Here was an oversight. I might have guessed so much; but, full of other things, I had never supposed the little man was anything but a Roman general sent out to harry and pursue us. Strange ideas rose at once, and while the Tyrian in me was awe-struck by the closeness of my approach to a famous and dreaded person, the Briton moaned at a golden opportunity lost to unravel, by one bold stroke—a stroke of poniard, of burning brand from the fire, of anything—the net that was closing over this unfortunate island.
So strong rose these latter regrets at having had Cæsar, the unwelcome, the relentless, within arms’ length, and having let him go forth with his indomitable blood still flowing in his lordly veins, that I stopped short, clapped my hand upon my swordless scabbard, and made a hasty stride back to the tent.
At once the ready Sempronius was on me like a wild cat, and with two strong legionaries bore me to the ground and tied me hand and foot. They carried me down to the camp, and there pitched me under a rock, to reflect until dawn on the things of a disastrous day.
But by earliest twilight the bird had flown! At midnight, when the tired soldiers slept, I chafed my hempen bonds against a rugged angle of earth-embedded stone, and in four hours was free, rising silently among the snoring warriors and passing into the forest as noiselessly as one of those weird black shadows that the last flashes of their expiring camp-fires made at play on the background of the woods.
I stole past their outmost pickets while the first flush of day was in the east, and, then, in the open, turned me to my own people and ran, like a hind to her little one, over the dewy grasslands and through the spangled thickets, scaring the conies at their earliest meal, and frightening the merles and mavis ere they had done a bar of their matin songs, throwing myself down in the tents of my kinsmen just as the round sun shone through the close-packed oak trunks.
But, curse the caitiff fools who welcomed me there! It would have been far better had I abided Cæsar’s anger, or trusted to that martial boy, Sempronius Faunus!
The British churls, angry and sullen at their defeat of yesterday, were looking for a victim to bear the burden of their wrongs. Now the priest Dhuwallon, who had turned livid with fear and anger when I had come back unharmed from the hands of the enemy, with a ready wit which was surely lent him from hell, saw he might propitiate the Britons and gratify his own ends by one more coward trick to be played at my expense. I do not deny his readiness, or grudge him aught, yet I hate him, even now, from the bottom of my heart, with all that fierce old anger which then would have filled me with delight and pride if I could have had his anointed blood smoking in the runnels of my sword.
Well. It was his turn again. He procured false witnesses—not a difficult thing for a high priest in that discontented camp—and by midday I was bound once more, and before the priests and chiefs as a traitor and Roman spy.
What good was it for me to stand up and tell the truth to that gloomy circle while the angry crowd outside hungered for a propitiary sacrifice? In vain I lied with all the resources I could muster, and in vain, when this was fruitless, denounced that pale villain, my accuser. When I came to tell of his treachery in killing my horse the day before, and leaving me to be slain by the enemy, I saw I was but adding slander, in the judges’ eyes, to my other crimes. When I declared I was no Roman, but a Briton—an aged fool, his long, white locks fileted with oak leaves, rose silently and held a polished brass mirror before me, and by every deity in the Northern skies I must own my black hair and dusky face were far more Roman than native.
So they found me guilty, and sentenced me to be offered up to Baal next morning, before the army, as a detected spy.