A Friend of Caesar Part 6

[51] A coa.r.s.e epithet.

Fabia without the least hesitation thrust herself into the dirty-robed, foul-mouthed crowd. At sight of the Vestal's white dress and fillets the pack gave way before her, as a swarm of gnats at the wave of a hand. Drusus strode at her heels.

It was a sorry enough sight that met them--though not uncommon in the age and place. Some wretched slave-boy, a slight, delicate fellow, had been bound to the bars of a furca, and was being driven by two brutal executioners to the place of doom outside the gates. At the street-crossing he had sunk down, and all the blows of the driver's scourge could not compel him to arise. He lay in the dust, writhing and moaning, with the great welts showing on his bare back, where the bra.s.s knots of the lash had stripped away the cloth.

"Release this boy! Cease to beat him!" cried Fabia, with a commanding mien, that made the crowd shrink further back; while the two executioners looked stupid and sheepish, but did nothing.

"Release this boy!" commanded the Vestal. "Dare you hesitate? Do you wish to undo yourselves by defying me?"

"Mercy, august lady," cried Alfidius,--for the chief executioner was he,--with a supplicatory gesture. "If our mistress knows that her commands are unexecuted, it is we, who are but slaves, that must suffer!"

"Who is your mistress?" demanded Fabia.

"Valeria, wife of Lucius Calatinus."

"Livia's precious mother!" whispered Drusus. "I can imagine her doing a thing like this." Then aloud, "What has the boy done?"

"He dropped a murrhine vase," was the answer.

"And so he must be beaten to death!" exclaimed the young man, who, despite the general theory that most slaves were on a par with cattle, had much of the milk of human kindness in his nature. "_Phui!_ What brutality! You must insist on your rights, aunt. Make them let him go."

Sulkily enough the executioners unbound the heavy furca. Agias staggered to his feet, too dazed really to know what deliverance had befallen him.

"Why don't you thank the Vestal?" said Alfidius. "She has made us release you--you ungrateful dog!"

"Released? Saved?" gasped Agias, and he reeled as though his head were in a whirl. Then, as if recollecting his faculties, he fell down at Fabia's feet, and kissed the hem of her robe.

"The G.o.ds save us all now," muttered Alfidius. "Valeria will swear that we schemed to have the boy released. We shall never dare to face her again!"

"Oh! do not send me back to that cruel woman!" moaned Agias. "Better die now, than go back to her and incur her anger again! Kill me, but do not send me back!"

And he broke down again in inward agony.

Drusus had been surveying the boy, and saw that though he was now in a pitiable enough state, he had been good-looking; and that though his back had been cruelly marred, his face had not been cut with the lashes. Perhaps the very fact that Agias had been the victim of Valeria, and the high contempt in which the young Drusian held his divorced stepmother, made him instinctively take the outraged boy's part.

"See here," began Drusus, "were you to be whipped by orders of Calatinus?"

"No," moaned Agias; "Valeria gave the orders. My master was out."

"Ha!" remarked Drusus to his aunt, "won't the good man be pleased to know how his wife has killed a valuable slave in one of her tantrums?"

Then aloud. "If I can buy you of Calatinus, and give you to the Lady Cornelia, niece of Lentulus, the consul-elect, will you serve her faithfully, will you make her wish the law of your life?"

"I will die for her!" cried Agias, his despair mingled with a ray of hope.

"Where is your master?"

"At the Forum, I think, soliciting votes," replied the boy.

"Well then, follow me," said Drusus, "our road leads back to the Forum. We may meet him. If I can arrange with him, your executioners have nothing to fear from Valeria. Come along."

Agias followed, with his head again in a whirl.

III

The little company worked its way back to the Forum, not, as now, a half-excavated ruin, the gazing-stock for excursionists, a commonplace whereby to sum up departed greatness: the splendid buildings of the Empire had not yet arisen, but the structures of the age were not unimposing. Here, in plain view, was the Capitoline Hill, crowned by the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and the Arx. Here was the site of the Senate House, the Curia (then burned), in which the men who had made Rome mistress of the world had taken counsel. Every stone, every basilica, had its history for Drusus--though, be it said, at the moment the n.o.ble past was little in his mind. And the historic enclosure was all swarming, beyond other places, with the dirty, bustling crowd, shoppers, hucksters, idlers. Drusus and his company searched for Calatinus along the upper side of the Forum, past the Rostra, the Comitium,[52] and the Temple of Saturn. Then they were almost caught in the dense throng that was pouring into the plaza from the busy commercial thoroughfares of the Vicus Jugarius, or the Vicus Tuscus. But just as the party had almost completed their circuit of the square, and Drusus was beginning to believe that his benevolent intentions were leading him on a bootless errand, a man in a conspicuously white toga rushed out upon him from the steps of the Temple of Castor, embraced him violently, and imprinted a firm, garlic-flavoured kiss on both cheeks; crying at the same time heartily:--

[52] _Comitium_, a.s.sembly-place round the Rostra.

"Oh, my dear Publius Dorso, I am so glad to meet you! How are all your affairs up in Fidenae?"

Drusus recoiled in some disgust, and began rubbing his outraged cheeks.

"Dorso? Dorso? There is surely some mistake, my good man. I am known as Quintus Drusus of Praeneste."

Before he had gotten further, his a.s.sailant was pounding and shaking a frightened-looking slave-lad who had stood at his elbow.

"The G.o.ds blast you, you worthless _nomenclator_![53] You have forgotten the worthy gentleman's name, and have made me play the fool!

You may have lost me votes! All Rome will hear of this! I shall be a common laughing-stock! _Hei! vah!_ But I'll teach you to behave!" And he shook the wretched boy until the latter's teeth rattled.

[53] Great men, and candidates for office who wished to "know"

everybody, kept smart slaves at their elbow to whisper strangers'

names in their ears. Sometimes the slaves themselves were at fault.

At this instant a young man of faultless toilet, whom we have already recognized as Lucius Ahen.o.barbus, pushed into the little knot as a peacemaker.

"Most excellent Calatinus," said he, half suppressing his laughter at the candidate's fury, the nomenclator's anguish, and Drusus's vexed confusion, "allow me to introduce to you a son of s.e.xtus Drusus, who was an old friend of my father's. This is Quintus Drusus, if in a few years I have not forgotten his face; and this, my dear Quintus, is my good friend Lucius Calatinus, who would be glad of your vote and influence to help on his candidacy as tribune."

The atmosphere was cleared instantly. Calatinus forgot his anger, in order to apologize in the most obsequious manner for his headlong salutation. Drusus, pleased to find the man he had been seeking, forgave the vile scent of the garlic, and graciously accepted the explanation. Then the way was open to ask Calatinus whether he was willing to dispose of Agias. The crestfallen candidate was only too happy to do something to put himself right with the person he had offended. Loudly he cursed his wife's temper, that would have wasted a slave worth a "hundred thousand sesterces" to gratify a mere burst of pa.s.sion.

"Yes, he was willing to sell the boy to accommodate his excellency, Quintus Drusus," said Calatinus, "although he was a valuable slave.

Still, in honesty he had to admit that Agias had some mischievous points. Calatinus had boxed his ears only the day before for licking the pastry. But, since his wife disliked the fellow, he would be constrained to sell him, if a purchaser would take him."

The result of the conference was that Drusus, who had inherited that keen eye for business which went with most of his race, purchased Agias for thirty thousand sesterces, considerably less than the boy would have brought in the market.

While Drusus was handing over a money order payable with Flaccus, Lucius Ahen.o.barbus again came forward, with all seeming friendliness.

"My dear Quintus," said he, "Marcus Laeca has commissioned me to find a ninth guest to fill his _triclinium_[54] this evening. We should be delighted if you would join us. I don't know what the good Marcus will offer us to-night, but you can be sure of a slice of peac.o.c.k[55] and a few other nice bits."

[54] Dining room with couch seats for nine, the regular size.

[55] The _ne plus ultra_ of Roman gastronomy at the time.

"I am very grateful," replied Drusus, who felt all the while that Lucius Ahen.o.barbus was the last man in the world with whom he cared to spend an evening's carousing; "but," and here he concocted a white lie, "an old friend I met in Athens has already invited me to spend the night, and I cannot well refuse him. I thank you for your invitation."

Lucius muttered some polite and conventional terms of regret, and fell back to join Servius Flaccus and Gabinius, who were near him.

"I invited him and he refused," he said half scornfully, half bitterly. "That little minx, Cornelia, has been complaining of me to him, I am sure. The G.o.ds ruin him! If he wishes to become my enemy, he'll have good cause to fear my bite."