Andivius Hedulio: Adventures of a Roman Nobleman in the Days of the Empire Part 26

"I most certainly will," I said, "and without reservation. If you think you can save me, tell me what you want me to do and I shall do it. I shall follow your suggestions implicitly."

"Well," said Agathemer, "since remaining here means certain death and since there seems a chance of final salvation for you through the efforts of your friends and especially those of Opsitius and Vedia, since they will need plenty of time to save you, if you can be saved, from every point of view the right course of action is not merely inaction, not merely hiding, but an immediate and complete disappearance. If you are found you will be ordered to kill yourself or will be put to death. If you cannot be found you cannot be killed or made to kill yourself. Since you cannot be found you will stay alive until you can be rehabilitated with the Emperor. If that cannot be done or is not done, at least you will be alive. My deduction is, disappear at once and completely. You have many times, for a lark, disguised yourself as an ordinary country proprietor or small farmer and mingled with the crowd at a fair without being recognized. What you have done for an evening in jest now attempt in earnest and for as long a period as is necessary. And to begin with, vanish from here at once and completely."

"But how?" I queried.

"If you are to disappear," said Agathemer, "why should I waste time in explaining how. Let us disappear together, leaving no trace and let us do it at once."

"But," I cried, "I could never consent to anything like that! You are not in any danger. You will be manumitted by my will and you can live safely, comfortably and at ease. Why should I drag you into I know not what miseries, hards.h.i.+ps and privations along with me? Tell me what to do and I will proceed to do it. But do you stay here."

"If I told you my plan," said Agathemer, "you could not carry it out alone. My scheme for your escape and vanishment pivots on my disappearing along with you. If you agree, as I beg that you will, we shall both be safe, I hope and trust; alive, able to return here if it can be arranged, able to live elsewhere, somehow, if it cannot be arranged. If you refuse your a.s.sent, I shall die with you or soon after you; I am resolute not to survive you."

"I agree," I said. "I am under your orders henceforth, not you under mine."

Agathemer at once guided me into the house and upstairs to his rooms, for he inhabited the guest-suite next my rooms, which had been my uncle's.

"The first thing to do," he said, "is for both of us to eat heartily, for we do not know when we shall eat again. I have been choicy and whimmy about my eating since I came back here and mostly my meals have revolted me and I have left the _triclinium_ practically unfed, whereas I have often been seized with imperative hunger between meals. I have an overabundant supply of all sorts of tempting cold viands up here."

And, in fact, in the room he used as a reading and writing room, on a side table, I found an inviting array of cold meats, jellies, cakes, and fancy breads, with an a.s.sortment of wines. We ate till we could eat no more, masticating our food carefully and taking wine in moderation.

Then Agathemer put up a liberal supply of bread and relishes in a small linen bag, obliterated all traces of our meal and presence and went into his dressing-room, where he stripped stark naked and rubbed himself down with a rough towel, carefully disposing of his garments in his wardrobes.

From one of his tables he took a small silver case containing flint, steel and tinder. Then we went into my rooms, where he stripped me, rubbed me down, and disposed of my garments as he had of his. My wallet he took pains to hide in the bottom of a chest, after emptying it and putting the contents about so that each article was hidden in a different place and none could be connected with the others or with the wallet. The little horn case with flint and steel he retained.

The ante-room to what had been my uncle's bed-room and was now mine, had on its walls trophies of hunting-spears and other weapons of the chase.

Agathemer selected two knives for killing wounded stags, dependable implements, blade and shank one piece of fine steel, the handles of stag- horn, fastened on with copper rivets.

With the bag of food, the two knives and the two tinder boxes we went up my uncle's private stair to his library and reading room.

My uncle had had his own ideas as to nearly everything, usually much at variance with other people's ideas. As to building his ideas, perhaps, were less aberrant than his opinions on other subjects, but, certainly he was as tenacious of them as of his other notions.

He held, in the first place, that sleeping-rooms on the ground-floor of any house were unhealthy and a relic of primitive barbarism. He was equally positive that, in the country, where there was ample room for a building to spread out, it was folly to construct a dwelling of three or more stories: such villas he railed at as exhibitions of silly extravagance and of a desire to appear different from one's neighbors. His villa, therefore, was of two stories only.

But, on the other hand, he loved fresh air, light, and wide prospects from his windows; also he spent most of his daylight reading or writing, or both. To gratify to the full all his chief tastes at once he included in the plans of his villa a sort of tower, at the northwest corner, rising well above the remainder of the structure, so that the floors of its third story were on a level higher than that of the ridge-poles of the roofs of the other parts of the villa and from the wide windows of its rooms there was an un.o.bstructed view over the tiles of the villa upon the farm- buildings and beyond them across the fields to the woodlands and the forested eastern and southern horizon as well as a fine outlook down the valley northward and across it westward.

In this third story of this tower he housed his library and there he spent most of his time. It was reached by three stairs. One was connected with the villa in general and was used by him when going down to meals in his _triclinium_, or when escorting visitors up to his library, as he sometimes did with his particular favorites; and this stair was also used by such servants as he might summon to him while in his library or as might have to go up there to attend to it in his absence. The second stair connected with his living-rooms on the second floor, which rooms looked northwestward, as he detested being waked early by the rays of the rising sun and loved basking in the mellow radiance of afternoon sunlight. The third stair is not easy to describe and was one of my uncle's oddest eccentricities. It was inside a sort of minor tower built against the tower in which his library was set aloft, which minor tower extended far up towards the sky, like a great chimney. What was the primary purpose of this minor tower I shall explain later. In it, however, was a narrow, cramped, spiral stair, unlit by any window or loop-hole, unconnected with the second or first floor of the villa, opening at the top into the library and at the bottom into a cellar, a cellar so far down the hillside that its vault was below the level of the floors of the cellars under the villa in general. This stair my uncle had had constructed to enable him to apply his idea that a master could ensure the diligence of his tenants and slaves only if he was known to be in the habit of coming upon them unexpectedly at any hour of the day, only if they never knew when he might appear and so were spurred to continual diligence for fear he might catch them idling. For my uncle, though he habitually spent his entire daylight in his library, might at any hour slip down this stair, slip out onto the northwestern slope from the villa through a door locked to all but him and of which he kept the key, or might slip out southeastward or southwestward or northeastward, through similar doors on the ground floor, reached by pa.s.sages built between the many cellars of the upper level of cellars under the ground floor of the villa. By this plan and by popping out sometimes many times a day, sometimes after an interval of many days, he kept his underlings alert.

My uncle's tastes in respect to books were as peculiar as in all other respects. He had a really magnificent library, including all the Greek poets, all our own, and other n.o.ble works of literature, such as the historians in both the Greek and Latin tongues; the orators, and the writers on painting, sculpture, architecture and music.

But he paid more attention to his personal fads. He had a creditable collection of all works on divination, a similarly inclusive a.s.semblage of works on the theory of government, and an almost complete array of the writings of the Emperors, from the Divine Julius to the Divine Aurelius, whose meditations he extolled.

But he extolled above all other Princes and authors the Divine Julius.

"Caius Julius Caesar," he was never tired of saying, "was, in all respects, the greatest man who ever lived on earth. He was also the greatest author earth has ever produced. His poems, his mimes, his comedies, his dramas, compare favorably with the best of their kind. His accounts of his wars, whether against the Gauls or against his domestic adversaries, are models of narration, of lucidity, of terseness and of style. His astronomy is the best manual of that subject in Latin. His works on Engineering surpa.s.s anything of their kind in clearness and preserve for the benefit of future generations more useful and original ideas than ever before came from the brain of any one man. His works on divination, particularly that on Auspices, excel everything previously written on that most important of all human arts.

"But his two books against Cato are his masterpiece. It is wonderful that any man could have, in the s.p.a.ce of eight days, written, with his own hand, so fiery an invective, so compelling of the attention of any reader, so completely annihilative of his antagonist's pretensions and contentions, so convincingly establis.h.i.+ng his own: to have made of it, in the course of composition so rapid and totally unrevised, such a jewel of Latinity, in a style not only pure and impeccable, but glowing and charming, is astonis.h.i.+ng. But it is downright miraculous that he should have embodied in it the whole theory of government with all its principles marshalled in their array with the most perfect subordination of considerations of lesser importance to main principles. The two Anticatones contain all that a ruler or any minister of a ruler need know to guide him aright in his tasks. The First Book displays a complete theory of internal policy, the Second of external policy. The two together form a whole which is the most brilliant product of Rome's literary and political genius."

In accordance with his high esteem for Caesar's masterpiece he had possessed himself of a beautiful copy of it, written by the celebrated calligrapher Praxitelides, upon papyrus of the finest quality. It was in seven rolls, each book of Caesar's text occupying two rolls, the index a fifth, and the commentaries of grammarians two more. The rollers inside the rolls were of Nubian ivory, their ends carved into pine cones, each of the fourteen representing the cone of a different variety of pine. Each roll was enclosed in a copper cylinder made accurately to be both watertight and airtight. The seven cylinders were housed in an ebony case, inlaid with mother of pearl. I have never seen any literary work more beautifully enshrined.

When Agathemer and I were in the library he shut and locked the door at the top of my uncle's private stair, as he had the door at the bottom of it. The two keys he hid far apart, where neither was at all likely to be found easily or soon. He had laid the knives, tinder-boxes and bag of food on a table. He went to the case containing my uncle's most highly prized treasures. From it he took the ebony box, opened it and took out two of the cylinders. From these he removed the rolls embodying the grammarians'

comments. These rolls he put back in the box, shut it, returned it to the case and closed the case.

The two cylinders he had laid on the table by the things which he had brought up stairs. Inside each cylinder he placed a knife, a tinder-box, and a selection of the food. The bag, with what remained of the food, he tied up again. He handed me one cylinder.

"Now," he said, "we are prepared to escape. My idea is to leave no trace of how we leave this villa, to have no one see us leave, to have nothing with us which could identify us after we have left. We are to go down the secret stair, crawl out through the big lower drain pipe, hide in the bushes till dark, take to the woods, hide by day, creep northward by night, and, if we succeed in reaching a district where no one would recognize us, press on northward boldly, pa.s.sing ourselves off as runaway slaves if anyone encounters us."

"We'd be locked up as runaway slaves," I said, "advertised, sold to the highest bidder if unclaimed and henceforth kept in slavery."

"I'm in slavery now," said Agathemer. "You, if kept in slavery, would at least be alive and in no danger of being recognized."

"Let us go," said I.

We looked at each other and burst out laughing. We made a sufficiently absurd spectacle, each stark naked, each holding a copper cylinder, as we stood in that elegant and luxurious room. According to the fas.h.i.+on of the time, which aped the ways of the young Emperor, we wore our hair moderately long and as both had hair naturally curly, were perfectly in style as to hair. Our beards, also, we wore clipped but not shaved, and long enough to show a tendency to curl, as the Emperor wore his.

Our laugh over I gave a farewell glance about my little-used library. It was then about the fifth hour. Agathemer gazing rather outside at the landscape than inside at the room remained frozen stiff, staring northward down the valley.

"We are barely in time," he said. "Mercury is with us and Fortune."

"Before I left Rome," I said, "I prayed to Fortune and sacrificed to Mercury."

"Time well spent," he said. "Look there!"

Peering where he pointed I saw, where the road was first visible in the distance, fully two miles away, a dozen or more hors.e.m.e.n, manifestly, even at that distance, of military bearing: I caught, against the sunrays, a gleam of crimson and a glint of gold; I conjectured a detail of Praetorian Guards coming to arrest me or to put me out of the way.

Agathemer opened the upper door of the secret stair, which unlike most doors, could be locked on either side, for my uncle always wanted to lock the doors he used, whichever way he pa.s.sed through them. After we had pa.s.sed this door Agathemer closed it behind us, and, as we stood in the pitch dark, locked it.

We groped our way down the dizzying turns of the steep stair, Agathemer going first and, at the bottom, whacking his knee-cap on the lower door.

This he unlocked and I found myself in a dim-lit cellar which I had visited but twice before. Agathemer locked the stair-door behind us.

Now the minor tower, in which was the spiral stair, was built as a vent to carry up into the air, far above the roofs of the villa, any miasma, effluvium or exhalation from the drainage-water of the villa's baths, kitchen and latrines. On the subject of harmful vapours from drains my uncle was fanatical and to bear out his contentions he quoted from the works of many celebrated philosophers and physicians, including those of Galen.

Pursuant with his notions as to how to get rid of the exhalations from drainage and to make certain that no whiff of any such vapours ever found its way up any offset into his kitchen or any latrine or bathroom, he had built in this small high tower a shaft reaching its top and full six feet square all the way up. At its bottom it widened out into a chamber fully twelve feet square, carried down below the level of the cellar floor to form a cemented tank, vat, cistern or cesspool fully as deep as it was wide. The outfall from this trap was by a terra-cotta pipe of considerable size, its opening at such a point that the drain-water in the trap never reached higher than a foot or so below the level of the cellar floor. The various drainage-pipes from different parts of the villa were so led into this trap-room that their lower ends were always under water, so that no exhalations could ever pa.s.s up any of them.

To the bottom of the trap settled the solid matter and sediment from the drainage-water. The trap was cleaned by slaves so often that the ooze in it never rose high enough to escape down the outfall pipe and befoul the Bran Brook. For cleaning out the trap-room had an outer door, of heavy, solid oak, carefully locked, which when opened enabled the slaves entrusted with this task to dredge or bale or scoop out the filth and convey it off to be used as garden manure. There was also an inner door, as heavy and solid as the other, opening from the cellar, which enabled my uncle to inspect the trap at his convenience. This door Agathemer opened.

I peered in and, after my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, descried the opening of the outfall drain opposite me. It was large enough for lean men like me and Agathemer to crawl through, but certainly barely large enough. I could see, after some moments, the lower ends of the drain pipes, two dozen or more, dipping into the foul liquid which filled the cistern. It was very foul, for since my uncle's death the cleaning out of the trap had been neglected and the ooze came almost to the top of the water.

Agathemer hunted about the cellar, found some bits of stone about the size of apples, put them in the bag of food, tied up its neck again, and threw it into the trap, where it sank out of sight. After it he threw in the two keys.

Now was the moment for our plunge into the unknown. Agathemer's plan implied that we must crawl a full furlong through the outfall drain. We might be drowned, at any point of the crawl, by a rush of water from the bath-tank. We might suffocate in the foul vapours of the drain. But, plainly, Agathemer had pitched upon our only chance of escape, and we must escape that way and at once or not at all.

Agathemer threw the two copper cylinders, one after the other, neatly and deftly into the mouth of the outfall drain.

"Now," he said, "one of us must jump for that opening, and must cling to it, his arms inside, his body in the ooze of the trap. The other must stand on the narrow stone ledge inside this door, must contrive to slam the door behind him so that it will shut fast and stay shut, must then, in the pitch dark, jump for the shoulders of the other. If the drag of his weight pulls the other down, both of us will drown in this deep trap in the vile ooze. If the under man clings on, the upper must crawl over him into the drain, pa.s.s back to him one of the cylinders and then we shall be ready for our crawl down. Which goes first?"

"You choose," said I.

"Can you slam the door?" Agathemer queried.

I considered the door, the sill, the ledge inside, the jambs of the door, its edges; stood on the ledge, went through the motions and concluded that I could slam the door shut and not be knocked off into the ooze by its impact or topple off because of the sill's narrowness. I said so.