“Pooh! prejudice!” laughed the tribune. “Professional fancies that spring from thy coarse material trade. Blood leaves no more stain than wine. You and I have spilt enough of both in our time. What matter, a throat cut or a cracked flagon of Falernian? Dash a pitcher of water over a marble floor like this, and you wash away the signs of both at once. Said I not well, Damasippus? Why, what ails thee, man? Thy face has turned as white as thy gown!”
Damasippus, indeed, whose eyes were fixed upon the floor to which his patron had just alluded, presented, at this juncture, an appearance of intense terror and amazement. The freedman’s mouth was open, his cheeks were deadly pale, and his very hair seemed to bristle with dismay. Pointing a shaking finger to the slabs of marble at his feet, he could only stammer out in broken accents: “May the gods avert the omen!” over and over again.
The others, following the direction of his gaze, were no less astonished to see a narrow stream of crimson winding over the smooth white floor, as though the very stones protested against the tribune’s reckless and inhuman sentiments. For an instant all stood motionless, then Placidus, leaping at the velvet curtain, tore it fiercely open, and discovered the cause of the phenomenon.
Listening attentively for some further mention of the name that had roused his whole being, not a syllable of the foregoing conversation had been lost upon Esca, who, kneeling on one knee, with his wounded foot bent under him, and his ear applied close to the heavy folds of the curtain, had never moved a hair’s-breadth from his attitude of fixed and absorbing attention. In this constrained position, the wound in his foot, which was not yet healed over, had opened afresh, and though he was himself unconscious of all but the cruel and treacherous scheme he overheard, it bled so freely that a dark stream stole gradually beneath the curtains, and crept gently along the marble to the very feet of the horror-stricken Damasippus.
Esca sprang to his full height; in that moment his blood curdled, as it had done when he was down upon the sand, with his enemy’s eye glaring on him through the cruel net. [pg 170]He knew the tribune, and he felt there was no hope. The latter laughed loud and long. It was his way of covering all disagreeable emotions, but it boded no good to the object of his mirth. When Esca heard that laugh he looked anxiously about him as though to seek a weapon. What was the use? He stood wounded and defenceless in the power of four reckless men, of whom two were armed.
“Hold him!” exclaimed Placidus to his freedmen, drawing at the same time a short two-edged sword from its sheath. “It is unfortunate for the barbarian that he has learned our language. The necessity is disagreeable, but there is only one way of ensuring silence. My bath, too, is prepared, so I can spare him for to-day, and my freedmen will see that his place is supplied by to-morrow. Hold him, cowards! I say; do you fear that he will bite you?”
Neither Damasippus nor Oarses, however, seemed much inclined to grapple with the stalwart Briton. Wounded and outnumbered as he was, without a chance of rescue or escape, there was yet a defiant carriage of the head, a fierce glare in the eye, that warned the freedmen to keep hands off him as long as they could. They looked at each other irresolutely, and shrank from the patron’s glance. That moment’s hesitation saved him. Hippias, who regarded every six feet of manhood with a brave heart inside it as his own peculiar property, had besides a kindly feeling for his old pupil. He put his muscular frame between the master and the slave.
“Give him a day or two, tribune,” said he carelessly. “I can find a better use for him than to cut his throat here on this clean white floor, and an equally safe one in the end, you may be sure.”
“Impossible, fool!” answered Placidus angrily. “He has heard enough to destroy every hair on the head of each of us. He must never leave this room alive!”
“Only twenty-four hours,” pleaded the fencing-master, who well knew how much at that time in Rome a day might bring forth. “Put him in ward as close as you will, but let him live till to-morrow. Hippias asks it as a favour to himself, and you may not like to be refused by him, when it is your turn. What if I should say ‘No’ in the private apartments of the palace? Come, let us make a compromise.”