A Friend of Caesar Part 46

Cras.h.!.+ and with the stroke, a torrent of wild shouts, oaths, and imprecations burst forth from many score throats.

Cras.h.!.+ The slaves sleeping near the front door began to howl and shout. The great Molossian hound that stood watch was barking and snapping. The Gallic maid sprang from her pallet by Cornelia's door, and gave a shrill, piercing scream. Artemisia was sitting up on her bed, rubbing her eyes, blinking at the strange light, and about to begin to cry. Cornelia ran over the floor to her.

"_A! A!_ what is going to happen!" whimpered the girl.

"I do not know, _philotata_"[164] said Cornelia in Greek, putting her hand on Artemisia's cheek; "but don't cry, and I'll soon find out."

[164] Dearest one.

Cras.h.!.+ and at this the door could be heard to fall inward. Then, with yells of triumph and pa.s.sion, there was a great sweep of feet over the threshold, and the clang of weapons and armour. Cornelia found herself beginning to tremble. As she stepped across the room, she pa.s.sed before her largest mirror, whereon the outside light was s.h.i.+ning directly. She saw herself for an instant; her hair streaming down her back, her only dress her loose white tunic, her arms bare, and nothing on her throat except a string of yellow amber beads. "And my feet are bare," she added to herself, diverted from her panic by her womanly embarra.s.sment. She advanced toward the door, but had not long to wait.

Down below the invaders had burst loose in wild pillage, then up into the sleeping room came flying a man--Phaon, his teeth chattering, his face ghastly with fright.

"Domina! domina!" and he knelt and seized Cornelia's robe. "Save, _A!_ save! We are undone! Pirates! They will kill us all! _Mu! mu!_ don't let them murder me!"

A moment longer and Cornelia, in her rising contempt, would have spurned him with her foot. There were more feet on the stairway.

Glaring torches were tossing over gold inlaid armour. A man of unusual height and physique strode at the head of the oncomers, clutching and dragging by the wrist a quivering slave-boy.

"Your mistress, boy! where is she? Point quickly, if you would not die!" cried the invader, whom we shall at once recognize as Demetrius.

Cornelia advanced to the doorway, and stood in her maidenly dignity, confronting the pirates, who fell back a step, as though before an apparition.

"I am the Lady Cornelia, mistress of the villa," she said slowly, speaking in tones of high command. "On what errand do you come thus unseasonably, and with violence?"

Whereat, out from the little group of armed men sprang one clad in costly, jewel-set armour, like the rest, but shorter than the others, and with fair hair flowing down from his helmet on to his shoulders.

"Domina, do you not know me? Do not be afraid."

"Agias!" cried Cornelia, in turn giving back a step.

"a.s.suredly," quoth the young h.e.l.lene, nothing dismayed; "and with your leave, this great man is Demetrius, my cousin, whose trade, perchance, is a little irregular, but who has come hither not so much to plunder as to save you from the clutches of his arch-enemy's son, Lucius Ahen.o.barbus."

Cornelia staggered, and caught the curtain in the doorway to keep from falling.

"Has Master Drusus sent him to me?" she asked, very pale around the lips.

"Master Drusus is at Corfinium. No one knows what will be the issue of the war, for Pompeius is making off. It is I who counselled my cousin to come to Baiae."

"Then what will you do with me? How may I dare to trust you? Deliver myself into the hands of pirates! Ah! Agias, I did not think that _you_ would turn to such a trade!"

The youth flushed visibly, even under the ruddy torchlight.

"Oh, lady," he cried, "have I not always been true to you? I am no pirate, and you will not blame my cousin, when you have heard his story. But do not fear us. Come down to the s.h.i.+p--Fabia is there, waiting for you."

"Fabia!" and again Cornelia was startled. Then, fixing her deep gaze full on Agias, "I believe you speak the truth. If not you--whom?

Take--take me!"

And she fell forward in a swoon, and Demetrius caught her in his powerful arms.

"This is the affianced wife of Quintus Drusus?" he cried to Agias.

"None other."

"She is worthy of s.e.xtus's son. A right brave lady!" cried the pirate.

"But this is no place for her, poor thing. Here, Eurybiades," and he addressed a lieutenant,--an athletic, handsome h.e.l.lene like himself,--"carry the lady down to the landing, put her on the trireme, and give her to Madam Fabia. Mind you lift her gently."

"Never fear," replied the other, picking up his burden carefully. "Who would not delight to bear Aphrodite to the arms of Artemis!"

And so for a while sight, sound, and feeling were at an end for Cornelia, but for Agias the adventures of the evening were but just begun. The pirates had broken loose in the villa, and Demetrius made not the slightest effort to restrain them. On into the deserted bedroom, ahead of the others, for reasons of his own, rushed Agias. As he came in, some one cried out his name, and a second vision in white confronted him.

"_Ai! ai!_ Agias, I knew you would come!" and then and there, with the sword-blades glinting, and the armed men all around, Artemisia tossed her plump arms around his neck.

"The nymph, attendant on Aphrodite!" cried Demetrius, laughing. And then, when Artemisia saw the strange throng and the torches, and heard the din over the villa, she hung down her head in mingled fear and mortification. But Agias whispered something in her ear, that made her lift her face, laughing, and then he in turn caught her up in his arms to hasten down to the landing--for the scene was becoming one of little profit for a maid. Groans and entreaties checked him. Two powerful Phoenician seamen were dragging forward Phaon, half clothed, trembling at every joint. "Mercy! Mercy! Oh! Master Agias, oh! Your excellency, _clarissime_,[165] _despotes!_[166]" whined the wretched man, now in Latin, now in Greek, "ask them to spare me; don't let them murder me in cold blood!"

[165] Very distinguished sir.

[166] Master.

"_Ai!_" cried Demetrius. "What fool have we here? Do you know him, Agias?"

"He is the freedman of Lucius Ahen.o.barbus. I can vouch for his character, after its way."

"_O-op!_"[167] thundered the chief, "drag him down to the boats! I'll speak with him later!"

[167] _O-op_--avast there.

And Agias carried his precious burden down to the landing-place, while the seamen followed with their captive.

Once Artemisia safe on her way to the trireme, which was a little off sh.o.r.e, Agias ran back to the villa; the pirates were ransacking it thoroughly. Everything that could be of the slightest value was ruthlessly seized upon, everything else recklessly destroyed. The pirates had not confined their attack to the Lentulan residence alone.

Rus.h.i.+ng down upon the no less elaborate neighbouring villas, they forced in the gates, overcame what slight opposition the trembling slaves might make, and gave full sway to their pa.s.sion for plunder and rapine. The n.o.ble ladies and fine gentlemen who had dared the political situation and lingered late in the season to enjoy the pleasures of Baiae, now found themselves roughly dragged away into captivity to enrich the freebooters by their ransoms. From pillage the pirates turned to arson, Demetrius in fact making no effort to control his men. First a fragile wooden summer-house caught the blaze of a torch and flared up; then a villa itself, and another and another. The flames shot higher and higher, great glowing, wavering pyramids of heat, roaring and crackling, flinging a red circle of glowing light in toward the mainland by c.u.mae, and s.h.i.+mmering out over the bay toward Prochyta. Overhead was the inky dome of the heavens, and below fire; fire, and men with pa.s.sions unreined.

Demetrius stood on the terrace of the burning villa of the Lentuli, barely himself out of range of the raging heat. As Agias came near to him, the gilded Medusa head emblazoned on his breastplate glared out; the loose scarlet mantle he wore under his armour was red as if dipped in hot blood; he seemed the personification of Ares, the destroyer, the waster of cities. The pirate was gazing fixedly on the blazing wreck and ruin. His firm lips were set with an expression grave and hard. He took no part in the annihilating frenzy of his men.

"This is terrible destruction!" cried Agias in his ear, for the roar of the flames was deafening, he himself beginning to turn sick at the sight of the ruin.

"It is frightful," replied Demetrius, gloomily; "why did the G.o.ds ever drive me to this? My men are but children to exult as they do; as boys love to tear the thatch from the roof of a useless hovel, in sheer wantonness. I cannot restrain them."

At this instant a seaman rushed up in breathless haste.

"_Eleleu!_ Captain, the soldiers are on us. There must have been a cohort in c.u.mae."

Whereat the voice of Demetrius rang above the shouts of the plunderers and the crash and roar of the conflagration, like a trumpet:--

"Arms, men! Gather the spoil and back to the s.h.i.+ps! Back for your lives!"

Already the cohort of Pompeian troops, that had not yet evacuated c.u.mae, was coming up on the double-quick, easily guided by the burning buildings which made the vicinity bright as day. The pirates ran like cats out of the blazing villas, bounded over terraces and walls, and gathered near the landing-place by the Lentulan villa. The soldiers were already on them. For a moment it seemed as though the cohort was about to drive the whole swarm of the marauders over the sea-wall, and make them pay dear for their night's diversion. But the masterly energy of Demetrius turned the scale. With barely a score of men behind him, he charged the nearest century so impetuously that it broke like water before him; and when sheer numbers had swept his little group back, the other pirates had rallied on the very brink of tie sea-wall, and returned to the charge.

Never was battle waged more desperately. The pirates knew that to be driven back meant to fall over a high embankment into water so shallow as to give little safety in a dive; capture implied crucifixion. Their only hope was to hold their own while their boats took them off to the s.h.i.+ps in small detachments. The conflagration made the narrow battle-field as bright as day. The soldiers were brave, and for new recruits moderately disciplined. The pirates could hardly bear up under the crus.h.i.+ng discharge of darts, and the steady onset of the maniples. Up and down the contest raged, swaying to and fro like the waves of the sea. Again and again the pirates were driven so near to the brink of the seawall that one or two would fall, dashed to instant death on the submerged rocks below. Demetrius was everywhere at once, as it were, precisely when he was most needed, always exposing himself, always aggressive. Even while he himself fought for dear life, Agias admired as never before the intelligently ordered puissance of his cousin.