I
The sentries were going their rounds; the camp-fires were burning low. Over on the western hills bounding the Thessalian plain-land lingered the last bars of light. It was oppressively warm, and man and beast were utterly fatigued. Quintus Drusus stripped off his armour, and flung himself on the turf inside his tattered leather tent. Vast had been the changes eighteen months of campaigning had made in him. He had fought in Italy, in Spain, in the long blockade of the Pompeians at Dyrrachium. He had learned the art of war in no gentle school. He had ceased even so much as to grumble inwardly at the hardships endured by the hard-pressed Cæsarian army. The campaign was not going well. Pompeius had broken through the blockade; and now the two armies had been executing tedious manoeuvres, fencing for a vantage-ground before joining pitched battle.
Drusus was exceedingly weary. The events of the past two years,—loves, hates, pleasures, perils, battles,—all coursed through his mind; the fairest and most hideous of things were blended into buzzing confusion; and out of that confusion came a dull consciousness that he, Quintus Drusus, was thoroughly weary of everything and anything—was heavy of heart, was consumed with hatred, was chafing against a hundred barriers of time, space, and circumstance, and was utterly impotent to contend against them.
The Imperator—how he loved and adored him! Through all the campaigning nothing could seem to break the strength of that nervous, agile, finely strung physique. Sleeping in carriages or litters; ever moving; dictating continually books and letters to a secretary if for an hour there was a halt; dictating even while on horseback, in fact, and composing two letters at the same time; riding the most ungovernable horses fearlessly and without a fall; galloping at full speed with his hands clasped behind his back,—these were the mere external traits that made him wonderful among men. Worthy of all praise was the discipline by which the Imperator had held his troops to him by bonds firmer than iron; neither noticing all petty transgressions, nor punishing according to a rigid rule; swift and sure to apprehend mutineers and deserters; certain to relax the tight bands of discipline after a hard-fought battle with the genial remark that "his soldiers fought none the worse for being well oiled "; ever treating the troops as comrades, and addressing them as "fellow-soldiers," as if they were but sharers with him in the honour of struggling for a single great end. Drusus had known him to ride one hundred miles a day in a light chariot without baggage, march continually at the head of his legions on foot, sharing their fatigues in the most malignant weather, swim a swollen river on a float of inflated skins, always travelling faster than the news of his coming might fly before him. Tireless, unsleeping, all providing, all accomplishing, omniscient,—this was what made Drusus look upon his general as a being raised up by the Fates, to go up and down the world, destroying here and building there. The immediate future might be sombre enough, with all the military advantages falling, one after another, into Pompeius's lap; but doubt the ultimate triumph of Cæsar? The young Livian would have as readily questioned his own existence.
Some one thrust back the flaps of the tent, and called inside into the darkness:—
"Are you here, Drusus?"
"I am," was the wearied answer. "Is that Antonius?"
"Yes. Come out. We may as well dispose of our cold puls before the moon rises, and while we can imagine it peacocks, Lucrine oysters, or what not."
"If sight were the only sense!" grumbled Drusus, as he pulled himself together by a considerable effort, and staggered to his feet.
Outside the tent Antonius was waiting with a helmet half full of the delectable viand, which the two friends proceeded to share together as equally as they might in the increasing darkness.
"You are over sober to-night," said Antonius, when this scarcely elaborate meal was nearly finished.
"Perpol!" replied Drusus, "have I been as a rule drunken of late? My throat hardly knows the feeling of good Falernian, it is so long since I have tasted any."
"I doubt if there is so much as a draught of posca[176] in the army," said Antonius, yawning. "I imagine that among our friends, the Pompeians, there is plenty, and more to spare. Mehercle, I feel that we must storm their camp just to get something worth drinking. But I would stake my best villa that you have not been so gloomy for mere lack of victuals, unless you have just joined the Pythagoreans, and have taken a vow not to eat fish or beans."
"I do not know that I am especially gloomy to-night," replied Drusus, a bit testily. "I know little whereon to make merry."
"The arrows of Amor," hinted Antonius, "sink deep in the soul, and the god is unfair; he shoots venomed darts; the poison ever makes the pain greater."
"I would you could endure your own troubles," retorted the other, "and let me care for mine!"
"Perpol, friend," replied Antonius, "don't be vexed! I see it is a case of your wanting little said on a sore point. Well, keep silent, I won't tease you. Doesn't Theognis declare:—
"'Caress me not with words, while far away
Thy heart is absent and thy feelings stray'?[177]
And doubtless you would reverse the saying and put 'my heart' for 'thy heart.' Forgive me."
But Drusus, now that the ice was broken, was glad to talk.
"Now, amice, I won't harbour any ill feeling. I know that you don't look at women the way I do. If you had ever fallen in love with one like Cornelia, it would have been different. As it is, you can only stare at me, and say to yourself, 'How strange a sensible fellow like Drusus should care for a girl from whom he has been parted for nearly two years!' That's why I doubt if your sympathy can be of any great solace to me."
"Well," said Antonius, washing down his puls with a draught of water from a second helmet at hand, "I can't say that I would be full of grief two years from the day my beloved Fulvia was taken from me. But there are women of many a sort. Some are vipers to sting your breast, some are playthings, some are—what shall I call them—goddesses? no, one may not kiss Juno; flowers? they fade too early; silver and gold? that is rubbish. I have no name for them. But believe me, Quintus, I have met this Cornelia of yours once or twice, and I believe that she is one of those women for whom my words grow weak."
"Then you can sympathize, can feel, for me," said Drusus, as he lay back with his head on the dark green sward.
"Yes, as a poor man who has always possessed nothing can feel for a rich merchant whose whole fortune is about to founder at sea. Do not spurn my feeble sort of pity. But do you know nothing of her, not a word, a sign? Is she alive or dead? Much less, does she still care for you?"
"Nothing!" answered Drusus, and the sense of vexation and helplessness choked his utterance. "She vanished out of sight at Baiæ, as a flash of lightning passes away in the sky. I cannot imagine the cause of her disappearance. The pirates, indeed, might have wished to take her for ransom; but no, they bore her off with never a demand for money from any friend or relative. I have tried to trace them—the Pompeian ships on every sea make it impossible. I have questioned many prisoners and spies; she is not at the Pompeian camp with her uncle. Neither can I discover that her kinsmen among the enemy themselves know where she is. And to this is added that other mystery: whither has my Aunt Fabia vanished? How much of the account of those who followed her to the river dock is to be believed—that pirates saved her from Gabinius, and then abducted her? Upon all, my clever freedman Agias is gone—gone without ever a word, though I counted him faithful as my own soul!"
"And what then do you expect?" asked Antonius, not without friendly interest.
"What can a man, who dares to look the situation in the face, expect, except something too horrible to utter?" and Drusus groaned in his agony.
"You mean—" began his friend.
"That the pirates have kept Cornelia and perhaps Fabia in their vile clutches until this hour; unless, indeed, the Fates have been merciful and they are dead! Do you wonder at my pain?"
"Phui! we will not imagine any such disagreeable thing!" said Antonius, in a sickly effort to make banter at the other's fears.
"Don't speak again unless you want me your enemy," threatened Drusus, springing up in fury. Antonius knew his own interests enough to keep quiet; besides, his friend's pain cut him to the heart, and he knew himself that Drusus's dread was justified under the circumstances.
"Do you think there will be a battle to-morrow?" demanded Drusus, after some interval of gloomy silence.
"I would to the gods it might be so," was his answer; "are you thirsting for blood?"
Drusus half drew his short sword, which even in camp never left the side of officer or private during that campaign.
"Thirst for blood?" he growled. "Yes, for the lives of Lucius Lentulus, and Domitius and his accursed younger son. I am hot as an old gladiator for a chance to spill their blood! If Cornelia suffers woe unutterable, it will be they—they who brought the evil upon her! It may not be a philosophic mood, but all the animal has risen within me, and rises more and more the longer I think upon them and on her."
"Come," said Antonius, lifting his friend by the arm, "and let us lie down in the tent. There will be toil enough to-morrow; and we must take what rest we may."