IV
Demetrius had been astonishing his cousin that evening by the quantity of strong wine he could imbibe without becoming in the least tipsy. Agias marvelled at the worthy pirate's capacity and hardness of head, and, fortunately for his own wits, did not attempt to emulate the other's potations. Consequently, as the evening advanced, Demetrius simply became more and more good-natured and talkative, and Agias more entranced with his cousin's narration of the Indian voyage.
The younger Greek was about to order his yawning servants to fill up another krater,[159] when the conversation and drinking were interrupted by the arrival of Erigone. She, poor girl, had set out bravely enough; but once outside of the Atrium Vestæ every shadow had been a refuge of cutthroats, every noise the oncoming of goblins. Fortunately for her, she did not know the contents of the tablets she carried pressed to her breast, or she would have been all the more timorous. Once a few half-sober topers screamed ribald words after her, as she stole past a low tavern. She had lost her way, in the darkness and fright, among the alleys; she had dodged into a doorway more than once to hide from approaching night rovers. But at last she had reached her destination, and, pale and weary, placed the letter in Agias's hands. The young Greek read and grew grave. Even better than Fabia he understood how reckless a profligate Publius Gabinius might be, and how opportune was the night for carrying out any deed of darkness.
"Brave girl!" he said, commending Erigone for persevering on her errand. "But how long ago did you leave your mistress?"
"It was the second hour of the night[160] when I started," she replied.
Agias glanced at the water-clock.
"By Zeus!" he cried, "it is now the fourth hour! You have been two hours on the way! Immortal gods! What's to be done? Look here, Demetrius!"
And he thrust the letter before his cousin, and explained its meaning as rapidly as he could.
Demetrius puffed hard through his nostrils.
"Mū! mū! This is bad business. If there were time I could have twenty as stout men as ever swung sword up from the yacht and on guard to die for any relative or friend of Sextus Drusus. But there's not a moment to lose. Have you any arms?"
Agias dragged two short swords out of a chest. Demetrius was already throwing on his cloak.
"Those are poor, light weapons," commented the pirate. "I want my heavy cutlass. But take what the gods send;" and he girded one about him. "At least, they will cut a throat. Do you know how to wield them?"
"After a fashion," replied Agias, modestly, making haste to clasp his pænula.
Leaving Erigone to be cared for by the slaves and sent home the next morning, the two Greeks hastened from the house. Agias could hardly keep pace with his cousin's tremendous stride. Demetrius was like a war-horse, which snuffs the battle from afar and tugs at the rein to join in the fray. They plunged through the dark streets. Once a man sprang out from a doorway before them with a cudgel. He may have been a footpad; but Demetrius, without pausing in his haste, smote the fellow between the eyes with a terrible fist, and the wretched creature dropped without a groan. Demetrius seemed guided to the Forum and Via Sacra as if by an inborn instinct. Agias almost ran at his heels.
"How many may this Dumnorix have with him?" shouted the pirate over his shoulder.
"Perhaps ten, perhaps twenty!" gasped Agias.
"A very pretty number! Some little credit to throttle them," was his answer; and Demetrius plunged on.
The night was cloudy, there was no moonlight. The cold, chill wind swept down the Tiber valley, and howled mournfully among the tall, silent basilicas and temples of the Forum. The feet of the two Greeks echoed and reechoed as they crossed the pavement of the enclosure. None addressed them, none met them. It was as if they walked in a city of the dead. In the darkness, like weird phantoms, rose the tall columns and pediments of the deserted buildings. From nowhere twinkled the ray of lamp. Dim against the sky-line the outlines of the Capitoline and its shrines were now and then visible, when the night seemed for an instant to grow less dark.
They were close to the Atrium Vestæ. All was quiet. No light within, no sound but that of the wind and their own breathing without.
"We are not too late," whispered Agias.
The two groped their way in among the pillars of the portico of the Regia,[161] and crouched down under cover of the masonry, half sheltered from the chilly blasts. They could from their post command a tolerably good view of one side of the Atrium Vestæ. Still the darkness was very great, and they dared not divide their force by one of them standing watch on the other side. The moments passed. It was extremely cold. Agias shivered and wound himself in his mantle. The wine was making him drowsy, and he felt himself sinking into semiconsciousness, when a touch on his arm aroused him.
"St!" whispered Demetrius. "I saw a light moving."
Agias stared into the darkness.
"There," continued the pirate, "see, it is a lantern carefully covered! Only a little glint on the ground now and then. Some one is creeping along the wall to enter the house of the Vestals!"
"I see nothing," confessed Agias, rubbing his eyes.
"You are no sailor; look harder. I can count four men in the gloom. They are stealing up to the gate of the building. Is your sword ready? Now—"
But at this instant Demetrius was cut short by a scream—scream of mortal terror—from within the Atrium Vestæ. There were shouts, howls, commands, moans, entreaties, shrieks. Light after light blazed up in the building; women rushed panic-struck to the doorway to burst forth into the night; and at the open portal Agias saw a gigantic figure with upraised long sword, a Titan, malevolent, destroying, terrible,—at the sight whereof the women shrank back, screaming yet the more.
"Dumnorix!" shouted Agias; but before he spoke Demetrius had leaped forward.
Right past the sword-wielding monster sprang the pirate, and Agias, all reckless, was at his heels. The twain were in the atrium of the house. A torch was spluttering and blazing on the pavement, shedding all around a bright, flickering, red glare. Young Vestals and maid-servants were cowering on their knees, or prone on cushions, writhing and screaming with fear unspeakable. A swart Spanish brigand, with his sabre gripped in his teeth, was tearing a gold-thread and silk covering from a pillow; a second plunderer was wrenching from its chain a silver lamp. Demetrius rushed past these also, before any could inquire whether he was not a comrade in infamy. But there were other shouts from the peristylium, other cries and meanings. As the pirate sprang to the head of the passage leading to the inner house, a swarm of desperadoes poured through it, Gauls, Germans, Africans, Italian renegadoes,—perhaps ten in all,—and in their midst—half borne, half dragged—something white!
"Io triumphe!" called a voice from the throng, "my bird will leave her cage!"
"The lady! Gabinius!" cried Agias, and, without waiting for his cousin, the young Greek flung himself forward. One stroke of his short sword sent a leering negro prone upon the pavement; one snatch of his hand seized the white mantle, and held it—held it though half a dozen blades were flashing in his face in an eye's twinkling. But the prowess of twenty men was in the arm of Demetrius; his sword was at once attacker and shield; with a single sweeping blow he smote down the guard and cleft the skull of a towering Teuton; with a lightning dart he caught up the ponderous long sword of the falling brigand, passed his own shorter weapon to his left hand, and so fought,—doubly armed,—parrying with his left and striking with his right. And how he struck! The whole agile, supple nature of the Greek entered into every fence. He struck and foiled with his entire body. Now a bound to one side; now a dart at an opponent's head; fighting with feet, head, frame, and not with hands only. And Agias—he fought too, and knew not how he fought! When a blow was aimed at him, Demetrius always parried it before he could raise his sword; if he struck, Demetrius had felled the man first; but he never let go of the white dress, nor quitted the side of the lady. And presently, he did not know after how long—for hours make minutes, and minutes hours, in such a mêlée—there was a moment's silence, and he saw Publius Gabinius sinking down upon the pavement, the blood streaming over his cloak; and the brigands, such as were left of them, scurrying out of the atrium cowed and panic-struck at the fall of their leader. Then, as he threw his arms about Fabia, and tried to raise her to her feet, he saw the giant Dumnorix, with his flail-like sword, rushing back to the rescue.
Four brigands lay dead in the atrium and none of the others dared look the redoubtable Greek swordsman in the eyes; but Dumnorix came on—the incarnation of brute fury. Then again Demetrius fought,—fought as the angler fights the fish that he doubts not to land, yet only after due play; and the Gaul, like some awkward Polyphemus, rushed upon him, flinging at him barbarous curses in his own tongue, and snorting and raging like a bull. Thrice the Greek sprang back before the monster; thrice the giant swung his mighty sword to cleave his foeman down, and cut the empty air; but at the fourth onset the Hellene smote the ex-lanista once across the neck, and the great eyes rolled, and the panting stopped, and the mighty Gaul lay silent in a spreading pool of blood.
Already there were shouts and cries in the Forum. Torches were dancing hither and thither. The slave-maids of the Vestals ran down the Via Sacra shrieking and calling for aid. Out from the dark tenements rushed the people. The thieves ran from their lairs; the late drinkers sprang from their wine. And when the wretched remnants of Dumnorix's band of ex-gladiators and brigands strove to flee from the holy house they had polluted, a hundred hands were put forth against each one, and they were torn to pieces by the frenzied mob. Into the Atrium Vestæ swarmed the people, howling, shouting, praising the goddess, fighting one another—every man imagining his neighbour a cutthroat and abductor.
Agias stood bearing up Fabia in his arms; she was pale as the driven snow. Her lips moved, but no sound passed from them. Fonteia, the old Maxima, with her white hair tumbling over her shoulders, was still huddled in one corner, groaning and moaning in a paroxysm of unreasoning terror, without dignity or self-control. A frightened maid had touched the torch to the tall candelabra, and the room blazed with a score of lights; while in at the doorway pressed the multitude—the mob of low tapsters, brutal butchers, coarse pedlers, and drunkards just staggering from their cups. The scene was one of pandemonium. Dumnorix lay prone on a costly rug, whose graceful patterns were being dyed to a hideous crimson; over one divan lay a brigand—struggling in the last agony of a mortal wound. Three comrades lay stretched stiff and motionless on the floor. Gory swords and daggers were strewn all over the atrium; the presses of costly wood had been torn open, their contents scattered across the room. There was blood on the frescoes, blood on the marble feet of the magnificent Diomedes, which stood rigid in cold majesty on its pedestal, dominating the wreck below.
Agias with Fabia stood at the end of the atrium near the exit to the peristylium. Demetrius, seemingly hardly breathed by his exertions, leaned on his captured long sword at his cousin's side. The multitude, for an instant, as they saw the ruin and slaughter, drew back with a hush. Men turned away their faces as from a sight of evil omen. Who were they to set foot in the mansion of the servants of the awful Vesta? But others from behind, who saw and heard nothing, pressed their fellows forward. The mob swept on. As with one consent all eyes were riveted on Fabia. What had happened? Who was guilty? Why had these men of violence done this wrong to the home of the hearth goddess? And then out of a farther corner, while yet the people hesitated from reverence, staggered a figure, its face streaming with blood, its hands pressing its side.
"Quirites," cried a voice, the voice of one speaking with but one remaining breath, "ye have rewarded me as the law demands; see that she" and a bloody forefinger pointed at Fabia, "who led me to this deed, is not unpunished. She is the more guilty!"
And with a groan the figure fell like a statue of wood to the pavement; fell heavily, and lay stirring not, neither giving any sound. In his last moment Publius Gabinius had sought a terrible revenge.
And then madness seized on the people.
"She is his sweetheart! She is his paramour!" cried a score of filthy voices. "She has brought down this insult to the goddess! There is no pontifex here to try her! Tear her in pieces! Strike! Slay!"
But Demetrius had turned to his cousin.
"Agias," he said, making himself heard despite the clamour, "do you believe the charge of that man?"
"No villain ever would avenge himself more basely."
"Then at all costs we must save the lady."
It was time. A fat butcher, flourishing a heavy cleaver, had leaped forward; Fabia saw him with glassy, frightened eyes, but neither shrieked nor drew back. But Demetrius smote the man with his long sword through the body, and the brute dropped the cleaver as he fell.
"Now," and Demetrius seized the Vestal around the waist, as lightly as a girl would raise a kitten, and flung her across his shoulders. One stride and he was in the passage leading to the peristylium; and before the mob could follow Agias had dashed the door in their faces, and shot the bolt.
"It will hold them back a moment," muttered Demetrius, "but we must hasten."
They ran across the peristylium, the pirate chief with his burden no less swift than Agias. The door to the rear street was flung open, and they were out in a narrow alleyway. Just as they did so, a howl of many voices proclaimed that the peristylium door had yielded.
"Guide me by the straightest way," commanded the sea rover.
"Where?" was Agias's question.
"To the wharves. The yacht is the only safe place for the lady. There I will teach her how I can honour a friend of Sextus Drusus."
Agias felt that it was no time for expostulation. A Vestal Virgin take refuge on a pirate ship! But it was a matter of life and death now, and there was no time for forming another plan. Once let the mob overtake them, and the lives of all three were not worth a sesterce. Agias found it necessary to keep himself collected while he ran, or he would lose the way in the maze of streets. The yacht was moored far below the Pons Sublicius, and the whole way was full of peril. It was no use to turn off into alleys and by-paths; to do so at night meant to be involved in a labyrinth as deadly for them as that of the Cretan Minos. The mob was on their heels, howling, raging. The people were beginning to wake in their houses along the streets. Men bawled "Stop thief!" from the windows, imagining there had been a robbery. Once two or three figures actually swung out into the way before them, but at a stray glint of lantern light falling on Demetrius's naked long sword, they vanished in the gloom. But still the mob pressed on, ever gaining accessions, ever howling the more fiercely. Agias realized that the weight of his burden was beginning to tell on even the iron frame of his cousin. The pursuers and pursued were drawing closer together. The mob was ever reenforced by relays; the handicap on Demetrius was too great. They had passed down the Vicus Tuscus, flown past the dark shadow of the lower end of the Circus Maximus. At the Porta Trigemina the unguarded portal had stood open; there was none to stop them. They passed by the Pons Sublicius, and skirted the Aventine. Stones and billets of wood began to whistle past their ears,—the missiles of the on-rushing multitude. At last the wharves! Out in the darkness stood the huge bulk of a Spanish lumberman; but there was no refuge there. The grain wharves and the oil wharves were passed; the sniff of the mackerel fisher, the faint odour from the great Alexandrian merchantman loaded with the spices of India, were come and gone. A stone struck Agias in the shoulder, he felt numb in one arm, to drag his feet was a burden; the flight with the Cæsarians to the Janiculum had not been like to this,—death at the naked sword had been at least in store then, and now to be plucked in pieces by a mob! Another stone brushed forward his hair and dashed, not against Demetrius ahead, but against his burden. There was—Agias could hear—a low moan; but at the same instant the fleeing pirate uttered a whistle so loud, so piercing, that the foremost pursuers came to a momentary stand, in half-defined fright, In an instant there came an answering whistle from the wharf just ahead. In a twinkling half a dozen torches had flashed out all over a small vessel, now barely visible in the night, at one of the mooring rings. There was a strange jargon of voices calling in some Oriental tongue; and Demetrius, as he ran, answered them in a like language. Then over Agias's head and into the thick press of the mob behind, something—arrows no doubt—flew whistling; and there were groans and cries of pain. And Agias found uncouth, bearded men helping or rather casting him over the side of the vessel. The yacht was alive with men: some were bounding ashore to loose the hawsers, others were lifting ponderous oars, still more were shooting fast and cruelly in the direction of the mob, while its luckless leaders struggled to turn in flight, and the multitude behind, ignorant of the slaughter, was forcing them on to death. Above the clamour, the howls of the mob, the shouts of the sailors, the grating of oars, and the creaking of cables, rang the voice of Demetrius; and at his word a dozen ready hands put each command into action. The narrow, easy-moving yacht caught the current; a long tier of white oars glinted in the torchlight, smote the water, and the yacht bounded away, while a parting flight of arrows left misery and death upon the quay.
Agias, sorely bewildered, clambered on to the little poop. His cousin stood grasping one of the steering paddles; the ruddy lantern light gleamed on the pirate's frame and face, and made him the perfect personification of a sea-king; he was some grandly stern Poseidon, the "Storm-gatherer" and the "Earth-shaker." When he spoke to Agias, it was in the tone of a despot to a subject.
"The lady is below. Go to her. You are to care for her until I rejoin my fleet. Tell her my sister shall not be more honoured than she, nor otherwise treated. When I am aboard my flag-ship, she shall have proper maids and attendance. Go!"
Agias obeyed, saying nothing. He found Fabia lying on a rude pallet, with a small bale of purple silk thrust under her head for a pillow. She stared at him with wild, frightened eyes, then round the little cabin, which, while bereft of all but the most necessary comforts, was decorated with bejeweled armour, golden lamps, costly Indian tapestries and ivory—the trophies of half a score of voyages.
"Agias," she faintly whispered, "tell me what has happened since I awoke from my sleep and found Gabinius's ruffians about me. By whatsoever god you reverence most, speak truly!"
Agias fell on his knees, kissed the hem of her robe, kissed her hands. Then he told her all,—as well as his own sorely confused wits would admit. Fabia heard him through to the end, then laid her face between her hands.
"Would that—would that they had murdered me as they wished! It would be all over now," she agonized. "I have no wish again to see the light. Whether they believe me innocent or guilty of the charge is little; I can never be happy again."
"And why not, dear lady?" cried Agias.
"Don't ask me! I do not know. I do not know anything! Leave me! It is not fit that you should see me crying like a child. Leave me! Leave me!"
And thus conjured, Agias went up to the poop once more.
The yacht was flying down the current under her powerful oarage. Demetrius was still standing with his hands fixed on the steering paddle; his gaze was drifting along in the plashing water. The shadowy outlines of the great city had vanished; the yacht was well on her way down the river to Ostia. Save for the need to avoid a belated merchantman anchored in midstream for the night, there was little requiring the master's skill. Agias told his cousin how Fabia had sent him away.
"A! Poor lady!" replied the pirate, "perhaps she was the Vestal I saw a few days since, and envied her, to see the consuls' lictors lowering their rods to her, and all the people making way before her; she, protected by the whole might of this terrible Roman people, and honoured by them all; and I, a poor outlaw, massing gold whereof I have no need, slaying men when I would be their friend, with only an open sea and a few planks for native land. And now, see how the Fates bring her down so low, that at my hands she receives hospitality, nay, life!"
"You did not seem so very loath to shed blood to-night," commented Agias, dryly.
"No, by Zeus!" was his frank answer. "It is easy to send men over the Styx after having been Charon's substitute for so many years. But the trade was not pleasant to learn, and, bless the gods, you may not have to be apprenticed to it."
"Then you will not take me with you in your rover's life?" asked Agias, half-disappointedly.
"Apollo forbid! I will take you and the lady to some place where she can be safe until she may return vindicated, and where you can earn an honest livelihood, marry a wife of station, in accordance with the means which I shall give you, dwell peaceably, and be happy."
"But I cannot accept your present," protested the younger Greek.
"Phui! What use have I of money? To paraphrase Æschylus: 'For more of money than I would is mine.' I can't eat it, or beat swords out of gold, or repair my ships therewith."
"Then why amass it at all?"
"Why drink when you know it is better to keep sober? I can no more stop plundering than a toper leave a wine-jar. Besides, perhaps some day I may see a road to amnesty open,—and, then, what will not money do for a man or woman?"
"Quintus Drusus, my patron, the Lady Cornelia, and the Lady Fabia all are rich. But I would not take up their sorrows for all their wealth."
"True," and Demetrius stared down into the inky water. "It will not give back those who are gone forever. Achilles could ask Hephæstus for his armour, but he could not put breath into the body of Patroclus. Plutus and Cratus[162] are, after all, but weaklings. A! This is an unequal world!"
When Agias fell asleep that night, or rather that morning, on a hard seaman's pallet, two names were stirring in his heart, names inextricably connected: Cornelia, whom he had promised Quintus Drusus to save from Ahenobarbus's clutches, and Artemisia. In the morning the yacht, having run her sixteen miles to Ostia, stood out to sea, naught hindering.
It was two months later when Quintus Drusus reentered Rome, no more a fugitive, but a trusted staff officer of the lawfully appointed dictator Julius Cæsar. He had taken part in a desperate struggle around Corfinium, where his general had cut off and captured the army with which Domitius had aimed to check his advance. Drusus had been severely wounded, and had not recovered in time to participate in the futile siege of Brundusium, when Cæsar vainly strove to prevent Pompeius's flight across the sea to Greece. Soon as he was convalescent, the young officer had hurried away to Rome; and there he was met by a story concerning his aunt, whereof no rational explanation seemed possible. And when, upon this mystery, was added a tale he received from Baiæ, he marvelled, yet dreaded, the more.