Caesar Dies Part 13

"Good!" Commodus remarked. "First blood to the braver! Who would like to bet with me?"

"I!" Varronius retorted from between set teeth, his eyes fixed on the leopard that had recommenced his swift strategic to-and-fro stalking movement.

"I have betted you the consulship already. Who else wants to bet?" asked Commodus.

Before any one could answer the leopard sprang in again at Varronius, who stepped aside and drove his spear with very well timed accuracy. Only force enough was lacking. The point slit the leopard's skin and made a stinging wound along the beast's ribs, turning him the way a spur-p.r.i.c.k turns a horse. His snarl made Varronius step back another pace or two, neglecting his chance to attack and drive the spear-point home. The infuriated leopard watched him for a moment, ears back, tail spasmodically twitching, then shot to one side and charged straight at the group of courtiers.

They scattered. They were almost unarmed. There were three of them who stumbled, interfering with each other. The nearest to the leopard drew a dagger with a jeweled hilt, a mere toy with a light blade hardly longer than his hand. He threw his toga over his left forearm and stood firm to make a fight for it, his white face rigid and his eyes ablaze. The leopard leaped-and fell dead, hardly writhing. Commodus' long javelin had caught him in the middle of his spring, exactly at the point behind the shoulder-bone that leaves a clear course to the heart.

"I would not have done that for a coward, Tullius! If you had run I would have let him kill you!"

Commodus strode up and pulled out the javelin, setting one foot on the leopard and exerting all his strength.

"Look here, Varronius. Do you see how deep my blade went? Pin-p.r.i.c.ks are no use against man or animal. Kill when you strike, like great Jove with his thunderbolts! Life isn't a game between Maltese kittens; it's a spectacle in which the strong devour the weak and all the G.o.ds look on! Loose another leopard there! I'll show you!"

He took the spear from Varronius, balanced it a moment, discarded it and chose another, feeling its point with his thumb. There was a squeak of pulleys as they loosed a leopard near the end of the arena. He charged the animal, leaping from foot to foot. He made prodigious leaps; there was no guessing which way he would jump next. He was not like a human being. The leopard, snarling, slunk away, attempting to avoid him, but he crowded it against the wall. He forced it to turn at bay. No eye was quick enough to see exactly how he killed it, save that he struck when the leopard sprang. The next thing that anybody actually saw, he had the writhing creature on the spear, in air, like a legion's standard.

Then the madness surged into his brain.

"So I rule Rome!" he exclaimed, and threw the leopard at the gladiators' feet. "Because I pity Rome that could not find another Paulus! I strike first, before they strike me!"

They flattered him-fawned on him, but he was much too genuinely mad for flattery to take effect. "If you were worth a barrelful of rats I'd have a senate that might save me trouble! Then like Tiberius I might remain away from Rome and live more like a G.o.d. I've more than half a mind to let my dummy stay here to amuse you wastrels!" He glanced up at the box, where his subst.i.tute lolled and yawned and smiled. "All you degenerates need is some one you can rub yourselves against like fat cats mewing for a bowl of milk! By Hercules, now I'll show you something that will make your blood leap. Bring out the new Spanish team."

With an imperious gesture he sent senators and gladiators to scatter themselves all over the arena. Not yet satisfied, he ordered all the guards fetched from the tunnel and arranged them in a similar disorder, so that finally no stretch of fifty yards was left without a man obstructing it. There was no spina down the midst, nor anything except the surrounding wall to suggest to a team of horses which the course might be.

"Let none move!" he commanded. "I will crush the foot of any man who stirs!"

Attendants, clinging to the heads of four gray stallions that fought and kicked, brought out his chariot and others shut the gate behind it. Commodus admired the team a minute, then examined the new high wheels of the gilded chariot, that was hardly wider than a coffin-a thing that a man could upset with a shove and built to look as flimsy as an egg sh.e.l.l. Suddenly he seized the reins and leaped in, throwing up his right hand.

If he could have ruled his empire as he drove that chariot he would have far outshone Augustus, for whose memory men sighed. He managed them with one hand. There was magnetism sent along the reins to play with the dynamic energy of four mad stallions as G.o.ds amuse themselves with men. If empire had amused him as athleticism did there would have been no equal in all history to Commodus.

In a chariot no other athlete could have balanced, on a course providing not one un.o.bstructed stretch of fifty yards, he drove like Phoebus breaking in the horses of the Sun, careering this and that way, weaving patterns in among the frightened men who stood like posts for him to drive around. He missed them by a hand's breadth-less! He took delight in driving at them, turning in the last half-second, smiling at a blanched face as he wheeled and wove new figures down another zigzag avenue of men. The frenzy of the team inspired him; the rebellion of the stallions, made mad by the persistent, sudden turns, aroused his own astonishing enthusiasm. He accomplished the impossible! He made new laws of motion, breaking them, inventing others! He became a G.o.d in action, mastering the team until it had no consciousness of any self- will, or of any impulse but to loose its full strength under the directing will of genius.

The team tired first. It was its waning speed that wearied him at last. The mania that owned him could not tolerate the anticlimax of declining effort, so his mood changed. He became morose-indifferent. He reined in, tossed the reins to an attendant and began to walk toward the tunnel entrance, clothed as he was in nothing but the practise loin-cloth of a gladiator.

A dozen senators implored him to wait and clothe himself. He would not wait. He ordered them to bring his cloak and overtake him. Then he observed Narcissus, standing near the horse-gate, waiting to summon his trained gladiators for an exhibition:

"Not this time, Narcissus. Next time. Follow me." He waited for a moment for Narcissus. That gave the subst.i.tute time to come down from the box and go hurrying ahead into the tunnel-mouth; he went so fast (for he knew the emperor's moods) that the attendants found it hard to keep up; most of them were half a dozen paces in the rear. A senator gave Commodus his cloak. He took Narcissus by the arm and strode ahead into the tunnel, muttering, ignoring noisy protests from the senators, who warned him that the guards were not yet there.

Then there was sudden silence; possibly a consequence of Caesar's mood, or the reaction caused by chill and tunnel-darkness after sunlit sand. Or it might have been the shadow of impending tragedy. A long scream broke the silence, thrice repeated, horrible, like something from an unseen world. Instantly Narcissus leaped ahead into the darkness, weaponless but armed by nature with the muscles of a panther. Commodus leaped after him; his mood reversed again. Now emulation had him; he would not be beaten to a scene of action by a gladiator. He let his cloak fall and a senator tripped over it.

There were no lamps. Something less than twilight, deepened here and there by shadow, filled the tunnel. By a niche intended for a sentry the attendants were standing helplessly around the body of a man who lay with head and shoulders propped against the wall. Narcissus and another, like knotted snakes, were writhing near by. There was a sound of choking. Pavonius Nasor was silent. He appeared already dead.

"Pluto! Is there no light?" Commodus demanded. "What has happened?"

"They have killed your shadow, sire!"

"Who killed him?"

"Men who sprang out of the darkness suddenly."

"One man. Only one. I have him here. He lives yet, but he dies!"

Narcissus said.

He dragged a writhing body on the flagstones, holding it by one wrist.

"He was armed. I had to throttle him to save my liver from his knife.

I think I broke his neck. He is certainly dying," said Narcissus.

Some one had gone for a lamp and came along the tunnel with it.

"Let me look," said Commodus. "Here, give me that lamp!"

He looked first at Pavonius Nasor, who gazed back, at him with stupid, pa.s.sionless, already dimming eyes. A stream of blood was gushing from below his left arm.

"Now the G.o.ds of heaven and h.e.l.l, and all the strange G.o.ds that have no resting place, and all the spirits of the air and earth and sea, defile your spirit!" Commodus exploded. "Careless, irresponsible, ungrateful fool! You have deprived me of my liberty! You let yourself be killed like any sow under the butcher's knife, and dare to leave me shadowless? Then die like carrion and rot unburied!"

He began to kick him, but the stricken man's lips moved. Commodus bent down and tried to listen-tried again, mastered impatience and at last stood upright, shaking both fists at the tunnel roof.

"Omnipotent Progenitor of Lightnings!" he exploded. "He says he should have had stewed eels tonight!"

The watching senators mistook that for a cue to laugh. Their laughter touched off all the magazines of Caesar's rage. He turned into a mania.

He tore at his own hair. He tore off his loin-cloth and stood naked.

He tried to kill Narcissus, because Narcissus was the nearest to him.

His crashing centurion's parade voice filled the tunnel.

"Dogs! Dogs' ullage! Vipers!" he yelled. "Who slew my shadow? Who did it? This is a conspiracy! Who hatched it? Bring my tablets! Warn the executioners! What is Commodus without his dummy? Vultures! Better have killed me than that poor obliging fool! You cursed, stupid idiots! You have killed my dummy! I must sit as he did and look on. I must swallow stinking air of throne-rooms. I must watch sluggards fight-you miserable, wanton imbeciles! It is Paulus you have killed! Do you appreciate that? Jupiter, but I will make Rome pay for this! Who did it? Who did it, I say?"

Rage blinded him. He did not see the choking wretch whose wrist Narcissus twisted, until he struck at Narcissus again and, trying to follow him, stumbled over the a.s.sa.s.sin.

"Who is this? Give me a sword, somebody! Is this the murderer? Bring that lamp here!"

Bolder than the others, having recently been praised, the senator Tullius brought the lamp and, kneeling, held it near the culprit's face. The murderer was beyond speech, hardly breathing, with his eyes half- bursting from the sockets and his tongue thrust forward through his teeth because Narcissus' thumbs had almost strangled him.

"A Christian," said Tullius.

There was a note of quiet exultation in his voice. The privileges of the Christians were a sore point with the majority of senators.

"A what?" demanded Commodus.

"A Christian. See-he has a cross and a fish engraved on bone and wears it hung from his neck beneath his tunic. Besides, I think I recognize the man. I think he is the one who waylaid Pertinax the other day and spoke strange stuff about a wh.o.r.e on seven hills whose days are numbered."

He had raised up the man's head by the hair. Commodus stamped on the face with the flat of his sandal, crushing the head on the flagstones.

"Christian!" he shouted. "Is this Marcia's doing? Is this Marcia's expedient to keep me out of the arena? Too long have I endured that rabble! I will rid Rome of the brood! They kill the shadow-they shall feel the substance!"

Suddenly he turned on his attendants-pointed at the murderer and his victim:

"Throw those two into the sewer! Strip them-strip them now-let none identify them. Seize those spineless fools who let the murder happen. Tie them. You, Narcissus-march them back to the arena. Have them thrown into the lions' cages. Stay there and see it done, then come and tell me."

The courtiers backed away from him as far out of the circle of the lamplight as the tunnel-wall would let them. He had s.n.a.t.c.hed the lamp from Tullius. He held it high.