before ye, a man without a home, a governor without a city. Two nights
ago Saxons landed on our coasts, among the marshes, and entered
Anderida. The details of the whole I have not yet learned; whether they
assaulted first, or were provoked by some real or fancied injury of the
citizens. However this may be, they set upon us, and slew us, and were
joined by certain of the insurgents, who, it seems, have only awaited a
chance to rise in open revolt against the Empire, as represented in us.
United, they outnumbered those who were loyal to me by ten to one, and I
and mine, being all unprepared, were forced to flee. We fought our way
out of the city, and fled with others into the forest, leaving the
barbarians and the insurgents in possession. The temple of Jupiter is
destroyed and his priests are killed; the statues of the Emperor in the
Forum are wantonly shattered. One of the flamens who escaped joined our
party as we fled, and said that those who have committed these outrages
are not Goths nor Vandals, nor yet Saxons in revolt, but Romans, men of
our own blood, who should be of our religion. They it was who destroyed,
and incited the barbarians to greater excesses. Now I am come to you to
plead for help. We stand on the brink of great danger, and we are in no
position to help ourselves. It is to others that we must look. Where are
our troops? We have none, or next to none. Daily these barbarians
encroach upon us; our seas swarm with pirates, and we cannot resist."
Marcus Pomponius, the Count of the Saxon Shore, raised his head and
looked at him.
"You are right, but you have not told all,--not so much as the half of
it," he said. His voice was low and deep, and resonant as a trumpet.
"You, living here in the South, in Britannia Prima, can have no idea of
how things are in Maxima Caesariensis, in Flavia Caesariensis, or on the
Eastern Shore. One month ago, Constantine, my son, came from Deva. He
says that these provinces are no longer Roman, but Saxon, and that for
the most part without force or bloodshed. As for me and those who were
before me, year by year we have seen our power weakening, our troops
drawn off, cohort by cohort, until our ward of the Eastern Marches is
but an empty mockery. It is simply that, as we have retreated, Saxons
have advanced, inch by inch, until now they have gained a foothold from
which I believe no power that we may bring can dislodge them. They have
settled in our towns, mingled with us, married our women, obeyed our
laws--but they are here; and they are not of us, but alien, and they
will stay. I hold that this, the beginning of the end, began
twenty-seven years ago, when Fabian Procinus, the consul, abandoned
Eboracum and moved to the southern provinces with his forces. We can all
remember that day, I think. What happened? Saxons entered that deserted
city and established themselves there. When they became crowded, they
moved, not back to their northern fastnesses, but down to other cities
and towns of ours. And they are there still. The towns which we
destroyed, hoping thus to stay them, they rebuilt. It is true that for
the most part they have been peaceable and orderly; but it is also true
that when fresh bands have come upon us, these settled ones have sided
with them against us. This is where blood is spilled. They may be trying
to find peace for themselves, and a land to rest in, but slowly and
surely they are either absorbing us or driving us into the sea. This is
what we must face to-day."
Two or three nodded, half reluctantly, as though they recognized a fact
long known, and held aloof so far as might be. Pomponius glanced from
grave face to grave face. His voice dropped a note lower. Not for
nothing had he been trained to speak in the Forum before men.
"Friends, the fault of the whole matter lieth with us, in Roman hands.
If Romans lose Britain, and if Saxons win it, it will be the fault of
none but Romans."
A murmur went through the room, wordless, speaking more plainly than
words. Pomponius raised his hand.
"Have patience, I pray you, and hear me! What I shall say is, in a
manner, treason against our divinity, our lord Emperor, yet before now
truth hath been found in treason. The crux of the whole matter lieth in
the fact that we, Romans, lords paramount of Britain, have divided
ourselves into two sects--religious, if you will; but when was not
religion used for State purposes, or State purposes for religion? You
cannot divide the two. We are polytheists, worshipping the ancient gods
of our fathers, or we are Augustans, worshipping the divinity of our
lord Emperor. And of the two, which is the true faith hath nothing at
all to do with the matter. The point lieth in the fact that there are
two. Beset as we are by outer dangers, it needs small wit to see that
our sole hope is in unity of thought and purpose. This division, for
ourselves, was bad enough. It was worse when we found pitted against us
two other religions, of two separate peoples here with whom we had to
deal. One, the religion of the ancient Gaels, which we found here, and
which was druidical and wholly abhorrent in our eyes; the other, the
religion of the Goths and Saxons, which, like our own elder faith, was
polytheistic.
"You know that Rome's policy hath ever been to absorb, to make bone of
her bone and flesh of her flesh what she hath taken for her own. And
herein lies her true greatness. But Gaelic or British gods would never
unite with Roman gods; it was an alien creed, with no single point in
common. Gothic gods would so unite,--mark you that,--for Gothic religion
differed from Roman only in the names of its gods and in a coarser fibre
which with us had been refined away. What did we, therefore,--we, that
is the Romans our fathers,--for the furthering of our purposes and for
the glory which was Rome's? We took the Goths unto ourselves and gave
them our religion. We taught them that their Hesus was none but Bacchus,
their Freya our Venus, their Thor our Jupiter Tonans. But could we do
this with the Gaels, who had nothing in common with us, whose
meaningless rites could have no part in the beliefs of the commonwealth?
No. Did we therefore give them the privileges of citizenship, the right
to hold offices of priesthood and State, which we gave to those Goths
and Saxons who came among us peaceably? No. We made Saxons our allies
against alien gods, and we did wisely. They fought side by side with us,
they tilled our lands, and were our equals. And so long as the old faith
was among us, all was well. For to my mind, what I shall tell you, and
nothing else, is the secret of Rome's power. Armies alone can hold a
captive people for no longer than steel is bared, and Rome knew this.
But her religion took up the work where her armies had left it. Being
eclectic, it embraced all gods,--although this is not to say that every
Roman worshipped all of these,--and those peoples whom she conquered
were not ravished with violence from their creeds and forced to kneel at
unlike altars. Each nation might find a parallel for its gods in Rome's
pantheon, and so might be brought without shock into Rome's fold. For,
take a man's gods from him, whatsoever they may be that he worships, and
give him nothing in return to which he can hold, and at once you take
from him all that anchors him to the rationalities of life.
"Therefore I say that so long as the old faith endured, it was well with
us. But the worship of the Emperor's divinity was instituted; and it was
something in which these people could find no parallel to their own
gods. They said: 'Why should we worship one of whose powers we know
nothing? Your gods, which it seems after all are our gods under new
names, are well enough. We want no other, who is no god of ours. How may
this Emperor of yours be god as well as man?' But we Romans upheld this
new religion, with powers of government, with grants of land, with the
erection of new temples, with all manner of benefices, for those who
would think as we thought. To those who would not, we said: 'Worship as
we worship, or it will be the worse for you.' Who reaped the benefits of
this change? We, the Augustans, who had conformed to it. Who paid the
penalty? Those who clung to the old order, and so defied us, becoming
insurgent. Romans became divided even as Goths, taking part with them
against their own people. And herein were we in grave error, for we
needed all our strength, not to fight each other, but to fight our
common foes. Now it is our turn to pay the penalty for this, and it
shall be a heavy one.
"The insurgents, few in number as they were, and not powerful, bribed
the Saxon chieftains, who would else have lived peaceably enough among
us, by promises of plunder if they would join with them. And the
chieftains were the more readily persuaded to this, since it was a
righteous thing to uphold the old gods, and if there was reward for
doing it, in the way of booty, so much the better. The Romans who set
them on were pleased; the gods were pleased; the chieftains were
pleased. So here you have it, friends, the prime cause of our undoing.
It is our own people, of our blood and our speech, who, rebelling
against law and order, are stirring these Saxons against us. It is they
who have razed Augustan temples, destroyed holy relics, and slain
Augustan priests--they, and not the Saxons. I say again: when Britain
passes from our hands, it will not be by Saxon means, but primarily by
Roman treachery. And Saxons, profiting by our internal strife and their
own position, will reap the benefits."
He ceased; and his words hung in the silence of the room. They looked at
him, grave bearded men; and the truth of what he said was in their
faces.
"You speak as though we were in fault," said an old man, querulously,
far down the room. "Our fathers, not we, have done these things."
"Our fathers were Romans, and we are Romans, and their mistakes are our
heritage," said Pomponius, sternly.
"Let us have care that we leave no such heritage to those who shall call
us fathers."
"Britain is not out of our hands yet," said Aurelius. "And it is for us
to keep her there.--How?"
Again there fell a silence. Out of it a musing voice spoke.
"No troops in Britain; Gaul, our nearest help, beset by Huns.... But
Gaul is our only hope. We must ask AEtius for a legion as we did two
years ago."
A shrug went around the assembly. Plainly it said: "There is no other
thing to do."
"If we could but agree to act together in this!" said the old man. Men
called him Paulus Atropus, and bore with his senility for sake of what
he had been. "It would seem that in this matter there can be no room for
argument; we all must think alike for once. But should we not wait to
hear from those of our colleagues who are absent, before we move?"
"What need?" Aurelius asked feverishly. "As you say, they can but think
as we do. There is nothing else to be done; and if we wait to hear from
them, and to discuss pro and con, we shall gain nothing and lose time.
It is for their safety, as well as ours."
"I think we should wait until they can join with us," said Paulus
stubbornly. The talk eddied over his head.
"Who will go?" said Caius Valens; and men turned their eyes to Marius.
He was the only man in active service there, though not the only one who
had seen it. "It needs one swift and sure."
"Why not Marius?" Pomponius said, with a friendly glance at Marius.
"Once before he hath come from Gaul to our aid; he can win to AEtius
quicker than any of us; he is a soldier, and knows conditions, and what
to ask for."
Eudemius made a gesture of protest.
"Friends, believe that I, too, have the best interests of our country at
heart," he said quickly. "But Marius, who shortly becomes my son, is the
one hope of my old age. I would not call him back from what is his duty;
if this mission falls to him I shall be the first to speed him. But what
need is there for such frantic haste? There have been attacks before, as
severe as this one. Also this is not the first time we have thought of
appealing for help. The need is no more imperative now than many times
before. Therefore, if he be chosen, I pray you a little time. To-day is
his betrothal; in three days his marriage. Until then, leave him to me!"
Few of the lords present but knew Eudemius's story and the conditions
under which his daughter's marriage would take place; and none who knew
did not sympathize.
"A week would be time," said Pomponius, and one or two nodded. But
Aurelius struck his clenched fist upon the table.
"Nay!" he shouted. "I say that he should start this day! It is _my_ city
that burns!"
"I am ready," said Marius. "You all know that I shall start this night
if you will it so. But I promise you that this delay shall harm us
nothing, since I shall send ahead at once to post relays to the coast,
and give command for a vessel to be in waiting at Rutupiae. As to whether
I shall be successful, that is another question. It seems to me that
AEtius will have need of all his men for himself. They are none too
many."
"Do the best you can, and it will be all we ask," said Pomponius.
Old Paulus, at his end of the table, leaned his face forward upon his
hand.
"Friends, this is the first time in the history of the world that Rome
hath withheld aid from her sons who needed it, and cast them off to
shift as best they could. And I have lived to see it! I have indeed
lived too long!"
Again heads nodded, gravely and sombrely. Paulus was not alone in his
bitterness. For the first time in the history of the world men stood
aside and watched their country falling into ruins before their eyes
with a swiftness greater in proportion to its mighty length of life than
ever country had fallen before; and it was a bitter sight.
Pomponius, courtly, ever mindful of others, was first to shake off the
gloom to which Paulus had given voice.
"Friends, we must not make this a solemn betrothal feast!" he said. "We
have agreed--the most of us--that the danger is not over pressing. Let
us then set aside care while we may, for these few days, at least. Our
host did not bring us together to see long faces. While we live, let us
live!" He turned to Marius. "For sake of thee and thy bride, friend, we
will forget as we may the clouds which threaten us. Look to it that when
shortly we call on you, we find no cause to regret it."
"You shall find no cause," said Marius.
That afternoon Aurelius departed with his people. He would see for
himself what damage had been wrought upon his city, and whether or not
it was still in the hands of the insurgents and barbarians. He was in no
humor for betrothal feasts and merrymaking when his city was lost. He
had come there hoping to obtain help and prompt concerted action on the
part of his colleagues. He could not get it; so he would go away again.
But he left behind him Felix, his pale-eyed son, who was wounded and
wore his arm in a sling, and for doing so gave no man his reasons.
V
Wardo, the tall Saxon, sword-girt and muffled in his cloak, lighted his
torch at the cresset which burned at the head of the passage behind the
storerooms, and started down the slimy steps leading to the dungeon
levels. Evening had fallen, fragrant with warm earth-scents and the
odors of flowers; a silent night of Spring, when Earth slept and
gathered strength for the new life she should bring forth.
All that could be heard of the high feasting going on in the great house
was a haunting snatch of music drifting now and again into the night on
the soft air. Yet Wardo knew that in the Hall of Columns, with its rare
frescoes, its lights and perfumes and flowers, men and women, robed in
the splendor of their wealth and station, were drinking the health of
the betrothed pair from cups which each had cost ten times its weight in
gold; that wrestlers, brought from the arena at Uriconium, were striving
with sweat and strain for the purse of twenty sestertii offered to the
winner; and dancing girls from far Arabia were posing to the plaintive
wail of reeds and the thin tinkle of cymbals. But of all this the rear
courts knew nothing. Here was only hurrying to and fro of jaded slaves
laden with amphorae of wine and oil and honey; the smell of roasting
meats, the clash of pots and kettles. Here, behind the scenes, were the
ropes and pulleys which set the stage that the actors might strut
through their lordly parts; here was no relaxation and luxurious ease,
but labor stern and unremitting, since always pleasure must be paid for
by toil.
But Wardo, on his special mission, was exempt from menial tasks. He
descended the steps, from level to level, in a stone-bound stillness,
the nails in his sandals striking at times faint sparks of light from
the uneven flagging he trod. Near the door of Nicanor's cell he paused.
His light, flung upon rough-hewn walls, showed down three steps the
grated doors of the wine-cellars. Away to his right, down a narrow
pitch-black tunnel, were the walls of the hypocausts behind which fires
roared and ravened. Through these tunnels, in Summer, the furnaces were
approached to be repaired and cleaned.
"If the light fall upon him too suddenly, it may blind him," said Wardo.
"And perhaps he sleeps. I will go softly and make sure."
He thrust his torch into an iron socket in the wall, and went to the
door of Nicanor's prison hole. Here he felt with stealthy hands for the
small wicket, to be shut or opened only from the outside, built in every
cell-door that a warder might hear or see what his prisoner did within.
This he pushed back an inch, carefully, without noise, and bent his ear
to the opening.
So he heard a voice issuing out of the eternal darkness within; a voice
steady and resonant, and sustained as though it had been speaking for
some time. Out of the darkness it reached his ears as a thing
disembodied, seeming scarcely of the earth or of human lips. In it was a
thrill born of the pure joy of creation; prisoned, it yet was free with
a freedom whose limits were the limits of earth and sky and thought,
unchained, recking not of dripping walls nor aching darkness, for these
things were nothing.
"Out of the East three Kings came riding, on padded camels with harness
of gold. One was lord of the kingdom of life, and one of the kingdom of
love, and one of the kingdom of death, and each one had said: 'Behold
me! I am supreme.' But they heard that there lived one mightier than
they; and first they scoffed, and next they marvelled, and then they
came to see. People ran to watch them as they passed upon their journey,
and called them great and mighty; and to himself each said: 'They speak
of me.' Each wore about his neck a torques of gold; and in the first was
set a diamond, and in the second was set a ruby, hot as passion, and in
the third was set a pearl. Slaves walked behind them, bearing hampers
filled with gifts for that one who was mightier than they; forty and
four were the slaves that walked behind them, and the hampers were
covered with cloth of gold.
"So came they to their journey's end at nightfall, when the weary earth
was sinking into rest; and they looked about them for a palace more
splendid than their own, fitting for that one who was mightier than
they. But there were only the houses of the town, and stables. They
asked of strangers where such a palace might be, and none could tell
them. Then asked they if a very great and mighty king had been there,
and folk shook their heads and answered nay. There were many strangers,
and all the inns were full, but there was no mighty king that they had
seen. One said: 'It may be that he goeth in disguise,' and the others
answered: 'That may be so.' So they alighted and went into an inn; and
across the courtyard of the inn, in the stalls under the house where
cattle stood, they saw a group of people, three or four.
"And in the centre of the group a bearded man was kneeling, and beside
him, upon clean straw, lay a Woman and her Child. The Kings stood within
the stable, and their greatness was as a glory of light upon the place.
Chains of gold they wore upon their necks, and rings upon their hands,
and the crowns upon their heads were bright with jewels. They looked at
the Woman that lay upon the straw against her man's knees; and she was
fair and young and tender, and her eyes were full of joy and pain. And
one whispered to them: 'Behold, but now she hath brought a man-child
into the world, here in this place, among sweet-breathing oxen and
lowing kine.' So they looked upon the Child that lay on his Mother's
arm."
The voice stopped short, and silence reeled down upon the world once
more. Before Wardo could move or speak it came again, changed this time
and strained, all the thrill gone out of it and only weariness left, the
voice of one again in chains.
"Eh, thou little Christus, thou hast been brother and comrade both to me
in this my loneliness! But now am I indeed fast stuck in a quagmire of
uncertainty. Wherein did lie thy power? This I must know or ever the
tale can end. I have the Kings, their might and majesty, their robes,
and the gifts they bring. I have thy Mother, young and fair and tender,
with holy eyes. I have her man, who was not sire to thee, his care for
her, his human doubt and questionings. I have the servants of the inn,
the shepherds.--Thou great bully Rag, thou hast stood model more often
than thou knowest!--I have the cattle dozing in the stalls, the tumult
and the shouting of the inn. All this I can paint so that it shall stand
forth quick with life; for give me a word, a thought, an action, and I
can find the tale in it. But on my life I cannot find why men should
worship thee, thou little helpless Child. And until I can, I have no
motive for my tale; a thing eludes me which I cannot catch. What power
didst hold over men that they should bow to thee? Wherein did lie thy
strength? For men will worship only that which is stronger than
they--and how wert thou stronger? Was it through fear?--who would fear a
babe?--A child, little and ugly and very red, as I have seen babes in
the arms of slave-women in the mart at Londinium, with a crumpled mouth
wet with his mother's milk--in the name of the high gods, what should
men see in such a thing to worship? Thus ever do I question, and until I
find my answer the tale is not complete."
There was a restless movement in the dark, a soft shuffle of sandalled
feet pacing up and down, endlessly up and down. The voice dropped to a
broken mutter in which but a word now and then was to be caught.
"Oh, for a ray of sun or moon to tell if it be day or night! The
darkness beats upon mine eyelids like a thousand hammers, until my brain
is sick and reeling.... Hath one ever made of this a tale before me, I
wonder? The girl did not say. Where is she now, that black-haired love
of Hito's? Is she caught and brought back like a rabbit to the kennels
of the hounds? That is quite likely, and will be no fault of mine."
Again the voice stopped, and with it the pacing footsteps.
"Thou here, Momus?" Nicanor said suddenly. "So then; it must be time for
food. Thou canst tell that, graybeard; if thou couldst tell whether day
or night time, I'd carve an ivory figure of thee and hold all thy kind
in honor. Maybe they will forget us again, as they have forgot us
before. If so, soon I must eat thee, friend, and this will grieve me,
less for thy sake than for mine own."
"Who hath he here?" Wardo muttered in perplexity. He placed his lips to
the slit and spoke aloud.
"Nicanor!"
Instant silence fell, while one might have counted ten. Then Nicanor's
voice, keen and quiet, said:
"Who calls?"
"I, Wardo," answered Wardo, feeling for his eight-inch-long key. "I will
get my light and enter, for I have news for thee."
He got his torch, unlocked the door, and entered, locking it behind him,
for his orders were strict. The light fell upon Nicanor, sitting on the
floor, back against the wall, hands clasping his knees, and glistened in
his eyes, untamed beneath their shaggy thatch of brow. He was leaner
than ever, and his face was gaunt. He blinked uncertainly at the flare
and turned his head from it.
"I begged Hito that he let me be the one to bring thy food," said Wardo,
and spoke as one in self-excuse. "But not until to-day could I win him
to it. Now I have come to tell thee--" He hesitated; started again with
a rush of words. "Thou art sentenced to the mines, with certain others,
and I am ordered to convey thee thither."
"So?" said Nicanor.
"It seems to hold scant interest for thee!" said Wardo curiously, half
piqued.
"At this moment, little man, bread and a bone hold more of interest for
me than all the mines in Britain," said Nicanor, with a laugh. "Give me
these, and I'll show thee how much I have of interest."
Wardo found himself falling into the half ironic raillery of his
prisoner's mood.
"There should be plenty of both when this night's feasting is over. I'll
see thou hast thy share--"
"What feasting? Is it night?" Nicanor asked.
"True; I forgot thou couldst not know," said Wardo. "To-night is held
the betrothal feast of our lady and the lord Marius."
The careless figure on the floor stiffened, as it seemed, into stone as
it sat. Nicanor turned his head, slowly, and looked up at his gaoler.
The movement had in it something of the stealthiness of an animal
crouching to spring.
"Betrothed--to-night?" he muttered. The hands about his knees tightened
until their muscles strained under the brown skin; but the light was
bad, and Wardo's eyes were not over keen to see what he was not looking
for.
"Why, yes," said Wardo. "It is held in the Hall of Columns. By this
time, without doubt, the kiss is given and taken, the pledge is passed,
and our little lady by rights is in another's keeping. It wants only
the marriage three days hence."
Nicanor rose lithely to his feet, pressing back his mane of hair with
both hands.
"Wardo, we two have been friends, have we not, ever since we put each
the other to sleep with blows over the baker's black-eyed daughter?"
Wardo looked at him.
"Ay, that is so," he said sincerely.
"Then I shall ask of thee a thing which will put all thy friendship to
the test," said Nicanor. His voice was rapid and tense, and Wardo began
to look at him in surprise. "Let me go free and unhindered from here for
two hours. I give my word that when that time is over I will be at any
place thou shalt name, to go with thee willingly thy prisoner. If aught
untoward befall, no blame shall come to thee. It will be easily done;
the stewards are busy, and I shall have care not to be seen."
"But--body of me!--this is impossible!" Wardo cried, confounded. "I am
friend to thee, but I am my lord's gaoler, for the time, and it would
betray my lord for me to do this. Wherefore dost desire it? What will it
avail thee--freedom for two hours?"
"It will avail me much," Nicanor answered. "Have I ever broken faith
with thee or any man?"
"Nay," said Wardo. "Thou wilt steal, as I have known, but thou wilt not
lie, and I would have thy word as soon as another's bond. Sure never was
there such a strange fellow--"
"Then believe that I will not break faith now. How may our lord be the
worse for it? Thou hast ever been friend to me, man; we have drunk
together and feasted together and starved together; we have fought
together and clasped hands together. Dost remember a day of freedom we
two spent together, in the wine-shop to which I took thee, on the island
in the fords, when we and the five drunken gladiators fought until the
watch fell upon us, and how we escaped, both battered and bloody, and
left the gladiators in their hands?"
Wardo grinned regretfully.
"Eh, that was a great day! I have the scars yet. We have seen good days
together, thou and I."
"And they are gone over now, and done with. Here we part, I to the
mines, thou to the arms of thy fat Hito, I wish thee joy of him!
Comrade, dost remember that when we say farewell here it will not be for
to-day, nor to-morrow, but for all long time to come? I to the mines,
and who enters there comes not forth again."
Wardo clenched his fists.
"I know--I know! I'd give a finger if it had not to be!" He stood a
moment, his flaxen head bent, lost in troubled thought. Quite suddenly
he turned upon Nicanor, who, lynx-eyed, watched. "See then; I owe fealty
to my lord, but thou art my friend, and this thing I cannot do. We have
starved together and fought together, thou and I! The gods judge me, but
thou art my friend! I have money--not much, but more than nothing. Take
thou it--I'll leave the way open--and escape. Or, if thou wilt,
overpower me on the road to Gobannium--there'll be but two men with me,
and I'll see to them. Save thyself, and leave the rest to me."
Nicanor laid his left hand on Wardo's shoulder. Their eyes were on a
level; tall men they were, both, one dark, lean, steel-muscled as a
great cat; the other fair, more fully fleshed, massive in bulk as a
tawny bull.
"Leave thee to face double punishment, mine as a runaway slave, and
thine as his abettor?" said Nicanor, and laughed softly. "Nay, thou art
_my_ friend, and the gods judge me if I put thee in this plight. I did
not know I had such a friend in the world. Many things have I learned in
this time of darkness, and this have I also found."
Wardo hung his head, without speech. He thrust out his hand abruptly,
and Nicanor's hand closed over it. They stood a moment, in a silence
which needed no words from either.
"By the soul of my mother, I shall do it!" Wardo said then, huskily.
"By the soul of my mother, thou shalt not!" said Nicanor. "When I
escape, it shall be when thou canst not be brought to task for it. But
if thou wouldst prove true friend, leave the way open for two hours.
More will not help me now."
"So be it," said Wardo. "Here is the key. When we go, let us lock the
door behind us. Return here, then, and await me within. But, Nicanor, if
thou art not here, I shall make no search."
"I shall be here," said Nicanor, briefly.
Wardo took his torch; they left the cell. Nicanor locked the door,
thrust the key into his belt, and without a word started up the passage
into the darkness. Two hours speed swiftly when they hold life and death
and all that lies between.
VI
Nicanor gained the passage behind the storerooms, at the head of which
the cresset flared, and reached the court, meeting no one. The cool air
flooded him, and he raised his head and breathed it deeply. For eight
long months his lips had panted for it. As he had foreseen, the court
was deserted; all the household slaves were busy in this way and that
about the feast. He cast a calculating glance upward at the crescent
moon, struggling through banking clouds.
"Till she touches the top of the stunted lime," he muttered, and crossed
the court with his long noiseless stride.
A distant strain of music wandered out across the night; and at all it
whispered of that which was not for him he set his teeth with a
smothered groan. Past silent courts he went, avoiding the teeming
kitchens, and through narrow passages and empty rooms. A slave boy with
a trayful of broken meats passed him where he hung concealed in the deep
shadow of one court. He made a motion forward, his hungry eyes gleaming;
drew back in silence and let the boy pass on. It was many hours since
he had tasted food, but he dared not risk betrayal.
So he gained a certain small doorway in one of the lesser courts, a deep
recess, merely, in the wall, which led to no room. Just inside it steep
steps showed in the moonlight, leading upward. Nicanor listened a moment
to make certain that all was still, and, as one sure of himself and what
he meant to do, ran up them,--past where a landing opened on the stairs,
with glimpses of a pillared gallery beyond; and still up, until the
flight ended in a long and bare passage. Here it was very dark, with
only the moonlight coming through narrow windows of thick and muddy
glass. Nicanor looked about him as one who would know if all was as he
had left it last. A ladder lay upon the floor beneath the square of an
opening in the roof. This he leaned against the wall, mounted it, and
slid back the hatch, which ran in wooden grooves. The ladder creaked
beneath him as he swung his long body forward and gripped the edges of
the opening. Until he had made sure of his hold he did not leave the
ladder; then swung clear, shifting his hands one by one into better
position, and raised himself slowly, by sheer practised strength of
wrist and arm, until his head and shoulders rose above the opening. With
quick effort, then, he flung himself forward upon the roof, writhed
himself through, and stood erect.
Around him were the roofs of the separate apartments of the villa,
silvered gray where moonlight touched them. Flat and sloping and towered
were these, and broken by the intervals of the courts, where was massed
the heavy blackness of foliage. The night air swept cool around him;
above him was the high vault of heaven, cloudless now, where a young
moon rode in the loneliness of space. To his left as he stood was the
squat dome of the Hall of Columns, with light showing through the series
of narrow windows which encircled it. And these windows were barely four
feet above the level of the roof from which the dome sprang.
Nicanor started across the tiles, black against the moonlight, clawing
his way along steep and treacherous slopes and gliding along the leads,
sure-footed as a cat, toward the nearest window in the dome which would
look down into the hall below. This he gained in safety, and found that
it had been left half open, for ventilation. He leaned over the ledge,
gazing downward; and a ripple of music from hidden players rose to him
above a humming undercurrent of sound.
Below him, the great hall was a riot of color. On its hundred columns of
polished marble, veined in green and rose, light played in sliding
gleams from great lamps of wrought bronze hung by chains around the dome
and between the pillars, each with many lights floating in cups of
perfumed oil. The floors, of white marble, were overlaid with silken
rugs of glowing colors, with silver matting and with tawny skins of
beasts. The walls were wide panels of mosaics set in stucco, vivid with
red and blue, green and azure, picturing scenes of hunting and carousal.
Perfumes burned in silver jars set on pedestals of black marble at
intervals along the walls, sending forth faint spirals of smoke on the
heated air. The long table, lined on either side with men and women, was
directly beneath the dome. Looking down upon it Nicanor saw only a
confusion of gold and silver dishes, with the ruby glow of Samian plates
and cups, gleaming among strewn leaves and blossoms. The garments of the
guests were as a fringe of color about the table's edge; purple,
saffron, and gold, crimson, green, and white.
At the head of the board, raised somewhat above the other seats, three
figures had risen,--one, in the centre, tall, spare, stooping somewhat,
in spite of his brave attire; at his left, another as tall as he, but
broader, more compactly built, with the square shoulders of a military
man, richly dressed also in a scarlet tunic embroidered in gold, with
heavy bands of gold about his arms. And at the right of the central
figure, the third, young and slender and all in white, with a head-dress
of gold in which two poppies flamed upon either temple, and from which
long jewelled ends hung to her knees. A veil fell behind her, over her
dark hair, of Persian gauze, filmy as mist, in which threads of gold
like prisoned sunbeams were woven. Her face, upheld proudly as though
she scorned to give way before the eyes upon her, was white, but her
lips were scarlet as the flowers she wore. A jewelled girdle fell about
her hips, but on her bare arms were neither gems nor gold. The central
figure was speaking, but his words could not be heard. He took the
girl's hand, and laid it in the man's hand, and held them so; and the
tones of the man's voice repeating after him rose to Nicanor's eyrie,
although the words were lost. There followed a pause, in which the girl
drooped her head, but all faces were turned toward her, and Nicanor knew
that her lips were whispering the solemn "Where thou art, Caius, there
am I, Caia"; and he clenched his teeth, and for a moment the scene below
him swam in blood-red mist.
She was lost to him,--always he had known it, known the hopelessness of
his passion, all the sweeter for the bitterness which was in it,--but
never until then had the knowledge so come home to him. He would have
liked to force his way in among them, these smirking, soft patricians,
and tear her away from them by right of his savage strength; in his hot
eyes was murder, and in his heart raging hate and a love as raging. He
could have killed her, even; if she might not be his, he would have her
no man's. His hand shot out as though in fact the knife were in it; in
fancy he saw himself driving it home straight and true above the heart
whose throbbing he had watched--the heart that had throbbed for him
only, the slave, out of all the world of men. He could feel his dagger
bite through her white breast as he had felt the soft slice of flesh
under his blade before; he could see the blood well up around the knife,
slowly at first, with a quick, hot spurt when the steel was withdrawn.
So she would remain all his, and none might take her from him. His
thoughts maddened him. He groaned aloud and dropped his face in his
hands on the stone ledge of the window, and the moonlight touched him, a
strange figure of desperate longings, desperate bewilderment and
rebellion and pain. He shook to the primal passions of love and hate
that tore him,--love for one, hate for all that had gone to make the
conditions of his life what they must be; according to the measure of
his untamed strength he suffered, in fierce revolt against the mocking
Fates who were stronger than he.
A clapping of hands, sharp and crackling, roused him. He brushed the
hair from his eyes, and again looked down upon them, so far below, so
far above him. The central figure had withdrawn, but the betrothed
couple, hand clasped in hand, still stood together. The table was in
commotion; women pelted the two with flowers, and men were on their feet
and shouting. Nicanor saw Marius bend his head and kiss Varia upon the
lips. So was their covenant sealed before the law; in sight of all the
world her lord had claimed her, and she was no longer all her own.
High in his eyrie Nicanor laughed, with a flash of his old lawless
triumph.
"Thy lips are not the first on hers, sir bridegroom! Her head hath lain
on another breast than thine; other arms than thine have held her, O my
lord! What if this also were to be known? Where then would be thy
triumph?" He raised his clenched hands fiercely, sending forth his empty
challenge to the heedless stars. "Thy wife is not all thine, my lord!
Her body thou mayst purchase and possess, but her soul is mine, mine,
mine, for all time and all eternity! I, who waked it from its empty
sleep--I, who taught it first to live and love--I am her soul's lord
even as thou art her body's master--I, the slave!"
His voice stopped on the words, changed, and grew strained with infinite
love and longing, all its fierce triumph gone.
"Eh, thou very sweet, we dreamed awhile, and the dream was sweeter than
ever was dream before, and it is over! The wound in thy child's heart
will heal, for thy love is a child's love, and when it may grow no more
will fade and die. Yet it may be that it shall be never quite forgotten;
that in after days a word, a song, the fragrance of a flower, will bring
to thee dim memories of what is gone. But my love must last, to burn and
sear since it may not bless me, for it is not a child's love, beloved!
We had no right to happiness, thou and I. But wherefore not? And who
decreed it so? I may not have one last look from thee, one touch of thy
tender hands,--O little hands that have clung to mine!--and all my heart
is a tomb where my love lies buried. Long months have I lain in
darkness, but in my heart was light, for I dreamed of the time when I
should come to thee. Now all is dark, and my strength hath gone from me;
I am a child that cries for a stronger hand to lean on and can find
none. The dreams which I had are gone from me, and my tongue is lead. In
all the earth is none so lonely as am I!"
Again he buried his face in his hands, crouching against the wall
beneath the window. The music rose to him like a breath from that
scarcely vanished past, playing upon him,--calloused body and sensitive
tortured soul,--conjuring forth visions of dead golden hours, weaving
its own poignant spell. Voices from the hall mingled with it, in talk
and heedless laughter; healths were drunk and speeches made. When life
was gay and careless, when wine was red and eyes were bright and faces
fair, who would pause to give a thought to sorrow?
Minutes dropped away, link by link, from the golden chain of Time. All
at once Nicanor raised his head, slowly, like one unwilling to meet once
more what must be met. The loneliness of the moonlight revealed the
scarring passion in his face, signs visible of the chaos of inward
tumult which tore him, of the slow forces gathering for the inevitable
battle waged somewhen, somehow, by every mortal soul. And that face,
gaunt, with haunted, shadowed eyes, looked all at once strangely purged
of the heat of its lawlessness, for on it was the first presage of the
fierce slow travail of spirit rending flesh.
"What is this that I have done!" he said unsteadily. "I have boasted
unworthily, ravening like a brute beast in my triumph over thee, and by
my boasting have I shamed thee, thou lily among women. Was I blind, that
I could not see that thine is the triumph, over my passion and over me?
Thou art another's, O my Lady whom I love so well; and every thought I
hold of thy caresses doeth thee dishonor. For thou art pure and holy,
and though it puts all worlds between us, yet I would not have thee
otherhow. Yet I cannot but remember thy voice, thine eyes, thy little
clinging hands, the perfume of thy hair; they are all that is left to
me--dear memories, bitter sweet! But I may not boast of them, for thy
fair fame, which thou first didst teach me to honor, is thus much in my
hands, and I, even the outcast and despised, have it still to guard thee
in this little thing. Once was I filled with base pride for that I had
made thee love me in answer to my love; and oh, a blind, blind fool was
I, not knowing that my love for thee was then no love at all! But thou,
in thy white innocence, didst place thine hands upon mine eyes, and the
scales fell from them, and I saw thee and myself, and was humbled. Now
never while I live shall thy dear name pass my lips, lest through me one
breath of evil blow upon thee. I cannot die for thee, beloved, since
that were a fate too easy for the sport of thy high gods; I may not even
live for thee. This is all that I can do! This is what we have done,
each for the other: thy soul I wakened; thou in turn didst give to me a
soul within my soul, wakening it to what it never knew before,--new
dreams, new ambitions, new desires. For I saw through thee the great
world which is thy world, wherein lieth all for which men long and
strive. One glimpse I had; and now the gates are closed, and the light
is gone, and I am thrust back into outer darkness. And it all is
finished!"
A peal of laughter rose to him; a burst of music; a half-hundred voices
shouting _Vivas_ to Marius and his bride. He looked down once more into
the light and color of the great hall, seeing one there, only, out of
all the brilliant throng,--one fair and drooping, with scarlet poppies
framing her white face. Long and long he looked, as though he would burn
her image upon his heart and mind forever, his lady whom he had lost and
who was never his. So he turned away, back into the outer darkness, and
crossed the roofs again, and the blackness of the manhole swallowed him.
* * * * *
Wardo, cloaked and spurred and ready for the start, opened the cell door
and thrust his torch within. The light fell upon a bowed figure sitting
on the floor, motionless, with face hidden in its folded arms, and
nothing showing save a crown of rough black hair.
"Thou here?" said Wardo. "Well, I am sorry."
Nicanor looked up. His face, white with more than its prison pallor, was
drawn as though by bodily pain.
"Ay," he said dully, "I am here."
"I would thou wert not," Wardo muttered. "Come, then."
"I have a friend here, whom I would take with me," Nicanor said, without
rising. "Stand still, and I will call him."
He whistled softly through his teeth, a gentle hissing, until a shadow
seemed to stir from the far corner of the cell where the torchlight did
not fall. Forth into the light hobbled a great gray rat, gaunt, and
scarred, and lame. At sight of Wardo it whisked back into the gloom;
again Nicanor whistled; again it appeared, and again vanished. A third
time, emboldened, it essayed, and came to Nicanor warily, dazed in the
unwonted light. Nicanor threw a bit of cloth torn from his tunic over
its head, fastening it so that the beast could neither bite nor see,
tied its forelegs together, and without more ado thrust it inside his
tunic. Wardo gaped.
"Well, of all playmates! Will he not scratch thee?"
"Not while the cloth is about his head," Nicanor answered. There came an
odd note of pride into his voice. "Momus and I are old friends. I maimed
him; he hath bitten me. Now we understand each other. I have taught him
to fight,--he is quite as intelligent as Hito,--and there is not a rat
in the dungeons that can beat him. Man, you should see him fight!"
"I'd like to!" quoth Wardo, promptly. "Maybe, at Cunetio or Corinium we
shall find some trainer to try a main with thee. Now come; we have
tarried long enough."
In the slaves' court Hito was fuming over the departure of his deputy
and the half dozen prisoners. As Wardo and Nicanor approached he leered
upon them balefully.
"So, white-face!" he taunted. "Art recovered from thy madness?"
"Ha, fair Julia, how art thou?" Nicanor greeted him imperturbably, so
that Hito cursed him. For word of Hito's dance had spread, and even his
lords had laughed at him.
"Oh, ay, I remember!" he snarled. "This is to teach thee not to call thy
betters names. Were it not for thy insubordination, I should have
cancelled thy sentence to the mines. It is not well to laugh at Hito! I
have a doubt in my mind that thou wert not so mad as it seemed."
"I have no doubt in mine that I was not so mad as thou," said Nicanor,
with all cheerfulness.
Hito glared, and Wardo mounted and made haste to get his party under
way. His assistant snapped the chains on Nicanor's wrists which bound
him to his fellows, and got on his own horse. They went out through the
gate, opened by a sleepy porter, and took the road.
All through that night they plodded steadily. Once a horseman overtook
them, riding furiously; shouted something which none could catch, and
was gone in darkness. Their road led them over the downs and through the
heather by the little station of Bibracte to Calleva, where four roads
joined; and on through the level and open country around Corinium,
where, to south and west, among shaded groves, they caught glimpses of
palaces and stately homes. So, in time, they came to the scarred hills
of the great iron district of the west.
At each station where they stopped for rest and refreshment on their
three days' journey, Wardo was taken aside by strangers, who talked
earnestly. "The state of the country," he told his men, with his tongue
in his cheek. Most of these strangers were fair-skinned Saxons, like
himself; indeed, the number of these was significant. Wardo, coming from
the south, had to tell what he knew of recent happenings there. This was
not much; his interlocutors, it would seem, knew more than he.
Especially did they inquire to whom he belonged, and what he was doing
with his charges.
They crossed the Sabrina in a flat-bottomed barge, and were in Britannia
Secunda, the ancient country of the Silures. Here, from Uriconium to
Glevum on the Sabrina, and south to Leucarum on the Via Julia, were
scattered the iron mines from which their owners drew inexhaustible
wealth. The one controlled by Eudemius lay five Roman miles west of the
river, and was reckoned one of the largest and richest in the section.
In it were said to be employed over five hundred men, mostly prisoners
from the various estates of Eudemius, and overseers.
VII
The gallery, pitch-black and narrow, was dotted with moving lights which
wandered here and there, each a restless will-o'-the-wisp. It was very
damp, and from somewhere came a monotonous drip of water. The tapping of
picks sounded incessantly out of the darkness, and occasionally there
were hoarse voices raised in wanton curses or harsh commands. Shores of
heavy timbers supported the sides and roof of the tunnel, looming
grotesquely gigantic as some passing light touched them; this was the
newest of the workings, and so far the richest.
A light and a clanking of chains drew near down the tunnel; and eight
men, chained like mules, and loaded with baskets of ore, came painfully
over the uneven ground to the chamber of the main shaft, where a second
gang waited to unload them. Each party was in charge of its own
overseer, who carried a whip and went armed to the teeth. It was easier
to use men than to lower animals into the galleries for the work;
besides, the superintendent wished to save his horses.
The shaft, through which men ascended and descended by means of long
series of ladders, opened out into a chamber, roughly circular in
shape, from which the galleries branched off in all directions. It ran
through four different levels, the top one, and the oldest, something
over fifteen feet underground, the lowest not quite seventy. On each
level the ore was handled in the same way; brought to the central shaft
in baskets by men, and carried to the surface by other men who spent
their lives toiling up and down the endless ladders, with baskets
strapped upon their backs. It was primitive work, and barbarous, but it
at least served the purpose of getting rid, in short order, of
insubordinate slaves. Earth from the tunnellings was treated in like
fashion; and every timber used for building up the walls was lowered
from level to level by ropes. Accidents were many and appalling.
Sometimes a huge stick slipped from its lashings and crashed downward
into the bowels of the earth, knocking men off the ladders in its course
as though they had been flies. Sometimes a ladder gave way, hurling
screaming wretches into eternity; sometimes men were buried in sudden
falls of earth. Also the ladder men, who necessarily went unchained,
died like rats from heart trouble brought on by their constant climbing;
and others were to be driven into their places.
The overseer of the second gang watched the loading of the baskets
strapped to his men's backs, noted the time on his clepsydra, which
stood on a near-by ledge, and started the men one by one, in quick
succession. He knew to a fraction of time how long the trip to the
surface should take, but to make assurance more sure, each carrier, on
his return, brought a check stamped with the exact minute of arrival by
the overseer who had received the ore above. If this check showed that
more time had been consumed than was necessary for the ascent and
descent, there was punishment swift and sure for that luckless one who
had lingered.
The chained slaves, with their empty baskets, filed off again into the
gallery from which they had come.
The shaft chamber, the centre of its floor pierced by the black hole
leading down to the next and lowest level, was lighted dimly by lamps
and candles standing upon shelves which jutted from the earthen walls.
From all the galleries radiating from it, files of men, staggering under
weighted baskets, kept coming to be relieved of their loads by their
unchained fellow-workers. Every moment a man started up the ladder,
clawing his way at top speed out of sight in the darkness of the shaft,
like a grotesque, huge monkey. No lashing, no punishment, could get more
than four such round trips out of a man without a period of rest equal
to at least two trips. When it came to this point, he would merely lose
his hold from sheer exhaustion and fall from the ladder. And when picked
up by the crew at the bottom of the shaft, he was fit for nothing but to
be thrown like carrion into the nearest unused pit, walled in with a
half-dozen shovelfuls of earth, and left at last to rest.
The overseer by the shaft glanced at his water-clock, raised a reed to
his lips, and blew a shrill whistle. From level to level and from
gallery to gallery this was taken up and repeated in fainter cadences,
and with it the insistent tapping of the picks ceased. One by one men
began to hurry forth from the galleries, making for the ladders which
led to the world of air and sunlight.
Nicanor came from one of the branching tunnels, a pick over his
shoulder, stripped to the waist and grimed with sweat and dirt, his
lean chest and arms thrown out against the murky candle-light. He was
all bone and skin and muscle, hard as nails; but it was the dead,
springless hardness which comes to an athlete badly overtrained, not the
resilient firmness which denotes good condition. He laid his pick on the
ground near the entrance of the tunnel and went to the ladder. Even his
tread had lost something of its cat-like lightness; he walked wearily,
his shoulders bowed. He gave his number to the overseer, who barely
waited to record it in his tablet, with the time he had stopped work,
before starting up the ladder for his half-hour's intermission. Nicanor,
suddenly alert, ran back into the tunnel, reappeared with a bag, which
he held carefully, and started up the ladder also. But at the next
level, thirty feet above, he stopped, instead of keeping on to the
surface.
In the shaft-chamber here were a dozen and odd men gathered, but there
seemed to be no overseer among them. A ring had formed about a space on
the floor under one of the lamps; men craned over the shoulders of those
in front of them. One saw Nicanor and shouted at him.
"Well come, friend! We wait for you and that pretty pet of yours!"
He was a short man who spoke, with arms immensely long and hairy, and a
seamed face of a shortness out of all proportion to its width, as though
crown of head and chin had been pressed together in a vise. Of the
others, all were more or less as black as Ethiopians with grime; many
were shaven and mutilated, with lips slit or an ear gone. Some were
branded; and the backs of many were scored with the marks of floggings,
some long healed, others red and raw. No fouler-mouthed crew of
desperadoes might be found within the island; doomed here for many
offences, they still committed the offence of living. Nicanor was
greeted with a chorus of jests and exclamations.
"Hurry, son, our time is not so long as thy legs."
"Where's thy plaything? Balbus here is ready with his toy to make
ribbons of that ugly beast of thine."
"Let us see now whose boasts will stand repeating."
"I have two asses on thee, Balbus!" one cried, and jingled two copper
coins in his horny palms. Coins were produced from rags by those lucky
enough to own them; others wagered their picks or spades. One bet his
sandals on Nicanor's chances against a man who was willing to lose his
shirt.
Nicanor pushed his way into the ring, where Balbus, grasping a large
black rat, knelt on one knee, ready to loose the strip of cloth that
bound its muzzle. Nicanor shook his gray rat out of the bag, and untied
it.
Men had found such contests cheap as well as exciting, since rats were
over plentiful, and when pitted against their own kind would fight to
the death. This form of amusement was widespread among soldiers and the
lower classes; and there were men who made a business of training rats
and selling them or matching them against all comers. These beasts were
carefully bred from approved fighting stock, and often brought sums
preposterously large.
Balbus let go his black with a yell as Nicanor released the gray, and
the two beasts leaped at each other and closed in the middle of the
ring, rolling over. Men clawed over one another's shoulders to see
better; at opposite sides of the ring the owners squatted, each urging
on his animal with hisses and clapping hands. The light from the smoking
lamps and candles fell upon the crowd, throwing into relief brutal
faces, and eyes gleaming wolfishly, savagely eager for blood.
"The black is on top, the black wins!" one cried, hot-eyed with
excitement, and leaned further and still further into the ring. Another
pulled him back.
"Nay, fool--the gray--look at him, holy gods! My money on the gray! See,
the black bleeds--the gray hath bit him in the throat. Macte! At him
again, graybeard! Lad, a brand-new knife is thine if thou'lt win for me
those sandals of Chilo's! Ah--habet!"
The ring tossed with excitement. Bets were roared from brazen throats;
those on the outskirts of the crowd fought to get a look. And in the
open centre of the tumult a furry ball rolled and bit and squealed and
made bloody sport for those who gloated over it.
A yell, half exultation, half anger, broke from a dozen throats. The
black rat tore himself loose and fled back toward Balbus; the gray stood
in the middle of the ring, triumphant. Both were badly mangled and
drenched with blood, but the black was craven. The followers of the gray
roared their triumph. Balbus seized his rat and flung him back into the
fight, almost on top of the gray, which instantly fastened on him.
But, plainly, the black had had enough. It could be seen that he no
longer attacked; was all on the defensive, trying only to escape. Again
he broke away and crawled toward safety. The ring howled with mingled
derision and delight. Balbus, cursing, his face congested with rage,
again threw him back, and again the vicious gray fell upon him with
teeth and claws.
"Give thy sandals quickly, Chilo!" a voice shouted above the racket.
"The black is down!"
He was, and the gray on top of him, bloodily victorious.
"_Peractum est!_" Nicanor shouted, in the language of the arena; and
sprang to his feet and caught up his bloody pet and held him high in
triumph. But Balbus, his face aflame with fury, strode to where the
black rat lay still twitching, and stamped the heel of his iron-shod
sandal upon its head with such force that its brains and blood were
spattered.
"It was no fair fight!" he cried, turning on those who jeered him. "That
gray beast wrought by magic. Thou hast played a trick!" He shook his
fist in Nicanor's face, glaring.
Nicanor backed away with a laugh. It taunted Balbus beyond endurance; he
lunged forward, his fists clenched. In an instant there had been battle,
on which men would have bet as eagerly as on the combat ended. But there
was a sudden clamor of guards' whistles; a rush from the ladders, and
overseers fell upon the crowd with hissing lashes that left their marks
on backs and thighs. The ring broke up, as men fled like sheep and were
whipped back to their posts.
Soon there was nothing heard but the endless tapping of picks, the thud
of falling earth, and the voices of overseers and the foremen of the
gangs. But Balbus, each time he passed with laden basket the spot where
Nicanor stood tirelessly wielding his heavy pick, scowled at him blackly
and muttered oaths of vengeance. For he was of those who must be taught,
by many ungentle lessons, that one must know how to lose as well as how
to win.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE NIGHT AND THE DAWNING
BOOK V
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Book V
THE NIGHT AND THE DAWNING
I
When Wardo had delivered his charges to the superintendent of the mine
and received a receipt for them from him, he started back, with his
assistants, on his homeward journey. But at Bibracte, where they would
leave the main road and turn due south toward the villa, ten Roman miles
away, he bade his men wait for him at the station until his return.
Instead of striking across country for the villa, he kept along the main
road, riding swiftly and steadily, as one who pursues a definite plan.
He crossed the Tamesis at Pontes, after a night's rest, and at evening
of the next day rode through the marsh-ford at Thorney.
Here he met with one who also was on horseback, splashed to the waist
with mud, for even the high-roads were heavy with the springtime thawing
out of the frost. He was muffled in a cloak, and his spurs were
bloodstained. He hailed Wardo in Latin tinged strongly with a foreign
accent.
"Can you tell me, friend, if there be an inn in this place where soft
beds and good food may be found?"
Wardo was moved to curiosity.
"For yourself?" he asked, spurring up to the stranger's side.
"Nay, for my lord and his wife and daughter. I am sent ahead to find
lodging for them. They are on the road to Rutupiae, to take ship for
Gaul, and travel by way of Londinium, where my lord hath affairs to
settle; but the women have given out and vow that they will go no
farther. So do the chickens break for cover when the hawk swoops."
His voice was slightly contemptuous. He turned his face, covered with a
wiry red beard, upon Wardo. His eyes, small and light, glinted from a
network of wrinkles under reddish brows.
"You are no Roman," he said abruptly.
"Why, no," said Wardo, somewhat surprised, "I am Saxon."
"Like myself," said the stranger, grandly. "Men call me Wulf, the son of
Wulf."
"There is an inn here," said Wardo, without returning information. "I
will show you, if you like. It is kept by Christians, and it is clean."
"Then it will be poor," Wulf grumbled, "and the wine will not be fit for
decent men."
"There you are wrong," said Wardo. "It is where my lord Eudemius stops
with his train when he passeth through here."
"So!" Wulf's glance held awakening curiosity. "The lord Eudemius of the
white villa south of Bibracte?"
"That same," said Wardo, with the pride of a servant in a well-known
master.
"One hears tales of that house these days," said Wulf, casually. "See,
friend, when I have made arrangement for my lords and brought them
hither, is there not a place where we might find a mouthful of good
Saxon ale?"
Wardo hesitated.
"I fear my time is too short," he answered. "Even now I am late--"
"For the maid who awaits thee?" said Wulf, with a chuckle. "Well, I'll
not keep thee then. But this much I'll tell thee now. When my lord sails
with his familia from Rutupiae, it will be without Wulf, the son of Wulf.
I have it in mind to stay here longer; there will be fat pickings for
Saxons by and by, when these Roman lords are crowded out. Hast heard
that?"
"Ay," said Wardo. "I have heard it."
"And it is in my mind also to try for some of these same fat pickings,"
said Wulf, and laughed. "Why not I, as well as any man?"
"If you wait for these Roman lords to be crowded out, as you have it,"
said Wardo, "it will be some time before these fat pickings fall to your
lot."
"Perhaps not so long time as one might think," Wulf retorted. "Hast
heard of what happened at Anderida?"
"Oh, ay," said Wardo. "The lord governor of Anderida fled to the house
of my lord."
Wulf's glance became all at once as keen as a gaze-hound which sights
its prey.
"Had he his son, called Felix, with him, a cat-eyed rascal, who was
wounded?"
"Yes," said Wardo, quite proud to tell his news. "And on the evening of
the feast the lord governor and his men rode away again. But he left his
son behind him."
A gleam shot into Wulf's light eyes.
"So?" he said pleasantly. "Perhaps, then, this son Felix is still a
guest of your lord?"
"Ay, so he is," Wardo returned. "Which is to say that he was there when
I rode away, and that is now six days ago." In his turn he shot a glance
at the red-beard from his steely eyes. "Now why should you ask these
things, friend gossip? What concern is this son Felix of yours?"
"Merely that all men like to know what is happening these days. What
else? But know you how the man got his wound? Nay, I thought not.
Perhaps you know that the leader of that band of Saxons and those
insurgent Romans, called Evor, was slain in that affair at Anderida?"
"No," said Wardo. "I did not know that. Who slew him?"
"Felix," answered Wulf.
Wardo looked somewhat startled.
"Then this is why he remained behind!" he exclaimed. His face awoke to a
new thought. "Why, death of a dog! if this Evor's men pass through the
Silva Anderida and hear that this lord Felix is at the villa, there may
be trouble for my lord."
"Ay," said Wulf. There was a certain grimness in his tone. "The son of
Evor hath sworn to have the blood of his father's slayer; therefore it
is quite likely."
"How come you to know these things?" Wardo demanded. The stranger's
manner was always casual to indifference, and Wardo was not over keen to
see what he was not looking for. His question came more from curiosity
than from suspicion, although of this there was something also.
"News travels fast these days," Wulf said briefly. "I got it from a
carter who saw something of the business. I hope you do not think that I
was there? Now where is this inn of yours? I must find it and hasten
back to my lord."
By now they had reached a cobbled street no wider than an alley, running
at right angles to the main street, which led from ford to ford. Down
this they rode abreast, and there was room for no other horseman to pass
them. Bare-shouldered girls laughed down at them from upper windows;
bent crones hobbled from door to door with baskets of fish or produce;
children and dogs scampered from under their horses' feet. The evening
sunshine fell in long slanting shadows down the dusty street, stabbing
shafts of golden light into dark doorways.
Wardo saw Wulf to the door of the "cleanest inn on Thorney," watched him
enter, and wheeled his horse. Back again then he rode, with no more than
a glance for the long-haired girls who leaned to him from windows, and
with a recklessness which sent the dogs and children flying. He turned
into the main street, back toward the marsh-ford, and galloped the
length of it until he reached a house which stood the third from the
end, next to a half-burnt ruin where cattle had been stalled, with a
narrow door in a blank wall which betrayed nothing.
Before this he flung his horse back upon its haunches, leaped lightfoot
to the ground, and hammered on the door. The wicket was opened a space
and closed; then the door was opened. He entered, and it closed after
him.
Two hours later Wulf, the son of Wulf, came down the street in the dim
twilight, on foot, walking with a swagger. Out of the saddle he was seen
to be short and stunted, with legs badly bowed. His breath proclaimed
loudly that he had stopped at sundry wine-shops on the way. He was
passing unconcernedly, when a whinny from a horse standing before a door
caught his ear, and he stopped.
"Light of my eyes, I've seen this beast before," he muttered, going
closer to look. "Why, sure, he's the horse of that long-legged
yellow-head of mine. Ay, here's the brand I noted on the shoulder.
So--we shall see what we shall see."
He knocked boldly upon the door. The wicket opened.
"What will you?" a woman's voice asked from within.
"A friend of mine entered here a little time ago," Wulf began glibly.
"Many have entered here," said the voice. "Who is your friend?"
Wulf's laugh covered a moment of embarrassment.
"Why, in truth, I do not care to name his name aloud," he said. "If you
will let me in, I will see if he be still here."
The door opened. Wulf stepped inside, confronting a tall girl,
full-throated, long-limbed, with face of purest Grecian outline. Wulf's
single keen glance took in the girl, her attire, and the room behind
her. His manner changed at once.
"Your friend may not be here," said the girl.
Wulf advanced.
"In truth, I shall not miss him overmuch. Might a weary man purchase
food, and a drop of wine, and perhaps a lodging for the night?" He
jingled coins in the pouch which hung at his leathern belt.
The girl eyed him.
"You know that you may," she said, very wearily, and crossed the room
and opened a door into an inner chamber.
Here the air was heavy with the smell of food and the fumes of wine.
There were many people in the room,--men and women; yet in the first
glance he cast around Wulf saw his long-legged yellow-head reclining at
ease upon a couch, his arm around a slim golden beauty who sat beside
him. In his free hand Wardo clutched a brazen beaker, which the girl
filled constantly from a fat-sided ampulla on her knee. From time to
time she stroked back the fair hair on his temples, and each time he
raised his half-drunken head to kiss her shapely arm.
Wulf nodded to one or two men in the room, his face betraying no
surprise that he found them there. He bade the dark-haired Greek girl
bring wine and two cups. While she was gone a man and a woman slipped
away through one of the several side doors, leaving vacant the place
next to Wardo. At once Wulf possessed himself of it, without glancing at
his neighbor. The Greek returned, and he pulled her down beside him, had
her drink with him, kissed her arms and hands with his red-bearded
mouth, made love to her with jests and laughter unnecessarily loud. Soon
Wardo's attention was caught. He sat upright, steadying himself on the
girl's arm, and looked across at Wulf.
"Not too drunk to talk, I hope!" Wulf muttered.
"Holla, Wulf, son of Wulf!" Wardo called, in a voice somewhat thickened
by wine. "How didst find the way to Chloris?"
"Who but knows the house of Chloris?" said Wulf, pleasantly. "I did not
look to find thee here."
"I? Oh, I am always here. Is it not so, Sada? Am I not always with thee,
girl of my heart?"
"Ah, not always!" said the golden-haired girl. "Not so often as I would
have thee."
"Drink with us, thou and thy lady," Wulf invited.
The golden-haired girl leaned over.
"Nay, Wardo, thou hast drunk enough. Already the wine is in thy head,"
she murmured; and Wulf, keen-eared, caught the words.
But Wardo was already holding out his beaker, which the Greek filled at
a sign from Wulf.
"Nay, sweet, my head is iron," said Wardo, half indulgent, half in
scorn. "Here I pledge thee, friend Wulf, the son of Wulf: 'A long life
and a rousing one, a quick death and a merry one!'" He drank deeply.
"That is the motto of my lord master," quoth Wulf. "And light of my
eyes, but he lives up to it! There is a man who spends gold as wine
floweth through a _colum_."
"Ay, but promise you my lord spends faster!" said Wardo, with great
pride.
"So?" said Wulf. He gave the Greek a sign to keep the wine-cups filled.
"Then must he indeed be wealthy. In truth, I have heard something of a
feast he gives at his villa even now."
"The marriage feast of our lady Varia and the lord Marius," said Wardo.
"Men say that the gifts are of a richness beyond all counting," said
Wulf. "Of course, being there, thou couldst see it all, and judge."
"Ay," said Wardo. "I saw it all."
With the wine, his tongue began to wag. His eyes sparkled; he drained
his cup and set it down with a thump. "In that house is the ransom of an
emperor, ay, of forty emperors!" he cried. "No lord in the island could
gather such hoard of treasure, not even yours, Wulf the son of Wulf, and
I shall fight you if you say so! No man hath seen such jewels, such
vessels of gold and silver. There be a million golden cups set about
with rubies; an hundred thousand vases of silver; and every woman hath a
fan of gold, set with gems. And the jewels he hath loaded on our
lady--man, thine eyes have never seen the like! She wears a girdle that
blazes like that pharos at Dubrae, which I have seen; she goes belted
with flame that dazzles the eyes. On her arms are an hundred
bracelets--"
"Of a truth, I do think the wine is in thine eyes, Wardo mine," said
Wulf. His laugh was careless, but his eyes were keen.
Wardo flushed angrily.
"Not so!" he cried. "For these six months and more have not goods been
coming to us from all the world?" He boasted vaingloriously.
Wulf nodded.
"I have heard that that is so. There must indeed be great store of
plunder--of wealth within thy master's house."
"Verily!" said Wardo, somewhat appeased. He told all that he knew, and
much that he did not know, fired with eagerness to impress upon this
casual stranger the magnificence of the lord whom he served. From mere
loquacity he became argumentative, finally quarrelsome. But Sada wound
white arms about his neck and soothed him.
But by now the wine was reaching Wulf's head also, although compared to
Wardo he was sober.
"That house of thy lord's will be fat pickings for the men of Evor when
they come to claim the blood of Felix for the blood which he hath shed.
Light of my eyes! it would be worth--"
"What is this thou sayest?" Wardo demanded. He strove to sit upright,
but fell back against Sada in drunken laxity. "Speak louder, thou! There
be a million bees that buzz within my head."
Wulf waved the women away.
"Leave us, pretty ones, awhile. Is it the first time men have left your
arms to discuss affairs?"
Eunice, the tall Greek, went willingly, but Sada clung to her lover and
would not go.
"Nay, I'll not leave thee. Speak as ye will--what is it to me? I have no
call to remember."
"See, friend, I like thee, and I see no reason why we should not be
comrades, for the better gain of both," said Wulf, with all frankness.
"We be of one nation, as against these haughty Roman lords who soon must
yield to us the field. Oh, but I long for a half-hundred kindred souls
to take with me this chance! What chance, say you?--the chance of gain,
of wealth and fortune past all dreams. Why should they have all, these
haughty lords, while we have nothing? Why should not something of their
wealth profit us?"
Wardo shook his muddled head solemnly over this problem old as the ages.
"They have gained it," he muttered, with an air of profound wisdom.
"They have gained it, quotha! Ay, truly, but how? By rapine, taxation,
wars, plunder! Therefore why shall not others use like means? If it be
fair for them, I say it is fair for us!" Wulf brought down his fist upon
the table with a blow that made the cups rattle. "Therefore now is our
chance, say I! All is confusion; the lords fight amongst themselves; we
are slowly gaining the ground they lose--let us also gain wealth with
it!"
He discoursed at great length, repeating himself incessantly, losing
himself in endless trains of argument which nobody contradicted. It was
not very clear what he wanted, even to himself, it would seem. But he
was quite convinced that existing conditions were altogether wrong and
something should at once be done about it. What the something should be
he did not take the trouble to state. Wardo dozed peacefully, his head
on Sada's breast. No one in the room paid the least attention to them.
Wardo roused, in time, reaching out blindly for his cup, and caught a
word of Wulf's oration:
"... Gold for the taking. Had I but a half hundred--"
"Gold! That is a good thing to have!" Wardo muttered. He pulled Sada's
head down to him. "When I have gold, I shall buy thee from thy mistress.
Wilt go with me?"
The girl's fair face flushed.
"Ay, thou knowest I will go," she answered. "Wheresoever thou wilt take
me."
"If thou wouldst have gold, my friend, come with me, and it shall be
thine in plenty," Wulf cried eagerly.
Wardo looked at him with awakening interest.
"How so?"
"Thus," said Wulf. "We shall take for ourselves what should be ours by
right, what is wrung from us by infamous greed. What would suffice us
would not be missed by those who have more than plenty, yet even this
they will not give us. We must get it for ourselves."
Wardo nodded.
"That will be a good thing to do. Where shall we find it?"
"Why should we show mercy to them?" Wulf declaimed. "What mercy have
they shown us? Do they not grind us into the earth; do we not pay in
sweat and blood for their idle pleasures? And with all of this, have
they not sought to force us to our knees before any new god they choose
to perch upon a pedestal? I, for one, will not worship because one man
says 'Bow down!' And I do not care who knows it. I am as good as the
next man, and I will have my rights."
Wardo, who had never heard anything like this before, was impressed
deeply.
"I say so too," he exclaimed with great earnestness. "Let us take what
is our own. Then if thou hast rights, _I_ have rights also. And I will
have my rights!"
"Of course! I see thou art a clever fellow, and a man after mine own
heart. Drink more wine. See, then, I will tell thee a thing. This lord
of thine, who oppresses thee and vouchsafes thee no rights, who wrings
from thee what should be thine--thou hast him in thy hand. He hath
committed a grievous crime in giving shelter to a murderer. Does he
think that his guest will not be demanded of him by those whom that
guest hath wronged? For this does he not deserve punishment?"
Wardo nodded, much bewildered at the rapid changes of subject he was
called upon to follow. Gods, gold, oppression, murderers, and all at
once--and his mind was taxed with one thing at a time.
"Then I see plainly that thou art chosen to execute justice and to claim
thy full reward!" cried Wulf, in sonorous prophecy.
"Oh, no--not on my lord!" said Wardo, firmly. "Or, look you, it would be
I who should be executed." And chuckled at his cleverness in discovering
this point.
"You do not understand," Wulf assured him, patiently. "There is no
danger in it for you--none at all. All you will do is to answer these
questions I shall ask you now. Tell me then, first, how many men can
your lord summon to--let us say, protect this lord Felix when his
enemies find him out?"
"With his familia, and the coloni and casarii who own him lord, he can
call out near a thousand; though it would take time to gather all of
these from his estates. But, my friend, how may the enemies of this lord
Felix find him out when they know not where he is?"
Again he chuckled at the point which he had made.
"True," Wulf admitted smoothly. "I but suppose the case. For they are
roaming far and wide, and if they find him not, it will not be for lack
of searching."
"Now I must tell my lord of this, that he may be prepared," Wardo
muttered. He pressed his hands to his temples. "My head is buzzing with
your questions, and I am weary, for I have ridden far. Pray you, let me
sleep."
"Not yet!" Wulf said hastily, in alarm, as Wardo's head sank lower.
"See, friend, you are trusted in your lord's household, I doubt not. Is
there a rear door, even a very little one, of which you know where the
key is hung?"
Wardo jerked his head upright, his eyes half closed.
"What is this you say?" he asked angrily. "What would you with
a--a--little key?"
"Give me a key, and I will give you as much gold as you can carry on
your back," said Wulf, low and eagerly, his caution forgotten in the
fever of his greed.
Wardo opened his eyes with effort to their fullest extent and stared at
him. His voice was thick and stuttering.
"A key? to my lord's house? _Deae matres!_ What should I do that for? I
am my lord's man!"
"You shall come to no harm!" Wulf urged desperately, fearful lest the
man fall asleep before he could gain what he would. But at last Wardo
understood. He staggered off the couch, clutching at Sada's shoulder for
support, reeling and blind with drink, and towered over Wulf.
"Look you, sirrah!" he shouted, so that men turned to look at him in
surprise, "I am no traitor to my lord! I am his man, blood and body, and
his will is my law and his faith is my faith. I have served him loyally,
and so shall I continue to serve. What is this you would have me do?
Turn rascal, even as you? Holy gods, I'll show you, knave and varlet--"
Unexpectedly he stooped, and caught Wulf by the collar of his tunic.
Wulf struggled, but Wardo dragged him across the floor, shook him, and
flung him outside the door and slammed it. He turned to Sada, demanding
her applause with drunken self-satisfaction at his prowess, dropped on
the nearest couch in abject prostration, and was instantly asleep.
After uncounted hours he roused, to find Sada dashing cold water in his
face and calling his name in great distress. They were alone in the
room, and the sun was shining through the window.
"What hast thou?" Wardo grumbled. "Let me sleep!"
She shook his shoulder.
"Hasten, Wardo, and undo the mischief thou hast done while there may yet
be time. For hours I have tried to wake thee!"
"Harm? What harm?"
"Thou hast told that evil man all he would know of thy lord's defences,
of the treasures within his house, and of the lord called Felix who is
there. And when thou wert asleep he, being drunken also, did tell
Eunice, who bade him render payment for his wine, that it would not take
long to send word to these men who search for this lord Felix, and that
then he would give her gold and jewels in plenty. Hasten, Wardo, and
warn thy lord, or it will be too late!" She wrung her hands.
"_I_ have done this thing?" Wardo exclaimed, pointing a finger at his
own broad chest. "Nay, girl, thou'rt joking!"
"Never that!" cried Sada, with impatience. "Thou wert drunk, I tell
thee, and he got out of thee what he would. Thy lord is betrayed, and
through thee!"
"Betrayed!" The word stabbed through his dull sodden wits and sent him
starting from the couch, his face gray with horror. He sank back with a
groan of sheer physical sickness, and tried again, his teeth set, the
sweat starting on his forehead. His legs trembled under him, and his
eyes were dazed, but he got to the door and leaned against it, his hands
over his face.
"If I have done this thing thou sayest," he said hoarsely, "my life is
rightly forfeit, and I shall give it into my lord's hand. I do not
understand--I am my lord's man, and loyal." He turned to her in stunned
appeal. "Sada girl, am I drunk, that thou shouldst fill me with this
madness?"
Her eyes filled with tears.
"Nay," she answered sadly. "Thou art sober now."
The fresh air aided what the shock of her words had begun. He mounted,
heavily, yet in feverish desperate haste, whirled his horse about with
scarcely a word of farewell to her, and struck the heavy spurs deep. The
beast sprang forward, with a shower of sparks from the cobbles.
Sada, returning from the door, ran into the arms of a thin slip of a
girl, white-faced and with burning eyes, who caught her and cried
desperately:
"What said he of Nicanor? What have they done to him? Does he live
still?"
"Peace, child!" said Sada. "Now he hath thought for nothing but this
thing which he hath done, and I with him. But last night he did tell me
that this friend of his, thy lover, hath been sent to the mines, and
that he had been of the guard."
"And I not to know!" cried Eldris, bitterly. "He might have told me how
he looked and what he said; and now he hath gone, and I may not ask
him--"
"Ay, and I think that I shall never see him more. For surely his lord
will slay him when he knows what he hath done," said Sada.
Suddenly she put her head on Eldris's shoulder and wept; and Eldris, by
way of showing sympathy, having love sorrows of her own, put her arms
about her and wept also.
II
The lord Eudemius laid himself upon his couch of ebon and carved ivory
with the air of a man whose work has been well done. Midnight was long
gone, the great house was quiet, and the desire of his heart stood forth
in fulfilment. He had a son; his dying house was propped with fresh
strength and vigor, and the gods of the shades might claim him when they
would. One week ago had the marriage been celebrated. Each night since
there had been feasts, with at every feast new dishes contrived, new
sports and entertainments offered, new souvenirs of price distributed,
to provide the jaded senses of his guests with fresh gratification. Now
the festivities were nearly over; already some of the lords had gone.
Among them was Count Pomponius, with his Wardens of the Eastern Marches,
for it was reported that Saxons were again harrying and burning along
the coast.
In the mellow light of the bronze lamps the face of Eudemius showed
softer, less inscrutable, with eyes more kindly. On it was great
weariness, but also a great content. He put forth a hand and touched the
bell on the stand beside his couch. The strain under which he had
labored was lifting; he could afford to relax. The silvery tinkle of
sound had scarcely fallen into the quiet of the room when Mycon, chief
of the eunuchs, entered, parting the curtains, with his arms crossed
before his face.
"Bid Cyrrus bring hither his lyre," said Eudemius.
Many and many a day had gone since their dark lord had given such
command; the cries and groans of his slaves had been music enough for
him. Mycon bowed in silence and went. Before five minutes had fled, word
of the miracle had gone from end to end of the ranks of those whose duty
it was to watch the house by night; and weary men and women smiled and
blessed their little lady, who perhaps had bought for them the dawn of a
happier day.
Cyrrus the musician entered, a slender Greek boy; and the low light was
caught by the silver frame of the lyre he bore, and rippled on its
strings. He put himself where he should not be too much under his lord's
eyes, and played; and as though the instinct of his art had taught him
what to do, the music he played was plaintive and low and soothing.
Eudemius lay with arms behind his head and stared at the painted ceiling
where naked nereids sported. By slow degrees, still more his hard face
softened; under the spell of the music and of his thoughts his thin lips
parted to a smile. Slow and soft the melody rippled into the quiet room,
singing of placid waters smiling in the sun, with lilies floating on
their bosom, of young fleecy clouds and tender shadows. Again it
changed, with dropping notes like tears, and whispered of the yearning
hopes of men, of world pain and heart's peace, of longings unfulfilled
and prayers unanswered. Two tears, the slow and difficult tears of age,
stole down Eudemius's gray furrowed cheeks and lost themselves in his
silken pillow.
"My child!" he whispered. "My little, little child!"
In that moment the pathetic unloved beauty of her came nearer to
touching him than ever before. He forgot that he had sold her into
bondage; forgot that her happiness might not lie along the road of his.
She had done what he would have her do; she had been a dutiful daughter,
and at the last he rejoiced in her.
Varia, at that hour, sat alone in her chamber, awaiting the coming of
her lord. There were traces of tears upon her cheeks; her lids drooped
with weariness and sleep. They had taken away her robes of state, in
which she had sat by Marius's side through interminable hours of
merrymaking, when a thousand eyes had stared at her from a swimming sea
of lights, and she had shrunk and trembled beneath their glances. They
had put upon her a thin robe of Seres silk of rose, with no ornament or
jewel upon it. With bare neck and arms, and warm white throat bending
with the drooping flower of her head, she looked more than ever a child.
To all that they had done to her throughout the endless days of
festival, she had submitted docilely, dazed, if she could have told it,
by the excitement of those around her. Faces, scenes, events, had passed
before her in a blurred confusion, in which she could neither think nor
see clearly. She had repeated words of whose meaning she had no
knowledge; she had drunk wine and only been distressed that a drop had
fallen upon her royal robe; she had broken a cake of bread and only
wondered why her little black slave was not there to gather up the
crumbs. Of her lord she had seen little, save upon one fearful night of
which the memory still sent burning shudders through her frightened
heart. She drifted upon a gray sea of loneliness, torn from her old
shelters, given nothing to which she might turn and cling.
She got up from the chair covered with rugs of white fur, in which she
had been nestling like a great rose, and went to the window which looked
upon the garden, all her movements restless, like some shy creature
caged. Now the garden lay deserted, desolate in the mistiness of the
moonlight. She held her arms out to it in vague yearning.
"I would I were out there now!" she cried softly. "Where the trees
whisper and the lake sleeps, and none but may hear the music of one
voice. He is gone--he is gone from me, and I know not where they have
taken him. And I long for him; I would I could creep into his arms and
rest upon his breast forever, for then I should not be frightened. Now I
am left alone--I know not where to turn for very fear--my head it
burneth and my hands are cold. And I fear to be alone--and the night is
dark--so dark!"
A gust of wind rose slowly through the trees, like the flapping of
unseen wings, and Varia shivered. The moon was now and again obscured
under vast driving clouds; through the gloom trees massed themselves
into blots of sinister shadow. When the wind's voice died, the earth
hung silent, in suspense, so that Varia held her breath in sheer
unconscious attunement to it. In the garden she saw a black shape flying
with quick darting swoops. She knew it for a bat, but her eyes dilated
with nervous fright. It was so very still--in all the world there was
no sound at all. She glanced fearfully over her shoulder. Even the
lighted room was not reassuring; it also held the same waiting stillness
which she dared not break by so much as a sigh. Only the flame from the
perfumed lamps flickered wanly in the draught. Her wide eyes fixed
themselves upon the window, striving to pierce the mystery of the dark
without; she yielded helplessly to the sway of the vast unnamed forces
around her, a child frightened in the night. She sank upon the floor by
the window, hiding her face.
"Nerissa!" she called in a small and shaken voice, and wept, more
frightened at the little cry drowned in the tense stillness. Never had
she been so alone in her life; never so frightened. She clung to the
window, crouched as small as possible, not daring to look up.
And across the night a sound grew out of the void and came to her, and
her face blanched, and she caught at her throat with shaking hands.
Faint, elusive, coming from very far away, to be felt rather than heard,
it was now like the distant trampling of the feet of many men, now like
the rush of water over stones, now like the whisper of the wind in
trees, scarcely a thing apart from the silence which enfolded and
engulfed it. It was a voice from nowhere, warning her straining senses
of unknown and sinister things to come.
"Why, sweetheart, art hiding from me?" a voice said almost at her ear,
and Varia, taken unawares and startled out of all control, screamed
aloud and shrank lower into her corner, sobbing violently.
Marius stooped over her and took her hands away from her face.
"What is wrong?" he demanded. "Why these tears, little wife?"
"It was so dark!" Varia wailed. "And there was no sound at all, and then
there was a sound--"
She wept again, her fresh terrors submerging even her fear of him.
Marius picked her up in his arms, carried her to the couch, and laid her
there, and a moment she clung to his hand desperately. He was something
human to hold to; so she would have clung to Nerissa, or even to Mycon.
"Afraid of the dark!" Marius scoffed gently. "Well, I am here now, and
there is nothing shall harm thee. Of a truth, I did begin to think the
feast would never have an end. The more I burned to be done with it and
come to thee, the more the minutes dragged. I pictured thee, awaiting me
here in thy secret bower; thy flushing face and the veiling shadow of
thy hair, thy denying hands and averted glances--and thy father's guests
might well have thought me a love-sick fool, thinking of nothing but his
secret hope that his mistress might prove kind."
Varia sat upright on the couch and put her feet upon the floor, and his
eyes followed the gracious outlines of her form beneath its drapery of
rose. She pushed her hair back from her eyes and looked at him. Slow
crimson spread from throat to brow; her glance wavered and fell. Quite
suddenly she put both hands to her face, hiding her eyes from his, and
turned her face away. It was a gesture of a child, infinitely touching,
all-betraying in its pure artlessness. He started toward her, his dark
eyes keen; and she sat quite still, passive to this fate of hers from
which flight no longer might avail her. But with the touch of his hand
upon her shoulder there came a soft insistent knocking at the door.
Marius smothered a curse and strode to open it. Mycon stood upon the
threshold, and in the lamplight his face showed gray. He stammered like
one caught in guilt.
"Lord, thy pardon! There is trouble without, and the master sends to ask
my lord's presence. We be encompassed by barbarians who have crept upon
us."
"Tell thy lord I come," said Marius. Varia was forgotten; scarcely had
the slave vanished down the corridor when Marius was after him, leaving
his bride alone.
Now in the villa were to be heard the first sounds of people aroused
from sleep to find themselves in the midst of unknown dangers. Voices,
frightened and impatient, echoed back and forth along the corridors;
lights gleamed across the courts. Men and women, half dressed, began to
appear, questioning feverishly, delivering themselves of theories to any
who would listen.
"They say that if he will surrender Felix they will depart at once in
peace."
"How came they to know that he was here? Who told them?"
"He will not surrender Felix--"
"If he does not--holy gods!--we shall all be slain and plundered."
And above all, a woman's voice:
"I will not stay to be robbed! I shall leave this house at once!"
In the great court men had gathered about Eudemius and Marius, who held
hasty consultation. Felix, pale, nursing carefully his wounded arm, was
on the outskirts of the group. His face all unconsciously betrayed his
state of mind. It was white and flaccid; and at every yelp of the hounds
outside who clamored for his life, he cringed and quivered. But he was
very quiet, and the talk surged over his head as though he had not been
there. Men cast glances of scorn unveiled upon him, but he was long past
caring what they thought. He wanted his life; his eyes craved
protection. In his face was a desperate dumb reliance on the pride and
honor of Eudemius, which would not allow him to surrender one who had
claimed his hospitality; craven himself, he yet recognized and centred
all his faith upon this stern and scornful pride which must uphold its
traditions at whatever cost.
Several of the younger lords who had been or were then in military
service came forth, offering themselves, not at all averse, it would
seem, to such variation in the entertainment. A handful of drunken
barbarians--what were these? Upon them and upon Marius the defence of
the villa devolved. Marius gave his orders swiftly, and one by one his
lieutenants sped away. All slaves capable of bearing arms were to be
equipped at once from the armory. Men were already stationed at
intervals along the outer walls to guard against surprise. The house
seethed with uproar, which no efforts of discipline could quench. Women
wept and clung together, terrified each by the others' terror. They
huddled in bunches around the walls, catching at every man who would
pause to speak with them. Yes, there had been a barbarian even within
the hall, a great fellow, tall as the house, who spat fire and spoke
Latin as no Roman had ever heard Latin spoken before. Ay, truly, all
the gods might witness that he had spat fire. And then he had left,
taking back to his dogs of comrades their lord's refusal to yield up his
guest. So there would be an attack, and men had many other things to do
than to be stopped and chattered to by foolish women. Mingled always
with the lamentations of these was men's shouting, a trampling of many
feet, a swift confusion. The lights, continually fanned by the passing
of people, began to take on a lurid glare. In the wind which blew about
the crowded court, cressets flared horribly, with very evil-smelling
smoke. Their light fell waveringly on jewels and golden collars and rich
robes, and on burnished weapons in the hands of slaves. Long since had
the porter fled from his lodge, and his place was taken by a score of
eager defenders.
Marius snatched a moment from the importunities of those who would know
the precise state of their danger, and exactly how long it must be
before they should all be slain, and ran up the stairs which led to the
upper rooms. He felt his way through the darkness until he came upon a
window, very narrow and small, so high that he could overlook the rest
of the house and by leaning out see something of what went on in front.
And at what he saw he gave an exclamation, sharp and low, and his eyes
glittered like those of a warhorse which scents battle. For all below
him were lights which glinted in and out across the night; and to his
trained ears rose the stamp and snort of stallions held in check, and
the stir and rustle of many men. How many he could not tell, for the
moon, fighting her way through a smother of clouds, gave scarce light to
see, and in the trees the shadows were delusive.
A man's voice shouted; other voices took it up, until a seething bubble
of sound, hoarse and significant, eddied around the house and lost
itself in distance. A stealthy stir and movement heaved itself from
among the shadows; there was the clank of a weapon against an iron
stirrup; vague forms seemed to circle more closely about the house. The
voice shouted again and was answered by a scurry of horses' feet.
"There be more than I had thought," Marius muttered, and turned to go.
"And they are not all mounted. Also I think that they will try to take
the door by storm. Well, they can try! More than two may play at that
game!"
In time, those without began an attempt to batter their way in, so that
Marius proclaimed them very drunk and more foolish. He said nothing of
his suspicion that this was merely intended to mask an attack in some
other quarter, and was inclined to be scornful of this untried foe. So
that some of the old men, taking no consideration of the fact that
although his words were light his actions were prompt and well-planned,
became timid, and the shrieks of the women redoubled at every assault
upon the door. He strove to assure them that if their besiegers did
break in, they could get no further for the bristling hedge of swords
and spears which waited. But to this the timid ones replied with reason
that they did not want them in at all. Various guests began to take it
in their heads that this was not the entertainment they had come for;
and in an access of the strange panic which is liable to plunge even the
most sober crowd into blind folly, if nothing worse, collected their
valuables and their attendants and prepared incontinently to fly from
the house. Greatly their wrath raged when Marius refused to let them
out. They muttered that the heads of upstarts were easily turned by a
little power, and they had rather be slain in the open than butchered
like rats in their hole.
And at this, the first hint of insubordination among his forces, Marius
became no longer the easy-going gallant whom most of them had known, but
a being new and strange. He sprang to the mastery of the situation by,
as it were, divine right, a right which was his by grace of the power
that had trained him to face and control crises such as these. He
treated these high-born lords and ladies as though they had been squads
of mutinous recruits; he lashed them with his glance; he no longer
requested, he ordered. His voice held a rasp which none had ever heard,
and which brought them from displeased dignity to instant and abject
obedience. He spared none,--faded voluptuary, whining graybeard, nor
restive youth; in an hour he had bullied and frightened them into
working like galley-slaves, and all the house was under the iron
discipline of his camp.
* * * * *
In her chamber, Varia, in all her terror and loneliness, was forgotten.
About her was an insistent clamor of confusion; she stood in the middle
of the room, dazed and overwhelmed by it, the light flowing softly over
her. Now and again a shouted order was flung across the tumult; with
this there began presently to mingle sounds from without. In the
corridor words flew by her, whose meaning she scarcely comprehended.
"They have taken a tree to batter down the door--"
"My lord Marius saith we are _not_ to use the boiling pitch until he
gives command."
"He was crossing the court and an arrow fell from heaven and smote him."
"Thou liest, fool! It came in at a window!"
And almost in her ears, so close it seemed, a masterful voice shouted:
"Where is that fat beast Hito who hath the keys?" and was gone like
smoke.
And Hito's name was taken up and tossed from hall to hall; she heard it
now near, now far, in the midst of the rush of hasty footsteps and the
tangle of voices. A scream pierced through the clamor and hung a moment
above all other sounds; someone was wounded. She had a vision of
Claudius the physician brushing by her half-open door. As from a mist of
terror she saw the flying of his skirt and the gleam of his silver
beard. The actual point of attack was too far away for her to know what
went on. She began to draw her breath in small gasping sobs, glancing
this way and that, as one who longs to flee and dares not.
A sound in the garden caught her ears; from where she stood she strained
her eyes to see. Only the armed man on guard behind the little narrow
door, vine-hung, which led to the outer world. The man, though she could
not see him for the darkness, was short and fat, and his little pig's
eyes were glazed with fear. But there came other sounds; and a black
figure heaved itself above the wall, on the outer side, against the
starlight, and tottered insecurely there. And then that armed man
squealed, and cast his weapon on the ground, and knelt; and this also
she could not see. Nor could she hear the words which the black figure
on the wall flung down, nor what was answered, abjectly, with prayers
and promises. She did not see the dark bulk slide scrambling down the
wall, landing cat-like on its feet; she did not see it struggle a moment
with the kneeling man who tried to rise and flee, and thrust him forward
on his face. Again new sounds reached her out of all the uproar on the
other side of the house; the grating of a key, the thud of feet upon the
sward. Black figures came headlong out of the night; there was a clash
of spurs on the marble steps; and one man, and another, and a third,
leaped into the lighted room.
First of them all was a short man, bowed in the legs, with a red scrub
of beard and yellow eyes which gleamed at her. And those behind him were
great and blond and bearded, with drawn daggers, and round shields of
bull's hide on their left arms. They crowded on the heels of the
foremost, and stopped short, staring in the brilliant light at the
palpitating figure of rose.
Until then Varia had shrunk and wept and trembled, a terrified child,
alone, with no hand to cling to. But as the first barbarian crossed her
threshold, she faced him, a desperate, tender thing at bay. Unknown,
unreckoned with, there lurked within her the strange race-instinct, born
of blood in which was no drop of craven blood, and of caste which was
greater than that of kings. She was the product of her day and her
environment; but she was the product also of her mighty past, of great
men who had fought and ruled their world, and great women who had ruled
with them. It was instinct, dumb and blind, but it held her on her feet,
facing them, though her eyes were frozen with terror; and she obeyed it
because she had no sense or will to disobey.
For one heart-beat there was no sound but the heavy panting of men's
breath. Then a man snatched a golden cup rimmed with rubies, which stood
on a stand near the window, and thrust it into his breast. With his
first motion the two others started upon Varia where she stood, rose and
white, in the middle of the chamber. Midway, the larger man pushed the
smaller red-bearded one aside; he recovered, with a vicious pass of his
knife, which the other gave aside to parry.
"I entered first!" the red one shouted. "Hands off, thou son of swine!
Said we not that I, Wulf, who brought thee hither, should have first
choice? Call you the others; thus we shall catch them front and rear."
"Call yourself!" said the other. He sprang forward, clutching at Varia,
slipped on the polished floor, and plunged headlong at her feet. Varia
screamed in terror; and as Wulf overleaped his prostrate comrade and
caught her in his arms, screamed again. Her head was crushed against
Wulf's leather-clad breast, but she struggled and cried aloud as a hare
cries when the hounds have brought it down.
There was a rush from the corridor outside, a long-drawn shout of
warning and triumph, answered by yells from the garden, where more black
figures came leaping. Wardo, grimed from head to foot, dashed into the
room at the head of his men as a crowd of invaders surged through the
long window. He lunged at Wulf with the short broad sword he carried,
and the point came away red. Wulf gurgled and fell, dragging Varia with
him; and the fight closed over them both as water closes over a cast
stone.
And as Life had entered the garden by that little narrow door, so Death
also entered, bringing with it what Death must bring.
III
When dawn washed the first faint streak of gray across the night sky,
the barbarians, beaten back and baffled, retreated to the great Wood
from which they had come, and lurked darkly there.
"I think we are not yet through with them," said Marius. He had seen
Saxons fight before.
With dawn, also, Eudemius sent forth a trusty slave westward to seek aid
from the civil authorities and from his own people at the mine, the
nearest point at which it might be obtained, and with the dawn was found
the body of Hito, stabbed in the back, lying near the little garden door
which led to the outer world.
Many of the guests chose to take their chances of attack, and left the
villa hurriedly while yet the day was young. Eudemius could not hold
them prisoners, and would not if he could. His own was enough to guard.
But Felix did not go, and Eudemius could not order him forth. He dared
not leave the villa, where he felt a measure of security; were he to do
so, he knew that it would be his fate to be captured and killed before
he could win to safety. So they shrugged their shoulders and left him.
That day the villa, unmolested and with half its inmates gone, seemed to
sink into a calm of exhaustion, which, after the night that had passed,
was like the calm of death. Marius and Eudemius themselves superintended
the cleaning up of the house, the strengthening of barricades, the
muster of the slaves for what further service might be needed.
"I trust the messengers whom I sent forth have not been waylaid,"
Eudemius said.
"Help could not come before to-morrow night," Marius answered. "It will
go hard with us if we cannot hold out that long. This time it may be
that we shall fare better; there will be no Hito to betray us."
"I shall have him buried at the crossroads with a stake through his evil
heart!" said Eudemius. "There be eleven dead awaiting burial. This we
shall do to-night. And Varia, my son, how fares she?"
"She is unhurt, but exhausted, and the old woman watches her," said
Marius. "Sleep thou also, and I shall see to setting a watch about the
house, and that those may take rest who can be spared."
Mycon entered, his arms before his face.
"Lords, there be a slave, Wardo the Saxon, who insists that he hath
grave matters for thine ears. He is in very evil plight--"
"Let him stand forth," said Eudemius.
Wardo came, tall, grim, very dirty. A bloody rag bound his head; he
limped, and one of his sandals was stained with blood. He crossed his
arms before his face, and waited.
"Speak!" Eudemius commanded.
And Wardo spoke, standing erect, his blue eyes on his lord's face.
"Lord, it was not Hito who betrayed the household, as I hear men say. It
was I. There is a little man, red like a fox, who came to a house on
Thorney where was I. He also is Saxon. And I, being drunken with much
wine, did boast to this one of my lord's greatness, and of the feasts
which were made within this house, and the wealth which was herein. And
when I was sober, after many hours, one told me of what I had done, and
of how this red Saxon was gone to set his fellows upon my lord. So I
rode until my horse fell with me and died, but I was too late to bring
warning to my lord. When I reached this house last night, it was
surrounded, with the door beaten down and men swarming within. So I,
being Saxon, and not suspected in the dark, entered, shouting, with
others. And in my lady's chamber found I that red Wulf, who is no wolf,
but a sly thieving fox, and tried to slay him. But he got away. I am my
lord's man."
"It is well that you have told me this," said Eudemius. "At sunset you
shall be crucified. Go."
Wardo crossed his arms before his face and went.
When his work about the house was done, Marius entered softly the room
where Varia lay, tended by Nerissa. The old woman slipped away, and
Varia held out a slim hand to him in one of her sudden and unaccountable
moods of coquetry. He kissed it gallantly.
"How fares my lady?"
Varia shivered.
"I do not wish to think of it! Were it not for Wardo--"
"Ay, that is true," said Marius, misunderstanding. "Well, by this night
his fault will be punished. But how know you of what Wardo hath done?"
"How?" she echoed in surprise. "Was it not my life he saved? And what is
he to be punished for? What hath he done?"
"Naught that in the least would interest thee," he told her.
"He shall not be harmed," she said firmly. "He saved me from two great
men and one little one who would have slain me, and he is not to suffer
for it."
"Now this is something new. Dost know, sweeting, that had it not been
for this knave Wardo, no great men nor little would have come upon thee?
It was he who betrayed us, and it is right that he should suffer for
it."
Her eyes filled with tears.
"He saved my life, and I will not have him suffer! What is to be done to
him this night?"
He tried to put her off.
"Never mind him, sweet one. Think of him no more."
But she repeated stubbornly:
"What is to be done to him this night?" She glanced at him, one of her
strange and sidelong glances. "Is he to be--crucified?"
Marius started in spite of himself.
"Who told thee?" he demanded.
"None told me," she answered. She raised her hands to her temples. "I
felt it--here. So, I say that he shall _not_ be crucified, nor harmed in
any way at all. And thou must see to it!" She was like an imperious
young empress, commanding her meanest slave.
"And if I will not?" said the slave, perversely.
Her child's mouth quivered.
"But thou wilt!" she pleaded. She laid a hand upon his bare sinewy arm,
fingering the heavy golden armlet on it, and for a fleeting instant
raised her eyes to his. "Thou wilt?" she repeated sweetly.
His dark face hardened against her wiles.
"The man hath played the traitor. He also is Saxon. Who knows but that
he may set his fellows on again? Nay, lady wife; I fear thy man must
die."
"Ah, no!" she begged. "It is the first request I make of thee--thou'lt
not refuse it if I ask thee?"
"Ask it then," said Marius, his eyes on her, "in the right and proper
way that a wife should ask her husband."
Rose-leaf color flushed her cheeks; she raised herself to her knees amid
the draperies of the couch, and clasped her folded hands upon her
breast, and closed her eyes, devout and meek and holy.
"Pray thee, let Wardo go, my lord!" she said softly, and opened her eyes
quickly to see how he might take it. "Is it thus thou wouldst have me
ask?"
He bent his head, sudden laughter in his eyes, and kissed her pleading
lips.
"Who could resist thee, lady mine?" he cried gayly. "Sure never did
unworthy man have so fair a lawyer. Ay, child, if he saved thy life--and
thy account and his do tally--he shall go free."
Varia slipped out of his arms and clapped her hands.
"Go then--go quickly and tell my lord father so! He will do it for thee,
as thou hast done it for me. Is it not so?"
So it came to pass that evening that the cross in the chamber of fate
knew not its victim; and for this there were more reasons than a girl's
tender wiles.
For while the flame of sunset again stabbed the dusk of night, came men
out from the Wood of Anderida, fifteen miles away, some on foot and some
on horseback, with at their head the red Wulf, astride a great bay
horse. Wardo, from his station on the roofs, saw them from far off; saw
also that many as they had been the night before, they were now fivefold
more, an army bent on plunder, captained by lawlessness. And still no
aid had come. Wardo told Marius, and Marius went up on the roofs to see,
and came back square of jaw and with moody eyes. He sought out Eudemius,
where the latter was going the rounds of their makeshift defences, and
said:
"This red hound of hell hath come back upon us and brought his pack,
five times as many as before. Thou knowest I am not one to turn tail
when there is fighting to be done, but I can see what is to be seen. And
we have women and children with us."
"You think, then, that we should fly from here?" Eudemius asked with
sombre eyes.
"I think we are lucky to have the chance to attempt it," said Marius,
curtly. "Were it not better to lose half rather than all? For an hour we
might stand against them, scarcely more. Thy familia numbers five
hundred souls; of these some are wounded and more are but incumbrances.
If it pleaseth thee to stay, thou knowest that nothing will suit me
better. A good fight against odds is worth risking much for. I but state
the case as I have seen it."
"My fighting days are over," said Eudemius. "But I am not too old to
run. And there are the women and the children. Be it as thou sayest,
lad. This work is thy work--" he broke off to chuckle grimly--"and
thou'rt a clever workman! We have chariots and horses, and I will give
command to pack what papers and things of value I may."
Again the villa was in uproar. Chests were strapped on sumpter mules;
chariots with pawing horses stood in the main courtyard, ready to be
gone. Slaves ran here and there with scrolls and bundles in their arms;
cooks left the meat turning on the spits; dancing girls, wrapped in
cloaks and clinging to their treasures, huddled together, waiting for
the start. The gates were opened, and all but certain of the stewards
and body-slaves were permitted to depart. They swarmed from the villa
like ants when their hill is crushed, and spread off to the west, away
from the direction of the enemy. And always the slave stationed on watch
cried down to those below the approach, near and ever nearer, of that
enemy; and at every cry a spasm of increased activity shuddered through
the house. It was each one for himself, and the hindmost would surely
rue it.
"Should we be separated in the night, let us plan to meet at one spot,"
said Marius. He was strapping a bundle of food and a flask of wine to
his saddle-bow, in the hurrying confusion of the courtyard, too old a
campaigner to face a march without supplies. Eudemius nodded, his arms
full of papers, which a slave was placing in a box.
"At Londinium, then, whence I shall sail for Gaul as soon as may be. We
will wait there, each for the other. If the barbarians sweep the country
widely, we may not at first be able to reach there."
"That is true," said Marius. "I have thought of that. Our best plan will
be to hold west from here, make a half circle and gain the Bibracte
road, and when the brutes are worrying the carcass here, return
eastward, passing them by the road, and so reach Londinium. The gods
grant that AEtius can spare me a legion!"
In the end they barely escaped. The slave on watch shouted warning; the
stewards flung themselves on their horses and made off. Varia ran into
the court, crying for Nerissa; without ado Marius lifted her into the
chariot, of which Wardo held the reins. The chariot of Eudemius, driven
by himself, was already rumbling through the gateway. There was a
terrified scurry of slaves from under his horses' feet. He swung into
the road and lashed the stallions to a gallop. Close at his heels Wardo
followed, his grays leaping in the traces, with Varia, white-faced,
crouched low in front of him. The hollow thunder of the wheels mingled
with the pounding of hoofs as they dashed into the oak-bordered road.
Marius swung himself to his horse's back as the beast reared with
excitement, found his stirrups, and galloped hard after, his sword
clapping against his greave. He did not see who followed through the
gate, for as he caught up with the flying chariots, the first of the
pursuers mounted the brow of the hill to the east of the house, not a
quarter of a mile away.
Some of them rode their horses into the courtyard; others took up the
trail of the fleeing Romans. But they were there for plunder; soon they
gave up the chase and galloped back to strive for their share with the
others. Those slaves who had been left behind or who were overtaken on
the road were slain; as the sun went down there began in the stately
halls an orgy which sounded to high heaven.
So when they had eaten and drunk until they could eat and drink no more,
they fought among themselves over the division of the spoils; and
between them all they killed their leader, Wulf the red son of Wulf.
Also, in their drunken frenzy, they tried to set the villa on fire. In
the midst of this, while they swept ravening through the rooms like
devouring flame, while every court held its knot of drunken brawlers,
who cursed and fought in darkness or under the flaring light of
cressets, a detachment of milites stationarii, or military police, in
whose hands was the maintenance of law and public order, rode over the
western hills, coming hotfoot from Calleva, thirty miles away. They fell
upon the barbarians, taking them by surprise; these forgot their
quarrels and made common cause against this sudden foe. At once bloody
battle was waged beneath the stars; the pillared halls rang to the clang
of weapons and the thud of armed feet. Men in armor of bronze came
crashing to the ground with their blood spreading from them darkly over
the marble floors; in the courtyards men at every moment stumbled over
bodies of the dead and dying.