The Roman Traitor Volume I Part 3

And while he spoke, he sipped the cup of horror with unreluctant lips, and dashed the goblet with the residue over the pedestal and shrine. And there was not one there who shrank from that foul draught. With ashy cheeks indeed, but knitted brows, and their lips reeking red with the abomination, but fearless and unfaltering, they pledged in clear and solemn tones, each after each, that awful imprecation, and cast their goblets down, that the floor swam in blood; and grasped each others'

hands, sworn comrades from that hour even to the gates of h.e.l.l.

A long and impressive silence followed. For every heart there, even of the boldest, recoiled as it were for a moment on itself, not altogether in regret or fear, much less in anything approaching to compunction or remorse; but in a sort of secret horror, that they were now involved beyond all hope of extrication, beyond all possibility of turning back or halting! And Cataline, endowed with almost superhuman shrewdness, and himself quite immovable of purpose, perceived the feelings that actuated all the others-which he felt not, nor cared for-and called on Laeca to bring wine.

"Wine, comrades," he exclaimed, "pure, generous, n.o.ble wine, to wash away the rank drops from our lips, that are more suited to our blades! to make our veins leap cheerily to the blythe inspiration of the G.o.d! and last, not least, to guard us from the damps of this sweet chamber, which alone of his bounteous hospitality our Porcius has vouchsafed to us!" And on the instant, the master-for they dared trust no slaves-bore in two earthen vases, one of strong Chian from the Greek Isle of the Egean, the other of Falernian, the fruitiest and richest of the Italian wines, not much unlike the modern sherry, but having still more body, and many cyathi, or drinking cups; but he brought in no water, wherewith the more temperate ancients were wont to mix their heady wines, even in so great a ratio as nine to one of the generous liquor.

"Fill now! fill all!" cried Cataline, and with the word he drained a br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup. "Rare liquor this, my Marcus," he continued; "whence had'st thou this Falernian? 'tis of thine inmost brand, I doubt not. In whose consulship did it imbibe the smoke?"

"The first of Caius Marius."

"Forty-four years, a ripe age," said Cethegus, "but twill be better forty years hence. Strange, by the G.o.ds! that of the two best things on earth, women and wine, the nature should so differ. The wine is crude still, when the girl is mellow; but it is ripe, long after she is--"

"Rotten, by Venus!"-interposed Caeparius, swearing the harlot's oath; "Rotten, and in the lap of Lamia!"

"But heard ye not," asked Cataline, "or hearing, did ye not accept the omen!-in whose first Consulship this same Falernian jar was sealed?"

"Marius! By Hercules! an omen! oh, may it turn out well!" exclaimed the superst.i.tious Lentulus.

"Sayest thou, my Sura? well! drink we to the omen, and may we to the valour and the principles of Marius unite the fortunes of his rival-of all-triumphant Sylla!"

A burst of acclamations replied to the happy hit, and seeing now his aim entirely accomplished, Cataline checked the revel; their blood was up; no fear of chilling counsels!

"Now then," he said, "before we drink like boon companions, let us consult like men; there is need now of counsel; that once finished"--

"Fulvia awaits me," interrupted Ca.s.sius, "Fulvia, worth fifty revels!"

"And me Semp.r.o.nia," lisped the younger and more beautiful of the twin Sylla.

"Meanwhile," exclaimed Autronius, "let us comprehend, so shall we need no farther meetings-each of which risks the awakening of suspicion, and it may well be of discovery. Let us now comprehend, that, when the time comes, we may all perform our duty. Speak to us, therefore, Sergius."

No farther exhortation was required; for coolly the conspirator arose to set before his desperate companions, the plans which he had laid so deeply, that it seemed scarcely possible that they should fail; and not a breath or whisper interrupted him as he proceeded.

"Were I not certain of the men," he said, "to whom I speak, I could say many things that should arouse you, so that you should catch with fiery eagerness at aught that promised a more tolerable position. I could recount the luxuries of wealth which you once knew; the agonies of poverty beneath which, to no purpose, you lie groaning. I could point out your actual inability to live, however basely-deprived of character and credit-devoid of any relics of your fortunes! weighed to the very earth by debts, the interest alone of which has swallowed up your patrimonies, and gapes even yet for more! fettered by bail-bonds, to fly which is infamy, and to abide them ruin! shunned, scorned, despised, and hated, if not feared by all men. I could paint, to your very eyes, ourselves in rags or fetters! our enemies in robes of office, seated on curule chairs, swaying the fate of nations, dispensing by a nod the wealth of plundered provinces! I could reverse the picture. But, as it is, your present miseries and your past deeds dissuade me. Your hopelessness and daring, your wrongs and valor, your injuries and thirst of vengeance, warn me, alike, that words are weak, and exhortation needless. Now understand with me, how matters stand. The stake for which we play, is fair before your eyes:-learn how our throw for it is certain. The consular elections, as you all well know, will be held, as proclaimed already, on the fifteenth day before the calends of November. My rivals are Sulpicius, Muraena, and Sila.n.u.s. Antonius and Cicero will preside-the first, my friend! a bold and n.o.ble Roman! He waits but an occasion to declare for us. Now, mark me.

Caius Manlius-you all do know the man, an old and practised soldier, a scar-seamed veteran of Sylla,-will on that very day display yon eagle to twenty thousand men, well armed, and brave, and desperate as ourselves, at Fiesole. Septimius of Camerinum writes from the Picene district, that thirty thousand slaves will rise there at his bidding; while Caius Julius, sent to that end into Apulia, has given out arms and nominated leaders to twice five thousand there. Ere this, they have received my mandate to collect their forces, and to march on that same day toward Rome. Three several armies, to meet which there is not one legion on this side of Cisalpine Gaul! What, then, even if all were peace in Rome, what then could stand against us? But there shall be that done here, here in the very seat and heart, as I may say, of Empire, that shall dismay and paralyse all who would else oppose us. Cethegus, when the centuries are all a.s.sembled in the field of Mars, with fifteen hundred gladiators well armed and exercised even now, sets on the guard in the Janiculum, and beats their standard down. Then, while all is confusion, Statilius and Gabinius with their households,-whom, his work done, Cethegus will join straightway-will fire the city in twelve several places, break open the prison doors, and crying "Liberty to slaves!" and "Abolition of all debts!"-rush diverse throughout the streets, still gathering numbers as they go. Meanwhile, with Lentulus and Ca.s.sius, the clients of your houses being armed beneath their togas with swords and breast-plates, and casques ready to be donned, I will make sure of Cicero and the rest. Havoc, and slaughter, and flames every where will make the city ours. Then ye, who have no duty set, hear, and mark this: always to kill is to do something!

the more, and n.o.bler, so much the better deed! Remembering this, that sons have ready access to their sires, who for the most part are their bitterest foes! and that to spare none we are sworn-how, and how deeply, it needs not to remind you. More words are bootless, since to all here it must be evident that these things, planned thus far with deep and prudent council, once executed with that dauntless daring, which alone stands for armor, and for weapons, and, by the G.o.ds! for bulwarks of defence, must win us liberty and glory, more over wealth, and luxury, and power, in which names is embraced the sum of all felicity. Therefore, now, I exhort you not; for if the woes which you would shun, the prizes which you shall attain, exhort you not, all words of man, all portents of the G.o.ds, are dumb, and voiceless, and in vain! Mark the day only, and remember, that if not ye, at least your sires were Romans and were men!"

"Bravely, my Sergius, hast thou spoken, and well done!" cried at once several voices of the more prominent partisans.

"By the G.o.ds! what a leader!" whispered Longinus Ca.s.sius to his neighbor.

"Fabius in council," cried Cethegus, "Marcellus in the field!"

"Moreover, fellow-soldiers," exclaimed Lentulus, "hear this: although he join not with us now, through policy, Antonius, the Consul, is in heart ours, and waits but for the first success to declare himself for the cause in arms. Cra.s.sus, the rich-Caesar, the people's idol-have heard our counsels, and approve them. The first blow struck, their influence, their names, their riches, and their popularity, strike with us-trustier friends, by Pollux! and more potent, than fifty thousand swordsmen!"

A louder and more general burst of acclamation and applause than that which had succeeded Cataline's address, burst from the lips of all, as those great names dropped from the tongue of Lentulus; and one voice cried aloud-it was the voice of Curius, intoxicated as it were with present triumph-

"By all the G.o.ds! Rome is our own! our own, even now, to portion out among our friends, our mistresses, our slaves!"

"Not Rome-but Rome's inheritance, the world!" exclaimed another. "If we win, all the universe is ours-and see how small the stake; when, if we fail"-

"By Hades, we'll not fail!" Cataline interrupted him, in his deep penetrating tones. "We cannot, and we will not! and now, for I wax somewhat weary, we will break up this conclave. We meet at the comitia!"

"And the Slave?" whispered Cethegus, with an inquiring accent, in his ear-"the Slave, my Sergius?"

"Will tell no tales of us," replied the other, with a hoa.r.s.e laugh, "unless it be to Lamia."

Thus they spoke as they left the house; and ere the day had yet begun to glimmer with the first morning twilight-so darkly did the clouds still muster over the mighty city-went on their different ways toward their several homes, unseen, and, as they fondly fancied, unsuspected.

CHAPTER III.

THE LOVERS.

Fair lovers, ye are fortunately met.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

On the same night, and almost at the same hour of the night, wherein that dreadful conclave was a.s.sembled at the house of Laeca, a small domestic group, consisting indeed only of three individuals, was gathered in the tablinum, or saloon, of an elegant though modest villa, situate in the outskirts of the city, fronting the street that led over the Mulvian bridge to the aemilian way, and having a large garden communicating in the rear with the plebeian cemetery on the Esquiline.

It was a gay and beautiful apartment, of small dimensions, but replete with all those graceful objects, those manifold appliances of refined taste and pleasure, for which the Romans, austere and poor no longer, had, since their late acquaintance with Athenian polish and Oriental luxury, acquired a predilection-ominous, as their sterner patriots fancied, of personal degeneracy and national decay.

Divided from the hall of reception by thick soft curtains, woven from the choice wool of Calabria, and glowing with the richest hues of the Tyrian crimson; and curtained with hangings of the same costly fabric around the windows, both of which with the doorway opened upon a peristyle; that little chamber wore an air of comfort, that charmed the eye more even than its decorations. Yet these were of no common order; for the floor was tesselated in rare patterns of mosaic work, showing its exquisite devices and bright colors, where they were not concealed by a footstool of embroidered tapestry. The walls were portioned out into compartments, each framed by a broad border of gilded scroll-work on a crimson ground, and containing an elaborately finished fresco painting; which, could they have been seen by any critical eye of modern days, would have set at rest for ever the question as to the state of this art among the ancients. The subject was a favorite one with all artists of all ages,-from the world-famous Iliad: the story of the G.o.ddess-born Achilles. Here tutored by the wise Centaur, Chiron, in horsemanship and archery, and all that makes a hero; here tearing off the virgin mitre, to don the glittering casque proffered, with sword and buckler, among effeminate wares, by the disguised Ulysses; there wandering in the despondent gloom of injured pride along the stormy sea, meet listener to his haughty sorrows, while in the distance, turning her tearful eyes back to her lord, Briseis went unwilling at the behest of the unwilling heralds. Again he was presented, mourning with frantic grief over the corpse of his beloved Patroclus-grief that called up his Nereid mother from the blue depths of her native element; and, in the last, chasing with unexampled speed the flying Hector, who, stunned and destined by the G.o.ds to ruin, dared not await his onset, while Priam veiled his face upon the ramparts, and Hecuba already tore her hair, presaging the destruction of Troy's invincible unshaken column.(2)

A small wood fire blazed cheerfully upon the hearth, round which were cl.u.s.tered, in uncouth att.i.tudes of old Etruscan sculpture, the grim and grotesque figures of the household G.o.ds. Two lamps of bronze, each with four burners, placed on tall candelabra exquisitely carved in the same metal, diffused a soft calm radiance through the room, accompanied by an aromatic odor from the perfumed vegetable oil which fed their light. Upon a circular table of dark-grained citrean wood, inlaid with ivory and silver, were several rolls of parchment and papyrus, the books of the day, some of them splendidly emblazoned and illuminated; a lyre of tortoisesh.e.l.l, and near to it the slender plectrum by which its cords were wakened to melody. Two or three little flasks of agate and of onyx containing some choice perfumes, a Tuscan vase full of fresh-gathered flowers, and several articles yet more decidedly feminine, were scattered on the board; needles, and thread of various hues, and twine of gold and silver, and some embroidery, half finished, and as it would seem but that instant laid aside. Such was the aspect of the saloon wherein three persons were sitting on that night; who, though they were unconscious, nay, even unsuspicious of the existence of conspiracy and treason, were destined, ere many days should elapse, to be involved in its desperate mazes; to act conspicuous parts and undergo strange perils, in the dread drama of the times.

They were of different years and s.e.x-one, a magnificent and stately matron, such as Rome's matrons were when Rome was at the proudest, already well advanced in years, yet still possessing not merely the remains of former charms, but much of real beauty, and that too of the n.o.blest and most exalted order. Her hair, which had been black in her youth as the raven's wing, was still, though mixed with many a line of silver, luxuriant and profuse as ever. Simply and closely braided over her broad and intellectual temples, and gathered into a thick knot behind, it displayed admirably the contour of her head, and suited the severe and cla.s.sic style of her strictly Roman features. The straight-cut eye-brows, the clear and piercing eye, the aquiline nose, and the firm thin lips, spoke worlds of character and decision; yet that which might have otherwise seemed stern and even harsh, was softened by a smile of singular sweetness, and by a lighting up of the whole countenance, which at times imparted to those high features an expression of benevolence, gentle and feminine in the extreme.

Her stature was well suited to the style of her lineaments; majestically tall and stately, and though attenuated something by the near approach of old age, preserving still the soft and flowing outlines of a form, which had in youth been noted for roundness and voluptuous symmetry.

She wore the plain white robes, bordered and zoned with crimson, of a patrician lady, but save one ma.s.sive signet on the third finger of her right hand she had no gem or ornament whatever; and as she sat a little way aloof from her younger companions, drawing the slender threads with many a graceful motion from the revolving distaff into the basket by her side, she might have pa.s.sed for her, whose proud prayer, that she might be known not as the daughter of the Scipios but as the mother of the Gracchi, was but too fatally fulfilled in the death-earned celebrity of those her boasted jewels.

The other lady was smaller, slighter, fairer, and altogether so different in mien, complexion, stature, and expression, that it was difficult even for those who knew them well to believe that they were a mother and her only child. For even in her flush of beauty, the elder lady, while in the full splendor of Italian womanhood, must ever have been calculated to inspire admiration, not all unmixed with awe, rather than tenderness or love. The daughter, on the other hand, was one whose every gesture, smile, word, glance, bespoke that pa.s.sion latent in itself, which it awakened in the bosom of all beholders.

Slightly above the middle stature, and with a waist of scarce a span's circ.u.mference, her form was exquisitely full and rounded; the sweeping outlines of her snow-white and dimpled arms, bare to the shoulders, and set off by many strings of pearl, which were themselves scarcely whiter than the skin on which they rested; the swan-like curvature of the dazzling neck; the wavy and voluptuous development of her bust, shrouded but not concealed by the plaits of her white linen _stola_, fastened on either shoulder by a clasp of golden fillagree, and gathered just above her hips by a gilt zone of the Grecian fashion; the small and shapely foot, which peered out with its jewelled sandal under her gold-fringed draperies; combined to present to the eye a very incarnation of that ideal loveliness, which haunts enamored poets in their dreams, the girl just bursting out of girlhood, the glowing Hebe of the soft and sunny south.

But if her form was lovely, how shall the pen of mortal describe the wild romantic beauty of her soul-speaking features. The rich redundancy of her dark auburn hair, black where the shadows rested on it as the sable locks of night, but glittering out wherever a wandering ray glanced on its glossy surface like the bright tresses of Aurora. The broad and marble forehead, the pencilled brows, and the large liquid eyes fraught with a mild and l.u.s.trous languor; the cheeks, pale in their wonted mood as alabaster, yet eloquent at times with warm and pa.s.sionate blushes. The lips, redder than aught on earth which shares both hue and softness; and, more than all, the deep and indescribable expression which genius prints on every lineament of those, who claim that rarest and most G.o.dlike of endowments.

She was a thing to dream of, not describe; to dream of in some faint and breathless eve of early summer, beside the margin of some haunted streamlet, beneath the shade of twilight boughs in which the fitful breeze awakes that whispering melody, believed by the poetic ancients to be the chorus of the wood-nymph; to dream of and adore-even as she was adored by him who sat beside her, and watched each varying expression, that swept across her speaking features; and hung upon each accent of the low silvery voice, as if he feared it were the last to which his soul should thrill responsive.

He was a tall and powerful youth of twenty-four or five years; yet, though his limbs were sinewy and lithe, and though his deep round chest, thin flanks, and muscular shoulders gave token of much growing strength, it was still evident that, his stature having been prematurely gained, he lacked much of that degree of power of which his frame gave promise. For though his limbs were well formed they were scarcely set, or furnished, as we should say in speaking of an animal; and the strength, which he in truth possessed, was that of elasticity and youthful vigor, capable rather of violent though brief exertion, than that severe and trained robustness, which can for long continuous periods sustain the strongest and most trying labor.

His hair was dark and curling-his eye bright, clear, and penetrating; yet was its glance at times wavering and undetermined, such as would indicate perhaps a want of steadiness of purpose, not of corporeal resolution, for that was disproved by one glance at the decided curve of his bold clean-cut mouth, and the square outlines of his ma.s.sive jaw, which seemed almost to betoken fierceness. There was a quick short flash at times, keen as the falcon's, in the unsteady eye, that told of energy enough within and stirring spirit to prompt daring deeds, the momentary irresolution conquered. There was a frank and cheery smile that oftentimes belied the auguries drawn from the other features; and, more than all, there was a tranquil sweet expression, which now and then pervaded the whole countenance, altering for the better its entire character, and betokening more mind and deeper feelings, than would at first have been suspected from his aspect.

His dress was the ordinary tunic of the day, of plain white woollen stuff, belted about the middle by a girdle, which contained his ivory tablets, and the metallic pencil used for writing on their waxed surface, together with his handkerchief and purse; but nothing bearing the semblance of a weapon, not so much even as a common knife. His legs and arms were bare, his feet being protected merely by sandals of fine leather having the clasps or fibulae of gold; as was the buckle of his girdle, and one huge signet ring, which was his only ornament.