“A loud-mouthed, filthy lot,” said Caius.
“That they are—but good.”
“I shouldn’t be afraid of anything, with them along,” said Claudia, and added, “But them.”
“And they are
your
slaves now, and they shall be along with you,” answered Brutas gallantly. “Where to?”
“We stay at the
Villa Salaria
tonight,” said Caius, “and if you recall, the road branches about two miles from here.”
“Then for two miles, you shall fear nothing on earth,” cried Brutas, and asked Helena,
“Have you ever marched with a legionary guard of honor?”
“I am not and have never been that important.”
“That’s precisely how important you are to me,” said the young officer. “Just give me a chance. Just observe. I lay them at your feet. The company is yours.”
“They are the last thing in the world I would want at my feet,” protested Helena.
He finished the wine, tossed the cup at the door-slave, and piped on the little silver whistle he carried around his neck. There was a weird, demanding trill of four ascending and four descending notes, and in response the legionaries gulped their beer, swore under their breath, and moved on the double to where their spears, shields and helmets were stacked. Brutas sounded his whistle again and again, the notes stringing themselves into a sharp, insistent melody, and the maniple responded as if the notes played directly upon their nervous system. They fell in, grouped into squads, wheeled, broke apart, and then ranged themselves into two columns, one on either side of the road, in a truly amazing display of controlled discipline. The girls broke out in applause, and even Caius, somewhat annoyed at the antics of his friend, was forced to admire the precision of the company.
“Do they fight as well?” he demanded.
“Ask Spartacus,” said Brutas, and Claudia cried,
“Bravo!”
Brutas bowed and saluted her, and she burst out laughing. It was an unusual response for Claudia, but much about her had struck Caius as unusual today. There was bright color in her cheeks, and her eyes sparkled with excitement at the drill which the maniple had executed. Caius felt less excluded than amazed at the way she began to chat with Brutas, who had ranged himself between the two litters and taken the whole procession in hand.
“What else can they do?” asked Claudia.
“March, fight, swear—”
“Kill?”
“Kill—yes, they’re killers. Don’t they look it?”
“I like the way they look,” said Claudia.
Brutas studied her coolly, and then replied softly, “Really, I think you do, my dear.”
“What else?”
“What else do you want?” asked Brutas. “Do you want to hear them? March to cadence!” he shouted, and the deep voices of the troops chanted to step,
“Sky, earth, road, stone! Steel cuts to bone!”
The doggerel was blurred and coarsened in their throats, and the words were difficult to understand. “What does it mean?” Helena wanted to know.
“Nothing actually. It’s just a marching cadence. There are hundreds of them, and they don’t mean anything. Sky, earth, road, stone—nothing really, but they march better. This one came out of the Servile War. Some are not for the ears of a lady.”
“Some are for my ears,” said Claudia.
“I’ll whisper it to you,” he smiled, and bent to her as he walked along. Then he straightened up, and Claudia turned her head to stare at him. Once again, the crucifixes lined the road, the hanging bodies strung like beads along the way. Brutas waved at them. “Did you want it to be genteel? That’s their work. My maniple crucified eight hundred of them. They’re not nice; they’re tough and hard and murderous.”
“And that makes them better soldiers?” asked Helena.
“It’s supposed to.”
Claudia said, “Have one of them come over here.”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to.”
“All right,” he shrugged, and shouted, “Sextus! Break out and attend!”
A soldier broke out of ranks, swung on the double in front of and between the litters, saluted, and swung into step in front of the officer. Claudia sat up, folded her arms, and studied him intently. He was a middle-sized, dark-skinned, heavily muscled man. His bare forearms, neck, throat and face were tanned almost to a mahogany brown. He had sharp, jutting features, tight-stretched with skin, moist with sweat. He wore a metal helmet, and his great, four-foot shield hung on his back over his haversack. In one hand he carried the pilum, a thick, six-foot spear of hardwood, two inches in diameter and shod at one end with a wicked, heavy, eighteen-inch triangular iron point. He wore a short, heavy Spanish sword, and his leather jerkin had laced on to it three iron plates across the chest, and three more hooked on to each shoulder. Three additional iron plates were hooked from his waist and swung against his legs as he marched. He wore leather pants and high leather shoes, and under that enormous weight of metal and wood, he marched easily and apparently without effort. The metal he carried was oiled, just as his armor was oiled; the stench of oil, sweat and leather mixed and became the singular smell of a trade, a force, a machine.
From where he rode behind them, Caius could see Claudia’s face in profile, the lips parted, the tongue stroking them, the eyes fixed on the soldier.
“I want him next to the litter,” Claudia whispered to Brutas.
He shrugged and threw an order at the soldier, whose lips twitched in just the faintest smile as he dropped back and marched next to Claudia. Just once his eyes fixed on her, and then he looked straight ahead. She reached out and touched his thigh, just barely touched it where the muscles were bunching under the leather, and then said to Brutas,
“Tell him to go away. He stinks. He’s foul.”
Helena’s face was rigid. Brutas shrugged again and told the soldier to fall back into ranks.
VII
The
Villa Salaria
had a rather ironic name, which recalled the time when so much of the land to the south of Rome had been a malaria-infested salt marsh. But this section of the marsh had long since been reclaimed, and the private road, which turned off the Appian Way and led to the estate, was almost as well built as the main road itself. Antonius Caius, who owned the estate, was related to Caius and Helena through their mother; and though his country place was not as elaborate as some, being rather near to the city, it was still a great plantation in its own right and ranked high as a showplace among the
latifundia
.
After Caius and the two girls had turned off the Appian Way, there was still four miles of private road before they came to the house itself. The difference was immediately noticeable; every inch of land was manicured and cared for. The woods were pruned and park-like. The hillsides were terraced, and among the terraces were many fields of finger-like grape vines, just beginning to put forth their first springtime shoots. Other fields were planted in barley—a practice becoming less and less common and profitable as the small peasant landholds gave way to the great
latifundia
—and still others showed endless rows of olive trees. Everywhere, there was that evidence of elegant landscaping which can only be provided by an almost unlimited supply of slave labor, and again and again, the three young people noticed lovely little grottos, mossy and green and cool, with small replicas of Greek temples within them, marble benches, fountains of transluscent alabaster, and white stone paths which wound in and out of the woodland glens. Seen as it was now, in the cooling late afternoon with the sun dropping behind the low hills, the scene had a fairy enchantment which caused Claudia, who had not been there before, to cry out again and again in delight. It was in keeping with the “new Claudia,” and Caius reflected upon how a delicate and rather plethoric young lady could flower so under the stimulus of tokens of punishment, as they were called by the nicer-minded.
At this time of the day, the cattle were being driven in, and the tinkle of cow-bells and the sad call of the cowherds’ horns sounded constantly. Goatherds, young Thracians and Armenians, naked except for shreds of hide across their loins, ran through the woods, halooing at the scampering animals, and Caius wondered which looked the more human, the goats or the slaves. He reflected now, as he had so often before, on the wealth of this uncle of his. By law, any sort of commercial transaction was forbidden to the old and noble families; but Antonius Caius—as with many of his contemporaries—found the law a convenient cloak rather than a chain. It was said that he had, through his agents, over ten million
sesterces
out at interest, interest which frequently amounted to one hundred per cent. It was also said that he owned a controlling interest in fourteen
quinqueremes
in the Egyptian trade and that he owned half of one of the largest silver mines in Spain. Although no one but knights sat on the boards of the great joint stock companies which had arisen since the Punic Wars, the wishes of Antonius Caius were scrupulously observed by these boards.
It was impossible to say how wealthy he was, and though the
Villa Salaria
was a place of taste and beauty, with over ten thousand acres of fields and woodland belonging to it, it was by no means the largest or the most splendid of the
latifundia
. Nor did Antonius Caius make the ostentatious display of wealth that had become habitual with so many noble families of late, the sponsoring of great gladiatorial games, the setting of a table of indescribable luxury, and entertainment in the Eastern style. The table of Antonius was good and plentiful, but it was not graced with peacock breast, hummingbird tongues, or stuffed entrails of Libyan mice. This sort of fare was still frowned upon, and the scandals of the family were not paraded. Antonius himself was a Roman of old-fashioned dignity, and Caius—who respected him but did not particularly like him—never felt wholly at ease in his presence.
Part of this unease was due to the man himself, for Antonius Caius was not the most outgoing personality in the world; but more of the unease stemmed from the fact that Caius always felt an estimation on the part of his uncle of the difference between what the nephew actually was and what Antonius Caius would like the young Roman to measure up to. Caius suspected that the legend of the virtuous and austere Roman youth, dedicated to civic duty, a brave soldier first moving through the steps of officer advancement, marrying some upright Roman maiden, rearing a family like the Gracchi, serving the state unselfishly and well, moving from post to post, becoming consul finally, revered and honored by the plain and simple folk as well as the people of title and wealth, moral and upright throughout, was never less of a reality than now; and Caius himself knew of no such young Romans. The young men who surrounded Caius in the social life of Rome were interested in a number of things; some of them were dedicated to the conquest of astronomical numbers of young ladies; others caught the disease of money at a tender age and were already, in their twenties, engaged in a number of illegal commercial enterprises; still others learned the trade of ward heeling, plodding doggedly through the dirty routine of day to day work in the wards, buying and selling votes, bribing, fixing, conniving, learning from the bottom up the trade their fathers practiced so ably; still others made careers of food, becoming discerning gourmets; and a very few went into the army which, as a career for a young gentleman, was becoming less and less popular. So Caius, who as a member of that largest group of all—which dedicated itself to the dull task of passing days as idly and as pleasantly as possible—considered himself to be a harmless if not indispensable citizen of the great republic, resented the unspoken accusation which Antonius, his uncle, so frequently expressed. To Caius, live and let live summed up a civilized and workable philosophy.
He thought of this as they entered the vast expanse of formal garden and lawn which surrounded the villa itself. The extensive barns, corrals and slave quarters which constituted the industrial base of the plantation, were separate from the living quarters, and no hint of them, no hint of ugliness or struggle was allowed to intrude upon the classic serenity of the house. The villa itself, an enormous square house built around a central court and pool, stood on top of a slight elevation. Whitewashed, roofed with weathered red tile, it was not unlovely in itself, and the hardness of its plain lines was relieved by the tasteful arrangement of tall cedars and poplars all around it. The grounds were landscaped in what was known as the Ionian style, with many flowering shrubs trained to grow into unusual shapes, smooth lawns, summer houses of colored marble, alabaster basins for tropical fish, and numerous pieces of traditional lawn statuary, nymphs and pans and fawns and cherubs. Antonius Caius had a standing purchase offer at the highest price in the Roman markets where skilled Greek sculptors and landscapers were sold; he never stinted on this—although it was said that he had no taste himself and merely followed the advice of his wife, Julia. Caius believed this, for he was not without taste himself and he saw no trace of it in his uncle. While there were many other villas more splendid than the
Villa Salaria,
some like the palaces of oriental potentates, Caius could think of none in better taste or lovelier in setting. Claudia agreed with him. As they came through the gates and onto the brick road that approached the house, Claudia gasped with surprise, and said to Helena,
“It’s like nothing I ever dreamed of! It’s like something out of the Greek myths.”
“It’s a very pleasant place,” Helena agreed.
The two young daughters of Antonius Caius saw them first and raced across the lawns to greet them, followed more sedately by their mother, Julia, a pleasant looking, dark skinned and rather plump woman. Antonius himself came out of the house a moment later, followed by three other men. He was punctilious in matters of behavior for himself as well as others, and he greeted his niece and his nephew and their friend with grave courtesy—and then formally introduced his guests. Two of them were well known to Caius, Lentelus Gracchus, a shrewd, successful city politician, and Licinius Crassus, the general who had made such a name for himself in the Servile War and who was the talk of the city and had been for a year. The third man in the party was a stranger to Caius; he was younger than the others, not much older than Caius himself, diffident with the subtle diffidence of one who was not patrician born, arrogant with the less subtle arrogance of the intellectual Roman, calculating in his estimation of the newcomers, and moderately good looking. His name was Marcus Tullius Cicero, and he acknowledged his introduction to Caius and the two pretty young women with modest self-effacement. Yet he could not efface his restless curiosity, and even Caius, who was not the most perceptive of persons, realized that Cicero was examining them, assessing them, trying to compute their background, aggregate family wealth, and influence as well.