the
gentlemen came up out of the gully.
Up they came, a score of handsome young fellows, mostly each with his hat
in his hand and mopping his forehead.
"Why!" the foremost of them cried. "These are not the men! These are not
the men at all! They are not in the least like them!"
"Not in the least like Lupercus and Rufinus, certainly," another added.
"What a pack of asses you are!" cried a third, "to mishandle two
strangers. Couldn't you look at them before you mauled them?"
"We all took them for Rufinus and Lupercus," the head huntsman rejoined.
"Certainly they are desperate characters and runaways. Look at their
backs."
They turned us round, to display the marks of scourging still plain on us
both.
"They've both been branded," said a gentleman's voice.
"Pooh!" cried another, "that proves nothing. They may have been scourged
and branded by former masters, and manumitted since. I'll have no stranger
ill-treated on my land until he has had a chance to explain himself."
While he was speaking my guards turned me round again and took their hands
off me.
Our champion was a tall, powerful, plump and florid young man, with very
curly golden hair, very light blue eyes, and the merest trace of downy,
curly yellow beard. He was very handsome, with small delicate nose and
mouth, a round chin and the most beautiful ears I ever saw on any man. He
wore senators' boots and a tunic of pure silk, dyed a very brilliant green
and embroidered all over with a flowering vine in a darker, glossier
green.
"What are your names?" asked the elder man who had noticed our brand-
marks. He was swarthy and probably over thirty.
I gave him the name of Felix and Agathemer that of Asper, as we had
agreed, neither of us thinking it advisable to claim to be free Romans by
prefixing, "Sabinus" and "Bruttius."
"Shut up, Marcus," our champion ordered, "can't you see that these poor
fellows are in no condition to answer any questions? We'll interrogate
them after they have bathed, eaten and slept."
"Here, Trogus," he called to one of the chief-huntsman's assistants, "take
charge of these two fellows. Treat them well; if they report any
incivility or omission on your part I'll make you regret it. When they are
bathed and fed, let them sleep all they want to.
"And, here, Umbro" (this to the head-huntsman), "see that their effects
are found and restored to them."
He turned to us.
"Did you have wallets?" he asked.
We nodded, too shaken to speak.
"Umbro," he said, "scour the wood. Have their shoes, their cloaks and
especially their wallets found and brought to me. And make sure that
nothing is taken from those wallets, that they are handed to their owners
as they were found. If they find anything missing, I'll make you and your
men smart. Be prompt! Be lively. Get those wallets and cloaks and shoes."
While he gave these orders, some beaters brought us our torn tunics;
which, even so, were better than no clothing at all. We put them on.
Then we were led off to the edge of a forest, bestowed in a light Gallic
gig, drawn by one tall roan mule only, and in it, the driver sitting at
our feet, sideways, on one shaft, his legs hanging down, we were driven
off through a beautiful gently rolling country, clothed with the
superabundant crops, vines and orchards of the lower Po Valley, all bathed
in brilliant spring sunshine, to a magnificent villa, most opulently
provided with white-walled, neat outbuildings, all roofed with red tiles.
In one of these, apparently the house of the farm-overseer, we were
bathed, clothed with fresh tunics, far better than our own, lavishly fed
and led to rest in tiny white-washed rooms, very plain, but clean and
airy, where we went to sleep on corded cots provided with very thin grass-
stuffed mattresses.
When we woke each found his wallet beside his cot, set on his neatly
folded cloak; with our old worn shoes, well cleaned, on the floor by the
folded cloaks.
Later we were led before our host and champion, who turned out to be
Tarrutenus Spinellus; in no wise, it seemed, affected, by the downfall of
his great kinsman. He questioned us and Agathemer told the story we had
agreed on: that we had been slaves of Numerius Vedius of Aquileia, who had
been kind to both of us and had made him overseer and me accountant of his
vegetable farms on the sandy islets offshore along the coast of the
Adriatic by Aquileia. There we had lived contentedly till we had been
captured by raiding Liburnian pirates from the Dalmatian islands. They had
sold us at Ancona, where we had been horribly mistreated by a cruel and
savage master, who had branded and scourged us for imaginary
delinquencies.
From him we had run away, intent on making our way back to Aquileia and to
our rightful owner.
"This all sounds plausible," said Tarrutenus, "and I believe you, and it
falls out well. For my cousin, Cornelius Vindex, will leave tomorrow or
next day for Aquileia and you can travel in his company all the way."
We were well fed and lodged while at Villa Spinella. While there we
learned that Lupercus and Rufinus, the two escaped malefactors for whom we
had been mistaken by the huntsmen and beaters, had been runaway slaves,
long uncatchable and lurking in swamps and forests, who had lately, tried
to rob at night the store-house of a farmstead: and who, when the farmer
rushed out to defend his property, had murdered him and even thereafter,
in mere wantonness, had also murdered two of his slaves, his wife and a
young daughter. This horrible crime had roused the whole countryside to
hunt them down and the great battue in which we had been involved had been
organized at a time of the year most unusual and ruinous to the increase
of deer-herds, precisely in order to snare the outlaws along with the
game. They had not been caught and we had.
After two nights' good sleep, and a day's rest, with excellent and
abundant meals, we set off at dawn in Cornelius' convoy, our precious
amulet-bags untouched; our wallets just as we had flung them down in the
forest, not a coin missing; and we were clothed in new good tunics, our
bruises pretty well healed up or healing nicely, ourselves well content
with our escape, but meditating a second escape, this time from,
Cornelius.
For we had no stomach for the road to Aquileia, if in such company that we
must present ourselves before Vedius as claiming to be slaves of his.
We escaped easily enough, just after crossing the Po, by sneaking off in
the darkness from a villa where Cornelius, stopped overnight with a
friend. Without any difficulty we recrossed the Po, not far below
Hostilia, and from there made for Parma.
For we agreed that, after our story to Tarrutenus, with Cornelius Vindex
in Aquileia, Aquileia would be no fit bourne for us. So we decided, after
all, to risk the highway from Parma to Dertona and from there make our way
across the Ligurian Mountains to Vada Sabatia and from there along the
highway to Marseilles, where we should be able to hide in the slums among
the mixture of all races in that lively city; and where Agathemer was sure
he could turn gems into cash without danger or suspicion.
All, went well with us till we reached Placentia. There we put up at an
inn. As we were leaving the town next morning, when we were about half way
from the inn to the Clastidian Gate, Agathemer gripped my arm and motioned
me up a side street. We walked with every indication of leisurely
indifference until we had taken several turns and were alone in a narrow
street. Then he told me that we had barely missed coming face to face with
Gratillus himself.
This barely missed encounter with one of the most dreaded of the Emperor's
spies, a man who knew me perfectly and who had always disliked me, so
terrified both of us that we left Placentia by the Nuran Gate and made our
way southwestward into the Apennines.
Once in the mountains we avoided every good road we saw and kept to bad
byways, until we were completely lost.