Nicanor - Teller of Tales Part 29

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 G.o.ds 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, ma.s.sive 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 G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sage into the darkness. Two hours speed swiftly when they hold life and death and all that lies between.

VI

Nicanor gained the pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sages and empty rooms. A slave boy with a trayful of broken meats pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage. Here it was very dark, with only the moonlight coming through narrow windows of thick and muddy gla.s.s. 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 ma.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.ds; 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. .h.i.to,--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 a.s.sistant 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.