The barriers had disappeared between them. Gracchus reached over and took her hand. He had never in all his life felt so close to a woman, so trusting of a woman. “My dear, my dear,” he said, “do you know what I told myself? First, I told myself that I wanted one night of love from you. Then I rejected that myself. Then I wanted one night of honor and respect. That too I rejected. All I wanted then was gratitude. But there’s more than gratitude, isn’t there, Varinia?”
“Yes, there is,” she said frankly. He realized then that there was no duplicity or artfulness in her. She knew no other way than to say exactly what was in her mind. He picked up her hand and kissed it, and she didn’t draw it away.
“I want this,” he said. “I have until daylight. Will you sit with me and talk with me and drink a little wine and eat a little food? There is so much I must say to you and so much I must hear from you. Will you sit with me until daylight—and then Flavius will come with the horses, and you will leave Rome forever? Will you do that for me, Varinia?”
“For myself too,” she said. “I want to do it.”
“I won’t try to thank you, because there is no way I know how to thank you.”
“There is nothing to thank me for,” Varinia said. “You are making me happier than I ever thought I would be again. I never thought I could smile again after Spartacus died. I thought life would always be like a desert. Yet he used to tell me that life was important above all other things. I never knew what he meant as much as I do now. I want to laugh now. I can’t understand that, but I want to laugh.”
IX
When Flavius returned, it was the hour before the dawn, the gray, lonely hour when life ebbs and things have reached their lowest point before they begin again. Without saying anything, the housekeeper took him in to Gracchus and Varinia. Gracchus was sprawled in a chair, tired, his face pale yet not unhappy. Varinia sat on a couch and nursed her child. She too seemed tired, yet she was very beautiful as she sat there, giving suck to the fat, pink baby. When Gracchus saw Flavius, he put a finger to his lips, and Flavius waited quietly. He could not help but be caught up in admiration for the woman’s beauty. As she sat there in the lamplight, feeding her child, she seemed to be something out of Rome’s memory of long, long ago.
When she finished, she covered her breast and wrapped the sleeping child in a blanket. Gracchus stood up and faced her, and for a long moment she looked at him.
“I decided on chariots,” Flavius told them. “That way, we can make the best time, and it will be a question of how many miles we put behind us whether we can bring it off or not. I filled one chariot with blankets and pillows, so you will be comfortable enough—but we must leave immediately. As it is, we’ve drawn it very thin. Exceedingly thin.”
They didn’t seem to hear him. They looked at each other, the beautiful wife of Spartacus and the fat, aging Roman politician. Then Varinia turned to the housekeeper and said to her,
“Will you hold the child a moment?”
The housekeeper took the child, and Varinia went over to Gracchus. She caressed his arms and then reached up and touched his face. He bent toward her, and she kissed him.
“Now I must tell you this,” she said to him. “I thank you because you are so good to me. If you come with me, I will try to be good for you too—as good as I can be for any man.”
“Thank you, my dear.”
“Will you come with me, Gracchus?”
“Oh, my dear, thank you and bless you. I love you a great deal. But I would be no good away from Rome. Rome is my mother. My mother is a whore, but with you she is the only woman I ever loved. I’m not unfaithful. And I’m a fat old man. Flavius there would have to search the city to find a chariot to carry me. Go, my darling.”
“I told you we’ve drawn the time thin,” Flavius said impatiently. “Fifty people know about this by now. Do you think that no one will blab?”
“You take good care of her,” Gracchus said. “Now you will be a rich man, Flavius. Now you will live in comfort. So do this last thing for me. Take good care of her and the child. Take them all the way north until you reach the foothills of the Alps. The Gaulish peasants who live there in the little valleys are good, plain, hard-working people. She will find a place with them. But don’t leave her until you can see the Alps—clear against the sky. And make time. Whip the horses. Kill them if necessary and buy new horses, but never stop. Will you do this for me, Flavius?”
“I have not broken my word to you yet.”
“No, you haven’t. Goodby.”
He went to the door with them. She took the baby in her arms. He stood in the doorway, in the lightening gray of dawn, and watched them climb into the chariots. The horses were nervous and alert. They stamped on the pavement and champed at their bits.
“Goodby, Varinia!” he called to her.
She waved to him. Then the chariots were off, clattering through the narrow deserted streets, waking the whole neighborhood with their crash and clatter . . .
Gracchus went to his office now. He sat down in his big chair, very tired now, and for a while he closed his eyes. But he didn’t sleep. His contentment had not passed away. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts wander and reflected upon many things. He thought of his father, a poor shoemaker back in that time which was apparently gone forever, when Romans labored and took pride in their labor. He remembered his political apprenticeship on the streets, the bloody gang wars, the training in the cynical buying and selling of votes, the use of the mob, his climb along the ladder to power. Never enough power, never enough money. In those days, there were still honest Romans who fought for the Republic, who fought for the rights of the people, who spoke bravely in the Forum of the injustice of expropriating the peasant and setting up the great slave plantations. They warned! They thundered! They set their faces against tyranny! Gracchus had understood them. That was his great gift—that he could understand them and acknowledge the justice of their cause. But he also knew that their cause was a doomed cause. The clock of history is not to be set back; it moves forward, and he had joined forces with those who put their faith in empire. He had sent his gangs to destroy those who spoke of ancient freedoms. He had slain the just and the principled.
He thought of it now, not with regret or pity, but with the desire to understand. They were fighting for ancient freedoms, those early enemies of his. But were there ancient freedoms? Here was a woman gone out of his house, and freedom was like a fire inside of her. She had named her son Spartacus, and he would name his own son Spartacus—and when would slaves be content to remain slaves? There was no answer for him, no solution he could pose for himself, and that too did not make him regretful. He had lived a full life, and he didn’t regret it. He had a sense of history then, a sense of a sweep of time in which he was only a moment—and that comforted him. His beloved city would endure. It would endure forever. If Spartacus ever returned and tore down the walls, so that men could live without fear, they would understand that there were men like Gracchus once, men who had loved the city even though they accepted its evil.
He thought now of the dream of Spartacus. Would it live? Would it endure? Was the strange thing that Varinia had said true—that men could become pure and selfless by fighting against evil? He had never known such men; but he had never known Spartacus. Yet he had known Varinia. Now Spartacus was gone and Varinia was gone. It was like a dream now. He had only touched the edge of Varinia’s strange knowledge. But for him it did not exist; it could not exist.
His housekeeper came in. He looked at her strangely. “What do you want, old woman?” he asked her gently.
“Your bath is ready, master.”
“But I don’t bathe today,” he explained, and was amazed at her surprise and consternation. “Everything is different today, old woman, look,” he went on to say. “Over there on that table is a row of bags. In each bag, there is a certificate of manumission for each of my slaves. In each bag, there are twenty thousand
sesterces
. I want you to give the bags to the slaves and tell them to leave my house. I want you to do that now, old woman.”
“I don’t understand you,” she said.
“No? Why don’t you understand me? What I said is perfectly clear. I want you all to go. You are free and you have some money. Did I ever allow you to disobey my orders before?”
“But who will cook for you? Who will care for you?”
“Don’t ask me all those questions, old woman. Do as I say.”
It seemed forever to Gracchus before they were all out of the house, and then the house was strangely silent, newly silent. The morning sun was rising. The streets were full of life and sound and clatter, but the house of Gracchus was silent.
He returned to his office, went to a cabinet and unlocked it. From there he took a sword, a Spanish shortsword, such as the soldiers carried, but beautifully wrought and held in a fine ornamental scabbard. It had been given to him years and years ago on some ceremonial occasion, but for the life of him he could not remember what the occasion was. How strange that he had such contempt for weapons! Yet not so strange when he considered that the only weapon he had ever relied on were his own wits.
He took the sword from the scabbard and tested its edge and point. It was sharp enough. Then he went back to his chair and sat down and contemplated his massive paunch. He began to smile at the thought of killing himself. There was no dignity attached to it. It was utterly ridiculous. And he seriously doubted whether he had the strength to plunge the blade in—in the time-honored Roman manner. How did he know that he wouldn’t merely cut into the fat and then lose his nerve and lie in his own blood and blubber and cry for help? What a time in a man’s life to begin killing! He had never killed anything in his whole life—not even a chicken.
Then he understood that it was not a question of nerves. He had only occasionally been afraid of death. From his childhood, he had mocked at the ridiculous stories of the gods. As a man, he had easily accepted the viewpoint of educated people of his own class, that there were no gods and that there was no life after death. He had made up his mind what he intended to do; he was afraid only that he would not do it with dignity.
With these thoughts going through his mind, he must have dozed off. He was awakened by someone hammering upon the outside door. He shook the drowsiness from him and listened.
“What a temper!” he thought. “What a temper you have. Crassus! What righteous indignation! That this fat old fool should twist you around his finger and take your great prize of the war! But you didn’t love her, Crassus. You wanted Spartacus to nail onto a cross, and when you couldn’t have him, you wanted her. You wanted her to love you, to crawl before you. Oh Crassus, you’re such a fool—such a stupid, blundering fool! Yet people like you are the people of the times. No doubt of that.”
He looked for the sword, but couldn’t find it. Then he got down on his knees and located it under the chair. He knelt with the sword in his hands, and then with all his strength he plunged it into his breast. The pain was such that he cried out in agony, but the sword went in, and then he fell forward upon it, driving it in the rest of the way.
That was the way he was when Crassus broke down the door and entered. It required all of the general’s strength to turn him over. Then the general saw that the face of the politician was fixed in a grimace or a grin . . .
After that, Crassus returned to his own house, filled with anger and hatred. Never in all his life had he hated anyone or anything the way he hated the dead Gracchus. But Gracchus was dead, and there was nothing that he, Crassus, could do about it.
When Crassus entered his house, he discovered that he had a guest. Young Caius was waiting for him. Caius knew nothing about what had happened. As he immediately explained, he had just returned from the holiday at Capua, and he had come straight to visit his beloved Crassus. He went up to Crassus and began to stroke his breast. And then Crassus knocked him down.
Crassus stormed into the next room and returned with a whip. Caius was just picking himself up off the floor, blood running from his nose, his face full of surprise and hurt and indignation. Then Crassus began to whip him.
Caius screamed. He screamed again and again, but Crassus went on whipping him. Crassus had to be held back finally by his own slaves, and then Caius stumbled out of the house, crying like a little boy from the pain of the whipping.
PART EIGHT.
In which Varinia finds freedom.
Flavius carried out his agreement with Gracchus. Armed with the best of credentials, signed by Gracchus himself, the chariots dashed north and then eastward. Varinia did not remember too much of the journey. For most of the first day, she slept with the baby clutched to her breast. The Cassia Way was an excellent, smooth and hard-surfaced road, and the chariots ran smoothly and evenly. For the first part of the day, the driver drove the horses without mercy; a new team was harnessed at noon, and for all the latter part of the day they drove at a fast, even trot. By nightfall, they were better than a hundred miles north of Rome. They changed teams again in the darkness, and all night long in the moonlight, the chariots rolled on at an even, mile-devouring pace.
A number of times they were challenged by military patrols, but the senatorial mandate which Gracchus had given Flavius was always sufficient to take them through. During that night, Varinia stood for hours in the swaying chariot, the baby sleeping peacefully at her feet, swaddled in blankets and cushioned by pillows. She saw the moonlit countryside slip past. She saw torrents rush by below as they rolled over the splendid Roman bridges. The world slept, but they went on.
When the moon set, a few hours before dawn, they pulled off the road onto a little meadow, unharnessed and hobbled the horses, munched some bread and wine, and then lay down on blankets to rest. Sleep came hard to Varinia, but the exhausted drivers were asleep immediately. It seemed to Varinia that she had barely closed her eyes, when Flavius was waking her. She nursed the child while they harnessed the teams, working slowly and fretfully, as men do when they have hardly overcome their exhaustion; and then, in the faint light of dawn, they drove back onto the road and northward again. The sun was rising when they stopped at a mile station to stretch their limbs and to change horses once again. A while later, they bypassed a walled city, and all that morning the drivers lashed the horses and thundered on. Now the endless motion of the chariot was beginning to tell on Varinia. She vomited several times, and she was in constant fear that her milk would stop flowing. But at evening time, Flavius bought fresh milk and goat cheese from a farmer—food Varinia was able to hold down—and since the sky was clouded, they rested for most of the night.