CHAPTER XV
THE HUNT
That day we met no one and made a long march north-westwards along the flank of the mountain, camping at dusk by a spring. There we rehearsed our rescue of Nona and marvelled at the ease with which we had disposed of five burly ruffians. Agathemer agreed with me that it had been mostly the effect of complete surprise. But he took a good deal of the credit to himself. He reminded me how he had practiced me, ever since we began our flight, at the art of fighting with knives, at knife attack in general. In particular he had drilled me, as well as he could without a corpse or dummy to practice on, at the favorite stroke of professional murderers, the stab under the left shoulder-blade, the point of the knife or dagger directed a little upward so as to reach the heart. By this stroke I had killed both my victims, and he one of his. I acknowledged his claims, but was inclined to thank the gods for special aid and favor. We discussed that amazingly lucky fight until too sleepy to talk any more.
Next day we met some charcoal burners, who were both friendly and unsuspicious and who gave us intelligible directions for making our way towards Sarsina. The second night we again camped in the woods; the third we spent at a farmhouse, thanks to Agathemer's flageolet.
The farmer, whose name was Caesus, told a grewsome tale of the horrors of the plague and of the death of almost all his slaves. He was gloomy about his future, as he, his two sons, and their surviving slave were too few to work his farm. He seemed to regard us as fugitives from justice and as men whom it was his duty to help and protect. As the season was too early for comfortable travelling along byways or for safety from suspicion along highways, and as he welcomed us, we spent a month with him, well fed, well lodged and rather enjoying the hard farm work and the outdoor life, though we spent also much time under-cover, working at what could be done under shelter during heavy rains.
After he had come to feel at ease with us, our host, one day when we three were alone, asked:
"Are you some of the King of the Highwaymen's men?"
On our disclaiming any connection with the King of the Highwaymen, or any knowledge of such a character, he sighed and said:
"Oh, well! Of course, if you were, you would deny it, anyhow. You may be or you may not be. Anyhow, if you are, tell him I treated you well and shall always do my best for any man I take for one of his men.
"You don't look like his kind nor act like any I ever was sure of, but he has all sorts. I thought it best to make sure. It is best to stand well with him. He passes somewhere near here every spring or early summer on his way north and again in the autumn on his way south."
We left this bourne only on the solstice, the tenth day before the Kalends of July, and trudged comfortably to Sarsina, where we put up at the inn, frequented by foot-farers like us. So also at Caesena and Faventia. There we agreed that we had had enough of the highway, as we might encounter some Imperial spies of the regular secret service department, and not a few of these spies might know me by sight in any disguise. So we struck off due north through the almost level open country, intending to keep on northward until we came to the Spina and to follow that to the Po. As Agathemer said, if we could not find ferrymen by day we could steal a skiff by night.
Not far north of Faventia, after an easy-going day's march under a mild spring sky, we came, just before sunset, to a forest of considerable extent. As we could not conjecture whether to turn east or west, we camped at its edge and slept soundly, comfortable in our cloaks, for the night was warm and still.
Next morning the weather was so charming that we were tempted to plunge into the forest and cross it as nearly due north as we could guide ourselves by the sun. Since we reached the edge of the forest we had seen no human-being near enough for us to ask in which direction we had best try to go round it. We plunged into it and in it we wasted the entire day.
The country is very flat between Faventia and the Spina. I do not believe that in any part of that forest the surface of the soil was four yards higher than in any other part. And it was marshy, all quagmires and sloughs, with narrow, sinuous ribbons, as it were, of fairly dry land between them. We were hopelessly involved among its morasses before we realized our plight and, after we did realize it, we seemed to make little progress. We agreed that it would be folly to try to regain our camp: we held to our purpose and tried to advance northwards. But we doubled right and left, had to retrace our steps often and could form no idea how far we had penetrated.
There was an astonishing abundance of game in that forest: hares everywhere; does with fawns, young does, and not a few stags; wild boars, which fled, grunting, out of their wallows as we approached; foxes of which we three times glimpsed one at a distance; and we came on indubitable wolf tracks. We had plenty of food and ate some at noon, for we were tired. Then we spent the day threading the mazes of that swampy forest. We were careful not to get bogged and we kept our tunics and cloaks dry, though we were mired to the knees. But our very care delayed us. The day was breezy and mild but not really warm, so that we did not suffer from the heat. But by nightfall we were exhausted and had no idea how far we had advanced northward. Just at dusk we came to reasonably firm going and walked due north about a furlong. There, as the twilight deepened, we encountered another stretch of ooze. We retreated from it a dozen paces and camped under some swamp-maples on comfortably dry ground. We ate about half of our food, bread, olives, and dried figs; and while eating dried and warmed our feet and shanks at a generous fire of fallen boughs, which Agathemer, who was clever with flint and steel, had made quickly. When our feet felt as if they really belonged to us, we wrapped ourselves in our cloaks and slept soundly.
We slept, indeed, so soundly, that it was broad day when, we waked. And we waked to hear the wood ringing with the barking and baying of dogs and with the cries of hunters and beaters. Instantly we realized that we were in danger. For a hunt of such size as was approaching us must have been gotten up by a coterie of wealthy land-owners; and such magnates, if they caught sight of us, would at once suspect us of being runaway slaves. It had been easy enough to pass ourselves off for farmerly cattle-buyers in the Umbrian Mountains. But, habited as we were, camped in the depths of a thick, swampy forest, we were sure to be suspected of being runaway slaves by anyone who encountered us; and such gentry as organize big hunts with swarms of beaters are always prone to suspect any footfarers of being runaway slaves.
We hastily girded ourselves for flight, meanwhile reminding each other of the story we had planned to tell if caught.
At first we seemed to have luck. We turned westwards away from the beaters and found and passed the upper end of the morass which had stopped us the night before. From there the going was good, through open underbrush, beneath big beeches and chestnuts, over firm and gently rolling ground. Stopping and listening we tried to judge by the sounds the location of the line of beaters. We seemed to have a chance of getting beyond its western end. We set off again; just as we started on nine deer dashed past us, a big stag, two young stags and six does.
Then we did run, for we knew it was our last chance and, indeed, but little further, a young wolf raced down a ferny glade, vanishing into some alders on the further side of the glade. I nearly trod on a fleeing hare. The beaters could not be far off.
Yet, for a bit, we seemed to be gaining on them, although we were quartering their front on a long slant. The third time we stopped to pant and listen we thought that our next dash would carry us where we might crouch in the first thicket and let their line sweep past us.
But, some fifty yards or so beyond, when we came to the dancing red feathers on the cord and thought we would be safe in a few breaths, there rose at us, from behind the feathered cord, three stocky men, armed with broad-bladed hunting-spears, who yelled at us:
"Halt! Stand! Surrender!"
We recoiled from them, amazed, threw away our wallets, threw off our cloaks, and bolted, incredulous; and as we ran, we heard them yelling:
"Here! Here! Here they are! We see them! This way, all of you! We've got them! Here they are!"
No bogs, no sloughs turned us or delayed us. The going was good, over firm footing, through light underwoods, among wide-set, big trees. For our lives we ran. There seemed a very slender chance of our crossing the whole length of the line of beaters and escaping on the other side, but that slender chance seemed our only chance. We ran fit to burst our hearts.
And the hunt was plainly converging on us. The noises of the beaters drew nearer. We seemed in a swarm of fleeing hares: more deer and more deer passed us, this time, I thought, does with young fawns. We caught a glimpse of another wolf, of two foxes. And, in a moist hollow, we barely avoided a nasty rush of eight panic-stricken, grunting wild swine.
We did run across the entire line of beaters, but little good it did us. Again we saw before us the feathered cord, the scarlet plumes dancing in the sun. At it we ran, sure of safety if we passed it unseen and penetrated even ten yards beyond it into the underbrush. But we were again disappointed.
This time only two huntsmen rose at us, but they, too, flourished hunting spears with gleaming points, as big as spades. They too yelled at us and yelled to their fellows:
"Halt! You are caught! Hands up! Give yourselves up!"
And:
"There they go! Both of them! Come on! Here they are!"
Off we went again, slanting back across the approaching line of dogs and beaters, now closer together as they drew on towards the nets, and already appallingly close to us. Again we crossed the whole line, now much shorter. But this time we ran, not against part of the long stretch of feathered cord, but against the outer yard-high net. Of course this was well guarded and again we were yelled at and turned back.
Doubling back, now steaming, panting, gasping, with knees trembling under us, we reached the net on the other side.
Turned again, we found the beaters so near us and so close together, that we ran away from them rather than across their line. We ran, in fact, in a sort of mob of hares, foxes, boars, deer and even wolves, for some of each were in sight every moment.
So running we came where we could see the line of nets, now of six-foot, heavy-meshed nets, on either side of us. We made a last, desperate dash at one of the nets, I hoping to leap it or vault it or clamber over it and escape, after all. But six keepers, all with broad-bladed hunting spears, rose at us beyond it, rose with triumphant yells:
"We've got you now! We've got you now!"
From them we shied off and ran, half staggering with exhaustion and despair, between the converging lines of nets, ran in a veritable press of terrified game of all sorts, ran madly, since we heard now, not the barking and whine of dogs straining at their leashes, but the exultant yelping, barking and baying of great packs of dogs unleashed behind their game.
Of course, although no single dog, however infuriated, would ever attack me in daylight, when it could see my face, yet I could do nothing whatever to protect myself, and far less Agathemer, against the massed onset of more than a hundred maddened hunting dogs, each bigger than a full-grown wolf.
So running, staggering, stumbling, at the end of our strength, we found ourselves running into the battue-pocket at the meeting of the two long converging lines of nets. Anything would be better than that. We tried to double back and were met by a dozen big dogs, some Gallic dogs of the breed of Tolosa, spotted black and white, others mouse-colored Molossians. To escape them we dodged apart, each ran for a tree, each jumped, each caught the lowest limb of a thick-foliaged maple, the two not much over five yards apart. So thick were their leaves that I could hardly make out Agathemer in his tree. The two maples were close to the beginning of the pocket net. From my perch I could see plainly how cunningly the pocket had been set.
It was of strong, close-meshed nets fully three yards high stretched on sturdy forked stakes and well guyed back outside to pegs like tent-pegs. These pocketing nets were set along the tops of the two banks of a gully about twenty yards wide, sloping sharply downward from its top near our trees and with sides three or four yards high and steep. Once in this gully, between the pocketing nets along the upper edge of its sides, no boar could scramble out, the lower meshes of the pocketing nets were too fine for any hare to squeeze through; no doe, no stag even, could leap such nets at the top of such banks.
I could just spy a part of the heaviest net across the gully at the end of the pocket. It seemed a large meshed net of rope thicker than my knee, with the large meshes filled in with smaller meshes of rope the size of my wrist.
Hardly was I safe in the crotch of my tree when the last of the game swept by below us, the dogs hot behind them, up came the press of beaters, and, from each side, in rushed the hunters, a score of handsome nobles and gentry, habited in green tunics, wearing small, green, round-crowned, narrow-brimmed hunting hats and green boots up to just below their knees. Each carried a heavy shafted hunting spear, tipped with a huge triangular gleaming head, pointed like a needle, edged like a razor, broad as a spade at its flare.
Even in my terror and exhaustion I could not but feel a certain pleasure in the beauty of the scene, a sort of thrill at its strangeness. I had participated in such hunts in Bruttium and Sabinum, but never as hunted game.
The sun was not yet half way up the heavens, the dew had not yet dried from the leaves, owing to the very late spring the freshness of springtime had not yet passed into the fullness of early summer. Through the tender green of the young leafage, starry with drops of moisture, the sunshine shot long shafts of golden light. Under the beautiful canopy of blue sky and golden green foliage was the amazing turmoil of the hunt.
More than a hundred large animals, pigs, fawns, sows, does, boars and stags had fled before the beaters and were now jammed pellmell in the gully, for the end-net held. There they frantically jostled each other and the half dozen wolves caught among them which, indeed, snapped, slashed and tore at everything within reach, but, cowed themselves, had no effect whatever on the maddened victims which all but trod them under and actually trampled on foxes and on the swarm of squeaking, helpless hares.
Upon this mass of terrified flesh the two hundred dogs flung themselves, through the nets the huntsmen stabbed at the nearest victims, behind the dogs the shouting hunters advanced to spear their game, the battue was on and I watched it till the last animal was flat. The few which, frenzied, doubled back through the dogs and hunters were met and killed by the beaters. Not one escaped.
As the battue ended up came the rush of beaters and our trees were soon surrounded by a crowd of eager, exultant, infuriated beaters and huntsmen.
Up the trees young beaters swarmed and we were plucked down, thumped, whacked, punched, kicked and manacled, our tunics torn off, ourselves mishandled till we streamed blood, all amid abuse, threats, epithets, execrations and curses.
We stood, half fainting, utterly dazed, supported by the two or three captors who held each of us, but for whose clutches we should have collapsed on the earth.
We expected to be torn limb from limb, yet could not conjecture why we were the objects of such infuriated animosity. A beater clutching either elbow, a hand clutching my neck from behind, my knees knocking together, naked, bruised, bloody, gasping, fainting, I, like Agathemer, was haled a few paces to one corner of the pocket net. There we were held till the gentlemen came up out of the gully.
Up they came, a score of handsome young fellows, mostly each with his hat in his hand and mopping his forehead.
"Why!" the foremost of them cried. "These are not the men! These are not the men at all! They are not in the least like them!"
"Not in the least like Lupercus and Rufinus, certainly," another added.
"What a pack of asses you are!" cried a third, "to mishandle two strangers. Couldn't you look at them before you mauled them?"
"We all took them for Rufinus and Lupercus," the head huntsman rejoined. "Certainly they are desperate characters and runaways. Look at their backs."
They turned us round, to display the marks of scourging still plain on us both.
"They've both been branded," said a gentleman's voice.
"Pooh!" cried another, "that proves nothing. They may have been scourged and branded by former masters, and manumitted since. I'll have no stranger ill-treated on my land until he has had a chance to explain himself."
While he was speaking my guards turned me round again and took their hands off me.
Our champion was a tall, powerful, plump and florid young man, with very curly golden hair, very light blue eyes, and the merest trace of downy, curly yellow beard. He was very handsome, with small delicate nose and mouth, a round chin and the most beautiful ears I ever saw on any man. He wore senators' boots and a tunic of pure silk, dyed a very brilliant green and embroidered all over with a flowering vine in a darker, glossier green.
"What are your names?" asked the elder man who had noticed our brand- marks. He was swarthy and probably over thirty.
I gave him the name of Felix and Agathemer that of Asper, as we had agreed, neither of us thinking it advisable to claim to be free Romans by prefixing, "Sabinus" and "Bruttius."
"Shut up, Marcus," our champion ordered, "can't you see that these poor fellows are in no condition to answer any questions? We'll interrogate them after they have bathed, eaten and slept."
"Here, Trogus," he called to one of the chief-huntsman's assistants, "take charge of these two fellows. Treat them well; if they report any incivility or omission on your part I'll make you regret it. When they are bathed and fed, let them sleep all they want to.
"And, here, Umbro" (this to the head-huntsman), "see that their effects are found and restored to them."
He turned to us.
"Did you have wallets?" he asked.
We nodded, too shaken to speak.
"Umbro," he said, "scour the wood. Have their shoes, their cloaks and especially their wallets found and brought to me. And make sure that nothing is taken from those wallets, that they are handed to their owners as they were found. If they find anything missing, I'll make you and your men smart. Be prompt! Be lively. Get those wallets and cloaks and shoes."
While he gave these orders, some beaters brought us our torn tunics; which, even so, were better than no clothing at all. We put them on.
Then we were led off to the edge of a forest, bestowed in a light Gallic gig, drawn by one tall roan mule only, and in it, the driver sitting at our feet, sideways, on one shaft, his legs hanging down, we were driven off through a beautiful gently rolling country, clothed with the superabundant crops, vines and orchards of the lower Po Valley, all bathed in brilliant spring sunshine, to a magnificent villa, most opulently provided with white-walled, neat outbuildings, all roofed with red tiles. In one of these, apparently the house of the farm-overseer, we were bathed, clothed with fresh tunics, far better than our own, lavishly fed and led to rest in tiny white-washed rooms, very plain, but clean and airy, where we went to sleep on corded cots provided with very thin grass- stuffed mattresses.
When we woke each found his wallet beside his cot, set on his neatly folded cloak; with our old worn shoes, well cleaned, on the floor by the folded cloaks.
Later we were led before our host and champion, who turned out to be Tarrutenus Spinellus; in no wise, it seemed, affected, by the downfall of his great kinsman. He questioned us and Agathemer told the story we had agreed on: that we had been slaves of Numerius Vedius of Aquileia, who had been kind to both of us and had made him overseer and me accountant of his vegetable farms on the sandy islets offshore along the coast of the Adriatic by Aquileia. There we had lived contentedly till we had been captured by raiding Liburnian pirates from the Dalmatian islands. They had sold us at Ancona, where we had been horribly mistreated by a cruel and savage master, who had branded and scourged us for imaginary delinquencies.
From him we had run away, intent on making our way back to Aquileia and to our rightful owner.
"This all sounds plausible," said Tarrutenus, "and I believe you, and it falls out well. For my cousin, Cornelius Vindex, will leave tomorrow or next day for Aquileia and you can travel in his company all the way."
We were well fed and lodged while at Villa Spinella. While there we learned that Lupercus and Rufinus, the two escaped malefactors for whom we had been mistaken by the huntsmen and beaters, had been runaway slaves, long uncatchable and lurking in swamps and forests, who had lately, tried to rob at night the store-house of a farmstead: and who, when the farmer rushed out to defend his property, had murdered him and even thereafter, in mere wantonness, had also murdered two of his slaves, his wife and a young daughter. This horrible crime had roused the whole countryside to hunt them down and the great battue in which we had been involved had been organized at a time of the year most unusual and ruinous to the increase of deer-herds, precisely in order to snare the outlaws along with the game. They had not been caught and we had.
After two nights' good sleep, and a day's rest, with excellent and abundant meals, we set off at dawn in Cornelius' convoy, our precious amulet-bags untouched; our wallets just as we had flung them down in the forest, not a coin missing; and we were clothed in new good tunics, our bruises pretty well healed up or healing nicely, ourselves well content with our escape, but meditating a second escape, this time from, Cornelius.
For we had no stomach for the road to Aquileia, if in such company that we must present ourselves before Vedius as claiming to be slaves of his.
We escaped easily enough, just after crossing the Po, by sneaking off in the darkness from a villa where Cornelius, stopped overnight with a friend. Without any difficulty we recrossed the Po, not far below Hostilia, and from there made for Parma.
For we agreed that, after our story to Tarrutenus, with Cornelius Vindex in Aquileia, Aquileia would be no fit bourne for us. So we decided, after all, to risk the highway from Parma to Dertona and from there make our way across the Ligurian Mountains to Vada Sabatia and from there along the highway to Marseilles, where we should be able to hide in the slums among the mixture of all races in that lively city; and where Agathemer was sure he could turn gems into cash without danger or suspicion.
All, went well with us till we reached Placentia. There we put up at an inn. As we were leaving the town next morning, when we were about half way from the inn to the Clastidian Gate, Agathemer gripped my arm and motioned me up a side street. We walked with every indication of leisurely indifference until we had taken several turns and were alone in a narrow street. Then he told me that we had barely missed coming face to face with Gratillus himself.
This barely missed encounter with one of the most dreaded of the Emperor's spies, a man who knew me perfectly and who had always disliked me, so terrified both of us that we left Placentia by the Nuran Gate and made our way southwestward into the Apennines.
Once in the mountains we avoided every good road we saw and kept to bad byways, until we were completely lost.