Spartacus (6 page)

High up on a hill-ridge they found a grassy dip and squatted there throughout the hours of the day. Below them the country lay blue in the Spring-time warmth. To the north a ribbon of river glinted. Once a kid strayed near them and the short man leapt out upon it, strangled it with his hands, and brought it back to their hiding-place. They drank its blood, but their throats were too parched to swallow the raw flesh. The short man speared the kid's heart on a flake of stone and held it towards the sun, ceremonially. Brennus grinned. Kleon squatted cross-wise and regarded the proceeding with passionless gaze.

‘Who is Kokolkh?' he asked.

‘I come from the northern seacoast of Iberia,' the short man said, ‘but I am no Iberian. My name is Titul and my people are the last of a race that lived on the world's edge, far in the Western Sea. This people was a great people: but they neglected to sacrifice to the God Kokolkh. So he whelmed their country in mud and sand; and the seas rose against it and devoured it.' He paused ceremonially, being mad, and chanting an oft-told tale. ‘But my fathers fled in boats and them Kokolkh allowed to escape. They saw him, the God visible, in the lightning fires that smote the islands. He was bearded with serpents and on his head were the feather-plumes of the sun.'

Kleon nodded, as the slurred chant ended. ‘It was the island of Atlantis, for so Plato tells. Of him you've never heard. And why worship this ill God?'

‘He is Pain and Life,' said Titul, and ate the heart ceremonially, watched by Brennus the agnostic and Kleon the atheist. The sun wheeled westward. Brennus clasped his hands round his knees, and sang a song in the broken Latin of the vulgares slaves:

‘These are the things I desire:

The city of stakes

And the darkened rooms

Of my home,

And the curling smoke,

And the moon;

Wild cattle low in the woods:

Shall I not return?'

‘He's a poet,' said Titul; and fell to his drone. ‘Mighty were the poets of old in the vanished Western Isle.'

Brennus yawned. ‘They were fools. For they were drowned. Let's sleep.' He yawned again, and shaded his eyes and looked south. ‘There's a big farm across that stream.'

Kleon nodded. ‘We'll try to get near at dusk, and free the slaves. If we form a large enough company, we can march openly to join the Games men.'

Titul licked his thick lips and also peered through the haze.

‘There may be women there – women of the Masters.'

Stretched full-length on the sun-warmed grass, Brennus purred drowsily. ‘No women are like the Gaul women. Oh, Gods, Gods, none at all! And I haven't had one since they brought me south, four years ago this Spring. Deep-breasted and with wide full hips; and we used to raid them. Gods! for a strong, warm woman to weep under your hands!'

‘In the Western Isle,' said Titul, ‘there were mighty women.'

[iii]

A day later Kleon halted his band by a river ford. With him were forty men and three women. More than half of the men were Gauls, tall, thin, and black-burned by the sun. Shepherds, they were matted still with the filth of their night-time kennels where every sunset they were led and chained when the horns of the horreum sounded. They had ceased to weep and sing and stare, and challenge one another to racings and wrestlings. Now, wearied, Brennus elected their leader, they lay down at halts and cast lots for the use of the three women captives.

Since daybreak they had marched through a country deserted. Like droppings of blood long shed, the grapes hung heavy in abandoned vineyards. Flocks strayed without shepherds and the horrea were found fast-locked and barred. These buildings the Gauls fired and looted, gathering bundles of grass and piling them under the wooden eaves. In stone-built houses which would not burn they defiled the atria with excrement, and smeared it upon the faces of the statues in the peristyles. Far across the countryside as the day waned other fires broke forth at intervals.

The Gauls had been shepherds and labourers, but the others vulgares of the household, ostiarii, pistores, coqui, bed-chamber slaves and slaves of the bath. Nine of these were Greeks, slaves from slave mothers, pale men with black hair and keen eyes and a high, shrill laughter: as though they knew this freedom a dream that would not endure, and shivered in the winds of the open lands. Their backs were scored with cicatrices, for their mistress had been Petronia, wife of C. Gaius Petronius, strong in belief that a well-flogged slave was a willing slave. Now, clad in a single linen shift, dust-covered, blinded, she was dragged forward by the hair grasped in the hand of a giant Gaul. He had cut a switch from a thorn-brake and at intervals raised the shift and smote the woman with the full strength of his arm. Her two daughters, with faces engrimed and staring eyes, ran by the side of their mother. Them the Gaul did not beat, for he desired them.

Five of the men were Negroes, cooks and men of the bedchamber, who slobbered a strange, half-intelligible Latin and stared appalled on the spaces of a countryside they had seen but seldom in their days of toil. One had been the household executioner. In the sleeves of his girt-up robe he carried two swords, and marched and smiled with a vacant intensity.

But the women slaves of the household had been left behind, at the order of the literatus Kleon. For they would delay the march. They had wept and followed the company many miles, some carrying children, some loot from the rooms of Petronius. Then they were lost behind in a stretch of marshland.

Now it drew towards nightfall again, and at the halt by the ford Kleon gestured Brennus and Titul to his side. Since they freed the slaves of Petronius, these slaves had elected them leaders without demur, and lonians Kleon and the Negroes Titul. Some already had heard of the Gladiators' revolt, others believed it only a tale, and the cross the end of the day's revolt. These it was who wrecked their fury on the countryside and the body of their stumbling mistress.

Brennus came sleepy-eyed from the midst of his Gauls. He wore the sandals of Petronia, strained and split on his shambling feet, and about him had girt the green robe she once wore, for he had been the first to reach her room. In his belt he carried a dagger, a sling, and over his shoulder a pouch of clay pellets.

‘Look there,' said Kleon.

They shaded their eyes with their hands and looked into the sunset quietude of Italy. Against it was a glitter of metal. A band of soldiers was riding towards the ford.

‘The Masters,' said Brennus, his hands trembling. Kleon looked at him with a cold contempt, unstirred by either fear or hope, and Brennus caught that look, and ceased to tremble. ‘Well, here's an end to women and freedom.'

‘We'll cut the throats of the women,' said Titul, licking his lips. ‘But first we'll fight.'

At the order of the three leaders the company climbed a knoll that overlooked the ford. Upon its summit were great stones, ruins of a temple builded by ancient men. With these stones the slaves set to building a wall. Flinging back the long hair from their faces, the sun-blackened Gauls lost their fear, and toiled with obscene jests and panting breath. Then they unwound their shepherds' slings, and laid in each leathern thong a round clay pellet, such as were used against flock-raiding wolves. The Negro executioner drew out his swords and laughed with a vacant fury towards the ford. But the Ionians were silent, toiling to erect the stone wall. Then one, the youngest, said to the others:

‘I'd thought to see the ships in Delos harbour of which our mothers told.' And he smiled upon them a strange, frightened smile. And the older men muttered and turned away their faces, to hide the ready Greek tears.

The three women crouched in the hollow on the summit of the knoll. Petronia knelt and stared with half blind eyes. A Negro flung filth in her face and promised her jackals instead of men to share her bed by the morrow. Kleon smiled coldly and looked down on the ford.

Now the horsemen rode near. They numbered half a century, and were heavy cavalry, armed and armoured in the new fashion borrowed from the Greeks, with iron leggings and breastplates and crested helmets. Two officers rode at the head of the company, men of high rank, middle-aged and grave. The sunset was in Kleon's eyes, but his company and the hasty defences were plain to the eyes of the soldiers. A shout arose.

‘Slaves!'

With this came a roar of laughter. The horsemen splashed through the ford. Then, at a word, they wheeled and halted below the knoll. One of the officers held up his hand, stilling his soldiers, and addressing Kleon.

‘Excrement: a hundred lashes and the mines for those of your following who surrender. For such of the others as escape our swords – the cross. Choose. Quickly.'

Behind Kleon the giant Gaul who had beaten Petronia throughout the march laid aside his switch and wrenched a great stone from the ground. Before the officer had ceased to speak the Gaul swung the stone twice and thrice till he reeled in the momentum. Then he hurled it from him. It soared through the air, struck a soldier from his horse, and broke the back of the animal, which neighed a shrill scream. Wild laughter broke from the slaves. All seized stones and hurled them upon the horsemen, Kleon alone standing inactive, watching the horsemen scatter. As they did so, slaves and soldiers alike were startled by a woman's scream.

‘Father! Petronius! My father!'

One of the daughters of Petronia attempted to climb the wall at the summit of the knoll. Titul seized her hair and held her. Weeping, she knelt and flung out her arms. Titul licked his thick lips.

‘It's Petronius himself.' He laughed, and snatched one of the swords from the Negro executioner. Then, twisting the girl to silence, he rent her robe from her shoulders and bent her back over his knee. In the half-dusk her body shone white, and the sword, a moment ceremonially poised in the sun's last rays, descended to sever her breasts. But Kleon leant forward and held Titul's arm.

Then he called to Petronius: ‘We hold your wife and daughters. Come nearer and we'll cut their throats.'

Petronius, the officer who had threatened them with the mines or the cross, gave a cry and fell forward in his saddle. Two soldiers went to assist him. He was an old man, in the Social War notorious for his cruelties. From the knoll Kleon watched him recover and again sit erect in his stirrups. His face was now indistinct, as were the faces of all the soldiers, but his voice carried clearly uphill in the evening quiet:

‘If you'll surrender the women you can go.'

A howl of laughter rose from the slaves. Titul, with mad, drowsing eyes, again swung up the sword. But again Kleon the literatus held him.

‘And what's our surety that you won't follow?'

The soldiers debated. ‘The surety that a body of slaves, too strong for us to assail, is camped three miles beyond the ford.'

Kleon looked into the darkness where the sunset had been. The Romans spoke the truth, for he saw the glint of watchfires. He decided quickly, with a cold amusement that he ordered the Masters.

‘Withdraw your soldiers, Petronius, and we'll send down your daughters. Beyond the ford only we'll release Petronia.'

The body of horsemen manoeuvred dimly. A segment of it trotted away, with rhythmic hoof-beats, into the darkness. Kleon freed the girl from Titul's clutch. Half-swooning, she staggered down the hill. Then the eunuch literatus became aware that the Gauls, laughing, had surrounded Brennus and the other girl. In a sudden, sick distaste he thrust through the group. At the girl he did not look.

‘Run!'

She sped down the hill towards the ten horsemen who still waited. Singing and laughing, the slaves descended the hill in her rear and splashed through the ford. Petronia, fast-gripped by the giant Gaul, was dragged in their midst. They had gained the further side when a rhythmic beating of hooves again arose to their ears. Then, out of the darkness on either side, burst the horsemen who had ridden away. At the same time Petronius and his ten charged through the ford.

Too late Kleon realized his own simplicity. He screamed:

‘Scatter! Westward is the slave camp.'

Then the horsemen were on them. With shrill screams the Negroes fled, all except the executioner, who swung his swords and disembowelled a horse. A moment later, clawing at a pilum buried in his stomach, he fell into the water and was carried away. Maddened, the sun-blackened Gauls stood fast and fought, or, running to a little distance, swung their slings and poured a volley of clay pellets into the mellay. Each pellet was of the hardness of stone and fashioned to ensure straight flight. Several horsemen fell from the saddles, and an Iberian and a Greek, struck by these projectiles of their fellow-slaves, were killed instantly. Then the horsemen wheeled and charged again, and the Gauls, drawing their short knives, attempted to hamstring the horses. A sickening smell arose from the slicing of warm flesh. Then complete darkness descended.

[iv]

In the darkness a half-mile beyond the ford Kleon stumbled upon the Ionians. One of them limped and another was attempting to staunch the flow of blood from his neck. Him Kleon bandaged with strips torn from his tunic. Then they listened, but now the night was void of sound.

Yet presently there neared the noise of a galloping horse.

‘The Masters!'

Kleon listened, panting, having fought at the ford, not only run from it. ‘There is only one. I'll stab the beast in the belly.'

With his short dagger in his hand, he crouched by the side of the track. The horse shied in alarm from his leaping figure. Then Kleon saw it was no Master, but Titul. The Iberian grinned with gleaming teeth.

‘I dragged down a soldier and dashed out his brains with a stone,' he said. ‘His helmet cracked like a shell. Then I stole his horse.'

‘Brennus?'

‘Brennus is dead,' said Titul. ‘For I saw him killed. As for the other Gauls, they're also dead and doubtlessly in hell, being men without GODS.'