Part 36 (1/2)

”_Finitum est!_” said Curio, his eyes cast on the ground. ”We have seen, my friends, the last day of the Republic.”

II

Behind the Temple of Mars the faithful Agias was ready with the slaves' dresses which were to serve as a simple disguise. Antonius and his companions tossed off their c.u.mbrous togas and put on the dark, coa.r.s.e cloaks and slippers which were worn by slaves and people of the lower cla.s.ses. These changes were quickly made, but valuable time was wasted while Antonius--who, as a bit of a dandy, wore his hair rather long[147]--underwent a few touches with the shears. It was now necessary to get across the Tiber without being recognized, and once fairly out of Rome the chances of a successful pursuit were not many.

On leaving the friendly shelter of the Temple buildings, nothing untoward was to be seen. The crowds rus.h.i.+ng to and fro, from the Curia and back, were too busy and excited to pay attention to a little group of slaves, who carefully kept from intruding themselves into notice.

Occasionally the roar and echo of applause and shouting came from the now distant Curia, indicating that the Senate was still at its unholy work of voting wars and destructions. A short walk would bring them across the Pons aemilius, and there, in the shelter of one of the groves of the new public gardens which Caesar had just been laying out on Janiculum, were waiting several of the fastest mounts which the activity of Agias and the lavish expenditures of Pausanias had been able to procure.

[147] Slaves were always close clipped.

The friends breathed more easily.

”I hardly think,” said Quintus Ca.s.sius, ”we shall be molested. The consuls cannot carry their mad hate so far.”

They were close to the bridge. The way was lined with tall warehouses and grain storehouses,[148] the precursors of the modern ”elevators.”

They could see the tawny Tiber water flas.h.i.+ng between the stone arches of the bridge. The swarms of peasants and countrymen driving herds of lowing kine and bleating sheep toward the adjacent Forum Boarium seemed unsuspicious and inoffensive. A moment more and all Drusus's tremors and anxieties would have pa.s.sed as harmless fantasy.

[148] _Horreae_.

Their feet were on the bridge. They could notice the wind sweeping through the tall cypresses in the gardens where waited the steeds that were to take them to safety. The friends quickened their pace. A cloud had drifted across the sun; there was a moment's gloom. When the light danced back, Drusus caught Curio's arm with a start.

”Look!” The new sunbeams had glanced on the polished helmet of a soldier standing guard at the farther end of the bridge.

There was only an instant for hesitation.

”Lentulus has foreseen that we must try to escape by this way,” said Curio, seriously, but without panic. ”We must go back at once, and try to cross by the wooden bridge below or by some other means.”

But a great herd of dirty silver-grey Etruscan cattle came over the causeway, and to get ahead of them would have been impracticable without attracting the most unusual attention. It was now evident enough that there was a considerable guard at the head of the bridge, and to make a rush and overpower it was impossible. The heavy-uddered cows and snorting, bellowing bulls dragged by with a slow plodding that almost drove Drusus frantic. They were over at last, and the friends hastened after them, far more anxious to leave the bridge than they had been an instant before to set foot upon it. On they pressed, until as if by magic there stood across their path the twelve lictors of one of the consuls, with upraised fasces. Behind the lictors was a half-century of soldiers in full armour led by their _optio_.[149]

[149] Adjutant, subordinate to a centurion.

”Sirs,” announced the head lictor, ”I am commanded by the consul, Lucius Lentulus Crus, to put you all under arrest for treason against the Republic. Spare yourselves the indignity of personal violence, by offering no resistance.”

To resist would indeed have been suicide. The friends had worn their short swords under their cloaks, but counting Agias they were only six, and the lictors were twelve, to say nothing of the soldiers, of whom there were thirty or more.

The ground seemed swaying before Drusus's eyes; in his ears was a buzzing; his thoughts came to him, thick, confused, yet through them all ran the vision of Cornelia, and the conviction that he was never to see her again. He looked back. The soldiers at the head of the bridge had taken alarm and were marching down to complete the arrest.

He looked before. The lictors, the troops, the stupid cattle and their stolid drivers, and the great black-sided warehouses, casting their gloomy shadow over the rippling river. Down stream; not a skiff seemed stirring. The water was plas.h.i.+ng, dancing, glancing in the suns.h.i.+ne.

Below the wooden bridge the spars of a huge merchantman were just covering with canvas, as she stood away from her quay. Up stream (the views were all compressed into the veriest moment)--with the current came working, or rather drifting, a heavy barge loaded with timber.

Only two men, handling rude paddles, stood upon her deck. The barge was about to pa.s.s under the very arch upon which stood the handful of entrapped Caesarians. A word, a motion, and the last hope of escape would have been comprehended by the enemy, and all would have been lost. But in moments of extreme peril it is easy to make a glance full of pregnancy. Antonius saw the face of his friend--saw and understood; and the other seemingly doomed men understood likewise. In an instant the barge would pa.s.s under the bridge!

”Fellow,” replied Antonius (the whole inspection of the situation, formation of the plot, and visual dialogue had really been so rapid as to make no long break after the lictor ceased speaking), ”do you dare thus to do what even the most profane and impious have never dared before? Will you lay hands on two inviolate tribunes of the plebs, and those under their personal protection; and by your very act become a _sacer_--an outlaw devoted to the G.o.ds, whom it is a pious thing for any man to slay?”

”I have my orders, sir,” replied the head lictor, menacingly. ”And I would have you know that neither you nor Quintus Ca.s.sius are reckoned tribunes longer by the Senate; so by no such plea can you escape arrest.”

”Tribunes no longer!” cried Antonius; ”has tyranny progressed so far that no magistrate can hold office after he ceases to humour the consuls?”

”We waste time, sir,” said the lictor, sternly. ”Forward, men; seize and bind them!”

But Antonius's brief parley had done its work. As the bow of the barge shot under the bridge, Curio, with a single bound over the parapet, sprang on to its deck; after him leaped Quintus Ca.s.sius, and after him Caelius. Before Drusus could follow, however, the stern of the barge had vanished under the archway. The lictors and soldiers had sprung forward, but a second had been lost by rus.h.i.+ng to the eastern side of the bridge, where the barge had just disappeared from sight. Agias, Antonius, and Drusus were already standing on the western parapet. The lictors and soldiers were on them in an instant. The blow of one of the fasces smote down Antonius, but he fell directly into the vessel beneath--stunned but safe. A soldier caught Agias by the leg to drag him down. Drusus smote the man under the ear so that he fell without a groan; but Agias himself had been thrown from the parapet on to the bridge; the soldiers were thronging around. Drusus saw the naked steel of their swords flas.h.i.+ng before his eyes; he knew that the barge was slipping away in the current. It was a time of seconds, but of seconds expanded for him into eternities. With one arm he dashed back a lictor, with the other cast Agias--he never knew whence came that strength which enabled him to do the feat--over the stonework, and into the arms of Curio in the receding boat. Then he himself leaped. A rude hand caught his cloak. It was torn from his back. A sword whisked past his head--he never learned how closely. He was in the air, saw that the barge was getting away, and next he was chilled by a sudden dash of water and Caelius was dragging him aboard; he had landed under the very stern of the barge. Struggling in the water, weighed down by their armour, were several soldiers who had leaped after him and had missed their distance completely.

The young man clambered on to the rude vessel. Its crew (two simple, harmless peasants) were cowering among the lumber. Curio had seized one of the paddles and was guiding the craft out into the middle of the current; for the soldiers were already running along the wharves and preparing to fling their darts. The other men, who had just been plucked out of the jaws of destruction, were all engaged in collecting their more or less scattered wits and trying to discover the next turn of calamity in store. Antonius--who, despite his fall, had come down upon a coil of rope and so escaped broken bones and serious bruises--was the first to sense the great peril of even their present situation.