CHAPTER XXVIII
MOONLIGHT
When our transports had abated a little I was aware that the twilight wasdeepening into dusk and that I must somehow save Vedia from the roamingwild beasts. I guided her along the twisting track from her hiding-placeto the road. As we gained it I heard a loud snarl of a lion or tiger orpanther far off towards the crag. We must make haste.
I reflected that it would be a very strong and enterprising beast, even ifa lion, which would break into Vedia's coach when its panels were slid andfastened.
"We are too far from any habitation," I said, "for us to reach any whilethe light holds. I dare not make the attempt with you among all thesefreed wild beasts. I should be afraid to try it alone in this deepeningdusk. The best thing we can do is to get inside your carriage, slide thepanels and trust to them to keep out any inquisitive leopard or lion. Withthe carcasses of four well-fed horses and as many mules laid ready to eat,no tiger ought to be hungry enough to be eager after us."
"I had thought that, too," she agreed.
I peered through the open door into the coach, which was roomy. Then Ireplaced in it its mattresses and cushions, Vedia showing me how theyfitted and, going round to the other door and opening it, helping me tolay smooth the unmanageable feather-stuffed upper-cushions. She alsoshowed me the receptacles for her toilet-box, the food hampers and thekidskins. While we were thus busied the almost full moon rose clear andbright over a distant mountain. I helped Vedia into the coach and shedisposed herself at full length on its cushions, sinking into thefeathers. I walked round the coach and slid all the panels except thefront panel through which the moonlight entered, then I climbed inside,shut and fastened the door, shut the panels, fastened each and stretchedout by Vedia, like her with plenty of cushions and pillows under my headand shoulders.
As I fastened the last panels we heard the hunting-squall of a leopard atno great distance. Vedia clung to me, shuddering.
"You have saved me, Caius," she said. "As you did on the terrace atNemestronia's."
Naturally, for a while, we exchanged kisses and caresses without anyintermingled words.
When, she spoke she said:
"How do you come to be alive?"
"That," I said, "is thanks to Agathemer and is a long tale. I am faintwith hunger and thirst, you yourself should be in need of nourishment andmight be the better for it. There should be food in those hampers and winein the kidskins."
"There is," she said, "and plenty. I am as hungry and thirsty as you, nowI am no longer terrified and am recovering from my panic. But I amintensely eager to hear your story. Do begin at the beginning just as soonas you can, and tell it while we eat."
Then she showed me how to dispose the hampers as they were designed to bearranged while the occupants of the coach ate. They were very generouslyfilled with the most luxurious fare: hard-boiled eggs, ham, cold roastpork, sliced thin; breast of roast goose, breast of roast duck, youngguinea-fowls, broiled whole and cut up, broiled chickens, broiled squabs;half a. dozen kinds of bread, a quarter loaf and different sorts of rolls;lettuce and radishes; bottles of oil, vinegar, garum sauce, and othersauces; salt smoked fish; figs, both big green figs and small purple figs;a jar of strained honey, several kinds of cakes, and plenty of salt,pepper, other relishes, and a lavish provision of knives and of silver,plates, spoons, cups and other utensils.
"Why all this profusion?" I queried. "You have enough here for a party often."
"I always have a variety like this," she explained. "I generally have verylittle appetite on a journey so I tell Lydia to put in all the things shecan get which she knows I like. Then something is likely to tempt me."
We feasted by moonlight, while I told my story from the moment when I hadreceived her warning letter.
"I knew that you mounted the horse in front of Plosurnia's Tavern," shesaid, "but I have never heard of you after that. Tanno and I did all wecould to find out what had become of you; all we could without risking thesecret service getting an inkling that we had a hope that you were notdead.
"In fact it was not only advertised from the Palace in due course, butcircumstantially reported to us privately, that the secret service hadlearned that you had arranged for a fishing-vessel to take you to sea fromSipontum. They had then set three detachments of Praetorians to interceptyou, one on each road, with watchers to warn them if you were recognized.You were seen or betrayed somewhere between Hadria and Auximum, oneaccount said at Ortona, and the Praetorians killed you.
"Tanno said that the secret service always gave out such an account ifthey failed to locate and capture any man they should have arrested. Butthe confirmation of the story by three different private agencies plainlydestroyed his hopes that you might still be alive. I tried to keep onhoping, but, after a whole year, I stopped lying awake and sobbing in thedark; while I felt more grief for you than I ever felt for SatroniusPatavinus and more truly widowed than when he died, I ceased to grieve andregained my interest in gaieties and suitors. Don't you think that wasnatural?"
"Very natural," I admitted and went on with my story.
The moon rose higher and its rays no longer struck on our faces, but,striking through the open panel, diffused from what part of the cushion orsides of the coach they fell on directly, lit up the whole interior with apearly glimmer. By this subdued light Vedia looked bewitchingly charmingand coquettish, all the more because of the contrast between her elaboratecoiffure and the simple costume her maid had worn.
I ate liberally and with relish and she appeared to enjoy her food as Idid.
"You don't seem a bit worried," I remarked, "over the loss of yourjewels."
"Loss!" she exclaimed. "I haven't lost them, they are all in the secretcompartment under us inside the coach body, just where Lydia put thembefore we left Rome. The bandits had barely begun to ransack the coachwhen we heard the yells of the constabulary and then the hoof-beats oftheir horses. They and their horses made so much noise that the brigandsthought they had to do with a hundred or more and fled, dragging offBambilio and Lydia and leaving me and the hampers, even the wine-skins.They never were near laying hands on those jewels. They had Bambilio'scoin-chests, to be sure; but not my jewelry nor so much as a nugget of thebullion they had expected. They were preparing to torture the procuratorto make him reveal the hiding place of his bullion, when the yelling andgalloping horsemen scared them away."
I congratulated her and we ate with even more relish. Both of us, however,were sparing of the wine, though I gloated at the savor of the firstreally good wine I had tasted for more than two years.
And garum sauce! I had not realized how I had craved such luxuries asgarum.
I told my story to an accompaniment of Vedia's exclamations. She wasamazed at all of it; at our crawl through the drain, at the loyalty of oldChryseros, at my involvement with Maternus, at my encounter withPescennius Niger, at my involvement with the mutineers; but most of all,at my having been present in the great circus, an eyewitness of the mostspectacular day of racing Commodus ever exhibited under his transparentpseudonym of Palus and his last day of public jockeying; and, equally, atAgathemer's device by which we survived the massacre.
We had finished our leisurely meal and I had finished my story, neitherour appetites nor the flow of my narrative marred by the distant squallsof leopards and roars of lions, nor by the uncanny sounds made by thehyenas, when, all of a sudden, a lion uttered a powerful and prolongedroar within a dozen yards of us. Vedia shrieked and clung to me, clutchingme so I had to remonstrate with her in order to be able to slide shut andfasten the open front panel. I had barely fastened it when another roar asloud, sudden, and long answered the first from the other side of us,somewhere in the swamp tract. This time Vedia did not shriek, she onlyclung closer to me. I held her as close as she held me and, so clinging toeach other, in the pale glimmer of the moonlight striking on the shellpanes in the panels, we listened to repetitions of the roars, each timenearer, till the two beasts were roaring at each other not much mo
re thanits length from the carriage, apparently facing each other across the deadpole-horses. I expected a fight, but they ceased roaring, and, by thesounds they made, fell to gorging themselves on horse-meat.
When we had become used to their proximity, since, after a lapse of timewhich seemed like half an hour or more, they kept on crunching and rendingwithout any roarings and without coming nearer the carriage, Vedia, herarms still about me, told me the story of her doings since my downfall.Most of it was taken up with social gaieties and with rejections oftolerated suitors.
Then she, shyly, told me of her liking for Orensius Pacullus, of Aquileia,and her promise to marry him. She explained at length why she had beencalled imperatively to Aquileia, why he felt bound to remain there and howit was that she had agreed to travel to Aquileia to be married there,instead of his returning to Rome, which would have been the mostconventional arrangement.
While she was telling me this we heard not only the noise of the feedingof the two lions which were eating the dead horses, but heard also a thirdanimal as noisily tearing at one of the dead mules behind the coach.
"I cannot believe," she said, "that I ever consented to marry anybodyelse, even when I was certain you were dead. But you know, Caius, it isnatural to be married; and to live alone, as maid or widow, is not onlylonesome and unnatural, but unfashionable and absurd.
"But, now that I know you are alive, I shall not care who thinks meridiculous or who calls me silly; I shall feel lonely, but lonely merelybecause I cannot live with you. I shall jilt poor dear Pacullus, who is asgood a man and as good a fellow as ever lived, and I shall stick to mywidowhood until I die or Commodus joins the company of the gods and we canarrange for your full rehabilitation and the restoration of your estatesand rank."
Just as she said this we distinctly heard clawing and snuffing against thepanels behind our heads, opposite where the lions were feasting. Vedia didnot shriek, she was too scared to make any sound: she merely clutched mecloser.
Both lions roared in front of the coach; a tiger's rasping yarr answeredfrom behind it and almost instantly there were noises alongside the coachindicating that a lion and tiger were at grips; growls, snarls, moregrowls and more snarls, each choked off in the middle as it were, halfswallowed and left unfinished. For some reason the noise of the fightimmediately started a chorus of hyenas, emitting their strange cries, muchlike human laughter, but the laughter of maniacs. Our situation andenvironment was to the last degree uncanny.
The fight lasted no long time. We could not conjecture which combatant wasvictorious, but they dashed off, one pursuing the other. The remaininglion roared twice; long, choking, snarling torrents of thunderous noise;then it also went away. Except for distant snarls, squalls and roars, wewere in a silent moonlit world, almost peaceful. I ventured to unfastenthe other front panel and slide it a little way open. The rays of the highmoon, poured in on our feet, we looked out on a magical prospect.
Vedia put a relishing warm arm round my neck.
"Call me Caia again," she whispered. "Where you are Caius I am Caia!"[Footnote: From the Roman marriage-ritual.] The implication thrilled me.It was as if we were married, had been man and wife for long past.
It may have been midnight, was near midnight when she said:
"I don't want to go to sleep at all. We can do without one night's sleep.We can sleep tomorrow night, when we are not together. Let's try to keepawake every minute till daylight."
In fact it was not easy to sleep, for a pack of hyenas, apparently asfriendly with each other as if they had hunted together since they wereweaned, came and picked the bones of the horses and mules, even ate thebones, which cracked loudly between their powerful jaws. The noise oftheir gluttony would have kept awake a pair sleepier than we.
But, when the moon was almost half way down the sky, when the roars andsqualls and snarls of lions and leopards and tigers and the horridlaughter of hyenas had ceased to sound, when the night silence was socomplete that we could hear the cocks crowing near distant farmsteads andthe faint breezes rustling in the willows, we did sleep, she first, herarms round me and her head on my shoulder.
When we woke, with the slanted moon rays on the back corner of the coachbehind me, she cuddled to me luxuriously, patted me and presentlywhispered, in a bantering, roguish tone which I detected even in hersoftest whisper:
"You remember that old sweetheart of yours?"
"I don't remember any sweetheart except you," I retorted. "I never had anysweetheart except you."
"I mean," she said, "that minx who made eyes at you and all your countryneighbors and certainly tried to marry you and most of your Sabinefriends."
"You mean Marcia?" said I.
"Ah," she said, playfully and teasingly, "I thought you would remember hername. If you remember her name you must remember her."
"Of course I remember Marcia," I said. "How could I forget her after theway she led my uncle by the nose, had half the countryside mad for her,set us all by the ears, rebuffed Ducconius Furfur, and married MarcusMartius?
"If I had never known her before I'd be bound to recall the creature whoembroiled me with you. My! You were in a wax!"
"I certainly was," she whispered, "and I thought I had reason to beindignant. But now I believe your version of her relations with you andfeel no qualms at recollecting the slanders I then credited. But, thepoint is, you remember her."
"My dear," I said, "if I had never set eyes on Marcia except when Iencountered her in the Baths of Titus the day you rescued me from drowningwhen I fainted in the swimming pool, I'd remember her for life. She is toobeautiful to forget."
"Am I so hideous?" she demanded.
"You are the loveliest woman alive," I vowed. "But Marcia is amazinglyspectacular and the pictures she makes impress themselves on one's memoryand eyesight. I could never forget her in that brilliant tableau on thecamp-platform facing the mutineers, even if I had never seen her before."
"I was coming to that," Vedia said. "Marcia, who was a foundling and aslave as the adopted child of a slave, has risen so high that she is trulyEmpress in all but the official title. She has all the honors Faustina orCrispina ever had, except that she keeps out of those religious rites,participation in which is confined to women married with the full old-timeceremonies and observances."
I then told her what Agathemer and I had heard about Marcia whiledomiciled with Colgius, and of the absence from all talk about her of anymention of or allusion to Marcus Martius; I asked if she knew what hadbecome of him or, indeed, anything about him.
"Oh, yes," she said, "all Roman society knew the main facts and dear oldTanno supplied me with many of the intimate details. Commodus made a pointof having Martius specially presented to him because he had heard that hehad been, with you and Tanno, one of the foremost fighters in your affraysin Vediamnum and near Villa Satronia. At his private audience hecongratulated and bepraised Martius and acclaimed his prowess. Martius,who seems to have been a very fine fellow, disclaimed any pretensions tosuch laudations and modestly stated that he had, at the beginning of eachfight, been far in the rear in your travelling-coach, with Marcia; thatshe had clung to him and so delayed his getting out; that each time he hadgotten out and picked up the staff of a disabled combatant, but that, ineach combat, he had arrived barely in time to land a few blows on some ofthe routed enemy; that in neither affray had he done any real fighting orbeen in any danger or performed any exploits.
"Commodus, in his blunt way, had asked whether he was good for anything,anyhow. Martius had replied that he was considered more than a mediocrehorse-master.
"Commodus had then invited him to demonstrate his prowess in the Stadiumof the Palace. There Martius had shown such skill, courage, agility,judgment, grace and ease that Commodus was delighted. He had Martius ridea number of wild, fierce and unmanageable horses and was more and morecharmed with him.
"Next day he had another batch of intractable mounts for him. As Martiuswas manoeuvring one which he had almost subdued Commodus s
tepped too nearthe plunging brute and, in saving the Emperor from being run down andtrampled, Martius was somehow thrown and his neck broken.
"Commodus was very penitent, felt that he had caused Martius' death, hadhim given a funeral of Imperial magnificence and, as soon as her grief hadquieted enough, paid Marcia a ceremonial visit of condolence, as if shehad been the widow of a full general killed in battle on the frontier.
"One sight of Marcia was enough. Within a very short space of time herwiles had ensnared him and Crispina raged in vain."
Then she told me all the story of the intrigues by which Marcia poisonedthe Emperor's mind against the Empress, until Crispina fell under allsorts of suspicion in the eyes of Commodus: of how at the same time Marciasubtly laid snares for Crispina and enticed her into injudicious behaviorwith several gallants, until finally the Emperor put her undersurveillance, later relegated her to Capri, then to some more distantisland, and finally had her brought back to Rome, publicly tried,convicted and executed.
I told her my conjectures as to the queer outcome of the arrest ofDucconius Furfur and as to who Palus really was and who occupied thethrone while Palus exhibited himself as wrestler, boxer, charioteer andwhat not.
"I know nothing to confirm your surmises," she said, "but we about theCourt have often been puzzled at the way Commodus appeared to be in twoplaces at once. You set me thinking."
After the second cockcrow, since dawn was not now far away, we fell totalking of the future.
"I shan't marry anybody, ever, except you, dear!" she promised, without myasking it and again and again: "I'll remain a widow until I die unless weoutlive Commodus, and Tanno and I succeed in having you rehabilitated. Ihave many consolations in my wealth and social position and friends."
"And suitors," I put in, mimicking her tone when she bantered me aboutMarcia.
"And suitors!" she replied. "Caius, I love you, and I'll never marryanyone else, but I do love attention. I love to keep a dozen good catchesdangling about me; their wooings and their gifts and their behaviorgenerally are no end of good fun. And it's good fun to have half themarriageable belles furious with me. I cannot help encouraging any man, oreven lad, who moons about after me. But you have never had any reason tobe jealous, you have none now, you never will have."
I expressed my faith in her the best I could.
"You are a dear, dear boy," she said, "and it is good of you not to bejealous, even when you have so little reason to be jealous. I have muchmore. Suppose I raged about Nebris or Septima?"
I tried to change the subject and succeeded, when I suggested that we mustplan what we were to do at dawn and in the future. After a full discussionand the airing of her ideas and mine, we agreed that there was little orno likelihood of the road-constables returning or of anyone elseapproaching her carriage before full daylight. As soon as there wassufficient light for it to be safe, I would open the panels enough for usto keep watch up and down the highway and in the direction the constableshad taken. When we saw them returning I was to wait till they were nearenough to assure her safety and then, at the last moment, I was to slipout on the other side of the coach. That was next the swamp and I could beout of sight among the willows and alders when less than two score yardsfrom the road; also I knew the path across the swamp and could cross itand go off home through the meadows and pastures beyond it. This was ourplan.
She said she would, whenever the road-constables returned, behave as ifshe had been alone in the coach all night. She had no doubt that thepolice would give her every assistance in their power.
"Of course," she said, "my intendant galloped off somewhere, somehow andthe coachman and outrider and mule-drivers ran away; you couldn't expectany or all of them to make a stand against all those armed brigands. Ifthe constables return, as they will, all my men will come back. Osdaruswill manage to get me horses from the nearest change-station or somewhereelse, somehow. Once at an inn I can get fresh horses. I can buy a team atNuceria."
"Can you pay for a team?" I interrupted. "Have you the cash?"
"My gold and silver," she laughed, "are in the other secret compartment.The outlaws did not get my coin any more than my jewelry. Why look!Lydia's earrings are in my ears now and her necklace round my neck and herbracelets on my wrists and her rings on my fingers. The rascals were sosure of not being interfered with and so much at ease that they werestartled frantic by the galloping horsemen and scuttled off withBambilio's coin-chest, dragging him and poor Lydia and totally forgettingme, thinking me the maid, not even noticing these little trinkets, whichare mostly silver and some of gold and so worth stealing.
"I have the cash to pay for two teams or three: I brought plenty for thejourney to Aquileia, because we could learn little of the state of theroads beyond Bononia and I thought I might have to travel by Placentia oreven by Milan. I'll get back to Rome, as fast as I can. I don't want to bemarried now, so I don't want to go on to Bononia, let alone all the way toAquileia. If I did want to go on, the bandits have run off with my maid,and I could hardly get along without her, and they have also removed myescort, and I certainly could not keep on without a proper escort. I haveevery excuse for turning about at once and making haste to get out of thisdangerous neighborhood and getting back home.
"Poor Lydia! I hate to think of her at the mercy of those brutal ruffians.They may maltreat her horribly if they discover that they have the maidinstead of the mistress, and by the maid's device. I'll tell everybody Isee that I'll pay any ransom in reason, even beyond reason, for poorLydia, if the brigands will restore her to me safe and sound. I fancytheir friends hereabouts, and almost every inhabitant of the district is afriend of theirs, by your account, will speedily have conveyed to them thenews that their capture is worth almost as much ransom as they hoped toextort for me. That news ought to protect Lydia while she is among theoutlaws and ought to help me to get her back without much delay.
"As soon as I am in Rome I'll send a trusty agent up here to set on footnegotiations with the outlaws and to rescue Lydia by paying what they askfor her.
"And, the moment I reach Rome I'll set in motion all the forces I cancontrol or enlist, and I can influence many men in high places, I'll haveall I can influence working quietly and most unobtrusively for thatofficial manumission, of yours. Once you are free you had best travelsecretly and without haste to Bruttium. No folk are more secretive or moreloyal than the herders and foresters of Bruttium. Not only your formerslaves on your uncle's estate there, but all their neighbors will do asmuch to keep secret your presence among them, and shield you and to makeyou comfortable and happy as the Umbrians hereabouts have been doing tohelp and protect Bulla and his band and to shield them from theconstabulary and authorities. In Bruttium you can lurk in safety as longas Commodus lives and it will even be safe for us two to exchange letters.In Bruttium it can be arranged that no secret-service agent or Imperialspy can ever get wind of your existence, let alone of your hiding-place.You can be free, in a way, housed comfortably, with no duties, able topass your time as you please, and well cared for. Tanno and I will seethat you are supplied with cash for the journey and for your needs afteryou reach your haven."
The cocks crowed vociferously at all the neighboring farmsteads and wecould hear them plainly across the considerable distances from us to each.The moon hung low and the pale first light of day began to overcome themoonlight.
Vedia petted me and I petted her and she repeated her vows of unalterablefidelity to her pledge to marry no one else and to hope to marry me.
As dawn brightened the hyenas burst into a belated chorus and a lionroared far away. After that the beasts made no sounds which came to ourears.
Vedia insisted on my eating more of her delicacies and, I confess, I ateliberally and with relish. A night with almost no sleep and muchexcitement causes an unnatural hunger at dawn and the delicious raritiestempted me.
She explained, over and over, that I was to behave precisely as if we hadnot encountered each other and be sure not to mistake some s
ecret-serviceagent for her emissary. The watchword was to be, in memory of that used atmy escape from Rome, that whoever came from her or Tanno to me would ask:
"Can you direct me to the leopard-tamer who rode the horse with the bluesaddle-cloth?"
I was to reply:
"The blue saddle-cloth was bordered with silver."
He was then to respond:
"I have silver for the leopard-tamer."
I was then to say:
"I am the leopard-tamer and I have a pouch for your silver."
After we had rehearsed the passwords till both were sure neither couldforget or misplace a word, as the day was coming on, we kept a keenlookout through the partly opened panels. Before sunrise I saw the mountedconstables approaching down the mountain trail, for there were severalpoints on it where horsemen could be seen through the trees, even fromwhere we were.
I unfastened the coach door next the swamp, we kissed each other again andagain, and, as the horsemen came in sight away across the meadows wherethey emerged from the woods, we exchanged a last farewell kiss and Islipped out and across the swamp.
BOOK IV
DISSIMULATIONS
Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire Page 29