Spartacus (15 page)

‘My people were eating of the bread of God when yours were starving in their northern stenches.'

‘A very desirable and praiseworthy God,' said Crixus, politely. He cared nothing for Gods. ‘Could you not make him a sacrifice and bring him over the seas to help us now?'

Gershom ben Sanballat looked at the heathen with the old Pharisee arrogance.

‘He is the God of Israel alone.'

Crixus signed. ‘That's a pity, since He specializes in bread. He might have helped in the feeding of this gaping camp. The country is as bare as a desert for a score of pace miles around.'

Gershom nodded: ‘Then let us move.'

‘Where?'

‘To the sea and disperse.'

The Gaul shook his head. ‘That we can't do, unless Spartacus orders it. We've sworn to abide by the orders of the Strategos alone.'

‘
I
have sworn no such oath.' The Jew combed his black, curled beard with irritable fingers. ‘This Thracian is our leader for as long as we please, not a King whom we cannot depose.'

‘Yet I heard of a tribune of the Free Legion who beat one of his men – a Bithynian, I think – who had spread the rumour that Spartacus intended betraying the slaves to the Republic.'

Gershom shrugged impatiently, but made no answer, tall, black-haired, black-bearded, incongruous in his Roman armour and silvered Greek helmet. Crixus looked westward and spoke almost to himself.

‘Yet we can't stay here long, as Spartacus knows. He must return within a few days, he and the Greek.'

Gershom was blunt. ‘What is this Greek eunuch to the Strategos? His lover?'

Crixus laughed again. ‘Many men love Spartacus. Even you, I think, Jew.'

‘Many men love a maid: but she beds with but one. This Kleon is with the Strategos night and day. He came back from the killing of Cossinus and I saw the Greek meet him. They talked together, then summoned you to their tent. Then I heard the sound of a company leaving, and saw the Strategos and the woman Elpinice, together with the Greek and a score of Thracians, setting out southwards. How do we know they haven't fled to the sea?'

‘Spartacus or Elpinice desert us? Ask the Gladiators who were with them in Vesuvius. You know little of either, Jew.'

‘I know little, else I'd be neither a fool nor a slave – nor a so-called tribune in an Unfree Legion commanded by a barbarian who withdraws from the camp when he chooses, and where.'

‘He has not withdrawn far. Listen: but don't spread the news about. They have crossed the hills to the great Stone Way to lie in wait for a tribute-train coming from the East through Brindisium. The Greek learned of this train's arrival, and laid the plan for its capture. With its treasure Spartacus is to buy the help of the Italiot cities and make payment to each slave as a Free Legion soldier.'

Then the Jew saw clearly. ‘So will it cease to be the Free Legion. We'll wander this land, fighting small battles and storming small towns, seeking alliances that never mature, seeking never to escape from Italy. Till the Republic awakes and crushes us as a man walking through grass crushes an adder.'

Crixus cared nothing for the morrow. ‘So be it. Any death is a good one if it isn't the Cross. And I'd rather any day go into the dark with a gladius in my ribs than escape to Gaul and grow old, and die of old age and hunger in some forsaken hut. Especially if the dark, ill Gods of whom they speak lie waiting one at the thither side.'

He fell silent a moment, straining his ears, listening; then looked at Gershom with bright, mocking eyes. ‘But Spartacus and the Greek have other plans. They talk of upbuilding another Republic in opposition to that at Rome – a Republic here in south Italy to which the Italiots will cleave.'

‘A Republic in the skies,' said Gershom. ‘Are these fellow slaves of ours allies that the Italiot cities will welcome? Especially after Metapontum – not to mention Paestum. Were I a free man I'd rather seek allegiance with a herd of swine.'

For even yet there were moments when the sight and smell of a fellow-slave disgusted the one-time aristocrat of Kadesh – disgusted him both as ruler and Pharisee, he who had twice defeated the Hellenizing Jannaeus, and then turned and ground under-heel the revolting serfs of Kadesh. He was amongst them, but not of them, himself seeking only escape, return to Judaea and a secret passing to his mountain folk, there to raise again the standard of the Hasidim against the unclean Salome. Marching his Bithynians through Lucanian towns, he had freed the slaves, as his own men clamoured, but coldly, contemptuous of those he freed. Half at least that he freed had been slaves from birth; slavery he thought their apportioned lot.

Yet also (and this startled his haughty heart when he thought of it), there were long stretches of days and hours, when he sank himself in the mood of the slaves, moved with their anger against the Masters, with their compassion for the fellow-enslaved. Gannicus the Teutone had now a fine tent, and two Roman captives who served him at meat: for that he was hated throughout the camp, perversely, the slave-horde pitying the Romans. Gershom joined in the hate like a slave; looking now towards the quarters of the German slaves a thought, unbidden, came sharp on his lips.

‘If the Strategos were wise he'd have his German tribune impaled on a stake ere he started the campaign.'

Crixus laughed. ‘What, in the Free Legion? Gannicus had done better to die as a slave.'

‘He has the heart of a slave. As have too many of the Legion. See to it, Gaul: no man may ever be a slave but he bears the stigma until he is dead. And that stigma is on his soul. We are no free men. We are rebel slaves.'

For a moment it seemed to Crixus that he was aware of a bitter truth. Then the sharpness of it faded from his mind. He laughed again.

‘I am no slave: I have no slave-stigma on my soul. I hate the Romans as I hate an enemy, not as a slave his Master.'

‘Then you are a fool,' said Gershom, and turned away. Then halted. ‘Here come your two spies.'

‘Brennus and his brother? Where?'

Gershom pointed across the entrenchments to two far figures that neared the camp with speed. The Gaul nodded.

‘You have keen eyes, Jew.'

‘Though a dull heart, Gaul. Heed to me, Crixus. If you and I led this Free Legion, were there in it no Gannicus, no dreaming Spartacus or Kleon, we might save it yet.'

Crixus shook his head. ‘I've sworn an oath to the Strategos; which is nothing. But I love Spartacus; which is much.'

Then he went forward to meet his panting spies.

[iii]

Early that same morning a band of twenty, on horseback, forded a river and rode north-westwards into Lucania. They drove a long train of laden ponies. All of the band was mounted, mostly on small horses, long-maned and long-tailed, Calabrian bred and hardy. Each rider carried a shield and javelins. Some were in armour, some not. Some rode half naked, their garments torn. Some had their bodies bound with bloody cloths. One rolled in his saddle, held there by a fellow-rider. It was the slave-band of Thracians, returning from its raid on the great Stone Way.

At the head rode their solitary scout, a small man with retreating chin and forehead. It was Titul, the Iberian. In the rear rode three who every now and again looked over their shoulders at the plains retreating and fading in the haze of the brightening sun. The tallest rode in the middle, a giant, mounted on a giant stallion, unwounded, unwearied, his great body cased in gilded armour. A magnificent figure, the Strategos Spartacus, commander of the Free Legion, once a slave in the ludus of Batiates.

So Kleon thought, riding on the Thracian's right side. But more than merely magnificent, the Thracian. In the space of three months he had changed from a wild, brooding slave who sought no better future than freedom in Thracian forest to a General, a statesman, archon with strategos, to the seeming, inward and outward, of that Prince whom Plato the divine had sought in sun-washed Syracuse. A feat for a eunuch to perform, this, while the Seeker slept with the shades!

Elpinice rode on the Gladiator's left. Since dawn she had ridden in agony, cloths wound tightly round her body, her armour long since thrown away. With lips compressed, she had felt the pain surge over her and set her teeth, and said nothing. For they could not stop in the plains, and she knew that the pains were but early ones, and her body would tell her in a keener agony when her ultimate hour had come.

At the first, in the marching and riding from Papa, when that knowledge had come on her in a night that she bore in her womb the seed of Spartacus, fear and anger had come with the knowledge. By means that were known to many women, in Rome and Capua and the white-walled houses that rose in all the cities of men that girded the Middle Sea, she had taken heed in her nights of old that she should give no children to Batiates. Then in her madness for the Thracian Gladiator, in the wild rides and hidings that followed Capua, when the world gaped to engulf their revolt, there had seemed no purpose to guard herself afresh. The days and the nights of the Thracian's love would endure but a shining space ere the dark came down.

But the dark had not come. In Lucania the Masters still failed to subdue the slave-horde. It waxed daily in size and strength. And with it waxed the fruit of that first strange night when the Gladiator took her in the kennels of Batiates.

So she had sought to kill the thing, riding as a centurion in the company of Castus, engaging in the sprawling guerilla warfare that Spartacus and Kleon waged on the Masters the while they tried to rouse the Italiot cities against the Republic. But it would not die, though she slept unshielded at night, though she lay in the ice-cold water of pools, though twice, dismounting, she had fought in the slave-ranks. Then a calmness had come on her, albeit fear also; and with widened eyes she watched her body change and grow strange. In the dark of the night, by the side of Spartacus, sometimes a wild, dark anger held her, breaking the calmness; sometimes, strangely, tearing her heart, a nameless thing that might once have been pity.

Pity for herself, for the giant head of the Gladiator, fast and secure in sleep, for all sleeping horde about the tents, for all life sleeping and waiting the day. In those dark, lost hours she groped back again through the curtains of years to the tears and touch of a woman half remembered, long before, in Athens: through the curtaining times that had set in her eyes, frozen, the stalactites of hate; that had put in her heart that cold delight that had urged her to cutting the tribune's throat, that had urged her in company of other slaves to nameless tortures on captured Romans, till the blood and the sweat stood out as a rain on their skins, tormented, and they groaned and died. And beyond those curtains she seemed to find, white-faced, a self that wept and, weeping, brought down its hands from a hidden face and laughed with the joy of careless child.

And with that lost self to companion her, she had ceased her ridings from Papa camp, abiding there while the Gladiator rode, hither and there, on missions and raids with the eunuch Kleon his companion-literatus. And the eyes that looked on Elpinice when the Thracian returned from those journeyings she saw awakened to a lover's eyes, not with the lust of the mad, strange child: he would lie and speak, with his head in her lap, of the world of the cities that awaited their coming, of the State that he and the slaves were to build; and she saw in him Power, like a quiescent Snake, and wondered over him while he slept; while the Masters armed and prepared in the north; while his seed would stir and turn in her womb.

He went unaware of her unborn child, as the slave-host did, with no eyes to see, death and the chances of War in their eyes; except for the eunuch Kleon, she thought, reading in the cold, amused eyes of the Greek a hint of the knowledge he shared with her. Yet even when they mooted the plan to raid the great Stone Way for the treasure-loads, and she had said she would ride on the raid, Kleon had said nothing, his eyes had not changed. She had thought it likely she rode her last raid: she had not known that her time was so nigh.

So Elpinice had crossed the mountains, into the green Calabrian land, hiding by daytime as did the others, marching and riding swiftly at night, going without food and long without drink, lying a fugitive in the rains. Behind: the slave-host was perhaps dispersed, perhaps they alone survived the revolt. But Spartacus and Kleon had taken the chance, knowing that Crixus was cautious and skilful, and Varinus still unreinforced. So they kept by the Way and fell on the train, taking it after a scattered fight. Now for two days they had been making their way back to the slave-camp under Mount Papa.

In the afternoon they were forced to turn north to avoid a band of Roman velites whom Titul had spied ere they spied him. Till sunset they made a wide detour, and were presently riding through the mountain-country grown familiar enough to the slaves since the Spring-time exodus from Campania. Here they descried a runner approaching, a solitary figure in a short grey tunic and carrying only a knife in his belt. It was a Gaul and he brought to the Strategos a message from Crixus under Mount Papa.

‘Haste and return. Varinus has been reinforced at last, and we have news of his secret plan.'

But Kleon pointed to Elpinice.

‘The woman can go no further.'

She was reeling with weakness. But she read in the cold Greek's eyes his plan. It was to have Spartacus abandon her.

Spartacus seemed to awaken, looking at Elpinice in frowning wonder, his ears still filled with Crixus' message. Then he and all who had ridden with her became aware of the thing of a sudden. They had ridden with her unnoticing for days, thinking of her as Elpinice, a Gladiator almost, no woman at all. Now they stared open-mouthed at a woman pregnant, and near to her time of travail at that. Around stood the halted pack-train. The sun was low, in the air a chill. The horses stood drooping-headed. Somewhere at hand a waterfall splashed ceaselessly over hidden rocks. Through a mist of pain Elpinice heard the Gaul messenger speaking.