CHAPTER XXVII
THE POINT OF VIEW
That evening, after our dinner, a perfect dinner eaten under a grape- arbor, lingering over the fruit and honey in the mingled light of waning dusk and a clear crescent moon, I showed Septima my belt and bags, put in the belt what silver would fill it to a flaccid and comfortable flatness, and gave her all the gold and the rest of the silver. I had already explained to her what impended over us, and had emphasized my wish to remain with her and my anxiety to know that she was provided for, if we were to be separated.
I did not visit the post of the road-constabulary as often as the camp of the outlaws. Next day I rode over to their post and chatted with one of the sergeants and several of the men. They were in doubt between, two opinions: most held that their presence in the district had frightened the bandits away and that they had left the neighborhood and transferred their attention to a wholly different region; only a few maintained the view that the brigands had been lurking near from before their arrival and that all their efforts had failed to locate their hiding place. I heard nothing which led me to believe that they had any inkling of the location of the outlaws' camp, of their purposes, or of their intended coup.
After a day of happy idling on my crag I visited Bulla. He was gay.
"It promises well," he volunteered. "The procurator and his gold are well on this side of Ariminum and the propraetor and widow left Rome yesterday. They'll he here within two days of each other, if he holds the rate he has kept all the way from Bononia and they travel as such luxurious folks generally do. Come over as often as you like. No one will suspect you or follow you. I'll keep you posted as to what our advices promise us. You may be able to help us."
By this time I was so interested in Bulla and his plans that I oscillated between my crag, the outlaws' camp and the constabulary post, with no more other occupations than what I judged absolutely needful to forestall any unwelcome interest in my doings and the possibility of too many persons knowing of my visits to the outlaws.
When next I visited them Bulla told me that something had alarmed the procurator. Either some rumor of their presence along the road had reached him or he knew of the bad reputation of the stretch of the Flaminian Highway through the Umbrian mountains between Forum Sempronii and Nuceria, which it had acquired some years before when the King of the Highwaymen himself had made on it a succession of valuable captures which had yielded him princely booty and the reports of which had spread all over Italy. Anyhow their advices informed them that he had packed his bullion-chests with stones and old-iron and had parcelled out his packets of dust and nuggets among the wagons of a long train of arena-beasts.
"We'll fool him!" Bulla boasted. "We'll nab him and hold him for a big ransom. Also we'll not only make sure of his bullion chests in case our information is false, or based on an intentional rumor he has given out as a blind; but we'll get that bullion, too, if it is not in the chests, but hidden in the wagons in the guise of dusty packets of provender for the draft-cattle or of meat for the caged beasts. We'll get it!"
Prom his mention of the wagons we fell into talk of the increasing difficulty of getting fresh meat for the lions and other beasts, of the depletion of the flocks and herds along the roads from Aquileia, to Rome; and he told me that his advices reported that the whole country near the highways was already swept clean of all goats, sheep and cattle, except breeding stock, milch stock and their choicest young kept for breeding. The inhabitants could get no beef, mutton or goats' flesh for themselves; all had gone into the maws of hyenas, tigers, wolves and the rest; and the procurators were insisting on the farmers selling their kids, lambs, calves, ewes and cows-in-milk, any stock, even mules and horses; any animals fit to butcher for lion-food.
From this we came round to chatting of my talks with the teamsters and of my prospect from my crag. I had told Bulla of the crag long before, but he did not seem to have taken in the idea. Now he was delighted.
"If I'd paid attention to you soon enough," he said, "I'd have put in a day or two with you watching the show. It's too late now. Our prayed for chances are coming soon, and not far apart."
Next day he was gleeful.
"It's all going to work out like the end of a theater-play," he said. "The procurator and the propraetor and his charge are practically certain to come along tomorrow afternoon. I calculate that they will meet not far south of your crag. I've planned to post one ambush near the foot of your crag, just south of it, another at a judicious interval down the road nearer Rome. I'll have 'em between the two ambushes about the middle of the afternoon or between that and sunset. We'll nab all three ransom prizes at once and we'll lay our hands on the jewels, coin and gold almost at the same instant. I've arranged to lead the constables off on a false scent about noon and they'll be miles away up a lonely crossroad when we pull off our coup. We'll make our getaway, with the swag, hours before they can get wind of the occurrence and follow on our trail. We'll have a long start of them.
"You can watch the whole thing from your crag. This ideal weather is going to last many days yet. And the moon will be full two nights from now, so its light will help us two nights on our getaway. I envy you up on that crag watching the show, comfortable as a senator at a theater, aloft like Jupiter on Olympus in the Iliad."
Next day I made sure that the Villicus would not want me, had Septima put up for me an abundant supply of her inviting food and set off about the middle of the morning for my crag, on foot, of course. I climbed to the very top and ensconced myself under and among sheltering bushes so that I was certain that I could not be seen from the road in either direction, yet could view it both ways as far as the horizon, except just at the foot of the crag and where, in the distance, hilltops hid the hollows behind them. Close by me I placed my precious kidskin of much watered wine, I might say of water flavored with wine, so that it would keep cool in the thickest shade. The day was hot, clear and still and the rays of the sun fierce. The occasional slight breezes were very welcome.
The outlook was really magnificent; a broad prospect of rolling pasturage, hilly pasturage, and wooded mountains; the grass-lands and grassy hillsides diversified by scattered trees, clumps of trees and small groves; the lower levels of woodland broken by grassy glades; the brighter green of the forests of chestnut, beech, and oak merging imperceptibly into the darker green of the pine-forests; the score of farms in sight brilliant in the green landscapes like semi-jewels; all the wide prospect glowing under a deep blue sky, varied by a very few very white clouds, the intense sunlight beating down on everything. It was a perfect summer day.
I conned the road, on which I saw only the rear of a column of wagons convoying arena-beasts receding over the hilltops to southwards, and the normal traffic, horsemen or two-horse carriages or wagons far apart and few. I dozed.
I must have slept a full hour. I waked hot, but much refreshed, feeling lively and full of interest in what was to come. Just after I waked I saw the constabulary, the officers and about a third of the men on horseback, the rest afoot, come up the road from the direction of their post, which was south of the crag. The infantrymen, tramped their fastest and the mounted men kept pace with them. They were evidently off on their wild- goose chase. As they came into sight below me, after passing my perch, I watched them double-quick northwards and wheel to their right into the first crossroad. They were barely out of sight among the forested hills when I saw momentarily, on the Highway, fully four miles to northward, on a sunlit hilltop, what I took to be the first wagon of a train of teams drawing cages of arena-beasts. I watched the road in that direction. What I saw confirmed my conjecture. Soon the road to northward was filled from its farthest visible hilltop to just below my crag with wagon-teams such as I had many times watched transporting cages of lions, tigers, leopards, panthers and the like. I made out also some cages which I was certain contained hyenas.
Every little while I glanced the other way. Just as the first wagons of the long train vanished from my sight into that section of the road immediately below me where my crag hid it from my view, I saw appear on a hilltop to southwards what I made sure was the travelling carriage of a wealthy noble. I conjectured that it had inside of it the ransomable propraetor. I kept my eyes on the road in that direction, only glancing northward from time to time. One such glance caught a glimpse of a travelling carriage among the beast-wagons; probably the procurator in charge of the bullion.
After I had caught glimpses of it on several successive hilltops the propraetor's carriage was near enough, on one of them, for me to recognize it. Of course, I had known from childhood the travelling carriages of our senate and nobility. As everybody knows, each, has a certain unmistakable individuality. Our makers of travelling carriages never make two precisely alike, and, what is more, the tastes of different families are so different that patterns are very unlike. I recognized the carriage for that of Faltonius Bambilio.
Why he was going out as propraetor of Asia so long after his term as praetor was a puzzle to me. I accepted it as one of the countless eccentricities of Imperial administration under Commodus. The irregularities of the management of the provinces ruled in the name of Caesar by prefects and procurators had notoriously extended to the provinces ruled by proconsuls and propraetors in the name of the senate. I had always disliked, despised and even hated Bambilio for his pomposity, self-esteem and bad manners. I rejoiced at the opportunity to look on at his capture.
It was by this time past the middle of the afternoon, the day still surpassingly fair and lovely, with few clouds in the sky, a steady light breeze, the mellow afternoon sunlight bathing the world and the sun already visibly declining towards the western horizon.
While I was grinning at my thoughts and watching the advance of Bambilio's carriage, glancing back at intervals at the beast-train and the procurator's coach, I caught sight, on the highway behind Bambilio's carriage, of another travelling carriage of which I had descried no glimpse before, though I must have missed seeing it as it topped several hills further south. When I caught sight of it, it was near enough for me to recognize it at first view.
Vedia's travelling coach!
Between the first and second beat of my thumping heart, I went through an amazing variety of complex, shifting and lucid thinking. And my thinking, multifold and effective as it was, was but as a chip on the surface of a freshet in a mountain gorge amid the torrent of emotions which inundated me.
Since I had begun to mend as the result of the succour and medication of old Chryseros Philargyrus I had resolutely refrained from, thinking of Vedia. I had argued with myself that it was impossible for me to forget or ignore the daily and hourly contrasts between my former status as a wealthy nobleman and my present condition as a fugitive always in danger and generally in acute discomfort. Amid the inevitable resultant depression I might keep alive, healthy and sane if I concentrated my thoughts on self-congratulation at my survival. If I dwelt on my downfall I should lose my wits. If, in addition to thoughts of my loss of rank, wealth, friends and ease I yielded to my inclination to brood over my loss of Vedia, I should infallibly go insane. I resolutely put thoughts of her away. I succeeded in keeping them away. During my winter at the hut in the mountains, during my succeeding adventures, I had not thought of Vedia; thoughts of her had crossed my mind but seldom and fleetingly.
Now, all at once, I was overwhelmed by the realization of how ardently, how unalterably I loved her, how keenly I longed for her, how tenderly I felt towards her. Nothing, past, present or future, mattered to me except Vedia and her welfare. I had been thinking with relished amusement of the dismay of some pampered beauty haled from, her luxurious coach and off through the wild mountains, immured in some lonely cave in the forests, guarded by coarse ruffians, reduced to the most primitive diet and bedding, forced to endure all sorts of discomforts, and threatened with death or worse if an enormous ransom were not forthcoming promptly. I had been chuckling at the prospect of getting a far-off glimpse of the first act of this comedy.
My revulsion of feeling was dazing. I was hot and cold with horror at the thought of Vedia's agony, terror and misery and of her danger among Bulla's swarthy, brutal ruffians with their black curly hair and beards intensifying the villainy of their lowering faces, with their mighty hands always close to their daggers. Vedia I must save!
How?
Almost as I recognized her carriage, my eyes, instinctively sweeping my entire outlook, caught sight of Selinus feeding among a small herd of young mares on a hillside midway of the extensive pasture on the other side of the road just to north of my crag. I knew there was, a little to the north of the crag, on the same side of the road, a knoll from which that bit of hillside was plainly visible at no great distance. I had my plan worked out in all its details.
I drank all I could hold of my watered wine, left my cloak by the kidskin, tucked a small packet of food into my belt-wallet, and raced down, the steep slope of the mountainside to the north of the crag, leaping from rock to rock under the huge forest trees. I reached the gentler slopes near the highway and gained the top of the knoll. Selinus was in plain view, grazing among his brides, and by good luck, all were headed towards me. I stood on the summit of the knoll and waved my arms. Selinus caught sight of me and galloped joyously down the slope of the pasture towards me. When he was near I ran towards him down the slope of the knoll, being careful that he should not lose sight of me. My luck held and he and I approached the highway and each, other where there was a comfortable interval between the lion's cage on the wagon which had been passing when I topped the knoll and the leading yoke of the team tugging the wagon next behind. The wind, also, was towards me, so that Selinus did not smell the lions till he and I met in the highway and I had mounted him. Like a hunting dog bounding over a fallen tree Selinus had leapt the tall thorn hedge which bordered the highway to keep stock off it and in the meadow.
Once I was on his back we set off northward at full gallop, which almost at once quickened into a maddened run. He had shied violently as we passed the first cage and he winded the lion in it, but I stuck on him. Also I stuck on at each, less violent sideways lurch as we passed cage after cage: tiger, panther, leopard, hyenas or lion; all smelt equally terrifying to him, but he only ran faster and his terror went into speed ahead rather than into leaps aside.
When we reached the crossroad, up which the constabulary had turned, the procurator's carriage was still somewhere up the highway; I had not seen it since I left the top of the crag. The train of beast-wagons seemed endless.
Into the crossroad we turned and up it Selinus tore. I chuckled. No road- police, no matter how young, nimble and long-winded, could maintain a double-quick any distance on that up-slope. Selinus mounted the hills like a grayhound after a hare. We were sure to overtake the detachment soon. They could not have gone far.
Overtake them we did and the maddened run at which Selinus scaled those steep hills caught their officer's attention. I had rehearsed what I meant to say and wasted no words. What I said conveyed the whole situation to him.
"We are too few horsemen to overcome them," he said, "but we can scare them from their booty and maybe from their captives. We'll ride our fastest and we have time to reach them before they are thinking of flight. The complete surprise will save the jewels, coin and gold and most likely the lady and the officials.
"But you fellows must double-quick after us to support us in case they recover from their amazement, rally and round on us from some near vantage-ground. You can retrace your steps in a tenth of the time it took us to reach here. Race!
"And you, Felix, give me that racer of yours. Fall in with the men. Here Caius, give Felix your saddle and bridle. Your mare is giving out. Felix, saddle and bridle your horse for me. Caius, take my horse."
In a moment I was afoot among the infantry constables, the officer was in the saddle on Selinus, the reins in his hands, and the horsemen were off at a tearing gallop, with us footmen after them at a run which carried us almost by leaps down the steep slope.
When we reached the highway neither the mounted police nor any outlaws were anywhere in sight. But it was plain that more time than I had realized had elapsed since I vaulted on Selinus. Not only was the sun near the horizon, but the bandits had evidently been further up the road than this. For an instant I marvelled that they had come this far at all when both their ambushes were south of the crag. Then I realized that they had been searching the wagons for the bullion. Every wagon was stalled, half were overset, the tongue-yoke of each was hamstrung, every cage was empty, not a lion, tiger or leopard, panther or hyena to be seen; all, apparently, let out that their cages might be ransacked. I conjectured that letting them out had taken less time than it would have taken to kill them.
Panting, sweating, nearing exhaustion, we hastened along the highway at a jolting run not much faster than the quick walk of untired men, but our best speed. We passed scores of stalled wagons, every cage empty, two hamstrung oxen or mules or even horses lying in agony before each wagon, the rest of the cattle either loosed and gone or held fast by the stalled wagons behind them. We saw not one teamster, not one beast. The long series of stalled wagons, with their hamstrung or stalled cattle and empty cages extended to the foot of the crag and beyond it. Beyond it we came on the procurator's carriage, empty; no horse to it or by it. Still we had seen no human being.
A half-mile further, midway of a flat stretch of road, on one side of which was an expanse of swampy ground, varied with pools bordered by sedge, reeds and bushes, with areas of tussocks and with clumps of willows and alders, we came on Bambilio's and Vedia's carriages, their gilded decorative carvings, coral-red panel-bars, pearl-shell panel-panes, gilded rosette-bosses, silver-plated hubs and gilded spokes and fellies glittering in the late sunshine.
His coach was without any sign of a horse near it, hers with all four hamstrung; their white leather harness, with its gold and silver bosses, horridly stained with the blood they had spattered all over them as they lay struggling and trying to kick. Both carriages were empty, their cushions and mattresses and other contents scattered about on the roadway.
The sun was near setting. Our sergeants, blown as their men and as I, paused and mopped their faces. We scanned the outlook. Far away well up the mountain side we caught sight of a group of burly men, and among them a slender figure clad in a garb of pale lavender hue with the sheen of silk. Below and close a similar group among which were two figures conspicuous for crimson cloaks or the like. Far below and much nearer us we glimpsed the pursuing horsemen.
Off we set, and our fresh excitement seemed to put fresh vigor into all of us. We ran a full mile straight across pastures and wooded hills towards the point where I had glimpsed Vedia.
The sun set.
The constables ran on, panting, but by no means failing.
I gave out.
The hopelessness of such pursuit took all the heart out of me.
I stopped.
I could not hope to keep up with the excited police. I could not believe that they would give any effective support to their mounted comrades or even that they could overtake the outlaws after sunset in such broken and wooded country, or that any or all of them could rescue any of the prisoners I shuddered to think of Vedia in the clutches of such ruthless villains. But I could accomplish nothing towards helping her. I turned to slink homewards.
Half way to the spot where we had left the highway I encountered a lion. He did not attack me or menace me and I was not afraid of him. But the sight of him brought to my attention that the light was waning and that I was, for a man afoot, a considerable distance from my cottage in broken country full of escaped beasts of prey. I had never understood my power over all animals, but I had always conceived that it depended on the way I looked to them when they gazed at me. I was totally unafraid of the most ferocious beast by daylight, but by no means comfortable in twilight or dusk, while after dark I had no reason to think that a lion, or tiger would prove more tractable to me than to any other man. I felt that I must hasten home, if I was ever to reach it alive. With what breath I had left I ran the rest of the easy downhill path to the highway.
When I reached it twilight had not yet deepened into dusk and I could see fairly well. The four hamstrung horses were struggling pitifully to rise and screaming at intervals. With my sheathknife I put them out of their misery; as also the four pack-mules which lay, similarly hamstrung, in the roadway, behind the carriage.
In spite of my dread of carnivora after dark I examined the coach and what lay about it on the road. There were two kidskins, bulging roundly, presumably with wine. Three covered food hampers, unopened; and, intact, a beautiful little inlaid chest, such as ladies have for their combs, brushes, ointment-pots and similar toilet articles. From their condition I conjectured that the bandits had just commenced to rummage the coach when the unexpected approach of the mounted constables, whose small numbers they most likely did not realize, had scared them away.
Reluctant to be off and fearing to remain, I glanced about, irresolute. In a clump of willows and alders in the midst of the swampy tract I caught sight of a bit of color out of keeping with anything which naturally belonged there and suggesting a woman's garment. There was a dryshod way to that clump of trees and bushes. I threaded it towards what I had glimpsed. When I was hardly more than half way from the road to the clump I thought I heard a sob. I made haste.
Hearing the place I saw a young and slender and graceful woman dressed as a slave girl. Somehow the sight of her brought to my mind's-eye vivid recollections of my convalescent outings in Nemestronia's water-garden. She looked terrified and yet hesitating to flee from me, as if she feared the swamp. A step nearer I realized that Vedia's maid, a woman not unlike her in build, as faithful to her as Agathemer was to me and amazingly astute, had had the shrewdness and also the time to fool the brigands by exchanging clothes with her mistress in the carriage.
"Vedia!" I exclaimed. "Caia!"
"Castor!" she screamed. "You know me? You call me Caia? Are you a ghost?
Are you alive? And that voice! Oh, are you real?"
"Real and alive," I answered. "I am myself. I am Hedulio."
To my amazement there, in the dusk under the willows, among the alders, she gave a half-smothered shriek and the next instant her arms were round my neck and mine round her, and she was sobbing on my shoulder, repeating:
"Call me Caia again. This is too good to be true."