CHAPTER XXXVIII
TORTURE
I was promptly haled off to the same prison where Galen had visited me three days before. There I was again deprived of my garments and clad in others, new, but of cheap material, coarse and uncomfortable. Also shackles, heavier shackles, were at once riveted on my ankles, and I was again consigned to the lower dungeon. I was, to be sure, given good and abundant food and wine not too unpalatable. Otherwise I had no indulgences and there I spent the night.
Next day, the last day of June, Galen again visited me.
"My lad," he said, "the first rule of medicine is to cheer up the patient, but I must say that your case looks grave and I have little cheer for you. I shall do my best and so will Tanno, Vedia and Agathemer. But we are all dazed. We cannot understand what has happened, nor who has brought it to pass, nor what influences are working against us.
"But someone has gotten the ear of Juvenalis or of Severus himself. It has been represented plausibly to the Prefect of the Praetorium, or perhaps even to the Emperor in person, that the courts here in Rome have fallen into a shocking state of disrepute on account of decisions in scandalous contravention of the evidence, brought about by favoritism and bribery. It has also been plausibly represented that the slave-population has little respect for the lives or property of their masters, less loyalty towards them and very little dread of punishment. Your alleged murder of poor Falco is held up as a flagrant example of the latter condition, your acquittal as an even more flagrant instance of the degradation of the courts.
"Believing that a shocking miscarriage of justice has taken place concerning an atrocious crime, the Prefect or the Prince has ordered you rearrested and retried, tomorrow, this time before Cassius Ravillanus."
I shuddered, not metaphorically, but actually. I felt cold all over, as if plunged into an icy mountain stream. Ravillanus claimed as his ancestor Cassius Ravilla and aimed at emulating him. Certainly, as a magistrate, he quite frankly talked and acted as if acquittal were a disgrace to the court, and the object of each trial not impartial justice but the conviction of the accused. He was perfectly sincere, upright in every intention, incorruptible, fanatical, self-opinionated, austere, ascetic, stern and harsh. I shuddered again and again at the thought of him.
"Ravillanus has the reputation of being unbribable," Galen went on, 'and it is a question whether an attempt at bribery might not prejudice your case more than letting matters be. Yet I have employed an agent far too clever to bungle any approach, and something may be done for you. Vedia is despondent, but resolute to keep her head and help you all she can, and she has cash to spare and much influence. Tanno has even more of both. Agathemer is hopeful of running down the real murderers, as they are loaded with their booty. If they are caught we can clear you.
"Keep up a brave heart."
I tried to, but it was impossible. I ate little and slept hardly at all.
The next day, the Kalends of July, saw me haled again to the Basilica
Sempronia.
There I beheld a scene almost a duplicate of my first trial; a similar throng of spectators, very similar bevies of expectant witnesses, advocates and prosecutors; the same batch of my former fellow-slaves, surrounded by the same guards; the very same charcoal-brazier tended by the same slave squatting on the same folded blanket; similar knots of notables in the apse, about and behind the magistrate's tribunal; the same carved arm-chair; in it not Corbulo, but Cassius Ravillanus, lean, dry, tanned, leathery, smooth-shaven, bald and stern.
He glared at me when my guards halted me four yards or so in front of him; then he beckoned to one of his apparitors and spoke to him in an undertone. The fellow went off as if on an errand.
Ravillanus then gave, even more positively than Corbulo, a demonstration of the great latitude permitted such a magistrate in procedure, of how completely it lies within his discretion what to do and how to do it.
"Fellow!" he ranted, "you have plotted to rob and murder your master, you have done both and you have, by favor and influence and perhaps even by bribery, arranged for your easy acquittal. I am charged by the Prince of the Republic to see to it, that the majesty of the law, the sacredness of the lives of Roman noblemen, and the security of their property be publicly vindicated: I am here to undo all that Lollius Corbulo supinely allowed to be done. You shall perceive that I am wholly unlike any such trifler. Of one feature only of his procedure do I approve. I highly acclaim his notions as to the right kind of torture. Slaves like you, however pampered, are property, like horses or cattle. Their value lies in their usefulness. Any slave, after torture, should be as useful to his owners as before. If a slave is placed upon the horse and weights hung to his feet, his legs are often made helpless, he cannot ever walk again, he is a cripple. Still oftener does the rack leave a slave utterly useless. Our courts have always desired some form of torture by which the recalcitrant could be made to suffer acute pain, but not in any way injured. Lollius has introduced a torture which never injures anyone subjected to it, but which causes extreme agony while in use. Only stretch a hard-yarn Spanish blanket over a thigh, draw it tight and hold the thigh at just the right distance from just the right size of brazier with its coals properly tended, and the subject can be made to tell the truth; but not broiled alive, for the blanket will singe before the flesh under it cooks. You had best tell the truth, not such an ingenious string of lies as you told before Lollius."
Then he had all my fellow-slaves brought up and ranged before him.
"Your master," he said, "has been foully done to death. If the guilt of this hideous crime can be indubitably fastened upon one of you or two or any few, the rest of you shall be held innocent and shall suffer no penalties. If no facts can be ascertained limiting the guilt to some of you, all of you, according to the ancient law concerning such cases, shall be put to death by crucifixion or exposure to the beasts in the arena, as our Prince may prefer. I have no desire to send to death any guiltless man. I enjoin you all to tell the truth and to assist the law. The truth- tellers will suffer less of the torture."
He then, beginning with the scullions, had every boy and man tortured over the brazier, asking no question of any till he had felt the heat of the fire and had begun to yell for mercy. Then he would interrupt the torture, question the victim, bid the torturers again hold their subject close to the fire; and again suspend the torture and ask questions. Naturally the victims, frantic with pain and terror, said whatever they thought would get them off.
Also, to my horror, I realized for the first time, what I had only vaguely suspected before, how venomously they had envied me, how violently embittered most of them were against me, how they had hated their master's favorite. They were glad to slander me, they enjoyed assisting at my ruin, they relished the prospect of my being tortured and executed. Moreover it appeared that they had been carefully coached in what they were to say or had agreed among themselves, without any outside hints, or after such hints.
The whole household made it appear that they had always suspected me of desiring Falco's death in order that I might gain my freedom and enjoy his promised legacies; that I had enticed and wheedled him into leaving me in his will an absurdly large share of his property.
They were also unanimous in declaring that they had been unable to bring home to me the devising of the robbery of the triclinium, but they had all felt certain from the first that I had arranged to have confederates of mine steal the table silver. They were equally consistent in asserting that they all believed that I had murdered Falco, after arranging for the looting of the gem-collection as a blind.
Hour after hour I had to stand and watch wretch after wretch held to the glowing coals, had to listen to the shrieks of the victims, could not but realize that Ravillanus was bent on my conviction, that nothing would swerve him from his purpose.
Dromo, alone of all the household, alone of my obsequious, indulged personal servants, held out against the torture and though he writhed, yelled, sobbed and even endured the pain until he fainted more than once, refused to say anything against me.
After Dromo my turn came. When I was stripped Ravillanus rubbed his hands and remarked:
"You have your character written on your back! How could Falco trust a fellow so branded and scarred! Easy-going masters like Falco not only bring on their own deaths, but sap the foundations of safety for all slave-owners. Your back, in advance, advertises you guilty. Better own up."
I pass over the details. But I must confess that I was far from heroic. Perhaps it is true, and not an invention, that Marcus Scaevola voluntarily thrust his hand into the altar-fire and stood mute and smiling, and watched it burn and char. If any man ever did that he had more self- control than I ever had. I could repress every indication of my agonies. I fainted so many times that I lost count. The afternoon was drawing on towards evening before Ravillanus began to lose patience.
Tanno and Galen had been from the first among those about the tribunal. Now, in a pause, while I was being brought back to consciousness to be again tortured, Galen succeeded in gaining the attention of Ravillanus enough to induce him, though grudgingly, to permit the celebrated advocate, Memmius Tuditanus, whom they had brought with them, to speak in my behalf. I had regained consciousness before he began to speak and heard most of what he said. He spoke well.
His chief point was that a gem-expert and art-amateur like me, knowing that he was to inherit one of the finest and most carefully chosen collections of gems and art objects in all the world, would be the last man on earth to allow it to be disturbed, let alone to plot its ransacking, the pillage of its cases and the dispersal of their precious contents. No man could better have exposed the absurdity of the whole flimsy and preposterous fabrication that I had had two confederates, who had, in my interest and at my suggestion, robbed first the triclinium and then the gem-collection, after which last I had myself murdered Falco.
But his logic, his lucidity and his eloquence fell on deaf ears. Ravillanus was unmoved. He permitted Lustralis to make a rambling and incoherent harangue, setting forth his ridiculous contentions.
Then he passed judgment:
"I hold you all innocent save Phorbas alone. Dromo is manifestly devoted to Phorbas and has lied in his behalf. But Dromo, apparently, was no accomplice in the plot or in the murder. I acquit him with the rest. Phorbas, who vilely plotted against his master, who foully murdered him, I adjudge guilty of his death and I hereby condemn him to be kept chained in the slaves' prison until the next day of beast-fighting in the Colosseum, then, in the arena, to be exposed to the ferocity of the famished wild beasts of the desert, wilderness and forest, by them to be lacerated and torn to pieces, as he richly deserves."
Tanno and Galen could indicate their grief and sympathy only by looks and gestures, for they dared not attempt to approach me.
Then Ravillanus called:
"Where is that barber?"
The apparitor who had gone off before the trial began produced a barber.
"Trim his hair and beard!" Ravillanus ordered. And I had to submit to having my long locks shorn and my beard clipped close, leaving me far too like my true former self for my comfort, since I still had hopes of Agathemer catching the real murderers in time to save me from the doom impending over me because of the fanaticism of Ravillanus, while I anticipated nothing but inescapable death should I be recognized as not Phorbas, but as Andivius Hedulio.
I was then, late in the afternoon of the Kalends of July, haled off to the Colosseum and immured in one of the cells of the lowermost crypt, far below the street level. To my amazement I found myself sharing the cell with Narcissus, who had been similarly condemned to exposure to the beasts, as the murderer of Commodus.
Together we spent five dreadful days in the darkness, dampness, chill and foulness of that tiny cell. I found that influence such as Tanno and Vedia possessed and cash such as they had at their disposal, could do much even for the occupant of such a cell, destined to such a doom. I was visited by Galen, more than once, and he emphasized the still hopeful possibility, nay probability, that Agathemer might, in time, save me, run down and bring before a magistrate the real murderers. I was gloomy, I admit. But his presence in that horrible hole and his words cheered me, by brightening the hope I had never wholly lost.
Also I was tended, massaged, rubbed, chafed, washed each day in warm water brought in big pails and poured into a big, shallow pan; I was anointed; clothed in a comfortable tunic, strengthened with plenty of good food and strong wine and provided with a cot and bedding and blankets. I was able to have Narcissus indulged also, in order that he might be a less unpleasant cell-mate.
He talked to me freely of life in the Palace, of Commodus, of Marcia, of Ducconius Furfur, of his own fatal mistake, of the amazing likeness, even apparent identity, between Furfur and Commodus, of the naturalness of his inability to tell them apart.
I drank and ate all the food and wine I could swallow, slept all I could, and tried to be hopeful.
Thus passed five horrible days and six hideous nights.
After no more than twelve days, as I learned later, Severus felt himself securely established as Prince of the Republic. By spending almost every moment of daylight on official business, denying himself more than the merest minimum of sleep and food, he had put every department of the government sufficiently in order to feel assured of their smooth and effective operation. His troops were now all outside the City, comfortably camped, well supplied and content; the City was orderly and its life had resumed its normal aspect and activities. He felt free to win the regard of the populace by magnificent exhibitions in the amphitheater, on the occasion of the eight days of the Games of Apollo, beginning the day before the Nones of July.
Early next day Narcissus and I were haled from our cell and led, by passages only too well known to me since my service in the Choragium, to the iron-gated doorway from which condemned criminals were thrust out into the arena for the lions or other beasts to tear. From inside that doorway I could look across the sand of the arena and could see not only the herald on his tiny platform, elevated above the leap of the most agile panther, not only the arena-wall opposite me, but also the faces of the senators in their private boxes on the podium, even a portion of the nobility behind them and of the populace higher up and further back.
The day was hot, still and clear, and the July sunshine, still slant in the early morning, struck under the awning and long shafts of the mellow radiance brightened the sand.
From that doorway, craning over the heads of the wretches in front of me, I caught glimpses of the fury of several beasts as they vented their ferocity upon some ordinary criminals and assuaged their ravenous hunger on their blood and flesh.
My time was not far off, yet I still hoped against hope that Agathemer might, even yet, have caught the thieving murderers and would intervene before it was too late. I did not at all fear the beasts; I knew that no bear, panther, leopard, tiger or lion would hurt me, but I felt certain that, when the beasts left me unharmed, I should be recognized as Festus the Beast-Wizard: and then, as the scrutiny of the whole audience would be riveted on me, identified as Andivius Hedulio.
Narcissus was led out, stepping jauntily between his guards, treading springily, with no sign of panic or dejection, a pattern Hercules, naked save for a loin-cloth, his skin pink and fresh, in spite of his days in a dungeon, his mighty muscles rippling all over his huge form. The herald proclaimed to all that this was Narcissus, professional wrestler, for long the crony of Commodus, who had strangled his master and was to be punished for his treachery and crime by being torn to pieces in sight of all Rome.
They let out on him a full-grown, young Mauretanian lion, starved and ravenous. Narcissus was naked and empty-handed, his close-clipped hair, standing like the bristles of a brush, yellow as gold wire, shining in the sun. He stood almost as immobile as had Palus and faced the lion, which, after a bound or two towards him, flattened down on the sand and began to crawl nearer, preparing for a spring.
When it sprang Narcissus performed one of the most miraculous feats ever beheld in the amphitheater. He did not dodge but ducked slightly, the wide-spread, taloned paws missing his head on each side. His arms shot out as the lion sprang, and, though the brute came at him through the air like a log-arrow from a catapult, his hands gripped each side of the wide-open mouth and his thumbs pushed the inner corners of the lips between the parted upper and lower cheek-teeth. Therefore to close his jaws on his victim the lion had to crush a roll or fold of his own lips. This incredibly difficult feat prolonged his life a few breaths. The whole populace howled in ecstasy at the wretch's coolness, courage, strength, swiftness and adroitness.
The lion's momentum and weight bore Narcissus to the ground, but his thumbs did not slip nor his hold loosen. On the sand lion and man rolled and wrestled, for a brief time. Then the lion, lashing out with his hind legs, caught with the claws of one the wrestler's belly and half disemboweled him. Narcissus collapsed and the great fangs met in his throat.
The populace redoubled their yells.
When silence fell, after the lion had been chased back into his cage and the cage lowered down the lift-shaft, after the mangled corpse of Narcissus had been dragged away and sand sprinkled to hide the red patches where his blood had soaked it, I was haled forth and stood in the very center of the arena. From his perch the herald proclaimed that I was Phorbas, the slave of Pompeianus Falco of Carthage and Rome, who had plotted his master's death in order sooner to gain freedom from his testament, and had himself dealt Falco his deathblow. The populace jeered and booed at me.
I had, as Festus the Animal-Tender, often viewed the interior of the Colosseum from the arena. But never when I was myself the cynosure of all eyes. There I stood, naked except for a loin-cloth, empty-handed, my shoulder-brand and scarred back visible to half the spectators, glared at and reviled. From my viewpoint the spectacle was singularly magnificent: the dark blue sky overhead, varied by some large, solid-looking, white clouds; the fluttering banners waving from the awning poles; the particolored, sagging awning, shading half the audience; the beauty of the upper colonnade under the awning; the solidly packed throng of spectators which crowded the colonnade, the aisles, the steps and every seat in the hollow of the amphitheater; the dignified ease of the nobility in their spaced chairs, of the senators in their ample armchairs; the gorgeousness of the Imperial Pavilion, filled with a retinue brilliant in blue and silver, in green and gold, in white and crimson, about the hard, spare, soldierly figure on the throne.
I was the only human being on the sand, eyed by all onlookers.
From a door in the podium-wall a famished lion was loosed at me. He bounded towards me, roaring; but, three or four lengths from me he paused, stood still regarding me, circled about me and then turned his back on me and loped off to the arena-wall, along which he rounded the arena, apparently searching for a way out. The populace, at first mute with astonishment, voiced their amazement in yells of a notably different quality from those they had uttered while watching Narcissus.
Another lion behaved similarly, except that he, after inspecting me, merely walked in circles far out in the arena, ignoring me as if I were not there at all.
They loosed on me five more lions, four tigers, four leopards, four panthers and four bears, of the fierce Alpine breed. Some of these animals delighted the populace by attacking each other and affording entertainment by savage and ferocious fighting. But not one showed any disposition to attack me.
As beast after beast approached me, conned me and spared me, the upper tiers began to call:
"He is innocent."
"He is guiltless."
"The beasts know."
"He is not guilty."
"The gods declare him clean of guilt!" and other such cries.
Also they began to show signs of being restless and bored. Some yelled for another criminal.
A seventh lion was loosed at me. He paused like the others and eyed me; then he strolled up to me, snuffed at me, and rubbed his mane against my hip, emitting a rambling purr. I laid my hand on his mane.
Instantly, from all sides at once, rang out cries of,
"Festus!"
"Festus the Beast-Wizard!"
"He's no Phorbas, he's Festus come back!"
I was not far from the Imperial Pavilion and one of the retinue leaned over the podium-coping and called to me. I walked towards him. When I was within earshot he called in Greek:
"The King commands that you lead the beasts back to their cages."
Elated and hoping for a reprieve, for vindication, for life, for rehabilitation, for Imperial favor, I led beast after beast back to its cage on a shaft-lift, or to a door in the wall. When the last one was caged an officer of the Imperial retinue, a frontiersman only lately come to Rome, stepped out of one of the postern doors, two arena-slaves with him. They led me to the center of the arena, trussed my hands behind me, bound my ankles and wrapped round my head an evil-smelling old quilt, probably taken from the cot of some arena-slave housed in some cell under the hollow of the amphitheater. Half suffocated by it, unable to shake it off, for they tied it fast, I stood there, blind, realizing that the Emperor still believed me guilty, was inexorable and meant me to be torn to pieces then and there; believing, as I did, that my immunity from attack was due to the effect of my gaze on the beasts I made mild.
Now you, who read, know that I was not devoured. But I had no shred of hope left. I thought that my end had come. I anticipated only the agony of great fangs rending my flesh.
I felt only the hot breath of a beast snuffing at my legs. Perhaps I fainted. Certainly my next sensation was of lying on the sand, with several unseen animals growling near me and one or more snuffing at my feet and legs.
The amphitheater was quiet, even hushed.
Then, suddenly, a lion uttered a full-throated, coughing roar, jagged and rumbling. When it died away a universal yell arose from the populace. I heard cries of:
"He is innocent!"
"Set him free!"
"We behold the justice of the gods!"
"This proves him guiltless!"
"Festus or Phorbas, he is not guilty!"
And other such exclamations.
Ridiculously, what passed through my mind, besides disgust at the foul odor of the quilt about my head, was the thought that, if I had known that ferocious beasts would avoid me even when they could not see my gaze, I should, on that unforgettable moonlit evening in Sabinum, have gone off home to my cottage, to Septima, and have missed my encounter with Vedia, and our night in her traveling coach.
Then I heard the voices of the animal-tenders essaying, with their long- handled tridents, to chase back into their cages the beasts loose about me.
Soon someone cut my ankle-thongs and the cords about the quilt, also my arm-thongs. The quilt was twitched from my face and I was assisted to my feet. The amphitheater was full of the yells of the populace, affirming my innocence and the manifest intervention of the gods in my behalf. I rolled my gaze around the audience and sought to interpret the demeanor of the Imperial retinue.
Then, as I gazed at the Emperor, too far off for me to make out his expression, the yells altered their quality.
I turned round.
I saw, running towards me across the sand, Agathemer!
Behind him was an official in the robes of a magistrate!
Behind him six more human shapes, four lictors convoying two bound prisoners.
Agathemer embraced me and I him.
"Saved," he breathed, "we've got 'em and most of the loot. Enough to convict 'em and clear you!"
As we loosed our embrace I looked at the approaching magistrate.
He was Flavius Clemens!
Before the shock of recognizing him had passed I forgot him entirely.
For I had recognized the two prisoners.
Though I had seen them but once and that by moonlight, and that eight years before, I recognized the two drunken robbers who had helped us to our couriers' equipment and sent us off galloping to Marseilles.
Indubitably they were Carex and Junco!
While still numb with amazement I felt upon me the cold gaze of Flavius Clemens. I looked him full in the face. He was no less astonished than I and I could read in his expression both amazement and suspicion. I was acutely aware that Ravillanus, by having my hair and beard clipped, had made me readily recognizable to anyone and everyone who had known me in the days of my prosperity. I was even more acutely aware of the keen intuition which every lover feels toward any actual or potential rival. I dreaded that Clemens not only recognized me for myself, but had a glimmering inkling as to why his suit of Vedia had twice failed. But he said nothing except:
"You are cleared of every imputation in connection with the murder of
Pompeianus Falco. You are free to go where you please."
Agathemer took off his robe, and threw it around me and led me to a postern. In the vaulted corridor we were met by Tanno, who embraced me and congratulated me, and Galen, who also embraced me and felicitated me. Tanno said:
"Vedia kept up till Agathemer nabbed the criminals, then she fainted; but she declares the faint relieved her and that she is entirely herself."
In one of the cells under the hollow of the amphitheater I was given strong wine, all I wanted, and then washed with warm water already prepared for me, and afterwards thoroughly massaged. Then I was clad in garments of my own.
"I feel like myself," I remarked.
Just then Flavius Clemens entered, his expression entirely too intelligible for me. Looking me full in the eyes he said:
"You have been passing as an art-amateur of Greek ancestry, under the name of Phorbas, with the status of a slave. Before that you were among the helpers at the Choragium, held as a slave belonging to the fiscus, by the name of Festus. It seems to me that you are no Greek, nor of Greek blood, even to the smallest degree, I take you for a full-blooded Roman. I think I recognize you. Are you not Andivius Hedulio?"
"I am," I acknowledged.
He saluted me courteously and bade me a polite farewell, without any other word.
Tanno and Galen made no comment, nor did Agathemer. They assisted me out to Tanno's waiting litter. In it I was borne off to the lodgings which I had occupied eight days before, between my two trials. There I found a tempting meal ready for me and ate liberally. Then I was put to bed and at once fell into the deep sleep of utter exhaustion and slept through till long after daylight next day.
When I woke I found that Dromo himself was by my bedside, as well as Agathemer. They tended me, washed me, plied me with wine and fed me with dainties, asserting that Galen had given orders that I was on no account to stir from my bed or sit up in it.
I slept again and, when I woke early in the afternoon, insisted on getting up and being dressed. I was no sooner clad than there entered the apartment a big, florid, youthful Pannonian sergeant and four legionaries.
I was yet again rearrested!
They led me away, forbidding Agathemer to exchange a word with me, or to follow us. Through the brilliant July sunlight they led me, along its northeast flank, up the Steps of Groaning, and to the Mamertine Prison!
There I was handed over to four of the assistants to the Public Executioner. They stripped me of my outer garments, leaving me naked except for my tunic. Then they haled me to the trap-door, lifted the trap, passed ropes under my armpits and lowered me into the dreaded lower dungeon, the horrible Tullianum!