Spartacus (24 page)

They brought him warmed wine and he sat and drank it in the chill of the morning. Then abruptly, and all around, the air was rent with the hoarse blowings of the bucinators, for the march was placed early in the dawn. The Bithynians were first to muster, the heroes of La Fata Pass, and march out southwards with Gershom of Kadesh at their head. Spartacus mounted on his great white stallion sat by the gate with Kleon and watched them march. In the baggage section of Gershom's legion went a litter with Judith and the child born on the night of the battle of Mutina. The Strategos smiled at the Jew as he saluted.

‘We'll find this child a palace to sleep in at Rome.'

Gershom scowled. ‘It were better if we find a cow unquartered on the march. The mother's milk has failed.'

Then the long Bithynian lines, the eastern and southern slaves, the Negro vulgares of the quarries had found great bales of red-dyed cotton and marched with their bodies swathed in the uncut web, their sword-hilts protruding from the folds, their thin-legged march raising a cloud of dust. So they went by, and then came the Gauls under Castus, with slung shields and heavy tramp, they marched because march they must. And Spartacus knew well that unless Rome was seized, as seized it must be, these would not long endure his command. Castus rode at their head and saluted, looking wistfully in the face of the Thracian. And Spartacus saluted and made no other sign.

Then came the Germans, with Gannicus also on horseback, a great roan the size of the Strategos's stallion. He scarcely saluted, Gannicus, and went by, his wild-haired tribesmen tramping behind him. Kleon said, ‘I still doubt if our Sky-Republic can exist secure without the blood-offering of Gannicus.'

Spartacus said, ‘This sounds like a worship alien to that of – I forget the name of your God.'

‘He was no God, but a man, Plato, though men called him divine.'

‘Were there slaves in that city he dreamt?'

Kleon moved uneasily. ‘He lived in other times.'

‘Then his time will never be ours. For this is our proclamation as we march on Rome: that we come to free all slaves whatsoever, that in the new state we'll make even the Masters will not be enslaved. We march with your Lex Servorum, but we do not march with your Plato.'

[ii]

On the borders of Sabani and Picenum they halted one night under the fringes of a great forest, a gnarled growth of trees from ancient times. Here the Gaulish velites of the Free Legions lay down to sleep, the main slave army ten stadia to the north. All that day, a great snake with crested head, that head the shining spears of the Bithynians, the army had wound south in the dust-wake of the velites. Shepherds fled from their horrea and watched it from afar, or, with the news that all slaves would henceforth be free, flocked to join it at its halting-places.

Brennus and his brother did not sleep that night, speaking of Gaul for long together, in a strange unease one with the other. Brennus said, ‘I would that we hadn't turned back. There's an aurochs follows me in dream at night, down through this ill road we take to the south. What can we do against the great City of the Masters?'

His brother grunted; but he also was sleepless. Presently they both rose and put on their abollae, and went through the lines of the sleeping velites and stood in the starlight at the edge of the forest, looking south.

As they did so, suddenly the sky rained fire. The long white arc of the heavens, a pallor, an immensity of stillness, was broken as though the stars were torn from their settings about the belt of Hercules. The two Gauls caught breath with fear.

The northern horizon flashed and winked. Then a great star fell and flamed over the forest, southwards, shedding a wan light on the countryside, rousing the velites so that they stared and covered their faces, those with Gods; and cursed, those without; and turned to sleep, those weary of both Gods and the godless. Brennus said, ‘I think that's an ill thing to have seen. I'd have done better to go through the mountains alone than have looked on that, though all Rome awaits our looting.' And he brushed the sweat from his brow with his withered left arm.

The camp of Spartacus had seen the great star as well. All Northern and Central Italy had seen it. Kleon sat with his Greek scribes in his tent, he was reading for their copying the military clauses of the Lex Servorum when that light winked and flashed across the night-stilled sky. He got up and watched it, cold and secure, unmoved by the threat of the sky. For the stars were bodies of fire circling about the earth at a little distance, and had no bearing on the fates of men. The literati with him muttered and swore, till Kleon turned his cold eyes upon them, and each sought his stylus and tablet.

It roused Gershom ben Sanballat in the bed of his Judith, he muttered in her arms and she soothed him, but terrified; and they watched together that bright thing torn from the sky and flung south over the Gentile lands, some sport of the alien Gentile Gods that had meaning for Gentiles – what meaning? And Judith whispered, ‘Sleep, sleep,' with her breasts warm under the head of Gershom of Kadesh.

Spartacus saw it, with Ialo, on the limits of the camp, making the round of the sentinels. Ialo muttered in fear and the Thracian stared long after that gleam winked bluely to nothingness, south. And a sudden spasm of fear went by, leaving his iron resolution unshaken. ‘Our star leads us south to Rome,' he said, and Ialo was comforted at that.

The long lines of the slave army stirred. Men rose on their elbows to stare, the Bithynian women moaned, here and there the sentries forgot their posts and forgathered and whispered. But the legions were too weary to pay great heed, excepting the southern men, who knew the Gods unsleeping and fearful, and the Gauls, thinking of the sad Gods of the woods and the ancient towers, the Gods of the verdant spring of Gaul who trailed the plague and death in their mists, death that was no resting at all, but only the beginning of lives without end – in the flow of water or a bright bird's flight, unceasing, enduring, undying in the wheel of macabre Law.

Gannicus slept.

Castus turned on his bed and thought of Spartacus, and bit upon his wrists.

And the star fell and fell unendingly, lighting up the countryside till it stood above Rome, and the people came out, and the beggars stirred in the tenements, sleeping their hundreds in one room; and on Right Bank a wail arose from the pens of the slaves, recaptured, awaiting the block on the morrow. And they cried, ‘It's the Gladiator coming!'

The lions in the Luda saw the star and howled.

The Senate sat in session over the news of Mutina, as yet unknown in the Forum. But the senators knew that the Thracian had turned, had armed and re-armoured in Umbria, and was marching south with Rome his objective. Could either consul do more than snap at him as a cur at a lion? What beast was there to set against the lion?

It was then they heard the howling of the lions in the Luda, and a lictor cried the news, and they crowded, old and young, heated with debate, to watch from a terrace that waning splendour above the City.

It seemed to wheel and wait, lighting the Seven Hills on which the Gladiator marched. Then it fell and flamed and vanished in the Tyrrhenian Sea.

The augurs searched till morning in the vitals of a slain sheep for meaning of that star. And at last, in the temple of Capitoline Jupiter, they slew a slave and looked in his entrails. And the augurs' words were made known to the Senate, listening coldly, for they were the words of its own secret instructions returned to it.

‘The falling star is the Gladiator's star. His march on the City will fail.'

That night Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives was chosen provincial praetor, to supersede both the consuls in the field, a small man, renowned for his greed and ability, wealthy with plunder from Sulla's time, hungering for recognition of his military prowess. But even he, appalled with thought of facing the slave hosts with the demoralized legions, advised the Senate to summon Pompeius from Iberia.

Meantime, he set to fortifying Rome.

In Sicily the pirates saw the star as the galleys wheeled out towards dawn to sail raiding down the Messine straits. It fell and hissed in the sea as the morning came, flinging the water high in a great spout.

And relentlessly, southwards, brushing defenders from their path, the slave legions marched on Rome.

[iii]

They saw it at noon, from the Campagna, from the Sabine Hills, shining below them, Mons Cispius crowned with trees and the long-roofed Doric temples, Mons Oppius shelving tenement-laiden into the sunrise's place, Mons Palatinus splendid with villas, fading into a sun-haze mist where the land fell down by Boarium to the Pons Aemilius. Aventine lay south, and north, high-crowned, the Capitoline Hill. Rome!

It was the first time most of the slave-host had seen it, the legendary City of the Masters. And at sight of its shining walls, and the wind that brought its reek a fierce drift across the Campagna, a strange sound rose from the legions of slaves – a growl like a wakened beast that ebbed and rolled into the rear ranks, where the Thracian had brought up the rearguard since dawn, fighting off the detachments of light cavalry which Crassus had sent to vex their march. Kleon stared at the City with cold, clear eyes if with trembling lips, his thoughts sharp on weak points for assailing, noting the cloud of cavalry gathered on the Clovus Suburanus and the hillsides deep-trenched by the guarding Tenth legion. In the air a lark sang, shrilly, sweetly, so that the Germans raised their matted heads to look, and even Gannicus forgot to look at the City, staring instead into the sun in an effort to see the little bird.

But that only a moment. From left to right flank, where Castus and Gershom had halted by the swaying machines of Hiketas, all stared at the City below them. Rome!

Now a cloud had been over the City but that went by, the sunlight came flowing by the Circus Flaminius in long waves catching the sheen of the Tiber and from there upflinging pellets of light, dazzling, into the eyes of the slaves. So for a time they were blinded, and covered their eyes. In its sunlight, terrible, they saw it afresh, the home of the Masters; and this time it was no cry of anger that rose from the slaves, but a sound like a vast, sighing moan.

Spartacus, helmeted, cloaked, mounted on his great white stallion, sat and stared at the City of the Masters, with a coolness at first like Kleon's: but it changed with that flare of sunlight. The home of the Masters, the richest city on earth, where the Gods arose by night and closed the gates and sharpened the swords of war! Rome that had marched to uttermost Thrace, that drew in a long black stream from the shores of the furthest seas the fettered conquered to slavery, that knew no mercy, no peace, no truth, that loved pain and ruth as other men life, a squatting Beast in the glare of the sun. And the Thracian looked round at his halted host, at the men near by him, by his horse's bridle, at their poor, starved, frightened, lustful faces, their hanging mouths and their wound-scarred limbs – and back again at the City – and back again at his legions: and something like an icy hand seized on his heart. These to conquer the City that was unconquered?

And again over the slave army that vast sigh ebbed.

Black roof on roof, palace and tenement, the Romans crowded to look at this terror at their doors. Old men, patricians, were borne to their roofs to look on the coming of the slaves. The Senate thronged to look. Slaves peered from the sweating-dens by the Porta Fontinalis across the shoulder of the Collis Viminalis at that far halted massing of lines they had heard were the Criminals of Capua. How long, O Gods, how long?

Then they saw a strange thing, a thing that Rome might not believe, the army of the slaves in motion, at first it appeared at the legionaries' run upon the City. Then they saw it halt and split again; and then – the lines wheeled round, flashing their stolen armour in the sun.

The slaves were in retreat!

[iv]

That seemed in a day and an hour long past. Yet only another night had come, though it seemed to Kleon the space was bridged with days of fighting and pleading since that moment when the slave legions turned about, with a strange unanimity, and marched away from the sight of Rome at their feet – marched swiftly away, heart-broken and in despair, frightened with a fear that had no name, marching and marching, the cloudy gathering of horse at their heels, the tribunes riding to and fro the disordered lines, pleading, commanding, even slaying here and there. But in such places of killing the slave march broke and became no more than a streaming rout, they kissed the hands of Spartacus, of Gannicus, of Castus and even of Kleon the eunuch, they cried that these were the greatest of strategoi and that they would follow and obey them for ever – but not against the City that no men might take, where the Masters lay waiting to trap and torment.

Only the Bithynian legion wavered and shook and yet stood fast, Gershom of Kadesh riding its ranks, smoothing with a cool hand now at his beard, cursing the frightened in their Asian tongues, wary as a panther, unfrightened at the shining Wolf below. Yet presently when he sent a mounted messenger to bear the news to Spartacus that the Bithynians stood fast and so would stay while the other legions were reformed from their panic, the answer came back that Gershom was to march his legion in the wake of the slaves, acting again as its rearguard.

And at that, seeking this venture less than most, ill-omened of its success, hating and despising this life of the sword in Gentile lands, something stirred black to a tremendous anger in the heart of the Jew. For a moment indeed he sat and looked down on Rome and weighed the chances of seizing the City by himself – ill-garrisoned, fearful, rich with spoil, of seizing it or setting to it such a flame that it and its Masters would empyre the world. Then he looked over the patient troubled ranks of his legion, and tore at his beard again, that he might not weep. ‘We march as rearguard,' he told his tribunes.

Only then did he remember Judith and his son, with the main body of the fleeing slave army.