The Roman Traitor Volume Ii Part 19

With a proud gesture he waved his hand toward the door, and six of the number marched forward, three and three, while the rest falling into regular array behind him, escorted him with all respect, but with stern watchfulness, along the Via Sacra to the Carinae.

Quickly arriving at the Atrium of Cicero's house, which was filled with his friends and clients all in arms, and with many knights and patricians, whom he knew, but no one of whom saluted or seemed to recognize him, he was admitted into the Tablinum, or saloon, at the doors of which six lictors were on guard with their fasces.

On entering this small but sumptuous chamber he found a.s.sembled there already, Cethegus, Statilius, and Gabinius, silent, with white lips, in an agony of terror worse than death.

"Ha! my friends!" he exclaimed, with an unaltered mien and voice, "We are met once again. But we seem not, by all the G.o.ds! to be well pleased with the meeting. Why so downcast, Cethegus?"

"Because on earth it is our last meeting," he replied. And it was clear to see that the boldest and fiercest, and most furious of the band, while danger was afar, was the most utterly appalled now, when fate appeared imminent and certain.

"Why, then!" answered Lentulus, "we shall meet in h.e.l.l, Cethegus."

"By the G.o.ds! jest not so foully-"

"Wherefore not, I prithee? If that this be our last meeting, good faith!

let it be a merry one! I know not, for my part, what ails ye all."

"Are you mad? or know you not that Volturcius is a prisoner, and our letters in the hands of the consul? They will kill us ere noon."

"Then they must make haste, Caius. It is noon already. But, cheer thee up, be not so much afraid, my brave Cethegus-they dare not slay us."

"Dare not?"

"For their own lives, they dare not!" But as he spoke, raising his voice to its highest pitch, the curtains which closed the other end of the Tablinum were suddenly drawn back, and Cicero appeared, clad in his consular robes, and with his ivory staff in his hand. Antonius his colleague stood in the intercolumniation, with all the lictors at his back, and many knights in their appropriate tunics, but with military cloaks above them in place of the peaceful toga, and with their swords girded by their sides.

"Praetor," said Cicero in a dignified but serene voice, with no show of taunting or of triumph over his fallen enemy. "The Senate is a.s.sembled in the temple of Concord. The Fathers wait but for your coming. Give me your hand that I may conduct you thither."

"My hand, consul? Not as a friend's, I trust," said the undaunted Traitor.

"As a magistrate's, Cornelius Lentulus," replied Cicero severely, "whose hand, even if guilty, may not be polluted by an inferior's grasp."

"As a magistrate's you have it, consul. We go?"

"To the shrine of Concord! Antonius, my n.o.ble colleague, let us begone.

Senators, follow us; escape you cannot, if you would; and I would spare you the disgrace of chains."

"We follow, Cicero," answered Cethegus in a hollow voice, and casting his eyes with a wild and haggard expression on Gabinius, he added in a whisper, "to our death!"

"Be it so!" replied the other. "One can but die once; and if his time be come, as well now as hereafter. I fear not death now, when I see it face to face. I think, I have heard thee say the same."

"He spoke," answered Statilius, with a bitter and sarcastic laugh, "of the death of others then. Would G.o.d, he _then_ had met his own! So should we _now_ have been innocent and fearless!"

"I at least, if not innocent, _am_ fearless."

And watched on every side by the knights, and followed by the lictors, two behind each, the ringleaders of the plot, all save Caeparius who had fled, and Catiline-who was in open arms, an outlaw and proclaimed enemy of his country-the ringleaders were led away to trial.

The fate of Rome hung on the firmness of their judges.

CHAPTER XI.

THE YOUNG PATRICIAN.

Not always robes of state are worn, Most n.o.bly by the n.o.bly born.

H. W. H.

The light of that eventful morning, which broke, pregnant with ruin to the conspiracy, found Aulus Fulvius and his band, still struggling among the rugged defiles which it was necessary to traverse, in order to gain the Via Ca.s.sia or western branch of the Great North Road.

It had been necessary to make a wide circuit, in order to effect this, inasmuch as the Latin road, of which the Labican way was a branch, left the city to the South-eastward, nearly opposite to the Flaminian, or north road, so that the two if prolonged would have met in the forum, and made almost a right line.

Nor had this been their only difficulty, for they had been compelled to avoid all the villages and scattered farm houses, which lay on their route, in the fear that Julia's outcries and resistance-for she frequently succeeded in removing the bandage from her mouth-would awaken suspicion and cause their arrest, while in the immediate vicinity of Rome.

At one time, the party had been within a very few miles of the city, pa.s.sing over the Tiber, scarce five miles above the Mulvian bridge, about an hour before the arrest of the amba.s.sadors; and it was from this point, that Aulus sent off his messenger to Lentulus, announcing his success, thereby directly disobeying the commands of Catiline, who had enjoined it on him almost with his last words, to communicate this enterprise to none of his colleagues in guilt.

Crossing the Flaminian, or great northern road, they had found a relay of fresh horses, stationed in a little grove, of which by this time they stood greatly in need, and striking across the country, at length reached the Ca.s.sian road, near the little river Galera, just as the sun rose above the eastern hills.

At this moment they had not actually effected above ten miles of their journey, as reckoned from the gates of Rome to the camp of Catiline, which was nearly two hundred miles distant, though they had traversed nearly forty during the night, in their wearisome but unavoidable circuit.

They were, however, admirably mounted on fresh horses, and had procured a _cisium_, or light carriage for two persons, not much unlike in form to a light gig, in which they had placed the unhappy Julia, with a slight boy, the son of Caius Crispus, as the driver.

By threats of the most atrocious nature, they had at length succeeded in compelling her to temporary silence. Death she had not only despised, but implored, even when the point of their daggers were razing the skin of her soft neck; and so terribly were they embarra.s.sed and exasperated by her persistence, that it is probable they would have taken her life, had it not been for fear of Catiline, whose orders were express to bring her to his camp alive and in honor.

At length Aulus Fulvius had threatened in the plainest language outrages so enormous, that the poor girl's spirit sank, and that she took an oath, in order to avoid immediate indignities, and those the most atrocious, to remain silent during the next six hours.

Had she been able to possess herself of any weapon, she would undoubtedly have destroyed herself, as the only means she could imagine of escaping what to her was worse than loss of life, the loss of honor; and it was chiefly in the hope of effecting this ere nightfall, that she took the oath prescribed to her, in terms of such tremendous sanct.i.ty, that no Roman would dream of breaking it, on any pretext of compulsion.

Liberated by their success in this atrocious scheme, from that apprehension, they now pushed forward rapidly, and reached the station at Baccanae, in a wooded gorge between a range of low hills, and a clear lake, at about nine in the morning, of our time, or the third hour by Roman computation.

Here they obtained a fresh horse for the vehicle which carried Julia, and tarrying so long only as to swallow a draught of wine, they pressed onward through a steep defile along which the road wound among wooded crags toward Sutrium.

At this place, which was a city of some note, they were joined by forty or fifty partisans, well armed and mounted on good horses, all veteran soldiers who had been settled on the confiscated estates of his enemies by the great usurper Sylla, and thenceforth feeling themselves strong enough to overawe any opposition they might meet on the way, they journeyed at a slower rate in perfect confidence of success, numbering now not less than sixty well-equipped Cavaliers.

Before noon, they were thirty miles distant from Rome, and had reached the bottom of a long and almost precipitous ascent where the road, scorning any divergence to the right or left, scaled the abrupt heights of a craggy hill, known at the present day as the Monte Soriano, the ancient name of which has not descended to these times.

Scarcely however had they reached the first pitch of the hill, in loose and straggling order, when the rearmost rider, came spurring furiously to the head of the column, and announced to Aulus Fulvius, that they were pursued by a body of men, nearly equal to themselves in number, who were coming up at a rate so rapid, as made it certain that they would be overtaken, enc.u.mbered as they were with the wheeled carriage conveying the hapless Julia.

A brief council was held, in which, firmly resisting the proposal of the new-comers to murder their captive, and disperse in small bodies among the hills, Aulus Fulvius and Caius Crispus determined on dividing their men into two parties. The first of these, commanded by the smith, and consisting of two-thirds of their whole force, was destined to press forward as rapidly as possible; while Fulvius, with the second, should make a charge down hill upon the pursuers, by which it was hoped that they might be so effectually checked and alarmed as to give up the pursuit.

No time was lost in the execution, a second horse was attached to the _cisium_, for they had many sumpter animals along with them, and several spare chargers; and so much speed did they make, that Crispus had reached the summit of the ridge and commenced the descent before the pursuers had come up with Fulvius and the rear.

There is a little hollow midway the ascent, which is thickly set with evergreen oaks, and hollies, and in the centre of this hollow, the road makes a turn almost at right angles.

Behind the corner of the wood, which entirely concealed them from any persons coming up the hill, Aulus drew up his men in double lines, and as the band, whom he suspected to be in pursuit of him, came into the open s.p.a.ce, in loose array, and with their horses blown and weary, he charged upon them with a fierce shout, and threw them into disorder in a moment.

Nothing could indicate more clearly, the utter recklessness of the Catilinarian party, and the cheap estimate at which they held human life, than the perfect unconcern with which they set upon a party of men, whose ident.i.ty with those whom they feared was so entirely unproved.