The Brass Bell Part 8

AFTER THE BATTLE.

After I had beheld my mother and all the other women of the tribe die to escape the shame and outrages of slavery, the blood which I had lost caused me to swoon away. A long time pa.s.sed in which I was bereft of reason. When my senses returned, I found myself lying on straw, along with a great number of other men, in a vast shed. At my first motion I found myself chained by the leg to a stake driven into the ground. I was half clad; they had left me my s.h.i.+rt and breeches, in a secret pocket of which I had hidden the writings of my father and of my brother Albinik, together with the little gold sickle, the gift of my sister Hena. A dressing had been put on my wounds, which no longer occasioned me much pain. I experienced only a great weakness and dizziness which made my last memories a confused ma.s.s. I looked about me. I was one of perhaps fifty wounded prisoners, all chained to their litters. At the further end of the shed were several armed men, who did not bear the appearance of regular Roman troops. They were seated round a table, drinking and singing. Some among them, who carried short-handled scourges twisted of several thongs and terminating in bits of lead, detached themselves from time to time from the group, and walked here and there with the uncertain gait of drunken men, casting jeering looks on the prisoners.

Next to me lay an aged man with white hair and beard, very pale and thin. A b.l.o.o.d.y band half hid his forehead. He was sitting up, his elbows on his knees, and his face between his hands. Seeing him wounded and a prisoner, I concluded he was a Gaul. I did not err.

"Good father," I said to him, laying my hand lightly upon the old man's arm, "where are we?"

Slowly raising his sad and mournful visage, the old prisoner answered compa.s.sionately:

"Those are the first words you have spoken for two days."

"For two days?" I repeated, greatly astonished. I was unable to believe so much time had pa.s.sed since the battle of Vannes. I sought to recall my wandering memory. "Is it possible? What, I have been here two days?"

"Yes, and you have been unconscious, in a delirium. The physician who dressed your wounds made you take several potions."

"Now I recall it confusedly. And also--a ride in a chariot?"

"Yes, to come here from the battle-ground. I was with you in the chariot, whither they carried you wounded and dying."

"And here we are--?"

"At Vannes."

"Our army?"

"Destroyed."

"Our fleet?"

"Annihilated."[13]

"O, my brother, and your courageous wife Meroe, both dead also!" flashed through my mind. "And Vannes, where we are," I added aloud to my companion, "Vannes is in the power of the Romans?"

"Even as the whole of Brittany, they say."

"And the Chief of the Hundred Valleys?"

"He has fled into the mountains of Ares with a handful of cavalry. The Romans are in pursuit of him." Then raising his eyes to heaven, he continued, "May Hesus and Teutates protect that last defender of the Gauls!"

I had put these questions while my thoughts were still disordered. But when I recalled the struggle at the chariot of war, the death of my mother, my father, my brother Mikael, my brother's wife and his two children, and finally, the almost certain death of my own wife with her son and daughter--for up to the moment when I lost consciousness I had not seen Henory leave the shelter behind the chariot--when I recalled all that, I heaved, in spite of myself, a great sigh of despair at finding myself alone in the world. I buried my face in the straw to shut out the light of day.

One of the tipsy keepers became irritated at hearing my moans, and showered several cruel blows of the scourge, accompanied with oaths, upon my shoulders. Forgetting the pain in the shame that I felt at the thought of me, the son of Joel, being struck with the lash, I leaped to my feet notwithstanding my weakness, intending to throw myself upon the keeper. But my chain, sharply tightened by the jerk, checked me, and made me trip and fall upon my knees. The keeper, enabled by the length of his scourge to keep out of the prisoners' reach, thereupon redoubled his blows, las.h.i.+ng me across the face, chest, and back. Other keepers ran up, fell upon me, and slipped manacles of iron upon my wrists.

Oh, my son, my son! You, for whose eyes I write all this down, obedient to the wishes of my father, never do yourself forget, and let also your sons preserve the memory of this outrage, the first that our stock ever underwent. Live, that you may avenge the outrage in due time. And if you cannot, let your sons wreak vengeance upon the Romans therefore.

With my feet chained and my hands in irons, unable to move, I did not wish to afford my tormentors the spectacle of impotent rage. I closed my eyes and lay still, betraying neither anger nor grief, while the keepers, provoked by my calmness, beat me furiously. Presently, however, a strange voice having interposed and spoken a few angry words in the Latin tongue, the blows ceased. I opened my eyes and three new personages stood before me. One of them was speaking rapidly to the keepers, gesticulating angrily, and pointing at me from time to time.

This man was short and stout; he had a very red face, white hair and pointed grey beard. He wore a short robe of brown wool, buck-skin stocks, and low leather boots; he was not dressed in the Roman fas.h.i.+on.

Of the two men who accompanied him, one, dressed in a long black robe, had a grave and sinister mien. The other held a casket under his arm.

While I was gazing at these persons, my aged neighbor called my attention with a rapid glance to the fat little man with the red face and the white hair, who was conversing with the keepers, and said to me with a look of anger and disgust:

"The horse-dealer; the horse-dealer!"

"What are you talking about?" I answered him, unable to understand what he meant. "A horse-dealer?"

"That is what the Romans call the slave merchants."[14]

"How! They traffic in wounded men?" I asked the old man in surprise.

"Are there men who buy the dying?"

"Do you not know," he answered with a somber smile, "that after the battle of Vannes there were more dead than living, and not an unwounded Gaul? Upon these wounded men, in default of more able-bodied prey, the slave-dealers who follow the Roman army fell like so many ravens upon corpses."

There was no more room for doubt. I realized that I was a slave. I had been bought. I would be sold again. The "horse-dealer," having finished speaking to the keepers, approached the old man, and said to him in Gallic, but with an accent that proved his foreign origin:

"My old Pierce-Skin--how has your neighbor come on? Has he at last recovered from his stupor? Is he at last able to speak?"

"Ask him," snapped the old man, turning over on the straw. "He'll answer you himself."

The "horse-dealer" thereupon walked over to my side. He seemed no longer angry. His countenance, naturally jovial, was beaming. Putting his two hands on his knees, he stooped down to me; grinned at me; and spoke to me hurriedly, often putting questions which he answered himself, not seeming to care whether I heard him or not.

"You have, then, recovered your spirits, my fine Bull? Yes? Ah, so much the better! By Jupiter, it's a good sign. Now your appet.i.te will return, and it is returning, isn't it? Still better! Before eight days you will be in fine feather. Those brutes of keepers, always in their cups, scourged you, did they? Yes? I'm not a bit surprised--they never do anything else. The wine of Gaul makes them stupid. To strike you! To strike you! And that when you can hardly stand up; besides the fact that in men of the Gallic race, choler is likely to produce bad results. But you are no longer angry, are you? No! So much the better! It is I who should be provoked at those tipsters. Suppose the fury raging in your blood had stifled you! But, bah! those brutes care little for making me lose twenty-five or thirty gold sous,[15] which you will presently be worth to me, my fine Bull. But for greater safety I'll have you taken to a shelter where you will be alone and better off than here. It was occupied by a wounded fellow who died last night--a superb fellow.

That was a loss! Ah, commerce is not all gain. Come, follow me."

He set to work to unfasten my chain by a secret spring. I asked him why he always called me "Bull." I would have preferred by far the keeper's lash to the jovial loquacity of this trafficker in human flesh. Certain now that I was not dreaming, still I could hardly accept the reality of what I saw. Unable to resist, I followed the man. At least I would no longer be under the eyes of the keepers who beat me, and the sight of whom made my blood boil. I made an effort to raise myself, but my weakness was still excessive. The "horse-dealer" unhooked the chain, and held one end. As my hands were still shackled, the man with the long black robe and the one who carried the casket took me under the arms, and led me to the extremity of the shed. They made me mount several stairs and enter a small room that was lighted through an iron-barred opening. I looked through the opening and recognized the great square of the town of Vannes, and, in the distance, the house where I had often gone to see my brother Albinik and his wife. In the room were a stool, a table, and a long box of fresh straw, in place of the one in which the other slave had died. I was made to sit on the stool. The black-robed man, a Roman physician, examined my two wounds, constantly conversing in his own language with the "horse-dealer." He took various salves from the casket which his companion was carrying, dressed my hurts, and went to render his services to the other slaves, not, however, before helping the "horse-dealer" to fasten my chain to the wooden box which served as my bed. The physician then took his departure, and left me alone with my master.

CHAPTER IX.

MASTER AND SLAVE.

"By Jupiter," began my master immediately after the departure of the physician. "By Jupiter," he repeated in his satisfied and hilarious manner, so revolting to me: "Your injuries are healing so fast that you can see them heal, a proof of the purity of your blood; and with pure blood there are no such things as wounds, says the son of Aesculapius.

But here you are back in your senses, my brave Bull. You are going to answer my questions, aren't you? Yes? Then, listen to me."

Drawing from his pocket a stylus and a tablet, covered with wax, the "horse-dealer" continued:

"I do not ask your name. You have no longer any name but that which I have given you, until your new owner shall name you differently. As for me, I have named you Bull[16]--a proud name, isn't it? You are worthy to bear it. It becomes you. So much the better."

"Why have you named me Bull?"

"Why did I name that old fellow, your late neighbor, Pierce-Skin?

Because his bones stick out through his skin. But you, apart from your two wounds, what a strong const.i.tution you have! What broad shoulders!

What a chest! What a back! What powerful limbs!" While pouring out these praises, the "horse-dealer" rubbed his hands and gazed at me with satisfaction and covetousness, already figuring in advance the price I would fetch. "And your height! It exceeds by a palm that of the next tallest captive in my lot. So, seeing you so robust, I have named you Bull. Under that name you are entered in my inventory, at your number; and under that name will you be cried at the auction!"

I knew that the Romans sold their slaves to the slave merchants. I knew that slavery was horrible, and I approved of a mother's killing her children sooner than have them live a captive's life. I knew that a slave became a beast of burden. While the "horse-dealer" was speaking, I drew my hand across my forehead to make sure that it was really I, Guilhern, the son of Joel the brenn of the tribe of Karnak, a son of that free and haughty race, whom they were treating like a beef for the mart. The shame of a life of slavery seemed to me insupportable, and I took heart at the resolve to flee at the first opportunity, or to kill myself and thus rejoin my relatives. That thought calmed me. I had neither the hope nor the desire to learn whether my wife and children had escaped death; but remembering that I had seen neither Henory, Sylvest nor Syomara come from the enclosure behind the war-chariot, I said to the "horse-dealer":

"Where did you purchase me?"