Felicitas Part 6

Zeno read: "It was only the knee. My Greek slave has by friction reduced the swelling. I shall to-morrow again mount my horse.

Threefold, if thou gettest the woman to-morrow!"

The Greek exchanged a quick look with the Judge; he then, with the reverse end of the style, rubbed the tablet smooth, effacing the writing, turned the style and wrote:

"The priest alone knows that she was set free. On Sunday he denounces thee publicly. Dead dogs do not bark."

"Take that to thy Tribune," said he to the centurion.

"I cannot. I go on guard at the Vindelician gate. But here, Arsakes, go back to the Capitol."

He gave the tablet to one of the soldiers, who saluted and disappeared.

"At the Vindelician gate? Wait, then!" And Zeno whispered a word to the Judge.

"Halt, centurion!" cried the latter, "My Carcerarii are not within call; in case of necessity I can exercise authority over you warriors, according to the law of the Emperor Diocletian. Seize that debtor of the state, whose escape is suspected, and take him to the prison for tax-debtors; it stands by the Vindelician gate."

Fulvius was in a moment surrounded; the centurion laid hold of his shoulder, four men seized his arms.

"Oh, Felicitas!" sighed he, utterly helpless.

"I will save her! I will go to her immediately!" cried Crispus, and he hastened away.

He was about to turn the comer, when there sounded suddenly the hoof-strokes of a horseman riding along in mad haste, followed by a tumultuous crowd: soldiers, burghers, women, children--all pell-mell.

"One of our Moorish hors.e.m.e.n!" cried the centurion, as he caught the horse's bridle. "Jarbas! Comrade in arms! What is the matter?"

The rider, who was dripping with water, raised himself high in the saddle; he had lost helmet and s.h.i.+eld, he held a broken spear in his right hand, blood streamed over his naked left arm.

"Tell the Tribune," cried he in a hoa.r.s.e voice, as if making a last effort. "I can do no more--the arrow in my neck--they are there--close the gates--the Germans stand before the town!" And dropping the bridle, he fell backwards from his horse.

He was dead!

CHAPTER VI.

Was it actually so? Did the Germans stand indeed before the gates of Juvavum?

The burghers racked their brains in tormenting uncertainty. They could learn nothing more at present of what had happened without the walls; the mouth that might have given farther information was silent for ever.

The gates were kept carefully shut. When the news first reached the Capitol, Leo, the Tribune, had sprung from his couch, "To horse!" cried he; "out, before the walls!" But with a cry of pain he had sunk back in the arms of his slave; and he did not wish to entrust to another the dangerous enterprise of a nightly reconnaissance outside the gates, against an enemy certainly far superior in numbers. Severus, the commander of the volunteers in the town, had only infantry at his disposal. With these alone, he could not and would not advance against the barbarians in the night. He contented himself with occupying the towers and gates. The strengthened guard on the ramparts watched and listened attentively in the mild night air; but there was nothing unusual to be observed, no light in the neighbourhood, no camp-fires in the distance, which the advancing Germans, with wives and children, men-servants and maidens, with herds, carts and waggons, certainly could not dispense with, and which it was not their custom to extinguish either from prudence or fear. No noise was heard, neither the clang of arms, nor the hoof-strokes of horses; only the regular, gentle murmuring of the stream, which hastened through the valley from south to north, struck on the ears of the watchers. A burgher once thought he heard a noise in the direction of the river, like the gentle neighing of a horse, and a splash of the waves, as if a heavy body had fallen or sprung into the stream; but he convinced himself that he had been deceived, for everything remained still as before.

The nightingales sang in the bushes around the villas; their undisturbed song testified, as one rightly judged, that neither waggons, horses, nor warriors were in movement there.

So to gain information they turned again to the corpse of the horseman, and to his steed, yet trembling in every limb.

They saw that the horse had swum the stream, man and horse were running with water. Why had not the fugitive made use of the bridge below the town? Because he did not know if it were occupied? or because he did not wish to do so? Because he had striven to bring his news the most direct road? He had no other wound than that in the neck, caused by the deadly arrow, from which the blood had flowed over his shoulder and s.h.i.+eldless left arm. It was undoubtedly a missile like those the Germans carried; the three-barbed point had entered very deeply, the shot was given at a close range; the long shaft of alder-wood was winged with the feathers of the gray heron; the blade of his long cavalry sword was missing, the leather sheath hung empty at the right side of his girth; the spear, which the closed right hand still grasped, was broken at the first iron clasp by which the point was attached, by a powerful blow from a battle-axe, not from a sword; so that the rider had lost in close combat, helmet, s.h.i.+eld, sword, and spear, and in flight had received the arrow shot by his pursuer. The dead man could be questioned no more.

But what had become of his comrades in arms?

Leo, the Tribune, had the day before sent out five of the Moorish cavalry to take possession of a hill, two hours' journey north-west of the town, which commanded a view of the country as far as the thick forest to the north. A half-fallen watch-tower stood there, which had last been repaired and occupied in the time of the Emperor Valentinian I., now a hundred years ago.

What had become of the other four Moors?

n.o.body knew.

The citizens pa.s.sed an anxious night. The watch went their rounds on the ramparts with torches, and small fires burnt at the spots where broad flagstones covered the surface of the earth and turf.

The fires were extinguished at dawn of the early June morning; the sentinels looked carefully out into the country in the full morning light; there was nowhere a trace of the enemy.

Peasants came as usual from all parts into the town to sell or to buy.

They were astonished to find the gates closed. They were allowed to pa.s.s in singly, all being carefully examined to see if they were trustworthy people or spies, perhaps even barbarians in disguise.

But the inoffensive peasants were terrified at this unusual sharpness of the gate-watch; to question them was without rhyme or reason. They evidently knew nothing, and were much more zealous and anxious to inquire in the town what had taken place.

From the north-west, in the direction of Vindelicia, from which the approach of the barbarians was expected, the country people had come in, as usual, in numbers; they had observed nothing suspicious. But from the south-east hardly anyone came. It excited no remark, few villas and houses lay that way, and it was only seldom that a frequenter of the market came from thence. One might have considered the fright of the previous evening as a dream, only the dead horseman was a silent witness to its actuality.

The first hours of the day pa.s.sed away without any threatening indications; there was no enemy visible even in the far distance; the bridge over the Ivarus below the town (a second joined the two banks within the walls) was seen to be unoccupied.

As the Tribune was still kept a prisoner in the Capitol by the accident to his knee, Severus ordered the Vindelician gate to be opened; he went with a company to the bridge, caused the end on the left, western bank to be barricaded with pieces of rock and timber, left there thirty spearmen and slingers, and then returned to the town quite satisfied that there was no trace of the enemy. But the old soldier did not relax his watchfulness; he ordered the gates to be kept closed and the towers garrisoned, and any occurrence was to be notified immediately to him in the Bath of Amphitrite, whither he now went, to wash away the cares of the night and the heat and dust of the march.

After having fully enjoyed the bath, he sat comfortably on the soft woollen rug covering the marble seat, which formed a semicircle around the porphyry bath, rubbing now arms, and now legs, from the hip to the knee.

This man of about fifty-five years was a model of healthy and vigorous strength; his limbs showed that the practice of the hunt and gymnastics had developed the power of his strongly-formed body.

He now ceased his movements, and sank gradually into deep thought. His head fell deeper and deeper on his breast; at last he extended his right arm and began to draw figures in the clean white sand, which covered the s.p.a.ce between the marble seat and the edge of the bath.

"Must rank our men still deeper against the German wedge," murmured he to himself. "Ten men--twelve men deep. No, they don't waver yet. And yet--it must be just a question of arithmetic to defeat these Germans.

It is only a problem of stroke and counter-stroke. Who may solve it? It would be best"----

"It would be best," broke in gently a melancholy voice, "that we lay in our last long sleep, where there is no longer either stroke or counterstroke."

Severus turned; the white woollen curtain of the inner bath was moved aside; a handsome man in the strength of youth, and fully armed, stood behind it.

"Thou, Cornelius! What meanest thou?"

"Thou knowest my meaning. The best for man is not to have been born."

"Shame on thee! thirty years old, and already so tired of life."

"Shame on _thee_! Nearly sixty years, and still so foolishly fond of life."

"What dost thou bring?"