Nicanor - Teller of Tales : A Story of Roman Britain

by C. Bryson Taylor

Nicanor gained the passage behind the storerooms, at the head of which the cresset flared, and reached the court, meeting no one. The cool air flooded him, and he raised his head and breathed it deeply. For eight long months his lips had panted for it. As he had foreseen, the court was deserted; all the household slaves were busy in this way and that about the feast. He cast a calculating glance upward at the crescent moon, struggling through banking clouds.

"Till she touches the top of the stunted lime," he muttered, and crossed the court with his long noiseless stride.

A distant strain of music wandered out across the night; and at all it whispered of that which was not for him he set his teeth with a smothered groan. Past silent courts he went, avoiding the teeming kitchens, and through narrow passages and empty rooms. A slave boy with a trayful of broken meats passed him where he hung concealed in the deep shadow of one court. He made a motion forward, his hungry eyes gleaming; drew back in silence and let the boy pass on. It was many hours since he had tasted food, but he dared not risk betrayal.

So he gained a certain small doorway in one of the lesser courts, a deep recess, merely, in the wall, which led to no room. Just inside it steep steps showed in the moonlight, leading upward. Nicanor listened a moment to make certain that all was still, and, as one sure of himself and what he meant to do, ran up them,—past where a landing opened on the stairs, with glimpses of a pillared gallery beyond; and still up, until the flight ended in a long and bare passage. Here it was very dark, with only the moonlight coming through narrow windows of thick and muddy glass. Nicanor looked about him as one who would know if all was as he had left it last. A ladder lay upon the floor beneath the square of an opening in the roof. This he leaned against the wall, mounted it, and slid back the hatch, which ran in wooden grooves. The ladder creaked beneath him as he swung his long body forward and gripped the edges of the opening. Until he had made sure of his hold he did not leave the ladder; then swung clear, shifting his hands one by one into better position, and raised himself slowly, by sheer practised strength of wrist and arm, until his head and shoulders rose above the opening. With quick effort, then, he flung himself forward upon the roof, writhed himself through, and stood erect.

Around him were the roofs of the separate apartments of the villa, silvered gray where moonlight touched them. Flat and sloping and towered were these, and broken by the intervals of the courts, where was massed the heavy blackness of foliage. The night air swept cool around him; above him was the high vault of heaven, cloudless now, where a young moon rode in the loneliness of space. To his left as he stood was the squat dome of the Hall of Columns, with light showing through the series of narrow windows which encircled it. And these windows were barely four feet above the level of the roof from which the dome sprang.

Nicanor started across the tiles, black against the moonlight, clawing his way along steep and treacherous slopes and gliding along the leads, sure-footed as a cat, toward the nearest window in the dome which would look down into the hall below. This he gained in safety, and found that it had been left half open, for ventilation. He leaned over the ledge, gazing downward; and a ripple of music from hidden players rose to him above a humming undercurrent of sound.

Below him, the great hall was a riot of color. On its hundred columns of polished marble, veined in green and rose, light played in sliding gleams from great lamps of wrought bronze hung by chains around the dome and between the pillars, each with many lights floating in cups of perfumed oil. The floors, of white marble, were overlaid with silken rugs of glowing colors, with silver matting and with tawny skins of beasts. The walls were wide panels of mosaics set in stucco, vivid with red and blue, green and azure, picturing scenes of hunting and carousal. Perfumes burned in silver jars set on pedestals of black marble at intervals along the walls, sending forth faint spirals of smoke on the heated air. The long table, lined on either side with men and women, was directly beneath the dome. Looking down upon it Nicanor saw only a confusion of gold and silver dishes, with the ruby glow of Samian plates and cups, gleaming among strewn leaves and blossoms. The garments of the guests were as a fringe of color about the table's edge; purple, saffron, and gold, crimson, green, and white.

At the head of the board, raised somewhat above the other seats, three figures had risen,—one, in the centre, tall, spare, stooping somewhat, in spite of his brave attire; at his left, another as tall as he, but broader, more compactly built, with the square shoulders of a military man, richly dressed also in a scarlet tunic embroidered in gold, with heavy bands of gold about his arms. And at the right of the central figure, the third, young and slender and all in white, with a head-dress of gold in which two poppies flamed upon either temple, and from which long jewelled ends hung to her knees. A veil fell behind her, over her dark hair, of Persian gauze, filmy as mist, in which threads of gold like prisoned sunbeams were woven. Her face, upheld proudly as though she scorned to give way before the eyes upon her, was white, but her lips were scarlet as the flowers she wore. A jewelled girdle fell about her hips, but on her bare arms were neither gems nor gold. The central figure was speaking, but his words could not be heard. He took the girl's hand, and laid it in the man's hand, and held them so; and the tones of the man's voice repeating after him rose to Nicanor's eyrie, although the words were lost. There followed a pause, in which the girl drooped her head, but all faces were turned toward her, and Nicanor knew that her lips were whispering the solemn "Where thou art, Caius, there am I, Caia"; and he clenched his teeth, and for a moment the scene below him swam in blood-red mist.

She was lost to him,—always he had known it, known the hopelessness of his passion, all the sweeter for the bitterness which was in it,—but never until then had the knowledge so come home to him. He would have liked to force his way in among them, these smirking, soft patricians, and tear her away from them by right of his savage strength; in his hot eyes was murder, and in his heart raging hate and a love as raging. He could have killed her, even; if she might not be his, he would have her no man's. His hand shot out as though in fact the knife were in it; in fancy he saw himself driving it home straight and true above the heart whose throbbing he had watched—the heart that had throbbed for him only, the slave, out of all the world of men. He could feel his dagger bite through her white breast as he had felt the soft slice of flesh under his blade before; he could see the blood well up around the knife, slowly at first, with a quick, hot spurt when the steel was withdrawn. So she would remain all his, and none might take her from him. His thoughts maddened him. He groaned aloud and dropped his face in his hands on the stone ledge of the window, and the moonlight touched him, a strange figure of desperate longings, desperate bewilderment and rebellion and pain. He shook to the primal passions of love and hate that tore him,—love for one, hate for all that had gone to make the conditions of his life what they must be; according to the measure of his untamed strength he suffered, in fierce revolt against the mocking Fates who were stronger than he.

A clapping of hands, sharp and crackling, roused him. He brushed the hair from his eyes, and again looked down upon them, so far below, so far above him. The central figure had withdrawn, but the betrothed couple, hand clasped in hand, still stood together. The table was in commotion; women pelted the two with flowers, and men were on their feet and shouting. Nicanor saw Marius bend his head and kiss Varia upon the lips. So was their covenant sealed before the law; in sight of all the world her lord had claimed her, and she was no longer all her own.