Part 30 (1/2)
”You have not gone to all this trouble and taken up so much of my time and confided to me all the secrets of your heart merely to ease your mind. There's something you want me to do, some help you expect to gain from me. You have given me no inkling of what it is. What is it? Speak out!”
”He is certain to be killed sooner or later,” she said, wringing her hands. ”I want you to help me to save him.”
”Save him!” Commodus echoed. ”Isn't he competent to save himself? Hasn't he convinced you of his ability to protect himself--Sooner or later?
Much later, very much later. And he's more likely to be killed by old age than by any weapon in the hands of any man.
”I'll never understand women. No man can, I suppose. You're bent, bound and resolved that he must die. You pour out gold like water to compa.s.s his death. You have Italy ransacked for dexterous cutthroats. He never turns a hair. It's easy for him as for a Molossian dog to kill wolves.
He enjoys it; disposes of every man who dare face him. You can't find another bravo to take the risk, not for any money! Then, when he has proved himself the best fighter in Italy, you face about and all of a sudden you are in a wax for fear some one may kill him!
”n.o.body will ever kill him. You and I saw him dispose of more than a dozen expert gladiators, one after the other; you saw how daintily and adroitly he did, it. You have just described his fight with his predecessor. It was over almost before it was begun. The inc.u.mbent was a dead man from the moment he faced Almo. Both knew it, too, and, since then he has done for the pick of the blackguards from all Italy. If Ravax and his gang could find no one to face him, there is none; if no man of that crew could best him, not Ravax himself, no man can best him.
Don't you see?”
”No, I don't,” she said. ”It will be just like his fights in the arena.
No matter how often he wins, he is bound to lose at last.”
”Don't you believe it,” Commodus argued. ”I remember him well. I was wild over him just after Father's triumph and saw a good deal of him before he set out for Britain. I was then no such all-round expert at weapon-play as I have become since, but I was good for my age. I fenced with him repeatedly and I know his quality. I had all the best swordsmen in the capital pitted against him and not one of them was his match.
Murmex Lucro did not come to Rome till after Father's death. So I never saw Murmex and Almo fence. But let me tell you this: Murmex is the only man alive who can fence with me for points and make anything like my score. And Almo is the only man alive, except me, who is fit to face Murmex on equal terms. There are only two men on earth who could kill Almo in a fight with any kind of weapons--Murmex is one and I am the other.
”Why, Almo is as safe in the Grove as I am in the Palace. Don't you worry about him. n.o.body will kill him; take it from me, I know.”
Brinnaria, with a sharp intake of her breath, gazed about the room and collected herself to resume her argument and make her next point.
”Do you concede,” she queried, ”that I have the right to be solicitous about Almo's life?”
”Father said so,” Commodus replied, ”and I never knew him to be wrong. I took that opinion from him and I see no reason to change it.”
”Do you concede,” she pressed him, ”that I have the right to looking forward to marrying him at the end of my service?”
”Like Father, I do,” he admitted.
”How can I ever marry him,” she demanded, ”if he remains King of the Grove?”
The young Emperor laughed merrily.
”Don't you worry about that, either,” he said. ”I told you I'd do anything for you and I meant it. I told you I'd do anything for Almo, and I meant that too. But, as things are, doing what you want and what is good for him will be doing just what I most want myself. I have a frightfully poor memory. Barely seven years ago my Father triumphed after what was thought a complete, decisive and crus.h.i.+ng victory over Avidius Ca.s.sius and a huge confederation of nomadic tribes. Ca.s.sius was certainly abolished; he was buried. But after scarcely five years the desert nomads were as active as ever and they have grown so pertinacious and c.o.c.ky that something must be done. I don't want to go myself, and I feel no confidence in my ability to accomplish anything if I went.
I have been on the rack to decide whom to send. I can't afford to send some bungler who'd mismanage and let the sand-hills devour a half a dozen of my best legions.
”My councillors and I have found no promising candidate. All the while I have been cudgelling my brains trying to remember something Father told me. I distinctly recalled that he said that he had in view the very paragon of a commander to dispatch against Avidius, but that some occurrence made it impossible to send him and he had to go himself. I couldn't for the life of me recollect what had happened to hinder the man going or what the man's name was. Since it was a verbal communication from Father I had no memorandum and no one else had ever known it.
”Now I remember that Almo was the man and that his infatuation with the life of a gladiator was what prevented.
”Do you see what I mean? I shall not have to go to Syria and I'll send the very best man for that job who can be found on earth. If anybody knows what I'm doing they'll say that Almo is a lunatic and I am another to send him. But n.o.body will ever know and if everybody knows, what do I care. Father knew a good man when he saw one. I'll take his word for it that Almo proved himself the greatest genius for desert fighting that the Republic has produced in a hundred years. And I'll follow my own intuition that a swashbuckler whose own thoughts prompted him to challenge the King of the Grove as a cure for tedium, who had the nerve to carry out the idea and the skill to win a hundred and six fights in ten months must be a good all-round man and a real man clear through.
I take it that being put in supreme command of a great expedition will brush the cobwebs from Almo's brain and restore him to himself. Do you follow my idea?”
”I cannot conjecture,” Brinnaria replied, ”how you expect to carry it out.”
”Simple enough,” said Commodus. ”I'm not the man my Father was, not by a great deal. I am a natural all-round athlete, but I was never born to be an Emperor. All the same, when I buckle down to my job, I'm not such a bad hand at it. If I have a talk with Almo I'll swing him my way without half trying.”