CHAPTER XXXIII
"Come, take up the cross, and follow me."--ST. MARK X. 21.
Taurus Antinor had some difficulty in finding the clothes that hewanted, which would serve as a disguise for the Caesar and himself, andhe had to explore the huge deserted palace from end to end before hecame on the block of the slaves' quarters; here in one of the cubicleshe ultimately discovered a few bundles of garments, which had apparentlybeen hastily collected and then forgotten by one of the runaway scribes.
These he found on inspection would suit his purpose admirably. Writingtools and desk he had already collected; there were plenty of theselittering the building in every corner.
Armed with all these necessaries, he made his way back to the larariumwithout again crossing the peristylium where the soldiers wereassembled.
Sitting on the altar steps, with the desk between his knees and thelight from the narrow shaft above falling full upon the parchment, hewrote out carefully and laboriously the proclamation of pardon which wasdestined on the morrow to assure the people of Rome that all theirdelinquencies against the majesty and the person of their Caesar would byhim be forgotten.
It was necessary so to word it that not a single loophole should remainthrough which Caligula could ultimately slip and break his word. Morethan one beginning was made and whole lines erased and rewritten beforethe praefect of Rome was satisfied with his work.
The Caesar in the meanwhile was tramping up and down the tiny room likehis own favourite black panther when it was in a rage. Throwing histhick, short body about in a kind of rolling gait, he only paused attimes for a moment or two in order to hurl a vicious snarl at thepraefect.
His fingers were twitching convulsively the whole time, with longing nodoubt to grasp the leather-thonged whip which they were so fond ofwielding. At intervals he would gnaw his nails down to the quick whilesnorts of bridled fury escaped through his pallid lips.
But Taurus Antinor went on with his work, absolutely heedless of theCaesar's rage. When the wording of the proclamation satisfied him, heheld out the pen for Caligula to sign. He knelt on the floor with oneknee, holding up against his forehead, as custom demanded on a solemnoccasion, the desk on which rested the imperial decree. He rendered thisact of homage simply and loyally, as the outward sign of that sacrificewhich the Divine Master had demanded of him.
Faithful to his instincts of petty tyranny, the Caesar kept the praefectof Rome kneeling before him for close on half an hour; all this whilevolleys of vituperations poured from his mouth against all traitors ingeneral, and more especially against the praefect whom he accused ofselling his services only in order to gain his own ends.
It was only when Taurus Antinor had reminded him for the third time thathe was placing his life in grave jeopardy with all this delay that heultimately snatched up the pen and put his name to the decree.
After that both the men donned the dark garments of the fugitive scribe.With the proclamation of pardon rolled up tightly and hidden within thefolds of his tunic, Taurus Antinor led the way out of the lararium.
The afternoon light was slowly sinking into the embrace of evening. Thevast deserted palace, with its rows of monumental columns and statues ofstone gods looked spectral and mysterious in the fast gathering gloom.
When exploring the building in search of disguises Taurus Antinor hadtaken note of the minor exits which gave on the more isolated portionsof the imperial gardens; to one of these did he now conduct the Caesarand suddenly the outer air struck on the faces of the two men and theyfound themselves in the open, in the waning light of day.
Unbroken now by the solid marble walls which had shut out most of thenoise from the streets, the shouts that came from the slopes of the hillstruck more clearly upon the ear. The sound travelling through themist-laden air seemed to come more especially from the northwesternfront of the palace of Augustus, which here faces that of the lateEmperor Tiberius, with the new gigantic wing built recently thereunto byCaligula.
Here a vast multitude appeared to have congregated. The cries of"Death!" seemed ominously loud and near, and through them there was adull murmur as of an angry mob foiled in its lust.
The Caesar uttered a cry of terror and his knees gave under him. Hecowered on the ground, clutching at the praefect's robe and hiding hisface in the folds of his mantle.
"They will kill me!" he stammered thickly. "I dare not go, praefect!...take me back ... I dare not go!"
Taurus Antinor, none too patient a man at any time, had to clench hisfists and drive his finger-nails into the palms of his hands, else hecould have struck this abject, miserable coward. He wrenched his cloakout of the Caesar's grasp and with a firm grip pulled him roughly upfrom the ground.
"An thou canst not control thy cowardly fears," he said harshly, "I'llleave thee to perish at their hands."
And holding the wretched man tightly by the wrist, he quickly soughtshelter behind a pile of building material which lay some distance away.He hoped that this cringing dastard would not hear that other clamour ofthe people which invariably followed the call for vengeance: "HailTaurus Antinor! Hail!"
Did these words perchance reach Caligula's ears he would no doubt evenat this eleventh hour have refused to trust himself to the praefect; hewould rush back into the palace, like a tracked beast that seeks itsburrow, and all the sorrow and the renunciation of the past twenty-fourhours would turn to the bitter fruit of uselessness.
Fortunately Caligula's senses were dulled by his own terrors. He heardthe shouts and the ceaseless din of rebellious strife but the only wordthat he could distinguish was the ominous one of "Death," and wheneverthis word struck upon his confused mind a violent fit of trembling wouldseize him and he would stumble and stagger along like a drunken man.
Taurus Antinor, however, held him tightly by the wrist and thus he halfled, half dragged him in his wake. The towering masses of buildingmaterials, huge blocks of stone and of marble, scaffoldings and ladderspiled up on the open ground which encircled the rear of Caligula'spalace, afforded him the protection which he had counted on andforeseen.
Keeping well within the shadows, he thus gradually worked his way onfrom pile to pile until he reached the brow of the hill. The crowd whichwas swarming up the slopes was just beginning to appear in isolateddetachments in the roads and streets that led upwards from the Forum.Apparently the mob had not forgotten its former purpose to entrap thefugitive Caesar and to force him to come out and to face his people.
The dull evening light creeping up from below, the thin drizzle whichhad succeeded the heavy rain and which mingled with the rising vapoursfrom the sodden ground, the aimlessness of the onrushing crowd as itspread itself in confused masses all round the foremost palaces on thehill, all favoured Taurus Antinor's plans. Emerging from behind amonumental block of granite, looking in their dark clothes for all theworld like the scribes who had been seen running about here all the day,the two men attracted little or no attention.
Their faces in the gloom could not easily be distinguished, nor didanyone in that excited throng imagine for a moment that the Caesar wouldleave the safe shelter of his palace and, dressed in slave's garb,affront the multitude who clamoured for his death.
The audacity of this flight carried success along with it. Dragging thequaking Caesar after him, Taurus Antinor soon plunged into the very thickof the crowd.
The tumult here and the confusion were intense. Men running andshouting, women shrieking and children crying, all in a tangled mass ofnoisy humanity. Some of the men brandished sticks, shovels or rakes, anyinstrument they had happened to possess; they shouted loudly for theCaesar, demanding his death, urging the more pusillanimous to rush thepalace and drag the hiding princeps out into the open. Others carriedtall poles on which they had improvised rude banners made of bits ofpurple-coloured rags: they were proclaiming the new Caesar of theirchoice in voices rendered hoarse with lustiness.
The women clung to their men-folk, their shrill accents mingling withthe rougher ones. Some o
f them clutched small children to their breasts,others dragged older ones at their skirts, and it was terrible to hearthe cries of frightened children through the shouts of vengeance and ofdeath.
Now as the gloom gathered in a few lighted torches appeared here andthere, held high above the sea of surrounding heads; they flickeredfeebly in the damp air, throwing fitful lurid lights on the faces closeby: dark faces, flushed and excited, with sullen eyes and dishevelledhair, above which the black smoke from the sizzling resin formed weirdand shifting haloes.
The crowd carried the fugitives along with it, pressed shoulder toshoulder in a living, breathing, panting vice. Damp rising fromthousands of rain-sodden garments mingled with the mist and with therain and formed a grey, wet, clinging veil over this restless mass,kneading it all together into a dark, swaying entity from which rose thecries of the children and the hoarse shouts of the men.
Drifting with the throng, Taurus Antinor, still holding his tremblingcompanion by the wrist, soon found himself being carried down the longflight of steps which leads from the heights crowned by Caligula'spalace to the Forum below. Without attempting to work against the crowd,he presently crossed the Nova Via, and turning sharply on his left hefound himself behind the basilica whose every arcade and precinct wasdensely packed with men and women and whose marble walls echoed andre-echoed with a multitude of sounds.
The crowd!--always the crowd! Always these shouting men, thesescreaming women, these puny crying children! It seemed as if theirnumbers were being fed by invisible masses that came from out thedarkness which was closing in around. On ahead the height of theAventine hid the horizon line from view, and on its slopes tiny lightsbegan to appear that seemed to mock the weary fugitives by theirdistance and their elusiveness.
Taurus Antinor had all along intended to reach the Aventine by a deviousway. Now the crowd had brought him and his companion to the river bank,there where the Tiber winds its sudden curve at the foot of the threehills. That curve of the river would have to be followed its whole wayalong the bank, and the slope of the Aventine looked so immeasurablyfar.
But progress had become more easy at last. Taurus Antinor pushed his wayalong now as quickly as he dared. More than one angry glance followedthe tall, powerful figure as it forged a path for its burden, regardlessof obstruction; more than one oath was uttered in the wake of thosebroad shoulders that towered above the rest of the crowd.
With a man who was shivering as with ague dragging upon his arm, withhis body racked with fever and his temples throbbing with pain, the manset out with renewed energy upon this final stage of his journey.
In the constant pushing through the crowd the bandages on his shoulderhad shifted, and he could again feel the claws of the panther tearing athis flesh, and the hot breath of the beast scorching his face. Thesodden garments clung cold and dank to his skin, he felt chilled down tothe marrow, and yet he felt as if the fire of his body would burn hisskin on to his bones.
Perhaps the physical misery which he endured numbed the more unendurableagony of the soul; certain it is that a kind of torpor graduallyinvaded his brain, leaving within it only the sensation of a terriblelonging to drop down on the wet ground and to yield to the unconquerabledesire to stretch out his aching limbs and to lay down his head in thelast long sleep which would bring eternal rest.
But now the ground had begun to rise, the Aventine stretched out itsslopes into the arms of darkness and its summit was lost in the gloomabove. The weary ascent had begun.
Then it was that through the torpor of the man's brain a vision hadsuddenly found its way, searching those memory cells of the mind thatcontained the sacred picture of long ago. A mountain rugged and steep, asurging crowd, a Man, weary and with body tormented by ceaseless pain,toiling upwards with a heavy burden.
His naked feet made no noise upon the earth, the burden which He borewas a heavy Cross.
Above on the summit death awaited Him, ignominy and shame, but He walkedup in silence and in patience, so that men in long after years, who hadburdens of sorrow or of misery, should know how to bear them till theytoo reached the summit of their Golgotha, there to find ... not death,not humiliation or pain, but eternal life and the serenity of exquisitepeace.
The Caesar hung like a dead weight on Antinor's left arm, and the rightone, lacerated by the panther's claws, burned and ached well-nighintolerably. But the glorious memory of long ago now preceded him, theDivine Martyr walking on ahead with sacred shoulders bent to thesacrifice, and he seemed to hear again the swishing of the tunic,stained with blood and the mud of the road; he seemed to hear the shoutsof the jeering crowd, the rough words of the soldiery, the sobs offaithful disciples and women.
And he too plodded on with his burden. The crowd, now far away, seemedto mock him for the uselessness of his sacrifice; Dea Flavia's sobs ofsorely wounded love called to him to turn back.
But memory now would be held back no longer. The picture which itconjured up became more distinct and more real, and its gold-linedwings, as they fluttered around his head, made a murmur gentle andintangible as the flitting of the clouds across the skies of Italia.
The murmur was soft and low, and it reached the aching senses of theweary pilgrim like the cooling breath of multitudes of angels in theparched wilderness of his sorrow:
"If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up hiscross and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, andwhosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
"For Thy sake, oh Jesus of Galilee!" said the man as he toiled up hisendless Calvary and left behind him with every step, far away in thevalley below, all that had made the world fair to him and all thepromises of happiness.
On ahead the Divine Leader had fallen on his knees: the burden of HisCross seemed greater than He could bear. Rough hands helped to drag himup from the ground and set Him once more on His tedious way. His cheekswere wan and pale, blood trickled from the thorn-crowned brow, but therewas no wavering in the lines of the face though they were distorted withpain, no giving in, no drawing back, not though one word from thoselivid lips could have called even now unto God, and ten thousand legionsof angels would have come down at that word to avenge the outrage and toproclaim His godhead.
And in the wake of his Master the Christian plodded on, dragging hisburden on his arm, the cross which he had to bear. Gradually behind himthe noise became more and more subdued, then it died downaltogether--all but a confused and far-away murmur which mingled withthe sighing of the Tiber.
And the Christian was alone once more--alone with memory.
Taurus Antinor's breath came in short, stertorous gasps, his throat wasparched and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. The slope of thehill is precipitous here, and the house--nigh to the summit--seemed torecede farther and farther with devilish malignity.
And the sense of silence and of solitude became more absolute, a fittingattendant on memory. On and on the two men walked, the Christian and hisburden; their sandalled feet felt like lead as they sank ankle-deep inthe mud of the unpaved road.
"Come, take up thy cross and follow me!" and the Christian plodded on inthe wake of the Divine Presence that beckoned to him upwards from above.
From time to time Caligula's hoarse and querulous voice would break thedeath-like silence.
"Are we not there yet?"
"Not yet. Very soon," the praefect would reply.
"I am a fool to have trusted myself to thee, for of a truth thou leadestme to my death."
"Patience, Caesar, yet a little while longer."
"May the gods fell thee to the earth. I would I had a poisoned dagger byme to kill thee ere thou dost work thy treacherous will with me. Thouson of slaves, may death overtake thee now ..."
"God in heaven grant that it may, O Caesar," said the praefect fervently.
Now at last the houses became more sparse. Only here and there up theside of the hill a tiny light glittered feebly. Taurus Antinor's senseswere only just sufficiently alert t
o keep in the right direction. Thehouse which he wished to reach was not more now than six hundred stepsaway.
The darkness had become almost thick in its intensity, even the houseswere undistinguishable in the gloom. The two men stumbled as theywalked, loose stones detached themselves under their feet and theirheelless sandals slid in the mud. Once the Caesar lost his footholdaltogether; but for his convulsive hold on the praefect's arm he wouldhave measured his length in the mud.
Taurus Antinor felt after the wrench as if this must be the end, as ifbody and brain and soul could not endure a moment longer and live.
A mist akin to the one that enveloped the hill seemed to fall over hisbrain. He no longer walked now, he just tumbled along, blindly stumblingat almost every step with that dead, dead weight upon his arm which aninvisible force compelled him to carry up the precipitous height to theplace of safety which was so far away.
"What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" asked that heavenlymurmur on the wings of memory. "For the Son of Man shall come in theglory of the Father with His angels; and then He shall reward every manaccording to his work."
With his burden lying like an insentient log on his arm, Taurus Antinorfell up at last against the door of the house; his foot had stumbledagainst its corner-stone.
A moment or two later the door was opened from within and the feeblelight of a tiny lamp was held above him whilst a kindly voice murmured:
"Who goes there?"
"The Caesar is in danger, and a fugitive. He asks shelter and protectionfrom thee," murmured Taurus Antinor feebly, "and I would lay down myburden in thy house for I am weary and I would find rest."
"Enter friend," said the man simply.
The Caesar, trembling and nerveless, fell forward into the room.
The praefect of Rome lay unconscious upon its threshold but theChristian had laid down his cross at the foot of the throne of God.
Unto Caesar Page 33