Part 4 (1/2)
Hun Rhavas set up a succession of howls which echoed from temple to temple, from one end of the Forum to the other.
The frown on the praefect's forehead became even more marked than before. He had seen the young idlers--who, but a moment ago, were fawning round Dea Flavia's litter--turning eagerly back towards the rostrum, where Hun Rhavas' cries and moans had suggested the likelihood of one of those spectacles of wanton and purposeless cruelty in which their perverted senses found such constant delight.
But this spectacle Taurus Antinor was not like to give them. All he wanted was the quick restoration of peace and order. The fraudulent auctioneer was naught in his sight but a breaker of the law. As such he was deserving of such punishment as the law decreed and no more. But his howls just now were the means of rousing in the hearts of the crowd that most despicable of all pa.s.sions to which the Roman--the master of civilisation--was a prey--the love of seeing some creature, man or beast, in pain, a pa.s.sion which brought the Roman citizen down to the level of the brute: therefore Taurus Antinor wished above all to silence Hun Rhavas.
”One more sound from thy throat and I'll have thee scourged now and branded ere thy trial,” he said.
The threat was sufficient. The negro, feeling that in submission lay his chief hope of mercy on the morrow, allowed himself to be led away quietly whilst the young patricians--cheated of an antic.i.p.ated pleasure--protested audibly.
”And thou, Cheiron,” continued the praefect, addressing a fair-skinned slave up on the rostrum who had been a.s.sistant hitherto in the auction, ”do thou take the place vacated by Hun Rhavas.”
He gave a few quick words of command to the lictors.
”Take the hat from off that girl's head,” he said, ”and put the inscribed tablet round her neck. Then she can be set up for sale as the State hath decreed.”
As if moved by clockwork one of the lictors approached the girl and removed the unbecoming hat from her head, releasing a living stream of gold which, as it rippled over the girl's shoulders, roused a quick cry of admiration in the crowd.
In a moment Menecreta realised that her last hope must yield to the inevitable now. Even whilst her accomplice, Hun Rhavas, received the full brunt of the praefect's wrath she had scarcely dared to breathe, scarcely felt that she lived in this agony of fear. Her child still stood there on the platform, disfigured by the ugly headgear, obviously most unattractive to the crowd; nor did the awful possibility at first present itself to her mind that all her schemes for obtaining possession of her daughter could come to naught. It was so awful, so impossible of conception that the child should here, to-day, pa.s.s out of the mother's life for ever and without hope of redemption; that she should become the property of a total stranger who might for ever refuse to part from her again--an agriculturist, mayhap, who lived far off in Ethuria or Macedon--and that she, the mother, could never, never, hope to see her daughter again--that was a thought which was so horrible that its very horror seemed to render its realisation impossible.
But now the praefect, with that harsh, pitiless voice of his, was actually ordering the girl to be sold in the usual way, with all her merits exhibited to the likely purchaser: her golden hair--a perfect glory--to tempt the artistic eye, her skill recounted in fulsomeness, her cleverness with the needle, her knowledge of healing herbs.
The mother suddenly felt that every one in that cruel gaping crowd must be pining to possess such a treasure, that the combined wealth of every citizen of Rome would be lavished in this endeavour to obtain the great prize. The praefect himself, mayhap, would bid for her, or the imperator's agents!--alas! everything seemed possible to the anxious, the ridiculous, the sublime heart of the doting mother, and when that living ma.s.s of golden ripples glimmered in the noonday sun, Menecreta--forgetting her timidity, her fears, her weakness--pushed her way through the crowd with all the strength of her despair, and with a cry of agonised entreaty, threw herself at the feet of the praefect of Rome.
”My lord's grace, have mercy! have pity! I entreat thee! In the name of the G.o.ds, of thy mother, of thy child if thou hast one, have pity on me!
have pity! have pity!”
The lictors had sprung forward in a moment and tried to seize the woman who had dared to push her way to the praefect's closely guarded presence, and was crouching there, her arms encircling his thighs, her face pressed close against his knees. One of the men raised his flail and brought it down with cruel strength on her thinly covered shoulders, but she did not heed the blow, mayhap she never felt it.
”Who ordered thee to strike?” said Taurus Antinor sternly to the lictor who already had the flail raised for the second time.
”The woman doth molest my lord's grace,” protested the man.
”Have I said so?”
”No, my lord--but I thought to do my duty----”
”That thought will cost thee ten such lashes with the rods as thou didst deal this woman. By Jupiter!” he added roughly, whilst for the first time a look of ferocity as that of an angry beast lit up the impa.s.siveness of his deep-set eyes, ”if this turmoil continues I'll have every slave here flogged till he bleed. Is the business of the State to be hindered by the howlings of this miserable rabble? Get thee gone, woman,” he cried finally, looking down on prostrate Menecreta, ”get thee gone ere my lictors do thee further harm.”
But she, with the obstinacy of a great sorrow, clung to his knees and would not move.
”My lord's grace, have pity--'tis my child; an thou takest her from me thou'lt part those whom the G.o.ds themselves have united--'tis my child, my lord! hast no children of thine own?”
”What dost prate about?” he asked, still speaking roughly for he was wroth with her and hated to see the gaping crowd of young, empty-headed fools congregating round him and this persistent suppliant hanging round his s.h.i.+ns. ”Thy child? who's thy child? And what hath thy child to do with me?”
”She is but a babe, my lord,” said Menecreta with timid, tender voice; ”her age only sixteen. A hand-maiden she was to Arminius Quirinius, who gave the miserable mother her freedom but kept the daughter so that he might win good money by and by through the selling of the child. My lord's grace, I have toiled for six years that in the end I might buy my daughter's freedom. Fifty aurei did Arminius Quirinius demand as her price and I worked my fingers to the bone so that in time I might save that money. But Arminius Quirinius is dead and I have only twenty aurei.
With the hat of disgrace on her head the child could have been knocked down to me--but now! now! look at her, my lord, how beautiful she is!
and I have only twenty aurei!”