Chapter 9

"Paulus," a scarred veteran answered (they were all forbidden to address him by any other name in that arena), "you have ordered us to keep that fellow for the birthday games. If you keep killing all the best ones off at practise, what shall we do when the day comes? The last ship- load has arrived from Africa and already you have used up nearly half of them. There is no chance of another cargo arriving in time for the games. And besides, we have lacked corpses recently; that big one hasn't tasted man's flesh. He is hungry now. He will eat whatever we throw in, so let him taste the right meat that will make him savage."

"Loose a leopard then."

The veteran went off without a word to give his orders to the men below- ground, whose duty it was to drag the cages to the openings of tunnels in the masonry through which the animals emerged into the sunlight. There were ten such openings on either side of the arena, closed by trapdoors, set in grooves, that could be raised by ropes from overhead.

Commodus picked up one javelin and poised it. Half-a-dozen gladiators watched him, paying no attention to the doors, through any one of which the animal might come. They knew their Paulus, and were trained, besides, to look at death or danger with a curious, contemptuous calm. But the courtiers were nervous, grouping themselves where the sunlight threw a V-shaped shadow on the sand, as if they thought that semi- twilight would protect them.

A wooden door rose squeaking in its grooves but Commodus kept his back toward it.

"Women!" he exclaimed.

His sudden scowl transformed his handsome face into a thing of horror. He began to mutter savagely obscene abuse. A leopard crept into the sunlight, tried to turn again but was prevented by the closing trap, and crouched against the arena wall.

"Beware! The beast comes!" said a gladiator.

"Hold your presumptuous tongue, you slave-born rascal!" Commodus retorted. "Take that yapping dog away and have him whipped!"

A man stepped from the entrance gate to beckon the offending gladiator, who walked out with a look of hatred on his face. He paused once, hesitating whether to ask mercy, and thought better of it, shrugging his fine bronzed shoulders. The leopard left the wall and crept toward the center of the sand, his black and yellow beauty rippling in the sunlight and his shadow looking like death's trailing cloak. The courtiers seemed doubtful which of the two beasts to watch, leopard or emperor.

"A spear!" said Commodus. A gladiator put it in his hand.

"Varronius! It irks me to have cowards in the senate! Let me see you try to kill that leopard!"

Decadent and grown effeminate though Rome was, there was no patrician who had not received some training in the use of arms. Varronius took the spear at once, his white hands closing on the shaft with military firmness. But his white face gave the lie to the alacrity with which he strode out of the shadow.

"Kill him, and you shall have the consulate next year!" said Commodus. "Be killed, and there will be one useless bastard less to clutter up the curia!"

A flush of anger swept over the senator's pale face. For a moment he looked almost capable of lunging with the spear at Commodus--but Commodus was toying with the javelin. Varronius strode out to face the leopard, and the lithe beast did not wait to feel the spear-point. It began to stalk its adversary in irregular swift curves. Its body almost pressed the sand. Its eyes were spots of sunlit topaz. Commodus' frown vanished. He began to gloat over the leopard's subtlety and strength.

"He is a lovelier thing than you, Varronius! He is a better fighter! He is manlier! He is worth more! He has kept his body stronger and his wits more nimble! He will get you! By the Dioscuri, he will get you! I will bet a talent that he gets you--and I hope he does! You hold your spear the way a woman holds a distaff--but observe the way he gathers all his strength in readiness to leap instantly in any direction! Ah!"

The leopard made a feint, perhaps to test the swiftness of the spear- point. Leaping like a flash of light, he seemed to change direction in mid-air, the point missing him by half a hand's breadth. One terrific claw, outreaching as he turned, ripped open Varronius' tunic and brought a little stream of crimson trickling down his left arm.

"Good!" Commodus remarked. "First blood to the braver! Who would like to bet with me?"

"I!" Varronius retorted from between set teeth, his eyes fixed on the leopard that had recommenced his swift strategic to-and-fro stalking movement.

"I have betted you the consulship already. Who else wants to bet?" asked Commodus.

Before any one could answer the leopard sprang in again at Varronius, who stepped aside and drove his spear with very well timed accuracy. Only force enough was lacking. The point slit the leopard's skin and made a stinging wound along the beast's ribs, turning him the way a spur-prick turns a horse. His snarl made Varronius step back another pace or two, neglecting his chance to attack and drive the spear-point home. The infuriated leopard watched him for a moment, ears back, tail spasmodically twitching, then shot to one side and charged straight at the group of courtiers.

They scattered. They were almost unarmed. There were three of them who stumbled, interfering with each other. The nearest to the leopard drew a dagger with a jeweled hilt, a mere toy with a light blade hardly longer than his hand. He threw his toga over his left forearm and stood firm to make a fight for it, his white face rigid and his eyes ablaze. The leopard leaped--and fell dead, hardly writhing. Commodus' long javelin had caught him in the middle of his spring, exactly at the point behind the shoulder-bone that leaves a clear course to the heart.

"I would not have done that for a coward, Tullius! If you had run I would have let him kill you!"

Commodus strode up and pulled out the javelin, setting one foot on the leopard and exerting all his strength.

"Look here, Varronius. Do you see how deep my blade went? Pin-pricks are no use against man or animal. Kill when you strike, like great Jove with his thunderbolts! Life isn't a game between Maltese kittens; it's a spectacle in which the strong devour the weak and all the gods look on! Loose another leopard there! I'll show you!"

He took the spear from Varronius, balanced it a moment, discarded it and chose another, feeling its point with his thumb. There was a squeak of pulleys as they loosed a leopard near the end of the arena. He charged the animal, leaping from foot to foot. He made prodigious leaps; there was no guessing which way he would jump next. He was not like a human being. The leopard, snarling, slunk away, attempting to avoid him, but he crowded it against the wall. He forced it to turn at bay. No eye was quick enough to see exactly how he killed it, save that he struck when the leopard sprang. The next thing that anybody actually saw, he had the writhing creature on the spear, in air, like a legion's standard.

Then the madness surged into his brain.

"So I rule Rome!" he exclaimed, and threw the leopard at the gladiators' feet. "Because I pity Rome that could not find another Paulus! I strike first, before they strike me!"

They flattered him--fawned on him, but he was much too genuinely mad for flattery to take effect. "If you were worth a barrelful of rats I'd have a senate that might save me trouble! Then like Tiberius I might remain away from Rome and live more like a god. I've more than half a mind to let my dummy stay here to amuse you wastrels!" He glanced up at the box, where his substitute lolled and yawned and smiled. "All you degenerates need is some one you can rub yourselves against like fat cats mewing for a bowl of milk! By Hercules, now I'll show you something that will make your blood leap. Bring out the new Spanish team."

With an imperious gesture he sent senators and gladiators to scatter themselves all over the arena. Not yet satisfied, he ordered all the guards fetched from the tunnel and arranged them in a similar disorder, so that finally no stretch of fifty yards was left without a man obstructing it. There was no spina down the midst, nor anything except the surrounding wall to suggest to a team of horses which the course might be.

"Let none move!" he commanded. "I will crush the foot of any man who stirs!"

Attendants, clinging to the heads of four gray stallions that fought and kicked, brought out his chariot and others shut the gate behind it. Commodus admired the team a minute, then examined the new high wheels of the gilded chariot, that was hardly wider than a coffin--a thing that a man could upset with a shove and built to look as flimsy as an egg shell. Suddenly he seized the reins and leaped in, throwing up his right hand.

If he could have ruled his empire as he drove that chariot he would have far outshone Augustus, for whose memory men sighed. He managed them with one hand. There was magnetism sent along the reins to play with the dynamic energy of four mad stallions as gods amuse themselves with men. If empire had amused him as athleticism did there would have been no equal in all history to Commodus.

In a chariot no other athlete could have balanced, on a course providing not one unobstructed stretch of fifty yards, he drove like Phoebus breaking in the horses of the Sun, careering this and that way, weaving patterns in among the frightened men who stood like posts for him to drive around. He missed them by a hand's breadth--less! He took delight in driving at them, turning in the last half-second, smiling at a blanched face as he wheeled and wove new figures down another zigzag avenue of men. The frenzy of the team inspired him; the rebellion of the stallions, made mad by the persistent, sudden turns, aroused his own astonishing enthusiasm. He accomplished the impossible! He made new laws of motion, breaking them, inventing others! He became a god in action, mastering the team until it had no consciousness of any self- will, or of any impulse but to loose its full strength under the directing will of genius.

The team tired first. It was its waning speed that wearied him at last. The mania that owned him could not tolerate the anticlimax of declining effort, so his mood changed. He became morose--indifferent. He reined in, tossed the reins to an attendant and began to walk toward the tunnel entrance, clothed as he was in nothing but the practise loin-cloth of a gladiator.

A dozen senators implored him to wait and clothe himself. He would not wait. He ordered them to bring his cloak and overtake him. Then he observed Narcissus, standing near the horse-gate, waiting to summon his trained gladiators for an exhibition:

"Not this time, Narcissus. Next time. Follow me." He waited for a moment for Narcissus. That gave the substitute time to come down from the box and go hurrying ahead into the tunnel-mouth; he went so fast (for he knew the emperor's moods) that the attendants found it hard to keep up; most of them were half a dozen paces in the rear. A senator gave Commodus his cloak. He took Narcissus by the arm and strode ahead into the tunnel, muttering, ignoring noisy protests from the senators, who warned him that the guards were not yet there.

Then there was sudden silence; possibly a consequence of Caesar's mood, or the reaction caused by chill and tunnel-darkness after sunlit sand. Or it might have been the shadow of impending tragedy. A long scream broke the silence, thrice repeated, horrible, like something from an unseen world. Instantly Narcissus leaped ahead into the darkness, weaponless but armed by nature with the muscles of a panther. Commodus leaped after him; his mood reversed again. Now emulation had him; he would not be beaten to a scene of action by a gladiator. He let his cloak fall and a senator tripped over it.

There were no lamps. Something less than twilight, deepened here and there by shadow, filled the tunnel. By a niche intended for a sentry the attendants were standing helplessly around the body of a man who lay with head and shoulders propped against the wall. Narcissus and another, like knotted snakes, were writhing near by. There was a sound of choking. Pavonius Nasor was silent. He appeared already dead.

"Pluto! Is there no light?" Commodus demanded. "What has happened?"

"They have killed your shadow, sire!"

"Who killed him?"

"Men who sprang out of the darkness suddenly."

"One man. Only one. I have him here. He lives yet, but he dies!" Narcissus said.

He dragged a writhing body on the flagstones, holding it by one wrist.

"He was armed. I had to throttle him to save my liver from his knife. I think I broke his neck. He is certainly dying," said Narcissus.

Some one had gone for a lamp and came along the tunnel with it.

"Let me look," said Commodus. "Here, give me that lamp!"

He looked first at Pavonius Nasor, who gazed back, at him with stupid, passionless, already dimming eyes. A stream of blood was gushing from below his left arm.

"Now the gods of heaven and hell, and all the strange gods that have no resting place, and all the spirits of the air and earth and sea, defile your spirit!" Commodus exploded. "Careless, irresponsible, ungrateful fool! You have deprived me of my liberty! You let yourself be killed like any sow under the butcher's knife, and dare to leave me shadowless? Then die like carrion and rot unburied!"

He began to kick him, but the stricken man's lips moved. Commodus bent down and tried to listen--tried again, mastered impatience and at last stood upright, shaking both fists at the tunnel roof.

"Omnipotent Progenitor of Lightnings!" he exploded. "He says he should have had stewed eels tonight!"

The watching senators mistook that for a cue to laugh. Their laughter touched off all the magazines of Caesar's rage. He turned into a mania. He tore at his own hair. He tore off his loin-cloth and stood naked. He tried to kill Narcissus, because Narcissus was the nearest to him. His crashing centurion's parade voice filled the tunnel.

"Dogs! Dogs' ullage! Vipers!" he yelled. "Who slew my shadow? Who did it? This is a conspiracy! Who hatched it? Bring my tablets! Warn the executioners! What is Commodus without his dummy? Vultures! Better have killed me than that poor obliging fool! You cursed, stupid idiots! You have killed my dummy! I must sit as he did and look on. I must swallow stinking air of throne-rooms. I must watch sluggards fight--you miserable, wanton imbeciles! It is Paulus you have killed! Do you appreciate that? Jupiter, but I will make Rome pay for this! Who did it? Who did it, I say?"

Rage blinded him. He did not see the choking wretch whose wrist Narcissus twisted, until he struck at Narcissus again and, trying to follow him, stumbled over the assassin.

"Who is this? Give me a sword, somebody! Is this the murderer? Bring that lamp here!"

Bolder than the others, having recently been praised, the senator Tullius brought the lamp and, kneeling, held it near the culprit's face. The murderer was beyond speech, hardly breathing, with his eyes half- bursting from the sockets and his tongue thrust forward through his teeth because Narcissus' thumbs had almost strangled him.

"A Christian," said Tullius.

There was a note of quiet exultation in his voice. The privileges of the Christians were a sore point with the majority of senators.

"A what?" demanded Commodus.

"A Christian. See--he has a cross and a fish engraved on bone and wears it hung from his neck beneath his tunic. Besides, I think I recognize the man. I think he is the one who waylaid Pertinax the other day and spoke strange stuff about a whore on seven hills whose days are numbered."

He had raised up the man's head by the hair. Commodus stamped on the face with the flat of his sandal, crushing the head on the flagstones.

"Christian!" he shouted. "Is this Marcia's doing? Is this Marcia's expedient to keep me out of the arena? Too long have I endured that rabble! I will rid Rome of the brood! They kill the shadow--they shall feel the substance!"

Suddenly he turned on his attendants--pointed at the murderer and his victim:

"Throw those two into the sewer! Strip them--strip them now--let none identify them. Seize those spineless fools who let the murder happen. Tie them. You, Narcissus--march them back to the arena. Have them thrown into the lions' cages. Stay there and see it done, then come and tell me."

The courtiers backed away from him as far out of the circle of the lamplight as the tunnel-wall would let them. He had snatched the lamp from Tullius. He held it high.

"Two parts of me are dead; the shadow that was satisfied with eels for supper and the immortal Paulus whom an empire worshiped. Remains me--the third part--Commodus! You shall regret those two dead parts of me!"

He hurled the lighted lamp into the midst of them and smashed it, then, in darkness, strode along the tunnel muttering and cursing as he went-- stark naked.

X. "ROME IS TOO MUCH RULED BY WOMEN!"

"He is in the bath," said Marcia. She and Galen were alone with Pertinax, who looked splendid in his official toga. She was herself in disarray. Her woman had tried to dress her hair on the way in the litter; one long coil of it was tumbling on her shoulder. She looked almost drunken.

"Where is Flavia Titiana?" she demanded.

"Out," said Pertinax and shut his lips. He never let himself discuss his wife's activities. The peasant in him, and the orthodox grammarian, preferred less scandalous subjects.

Marcia stared long at him, her liquid, lazy eyes, suggesting banked fires in their depths, looking for signs of spirit that should rise to the occasion. But Pertinax preferred to choose his own occasions.

"Commodus is in the bath," Marcia repeated. "He will stay there until night comes. He is sulking. He has his tablets with him--writes and writes, then scratches out. He has shown what he writes to nobody, but he has sent for Livius."

"We should have killed that dog," said Pertinax, which brought a sudden laugh from Galen.

"A dog's death never saved an empire," Galen volunteered. "If you had murdered Livius the crisis would have come a few days sooner, that is all."

"It is the crisis. It has come," said Marcia. "Commodus came storming into my apartment, and I thought he meant to kill me with his own hands. Usually I am not afraid of him. This time he turned my strength to water. He yelled 'Christians!' at me, 'Christians! You and your Christians!' He was unbathed. He was half-naked. He was sweaty from his exercise. His hair was ruffled; he had torn out some of it. His scowl was frightful--it was freezing."

"He is quite mad," Galen commented.

"I tried to make him understand this could not be a plot or I would certainly have heard of it," Marcia went on with suppressed excitement. "I said it was the madness of one fanatic, that nobody could foresee. He wouldn't listen. He out-roared me. He even raised his fist to strike. He swore it was another of my plans to keep him out of the arena. I began to think it might be wiser to admit that. Even in his worst moods he is sometimes softened by the thought that I take care of him and love him enough to risk his anger. But not this time! He flew into the worst passion I have ever seen. He returned to his first obsession, that the Christians plotted it and that I knew all about it. He swore he will butcher the Christians. He will rid Rome of them. He says, since he can not play Paulus any longer he will out-play Nero."

"Where is Sextus?" Pertinax asked.

"Aye! Where is Sextus!"

Marcia glared at Galen.

"We have to thank you for Sextus! You persuaded Pertinax to shield Sextus. Pertinax persuaded me."

"You did it!" Galen answered dryly. "It is what we do that matters. Squealing like a pig under a gate won't remedy the matter. You foresaw the crisis long ago. Sextus has been very useful to you. He has kept you informed, so don't lower yourself by turning on him now. What is the latest news about the other factions?"

Marcia restrained herself, biting her lip. She loved old Galen, but she did not relish being told the whole responsibility was hers, although she knew it.

"There is no news," she answered. "Nobody has heard a word about the murder yet. Commodus has had the bodies thrown into the sewer. But there are spies in the palace--"

"To say nothing of Bultius Livius," Pertinax added. He was clicking the rings on his fingers--symptom of irresolution that made Marcia grit her teeth.

"The other factions are watching one another," Marcia went on. "They are irresolute because they have no leader near enough to Rome to strike without warning. Why are you irresolute?" She looked so hard at Pertinax that he got up and began to pace the floor. "Severus and his troops are in Pannonia. Pescennius Niger is in Syria. Clodius Albinus is in Britain. The senators are all so jealous and afraid for their own skins that they are as likely as not to betray one another to Commodus the minute they learn that a crisis exists. If they hear that Commodus is writing out proscription lists they will vie with one another to denounce their own pet enemies--including you--and me!" she added.

"There is one chance yet," said Pertinax. "Bultius Livius may have enough wisdom to denounce the leaders of the other factions and to clear us. None of the others would be grateful to him. That Carthaginian Severus, for instance, is invariably spiteful to the men who do him favors. Bultius Livius may see that to protect us is his safest course, as well as best for Rome."

He had more to say, but Marcia's scorn interrupted him. Galen chuckled.

"Rome! He cares only for Bultius Livius. It is now or never, Pertinax!"

Marcia's intense emotion made her appear icily indifferent, but she did not deceive Galen, although Pertinax welcomed her calmness as excusing unenthusiasm in herself.

"Marcia is right," said Galen. "It is now or never. Marcia ought to know Commodus!"

"Know him?" she exploded. "I can tell you step by step what he will do! He will come out of the bath and eat a light meal, but he will drink nothing, for fear of poison. Presently he will be thirsty and lonely, and will send for me; and whatever he feels, he will pretend he loves me. When the raging fear is on him he will never drink from any one but me. He will take a cup of wine from my hands, making me taste it first. Then he will go alone into his own room, where only that child Telamonion will dare to follow. Everything depends then on the child. If the child should happen to amuse him he will turn sentimental and I will dare to go in and talk to him. If not--"

Galen interrupted.

"Madness," he said, "resembles many other maladies, there being symptoms frequently for many years before the slow fire bursts into a blaze. Some die before the outbreak, being burned up by the generating process, which is like a slow fire. But if they survive until the explosion, it is more violent the longer it has been delayed. And in the case of Commodus that means that other men will die. And women," he added, looking straight at Marcia.

"If he even pretends he loves me--I am a woman," said Marcia. "I love him in spite of his frenzies. If I only had myself to think of--"

"Think then!" Galen interrupted. "If you can't think for yourself, do you expect to benefit the world by thinking?"