AFTER THE BATTLE.
After I had beheld my mother and all the other women of the tribe die to
escape the shame and outrages of slavery, the blood which I had lost
caused me to swoon away. A long time passed in which I was bereft of
reason. When my senses returned, I found myself lying on straw, along
with a great number of other men, in a vast shed. At my first motion I
found myself chained by the leg to a stake driven into the ground. I was
half clad; they had left me my shirt and breeches, in a secret pocket of
which I had hidden the writings of my father and of my brother Albinik,
together with the little gold sickle, the gift of my sister Hena. A
dressing had been put on my wounds, which no longer occasioned me much
pain. I experienced only a great weakness and dizziness which made my
last memories a confused mass. I looked about me. I was one of perhaps
fifty wounded prisoners, all chained to their litters. At the further
end of the shed were several armed men, who did not bear the appearance
of regular Roman troops. They were seated round a table, drinking and
singing. Some among them, who carried short-handled scourges twisted of
several thongs and terminating in bits of lead, detached themselves
from time to time from the group, and walked here and there with the
uncertain gait of drunken men, casting jeering looks on the prisoners.
Next to me lay an aged man with white hair and beard, very pale and
thin. A bloody band half hid his forehead. He was sitting up, his elbows
on his knees, and his face between his hands. Seeing him wounded and a
prisoner, I concluded he was a Gaul. I did not err.
"Good father," I said to him, laying my hand lightly upon the old man's
arm, "where are we?"
Slowly raising his sad and mournful visage, the old prisoner answered
compassionately:
"Those are the first words you have spoken for two days."
"For two days?" I repeated, greatly astonished. I was unable to believe
so much time had passed since the battle of Vannes. I sought to recall
my wandering memory. "Is it possible? What, I have been here two days?"
"Yes, and you have been unconscious, in a delirium. The physician who
dressed your wounds made you take several potions."
"Now I recall it confusedly. And also--a ride in a chariot?"
"Yes, to come here from the battle-ground. I was with you in the
chariot, whither they carried you wounded and dying."
"And here we are--?"
"At Vannes."
"Our army?"
"Destroyed."
"Our fleet?"
"Annihilated."[13]
"O, my brother, and your courageous wife Meroe, both dead also!" flashed
through my mind. "And Vannes, where we are," I added aloud to my
companion, "Vannes is in the power of the Romans?"
"Even as the whole of Brittany, they say."
"And the Chief of the Hundred Valleys?"
"He has fled into the mountains of Ares with a handful of cavalry. The
Romans are in pursuit of him." Then raising his eyes to heaven, he
continued, "May Hesus and Teutates protect that last defender of the
Gauls!"
I had put these questions while my thoughts were still disordered. But
when I recalled the struggle at the chariot of war, the death of my
mother, my father, my brother Mikael, my brother's wife and his two
children, and finally, the almost certain death of my own wife with her
son and daughter--for up to the moment when I lost consciousness I had
not seen Henory leave the shelter behind the chariot--when I recalled
all that, I heaved, in spite of myself, a great sigh of despair at
finding myself alone in the world. I buried my face in the straw to shut
out the light of day.
One of the tipsy keepers became irritated at hearing my moans, and
showered several cruel blows of the scourge, accompanied with oaths,
upon my shoulders. Forgetting the pain in the shame that I felt at the
thought of me, the son of Joel, being struck with the lash, I leaped to
my feet notwithstanding my weakness, intending to throw myself upon the
keeper. But my chain, sharply tightened by the jerk, checked me, and
made me trip and fall upon my knees. The keeper, enabled by the length
of his scourge to keep out of the prisoners' reach, thereupon redoubled
his blows, lashing me across the face, chest, and back. Other keepers
ran up, fell upon me, and slipped manacles of iron upon my wrists.
Oh, my son, my son! You, for whose eyes I write all this down, obedient
to the wishes of my father, never do yourself forget, and let also your
sons preserve the memory of this outrage, the first that our stock ever
underwent. Live, that you may avenge the outrage in due time. And if you
cannot, let your sons wreak vengeance upon the Romans therefore.
With my feet chained and my hands in irons, unable to move, I did not
wish to afford my tormentors the spectacle of impotent rage. I closed my
eyes and lay still, betraying neither anger nor grief, while the
keepers, provoked by my calmness, beat me furiously. Presently, however,
a strange voice having interposed and spoken a few angry words in the
Latin tongue, the blows ceased. I opened my eyes and three new
personages stood before me. One of them was speaking rapidly to the
keepers, gesticulating angrily, and pointing at me from time to time.
This man was short and stout; he had a very red face, white hair and
pointed grey beard. He wore a short robe of brown wool, buck-skin
stocks, and low leather boots; he was not dressed in the Roman fashion.
Of the two men who accompanied him, one, dressed in a long black robe,
had a grave and sinister mien. The other held a casket under his arm.
While I was gazing at these persons, my aged neighbor called my
attention with a rapid glance to the fat little man with the red face
and the white hair, who was conversing with the keepers, and said to me
with a look of anger and disgust:
"The horse-dealer; the horse-dealer!"
"What are you talking about?" I answered him, unable to understand what
he meant. "A horse-dealer?"
"That is what the Romans call the slave merchants."[14]
"How! They traffic in wounded men?" I asked the old man in surprise.
"Are there men who buy the dying?"
"Do you not know," he answered with a somber smile, "that after the
battle of Vannes there were more dead than living, and not an unwounded
Gaul? Upon these wounded men, in default of more able-bodied prey, the
slave-dealers who follow the Roman army fell like so many ravens upon
corpses."
There was no more room for doubt. I realized that I was a slave. I had
been bought. I would be sold again. The "horse-dealer," having finished
speaking to the keepers, approached the old man, and said to him in
Gallic, but with an accent that proved his foreign origin:
"My old Pierce-Skin--how has your neighbor come on? Has he at last
recovered from his stupor? Is he at last able to speak?"
"Ask him," snapped the old man, turning over on the straw. "He'll answer
you himself."
The "horse-dealer" thereupon walked over to my side. He seemed no longer
angry. His countenance, naturally jovial, was beaming. Putting his two
hands on his knees, he stooped down to me; grinned at me; and spoke to
me hurriedly, often putting questions which he answered himself, not
seeming to care whether I heard him or not.
"You have, then, recovered your spirits, my fine Bull? Yes? Ah, so much
the better! By Jupiter, it's a good sign. Now your appetite will return,
and it is returning, isn't it? Still better! Before eight days you will
be in fine feather. Those brutes of keepers, always in their cups,
scourged you, did they? Yes? I'm not a bit surprised--they never do
anything else. The wine of Gaul makes them stupid. To strike you! To
strike you! And that when you can hardly stand up; besides the fact that
in men of the Gallic race, choler is likely to produce bad results. But
you are no longer angry, are you? No! So much the better! It is I who
should be provoked at those tipsters. Suppose the fury raging in your
blood had stifled you! But, bah! those brutes care little for making me
lose twenty-five or thirty gold sous,[15] which you will presently be
worth to me, my fine Bull. But for greater safety I'll have you taken to
a shelter where you will be alone and better off than here. It was
occupied by a wounded fellow who died last night--a superb fellow.
That was a loss! Ah, commerce is not all gain. Come, follow me."
He set to work to unfasten my chain by a secret spring. I asked him why
he always called me "Bull." I would have preferred by far the keeper's
lash to the jovial loquacity of this trafficker in human flesh. Certain
now that I was not dreaming, still I could hardly accept the reality of
what I saw. Unable to resist, I followed the man. At least I would no
longer be under the eyes of the keepers who beat me, and the sight of
whom made my blood boil. I made an effort to raise myself, but my
weakness was still excessive. The "horse-dealer" unhooked the chain, and
held one end. As my hands were still shackled, the man with the long
black robe and the one who carried the casket took me under the arms,
and led me to the extremity of the shed. They made me mount several
stairs and enter a small room that was lighted through an iron-barred
opening. I looked through the opening and recognized the great square of
the town of Vannes, and, in the distance, the house where I had often
gone to see my brother Albinik and his wife. In the room were a stool, a
table, and a long box of fresh straw, in place of the one in which the
other slave had died. I was made to sit on the stool. The black-robed
man, a Roman physician, examined my two wounds, constantly conversing in
his own language with the "horse-dealer." He took various salves from
the casket which his companion was carrying, dressed my hurts, and went
to render his services to the other slaves, not, however, before helping
the "horse-dealer" to fasten my chain to the wooden box which served
as my bed. The physician then took his departure, and left me alone with
my master.