Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Marcia actually persuaded Commodus to countermand the order!” Livius said, emphasizing each word. “Almighty Jove can only guess what argument she used, but if Maternus had been one of her pet Christians she couldn’t have saved him more successfully. Commodus sent a messenger post-haste that night to recall the cohort.”

  “And a good thing too,” Pertinax remarked. “It isn’t a legion’s business to supply cohorts to do the work of the district police. There were five thousand raw men on the verge of mutiny in Ostia—”

  “And — wait a minute — and,” said Livius, “don’t go yet — this is interesting: Marcia, that same night, sent a messenger of her own to find Maternus and to warn him.”

  “How do you know?” Pertinax let a sign of nervousness escape him.

  “In the palace, those of us who value our lives and our fortunes make it a business to know what goes on,” Livius answered with a dry laugh, “just as you take care to know what goes on in the city, Pertinax.”

  The older man looked worried.

  “Do you mean it is common gossip in the palace?” he demanded.

  “You are the first man I have spoken with. There are therefore only three who know, if you count the slave whom Marcia employed; four if you count Marcia. I had the great good luck not long ago to catch that slave in flagrante delicto — never mind what he was doing; that is another story altogether — and he gave me an insight into a number of useful secrets. The point is, that particular slave takes care not to run errands nowadays without informing me. There is not much that Marcia does that I don’t know about.” Livius’ eyes suggested gimlets boring holes into Pertinax’s face. Not a change of the other’s expression escaped him. Pertinax covered his mouth with his hand, pretending to yawn. He slapped his thighs to suggest that his involuntary shudder was due to having sat too long. But he did not deceive Livius. “It is known to me,” said Livius, “that you and Marcia are in each other’s confidence.”

  “That makes me doubt your other information,” Pertinax retorted. “No man can jump to such a ridiculous conclusion and call it knowledge without making me doubt him on all points. You bore me, Livius. I have important business waiting; I must make haste into the sweating room and get that over with.”

  But Livius’ sharp, nervous laugh arrested him.

  “Not yet, friend Pertinax! Let Rome wait! Rome’s affairs will outlive both of us. I suspect you intend to tell Marcia to have my name included in the next proscription list! But I am not quite such a simpleton as that. Sit down and listen. I have proof that you plotted with the governor of Antioch to have an unknown criminal executed in place of a certain Norbanus, who escaped with your connivance and has since become a follower of the highwayman Maternus. That involves you rather seriously, doesn’t it! You see, I made sure of my facts before approaching you. And now — admit that I approached you tactfully! Come, Pertinax, I made no threats until you let me see I was in danger. I admire you. I regard you as a brave and an honorable Roman. I propose that you and I shall understand each other. You must take me into confidence, or I must take steps to protect myself.”

  There was a long pause while a group of men and women came and chattered near by, laughing while one of the men tried to win a wager by climbing a marble pillar. Pertinax frowned. Livius did his best to look dependable and friendly, but his eyes were not those of a boon companion.

  “You are incapable of loyalty to any one except yourself,” said Pertinax at last. “What pledge do you propose to offer me?”

  “A white bull to Jupiter Capitolinus! I am willing to go with you to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and to swear on the altar whatever solemn oath you wish.”

  Pertinax smiled cynically.

  “The men who slew Julius Caesar were under oath to him,” he remarked. “Most solemn oaths they swore, then turned on one another like a pack of wolves! Octavian and Anthony were under oath; and how long did that last? My first claim to renown was based on having rewon the allegiance of our troops in Britain, who had broken the most solemn oath a man can take — of loyalty to Rome. An oath binds nobody. It simply is an emphasis of what a man intends that minute. It expresses an emotion. I believe the gods smile when they hear men pledge themselves. I personally, who am far less than a god and far less capable of reading men’s minds, never trust a man unless I like him, or unless he gives me pledges that make doubt impossible.”

  “Then you don’t like me?” asked Livius.

  “I would like you better if I knew that I could trust you.”

  “You shall, Pertinax! Bring witnesses! I will commit myself before your witnesses to do my part in—”

  His restless eyes glanced right and left. Then he lowered his voice.

  “ — in bringing about the political change you contemplate.”

  “Let us go to the sweating room,” Pertinax answered. “Keep near me. I will think this matter over. If I see you holding speech not audible to me, with any one—”

  “I am already pledged. You may depend on me,” said Livius. “I trust you more because you use caution. Come.”

  VI. THE EMPEROR COMMODUS

  The imperial palace was a maze of splendor such as Babylon had never seen. It had its own great aqueducts to carry water for its fountains, for the gardens and for the imperial baths that were as magnificent, if not so large, as the Thermae of Titus. Palace after palace had been wrecked, remodeled and included in the whole, under the succeeding emperors, until the imperial quarters on the Palatine had grown into a city within a city.

  There were barracks for the praetorian guard that lacked not much of being a fortress. Rooms and stairways for the countless slaves were like honeycomb cells in the dark foundations. There were underground passages, some of them secret, some notorious, connecting wing with wing; and there was one, for the emperor’s private use, that led to the great arena where the games were held, so that he might come and go with less risk of assassination.

  Even temples had been taken over and included within the surrounding wall to make room for the ever-multiplying suites of state apartments, as each Caesar strove to outdo the magnificence of his predecessor. Oriental marble, gold-leaf, exotic trees, silk awnings, fountains, the majestic figures of the guards, the bronze doors and the huge height of the buildings, awed even the Romans who were used to them.

  The throne-room was a place of such magnificence that it was said that even Caesar himself felt small in it. The foreign kings, ambassadors and Roman citizens admitted there to audience were disciplined without the slightest difficulty; there was no unseemliness, no haste, no crowding; horribly uncomfortable in the heavy togas that court etiquette prescribed, reminded of their dignity by colossal statues of the noblest Romans of antiquity, and ushered by magnificently uniformed past masters of the art of ceremony, all who entered felt that they were insignificant intruders into a golden mystery. The palace prefect in his cloak of cloth of gold, with his ivory wand of office, seemed a high priest of eternity; subprefects, standing in the marble antechamber to examine visitors’ credentials and see that none passed in improperly attired, were keepers of Olympus.

  The gilded marble throne was on a dais approached by marble steps, beneath a balcony to which a stair ascended from behind a carved screen. Trumpets announced the approach of Caesar, who could enter unobserved through a door at the side of the dais. From the moment that the trumpet sounded, and the guards grew as rigid as the basalt statues in the niches of the columned walls, it was a punishable crime to speak or even to move until Caesar appeared and was seated.

  Nor was Caesar himself an anticlimax. Even Nero, nerveless in his latter days, when self-will and debauchery had pouched his eyes and stomach, had possessed the Roman gift of standing like a god. Vespasian and Titus, each in turn, was Mars personified. Aurelius had typified a gentler phase of Rome, a subtler dignity, but even he, whose worst severity was tempered by the philosophical regret that he could not kill crime with kindliness, had worn the imperial purple like Oly
mpus’ delegate.

  Commodus, in the minutes that he spared from his amusements to accept the glamor of the throne, was perfect. Handsomest of all the Caesars, he could act his part with such consummate majesty that men who knew him intimately half-believed he was a hero after all. Athletic, muscular and systematically trained, his vigor, that was purely physical, passed readily for spiritual quality within that golden hall, where the resources of the world were all put under tribute to provide a royal setting. He emerged. He smiled, as if the sun shone. He observed the rolled petitions, greetings, testimonials of flattery from private citizens and addresses of adulation from distant cities, being heaped into a gilded basket as the silent throng filed by beneath him. He nodded. Now and then he scowled, his irritation growing as the minutes passed. At each gesture of impatience the subprefects quietly impelled the crowd to quicker movement. But at the end of fifteen minutes Commodus grew tired of dignity and his ferocious scowl clouded his face like a thunderstorm.

  “Am I to sit here while the whole world makes itself ridiculous by staring at me?” he demanded, in a harsh voice. It was loud enough to fill the throne-room, but none knew whether it was meant for an aside or not and none dared answer him. The crowd continued flowing by, each raising his right hand and bowing as he reached the square of carpet that was placed exactly in front of Caesar’s throne.

  Commodus rose to his feet. All movement ceased then and there was utter silence. For a moment he stood scowling at the crowd, one hand resting on the golden lion’s head that flanked the throne. Then he laughed.

  “Too many petitions!” he sneered, pointing at the overflowing basket; and in another moment he had vanished through the door behind the marble screen. Met and escorted up the stairs by groups of cringing slaves, he reached a columned corridor. Rich carpets lay on the mosaic floor; sunlight, from under; the awnings of a balcony glorious with potted flowers, shone on the colored statuary and the Grecian paintings.

  “What are all these women doing?” he demanded. There were girls, half- hidden behind the statues, each one trying, as he passed her, to divine his mood and to pose attractively.

  “Where is Marcia? What will she do to me next? Is this some new scheme of hers to keep me from enjoying my manhood? Send them away! The next girl I catch in the corridor shall be well whipped. Where is Marcia?”

  Throwing away his toga for a slave to catch and fold he turned between gilded columns, through a bronze door, into the antechamber of the royal suite. There a dozen gladiators greeted him as if he were the sun shining out of the clouds after a month of rainy weather.

  “This is better!” he exclaimed. “Ho, there, Narcissus! Ho, there, Horatius! Ha! So you recover, Albinus? What a skull the man has! Not many could take what I gave him and be on their feet again within the week! You may follow me, Narcissus. But where is Marcia?”

  Marcia called to him through the curtained door that led to the next room —

  “I am waiting, Commodus.”

  “By Jupiter, when she calls me Commodus it means an argument! Are some more of her Christians in the carceres, I wonder? Or has some new highwayman — By Juno’s breasts, I tremble when she calls me Commodus!”

  The gladiators laughed. He made a pass at one of them, tripped him, scuffled a moment and raised him struggling in the air, then flung him into the nearest group, who broke his fall and set him on his feet again.

  “Am I strong enough to face my Marcia?” he asked and, laughing, passed into the other room, where half a dozen women grouped themselves around the imperial mistress.

  “What now?” he demanded. “Why am I called Commodus?”

  He stood magnificent, with folded arms, confronting her, play-acting the part of a guiltless man arraigned before the magistrate.

  “O Roman Hercules,” she said, “I spoke in haste, you came so much sooner than expected. What woman can remember you are anything but Caesar when you smile at her? I am in love, and being loved, I am—”

  “Contriving some new net for me, I’ll wager! Come and watch the new men training with the caestus; I will listen to your plan for ruling me and Rome while the sight of a good set-to stirs my genius to resist your blandishments!”

  “Caesar,” she said, “speak first with me alone.” Instantly his manner changed. He made a gesture of impatience. His sudden scowl frightened the women standing behind Marcia, although she appeared not to notice it, with the same peculiar trick of seeming not to see what she did not wish to seem to see that she had used when she walked naked through the Thermae.

  “Send your scared women away then,” he retorted. “I trust Narcissus.

  You may speak before him.”

  Her women vanished, hurrying into another room, the last one drawing a cord that closed a jingling curtain.

  “Do you not trust me?” asked Marcia. “And is it seemly, Commodus, that

  I should speak to you before a gladiator?”

  “Speak or be silent!” he grumbled, giving her a black look, but she did not seem to notice it. Her genius — the secret of her power — was to seem forever imperturbable and loving.

  “Let Narcissus bear witness then; since Caesar bids me, I obey! Again and again I have warned you, Caesar. If I were less your slave and more your sycophant I would have tired of warning you. But none shall say of Marcia that her Caesar met Nero’s fate, whose women ran away and left him. Not while Marcia lives shall Commodus declare he has no friends.”

  “Who now?” he demanded angrily. “Get me my tablet! Come now, name me your conspirators and they shall die before the sun sets!”

  When he scowled his beauty vanished, his eyes seeming to grow closer like an ape’s. The mania for murder that obsessed him tautened his sinews. Cheeks, neck, forearms swelled with knotted strength. Ungovernable passion shook him.

  “Name them!” he repeated, beckoning unconsciously for the tablet that none dared thrust into his hand.

  “Shall I name all Rome?” asked Marcia, stepping closer, pressing herself against him. “O Hercules, my Roman Hercules — does love, that makes us women see, put bandages on men’s eyes? You have turned your back upon the better part of Rome to—”

  “Better part?” He shook her by the shoulders, snorting. “Liars, cowards, ingrates, strutting peacocks, bladders of wind boring me and one another with their empty phrases, cringing lick-spittles — they make me sick to look at them! They fawn on me like hungry dogs. By Jupiter, I make myself ridiculous too often, pandering to a lot of courtiers! If they despise me then as I despise myself, I am in a bad way! I must make haste and live again! I will get the stench of them out of my nostrils and the sickening sight of them out of my eyes by watching true men fight! When I slay lions with a javelin, or gladiators—”

  “You but pander to the rabble,” Marcia interrupted. “So did Nero. Did they come to his aid when the senate and his friends deserted him?”

  “Don’t interrupt me, woman! Senate! Court!” he snorted. “I can rout the senate with a gesture! I will fill my court with gladiators! I can change my ministers as often as I please — aye, and my mistress too,” he added, glaring at her. “Out with the names of these new conspirators who have set you trembling for my destiny!”

  “I know none — not yet,” she said. “I can feel, though. I hear the whispers in the Thermae—”

  “By Jupiter, then I will close the Thermae.”

  “When I pass through the streets I read men’s faces—”

  “Snarled, have they? My praetorian guard shall show them what it is to be bitten! Mobs are no new things in Rome. The old way is the proper way to deal with mobs! Blood, corn and circuses, but principally blood! By the Dioscuri, I grow weary of your warnings, Marcia!”

  He thrust her away from him and went growling like a bear into his own apartment, where his voice could be heard cursing the attendants whose dangerous duty it was to divine in an instant what clothes he would wear and to help him into them. He came out naked through the door, saw Marcia talking to Narciss
us, laughed and disappeared again. Marcia raised her voice:

  “Telamonion! Oh, Telamonion!”

  A curly-headed Greek boy hardly eight years old came running from the outer corridor — all laughter — one of those spoiled favorites of fortune whom it was the fashion to keep as pets. Their usefulness consisted mainly in retention of their innocence.

  “Telamonion, go in and play with him. Go in and make him laugh. He is bad tempered.”

  Confident of everybody’s good-will, the child vanished through the curtains where Commodus roared him a greeting. Marcia continued talking to Narcissus in a low voice.

  “When did you see Sextus last?” she asked.

  “But yesterday.”

  “And what has he done, do you say? Tell me that again.”

  “He has found out the chiefs of the party of Lucius Septimius Severus. He has also discovered the leaders of Pescennius Niger’s party. He says, too, there is a smaller group that looks toward Clodius Albinus, who commands the troops in Britain.”

  “Did he tell you names?”

  “No. He said he knew I would tell you, and you might tell Commodus, who would write all the names on his proscription list. Sextus, I tell you, reckons his own life nothing, but he is extremely careful for his friends.”

  “It would be easy to set a trap and catch him. He is insolent. He has had too much rein,” said Marcia. “But what would be the use?” Narcissus answered. “There would be Norbanus, too, to reckon with. Each plays into the other’s hands. Each knows the other’s secrets. Kill one, and there remains the other — doubly dangerous because alarmed. They take turns to visit Rome, the other remaining in hiding with their following of freedmen and educated slaves. They only commit just enough robbery to gain themselves an enviable reputation on the countryside. They visit their friends in Rome in various disguises, and they travel all over Italy to plot with the adherents of this faction or the other. Sextus favors Pertinax — says he would make a respectable emperor — another Marcus Aurelius. But Pertinax knows next to nothing of Sextus’ doings, although he protects Sextus as far as he can and sees him now and then. Sextus’ plan is to keep all three rival factions by the ears, so that if anything should happen—” he nodded toward the curtain, from behind which came the sounds of childish laughter and the crashing voice of Commodus encouraging in some piece of mischief— “they would be all at odds and Pertinax could seize the throne.”