It was a strong temptation to the Briton, but the words he had so lately heard had sunk deep into his heart. He, too, would fain cast in his lot amongst these earnest men. He, too, he thought, had a task to perform—a cherished [pg 268]happiness to forego. With a timely warning, it might be in his power to save the Emperor’s life, and his very eagerness to accompany Mariamne but impressed him the more with the conviction that it was his duty to leave her, now she was in comparative safety, and hasten on his errand of mercy. Calchas, too, insisted strongly on this view, and though Mariamne was silent, and even pleaded with her eyes against the risk, he turned stoutly from their influence, and ere she was clasped in her father’s arms, the new Christian was already half-way between the Esquiline and the palace of Cæsar.
CHAPTER XV
REDIVIVUS
Many had been the debauch at which, himself its chief originator and promoter, the tribune had assisted; nor had he escaped the penalties that Nature exacts even from the healthiest constitutions, when her laws are habitually outraged in the high-tide of revelry and mirth; but never, after his longest sittings with the Emperor, had he experienced anything to compare with the utter prostration of mind and body in which he came to himself, waking from the deathlike sleep that followed his pledge to Valeria. With returning consciousness came a sense of painful giddiness, which, as the velvet cushions of the couch rose and heaved beneath his sight, confused him utterly as to where he was, or how he got there; then, sitting up with an effort that seemed to roll a ball of lead across his brain, he was aware that every vein throbbed at fever-heat, that his hands were numbed and swollen, that his mouth was parched, his lips cracked, and that he had a racking headache—the latter symptom was sufficiently familiar to be reassuring; he sprang to his feet, regardless of the pang so sudden a movement shot through his frame, then seizing a goblet from the table, filled it to the brim with Falernian, and in defiance of the nausea with which its very fragrance overpowered him, emptied it to the dregs. The effect, as he expected, was instantaneous; it enabled him to stand erect, and, passing his hand across his brow, by a strong effort of the will, he forced himself to connect and comprehend the events that had led to this horrible and bewildering trance. By degrees, one after another, like links in a chain, he traced the doings of the day, beginning a long way back, somewhere about noon, till the immediate past, so to speak, came more and more tangibly within his grasp. It was with a thrill of triumphant pleasure that he remembered Valeria’s visit, and his own arm winding round her handsome form on that very couch. Where was she [pg 270]now? He looked about him vacantly, almost expecting to find her in the room; as he did so, his eye lighted on the two goblets, one of them half-emptied, still standing on their salver.
To say that Placidus had a conscience would be simply a perversion of terms; for that monitor, never very troublesome, had since his manhood been so stifled and silenced as to have become a mere negative quality, yet in his present unhinged state, a shudder of horror did come over him, as he recalled the visit to Petosiris, and the poison with which he had resolved to ensure the silence of his slave. But ere that shudder passed away, the dark secret Esca knew, the plot from which it was now too late to draw back, the desperate adventure that every hour brought nearer, and that must be attempted to-night—all these considerations came flooding in on his memory at once, and for a moment he felt paralysed by the height of the precipice on the brink of which he stood. With the emergency, however, as was always the case in the tribune’s character, came the energy required to encounter it. “At least,” he muttered, steadying himself by the table with one hand, “the cup is nearly empty; the drug cannot but have done its work. First, I must make sure of the carrion, and then it will be time enough to find Valeria.” Had he suffered less in body, he would have laughed his own low malicious laugh, to think how deftly he had outwitted the woman he professed to love. The laugh, however, died away in a grin that betrayed more pain than mirth; and the tribune, with chattering teeth and shaking frame, and wavering uncertain steps, betook himself to the outer court to make sure with his own eyes that the stalwart frame of him whom he feared was stiff and cold in death.
His first feeling would have been one of acute apprehension, had not anger so completely mastered that sensation, when he perceived the slave’s chain and collar lying coiled on the pavement. Obviously, Esca had escaped; and was gone, moreover, with his late master’s life completely in his power; but Placidus possessed a keen intellect and one familiar with sudden combinations; it flashed upon him at once, that he had been outwitted by Valeria, and the two had fled together.
The sting was very sharp, but it roused and sobered him. Pacing swiftly back through the corridors, and stopping for a few minutes to immerse his head and face in cold water, he returned to the banqueting-hall, and eagerly scrutinised with [pg 271]look and smell, and, notwithstanding all that had happened, even with a sparing taste, the cup from which he had last drunk. The opiate, however, had been so skilfully prepared that nothing suspicious could be detected in the flavour of the wine; nevertheless, reflecting on all the circumstances with a clearer head, as the strength of his constitution gradually asserted itself, he arrived at the true conclusion, and was satisfied that Valeria had changed the cups while his attention was distracted by her charms; that he had purchased a poison he never doubted for a moment, nor suspected that Petosiris could have dared, from sheer love of trickery, to substitute an opiate for the deadlier draught; but he exulted to think that his powerful organisation must have resisted its effects, and that he who had so often narrowly escaped death in the field must indeed bear a charmed life. If a suspicion haunted him that the venom might still be lurking in his system, to do its work more completely after a short respite, the vague horror of such a thought did but goad him to make use of the intervening time all the more ardently for business and pleasure, not forgetting the sacred duty of revenge. Dum vivimus vivamus! was the tribune’s motto, and if he had been granted but one hour to live, he would have divided that hour systematically, between the delights of love, wine, and mischief.
Rapidly, though coolly, he reviewed his position, as though he had been commanding a cohort hemmed in by the Jewish army. To-night would make or mar him. The gladiators would be here within an hour. Esca must, ere this, have reached the palace and given the alarm. Why had a centurion of Cæsar not yet arrived with a sufficient guard to arrest him in his own house? They might be expected at any moment. Should he fly while there was yet time? What! and lose the brilliant future so nearly within his reach? No—he would weather this as he had weathered other storms, by skilful and judicious steering. A man who has no scruples need never be deficient in resource. To leave his house now, would be a tacit admission of guilt. To be found alone, undefended, unsuspicious, a strong presumption of innocence. He would at least have sufficient interest to be taken into the presence of Cæsar. There, what so easy as to accuse the slave of treachery, to persuade the Emperor the barbarian had but hatched a plot against his master’s life; to make the good-humoured old glutton laugh with an account of the drugged goblet, and finish the night by a debauch with his imperial host?
Then, he must be guided by the preparations for defence which he observed in the palace. If they were weak, he must find some means of communicating with Hippias, and the attack would be facilitated by his own presence inside. If, on the contrary, there was an obvious intention of firm resistance, the conspirators must be warned to postpone their enterprise. If worst came to the worst, he could always save his own head by informing against his confederates, and so handing over Hippias and the gladiators to death.