“It’s of no consequence.”
“But one does survive the
munera,
” Claudia said.
“Not necessarily, for the last pair could both be badly cut. But most likely, if one does, he will be crucified symbolically before the gates. There are seven gates, you know, and when the tokens of punishment were erected, it began with seven crosses, one in front of each gate. Whoever survives will simply replace the corpse at the Appian Gate. Have you ever been to Capua?” he asked Claudia.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Then you have a treat in store for you. It’s such a beautiful city, the most beautiful in the whole world, I sometimes think, and on a clear day there is the glorious bay to be seen from the walls, and in the distance the white summit of Vesuvius. I don’t know of anything else like it. I have a small villa there, and if you would all be my guests, I would be very pleased.”
Caius explained that his great-uncle, a Flavian, was expecting them, and that they could hardly change their plans now.
“In any case, we can see something of each other. The first few days will be a bore, but when the official welcome and speeches and all the rest are done with, we can have some hours on the bay, sailing—that’s the king of all sports, you know—and a picnic perhaps, and certainly an afternoon among the
unguentarii
. There is no separating Capua from its perfume, and I have an interest in a plant there and know something of the lore of the essence. Whatever perfume your heart desires,” he told them generously, “it will be my pleasure to present to you.
“You are very kind,” said Helena.
“Let us say that kindness costs me so little and rewards me well. In any case, I love Capua and have always felt proud of it. It is a very old city. You know, legend has it that a thousand years ago, the Etruscans built twelve cities in this part of Italy—the twelve jewels in the golden necklace, they were called. One of them was named
Volturnum,
and that is supposed to be the Capua of today. Of course, that is only a legend, and the Samnites, who took it from the Etruscans about three hundred and fifty years ago, rebuilt most of it—and when we took it from them, we built new walls and laid new streets everywhere. It is a much lovelier city than Rome.”
So they travelled on down the Appian Way. By now, they paid little or no attention to the tokens of punishment. When the wind blew and brought them the odor of decaying flesh, a spray of perfume sweetened the air. But for the most part, they hardly looked at the crosses. There were no incidents of consequence apart from the normal traffic on the road. They spent two nights at country homes, and one night in a very luxurious mile station. By easy stages, they came finally to Capua.
II
Capua was in a gala mood, a city at the height of its fame and glory and prosperity—with the stain of servile war wiped away. Twelve hundred banners floated from the white walls of the city. The seven famous gates were wide open, for the land was at peace, and nothing troubled it. News of their coming had gone before them, and there was a mass of city dignitaries to welcome them. The civic band of one hundred and ten pieces, brasses and fifes and drums, brayed out its greeting, and the City Cohort, decked out in silver-plated armor, escorted them through the Appian Gate. It was very thrilling for the girls, and even Caius, though he pretended indifference, was excited by the unusual and colorful welcome that they shared with their famous companion. Once within the city, they parted from Crassus and went to the house of their relatives; but a few hours later an invitation came from the general asking Caius and his sister and his friend and his family as well to be the guests of Crassus at the formal banquet to be held that very evening. It made Caius quite proud to be the object of the general’s attention, and all through the long and rather tedious banquet, Crassus went out of his way to show small kindnesses to them. Caius and Claudia and Helena only tasted a few of the fifty-five courses served as a mark of the general’s distinction and honor. Capua carried on the ancient Etruscan tradition of skillful and exotic preparation of insects, but Caius could not bring himself to enjoy insects, even when dissolved in honey or made into delicate cakes with minced lobster. One of the features of the evening was a new dance which had been created specifically in honor of Crassus. It portrayed the rape of Roman virgin maids by the blood-thirsty slaves, and scenes were enacted with great fidelity in the hour-long extravaganza. When the slaves were finally slain, a burst of white blossoms fluttered like snow from the ceiling of the great chamber.
Helena noticed that as the evening wore on and as the several hundred guests at the banquet became increasingly drunk, Crassus drank less and less. He only tasted the wine, and did not even taste the heavy plum brandy which Capua was so famous for, and which they distilled even as they distilled their world-famous perfume. He was a strange combination of austerity and sensuousness. They exchanged looks frequently now, and both qualities were in his eyes. Caius and Claudia, on the other hand, were quite drunk.
It was very late when the banquet finished, but Helena had a strange and willful notion that she would like to see the school of Lentulus Batiatus, the place where the servile revolt had its very beginnings, and she asked Crassus whether he wouldn’t take them there and be their guide and mentor. It was a glorious night, cool and balmy and full of the scent of the spring blossoms that were in bloom everywhere in the city. A great yellow moon was just rising up into the sky, and there would be no trouble about seeing their way through the darkness.
They were standing in the plaza of the forum, a crowd around the general, and there was also a question of diplomatically separating the two girls from Helena’s family; but she pressed Caius to act as their chaperone. He was so drunk that he readily agreed; he stood swaying a little, and looked at Crassus with worshipping eyes. The general managed the formalities, and a little while later they were in their litters, bound for the Appian Gate. The guards at the gate saluted the general and he joked with them a bit and distributed a handful of silver among them. He also asked them for directions.
“Then you’ve never been there?” Helena asked.
“No—I’ve never seen the place.”
“How strange,” remarked Helena. “I think that if I were you, I would have wanted to see it. The way your life and the life of Spartacus intertwine at this point.”
“My life and the death of Spartacus,” Crassus observed calmly.
“The place isn’t much now,” the captain of the gate told them. “It was a tremendous investment on the part of the old
lanista,
and he seemed well on his way to becoming a millionaire. But after the revolt, bad luck seemed to dog his steps, and then when he was murdered by his slave, the place was tied up in litigation. It has been ever since. The other big schools have moved into the city. Two of them took over apartment houses.”
Claudia yawned. Caius was asleep in his litter.
“In the history of the rising, the one written by Flacius Monaaia,” the captain of the guard continued cheerfully, “the school of Batiatus is described as being in the heart of the city. Now we take the tourists there. Believe me, my word is of no consequence as against the word of a historian. But Batiatus’s place is easy enough to find. Follow that little path alongside the brook. It’s almost as light as day under this moon. You can’t miss the arena. The wooden grandstand just towers up.”
A group of slaves carrying spades and picks came through the gate while they were talking. They also carried a ladder and a wicker basket. They went to where the great crucifix stood, the first and most symbolic of all the tokens of punishment, the first of the six thousand crosses which marked the road to Rome. As they set the ladder against the cross, a flock of crows fluttered angrily away.
“What are they doing?” Claudia asked suddenly.
“Cutting down a dog so that we may raise another dog in his place,” the captain of the gate answered casually. “In the morning, the survivor of the
munera sine missione
will be honored according to his rights. There will die the last slave who was with Spartacus.”
Claudia shivered. “I don’t think I want to go with you,” she said to Crassus.
“If you wish to go home you may—will you send two of your men with her?” he asked the captain.
But Caius, snoring comfortably, went with them. Helena wanted to walk, and Crassus nodded and left his litter to stroll with her. The litters moved on ahead, and the great financier and general and the young woman followed in the moonlight. As they passed the crucifix, the slaves were handing down the sun-blackened, bird-torn, stinking remains of the man who had died there. Others were digging at the base of the cross and driving wedges in to straighten and strengthen it.
“Nothing really disturbs you, does it?” Crassus asked Helena.
“Why should something like this disturb me?”
Crassus shrugged. “I didn’t mean it as criticism, you know. I think it’s quite admirable.”
“That a woman should not be a woman?”
“I accept the world we live in,” Crassus answered noncommittally. “I know of no other world. Do you?”
Helena shook her head without speaking, and they walked on. It was not a great distance to the school, and the landscape, lovely in the daytime, was changed by the moonlight into a veritable fairyland. Presently, they saw ahead of them the wall of the arena. Grassus told the litter-bearers that they could set down the litters together and remain beside them until he returned. Then he walked on with Helena.
The place was small and tawdry in its emptiness. Much of the iron which framed the exercise ground had been stolen. The wooden shacks were already rotting and half the wall of the arena was down. Crassus led Helena onto the sand, and they stood there looking up at the grandstand. The arena seemed very small and shabby, but the sand was silvery in the moonlight.
“I heard my brother speak of this,” Helena said. “But he made so much of it, and it seems so little.”
Crassus attempted to connect the fields of dead, the bloody battles, and the endless gruelling campaigns with this shabby little school, but he could not. It had no meaning to him, and he had no feeling for it.
“I want to go up in the stand,” Helena said.
“If you wish. But carefully. The wood may be rotten.”
They made their way up to the box which had been Batiatus’s pride and joy. The striped awning hung in tatters, and mice scurried from the remains of ancient pillows. Helena sat down on one of the couches and Crassus sat beside her. Then Helena said,
“Don’t you feel anything toward me?”
“I feel that you are a very lovely and intelligent young lady,” Crassus replied.
“And I, great general,” she said quietly, “feel that you are a swine.” He leaned toward her, and she spat full in his face. Even in the dim light, she saw how his eyes lit with rage. This was the general; this was the passion that never came into his words. He struck her, and the blow flung her off the couch and against the rotten fence, which splintered under her weight. She lay there, half over the edge, with the floor of the arena twenty feet below her, but caught herself and pulled herself back—and the general never moved. Then she was on him like a wildcat, scratching and clawing, but he grasped her two wrists and held her away from him, smiling coolly at her now, and telling her,
“The real thing is different, my dear. I know.”
Her spasm of anger and energy passed, and she began to cry. She cried like a little spoiled girl, and while she wept, he made love to her. She neither resisted this nor welcomed it, and when he had finished an act without either passion or urgency, he said to her,
“Was that what you wanted, my dear?”
She didn’t reply, but fixed her clothes and her hair, wiped away what lipstick had smeared over her face, and wiped off the eye shadow that had run down her cheeks. She led the way back to the litters, and crawled into hers silently. Crassus walked; the litter-bearers set off back down the little road to Capua, and Caius still slept. Now the night was almost over, and the moon was losing its bright radiance. A new light touched the earth, and soon a common gray cloud would merge moonlight with daylight. Crassus, for some reason, felt a renewed vibrancy of life and power. A feeling came over him that he experienced but rarely, a feeling of life and vitality to such an extent that he half believed the old legends which claimed that a select few of mankind are seeded in mortal women by the gods. Was it not possible, he thought to himself, that he was one such? Only consider how he had been favored. Why was it then not possible that he was such a one?
His stride took him alongside Helena’s litter, and she looked at him strangely and said,
“What did you mean before when you told me that the real thing was different? Am I not real? Why did you say such a terrible thing?”
“Was it so terrible?”
“You know how terrible it was. What is the real thing?”
“A woman.”
“What woman?”
His brow clouded, and he shook his head. He fought valiantly to retain his feeling of splendor, and much of it stayed with him. At the Appian Gate, he left her litter, went to the gate captain, still struggling to see himself as one spawned by the gods. He told the captain, almost curtly,
“Send a detail to see her home safely!”
The captain obeyed, and Helena was shepherded off without even a goodnight. Crassus stood brooding in the deep shadow of the gate. The gate captain and the troops on duty there watched him curiously. Then Crassus demanded,
“What time is it?”
“The last hour is almost over. Aren’t you tired, sir?”
“No, I’m not tired,” Crassus said. “I’m not tired at all, captain.” His voice softened somewhat. “It’s a long time since I stood a dog watch like this.”