"Take him to the Tullianum to await execution," the Praefect directed the chief bailiff. The Tullianum! I recalled that other time that I had been arrested and imprisoned.
The Arch of Augustus had dragged me past that dismal pile brooding over the five hundred years of human misery and hopelessness and suffering that it had held locked in its stony heart. What wails of grief, what cries of anguish its walls of hewn rock must have absorbed!
The Tullianum! The very sight of the building, the very name had always filled me with involuntary dread. Here were incarcerated only those who were condemned to die. As the chief bailiff led me through that massive doorway I looked long at it, for I knew that it was the last doorway I should enter in this life. I was entering my own sepulcher. I was already dead. My heart still beat. The red blood still flowed in my veins. Yet I was entering my grave-dead.
The Tullianum was cold and damp and clammy, although it was summer in that other world from which I had just come. Perhaps the dampness was from the five hundred years of tears that had been shed here, and the coldness from the hearts of those who sent men here.
My jailers were not unkind. They were members of the city watch, quasi-soldiers with the psychology of soldiers: a rough and jovial lenience when not aroused to the sterner demands of their vocation. They had no desire to be either cruel or brutal. As long as I gave them no trouble, I was a boon companion to whom they told monstrous stories of their exploits with enemies, with criminals, and with women-especially with women. It is strange how men, more or less segregated, love to expound endlessly upon their conquests in the lists of love. I gave them no trouble.
One old fellow, who had been here for many years yet had never risen above the status of a common guard, endeavored to cheer me up. "Well, young fellow," he said, "you certainly placed in tough luck. There isn't any death so painful as crucifixion; no, not even burning at the stake, for that is over much sooner. Most of them that are going to be crucified don't never sleep while they are waiting in here for the day. Lots of 'em scream for hours, and some of 'em go crazy. They'd like to open their veins, but we don't let 'em have anything to do it with-like we took away that razor you had hid in your tunic. We knew what you had it there for, and though I don't say that we wanted to take it away from you, we just naturally had to. If you'd used it, some of us would have paid for it-maybe gone to the mines for a while.
"I usually go out with 'em when they are taken to the Via Flaminia. Like as not I'll go out along with you. When they first drive the spikes through your hands, that never seems to hurt so much; it's when they drive 'em through your feet that you start to scream."
"I will not scream," I said.
"Oh, yes you will, sonny. And then when they raise the cross and the drag comes on your hands and feet and tears the wounds wider! Boy! You'll scream to high heaven then."
"I will not scream!" I repeated.
"Oh, yes you will, sonny: and you'll keep on screaming until you are hoarse, and after a day your tongue will swell up so that you couldn't scream if you wanted to. You'll think the wounds hurt, but wait until the thirst comes. And all the time you'll be praying for death, and death won't come-not right away. But the vultures will and the ravens. If you don't keep shaking your head, they'll think you're dead and they'll go for you. They'll go for your eyes first."
The head jailer called him and he left my cell, but he promised to come back and visit me later. "I always feel sorry for you poor devils," he said, as he was leaving, "and I like to do what I can to cheer you up."
I thanked him.
A day passed, and then another. I wondered when they were going to do it. I asked the cheerful old man. "I don't know what the delay is," he said. "Sometimes there is a delay because the lawyers are appealing the sentence, but that is for rich men or nobles. You ain't got a chance for any appeal-for two reasons. The first is because you're a slave and anyway you didn't have any lawyer; and the second is that you were tried before the Praetorian Praefect, and his judgments can only be appealed to the Emperor. It ain't likely that Tiberius is going to listen to any appeal from a slave, or that anyone would have the guts to take such a trivial matter to him."
I didn't think it was trivial.
No one visited me. I thought it strange that Tibur didn't come to see me, and I mentioned this to Sunshine, as I had come to call the old guard-to myself.
"No visitors are allowed in the Tullianum," he told me. "They used to, but after a few prisoners had opened their veins with razors or bits of glass smuggled in to 'em by friends, they issued this here new order. It's too bad, too, for we used to pick up quite a few sestertii from the rich ones for furnishing them razors. We always blamed it on their visitors.
"How you feelin', sonny? Pretty low, I guess. Well, I don't blame you none. They'll probably take you out tomorrow, and when a fellow's got that to look forward to all night it don't make him feel so chipper."
At last Sunshine left me, and I lay down on the straw pallet that was my bed. For some reason I felt that this was my last night, but I determined to sleep, as I had the other nights. I made myself sleep by repeating over and over again to myself, you are the great-grandson of Cingetorix. You are not afraid.
But this, my last night, as I thought it. I let my mind rove back through the past-back to all the pleasant things in my life that I could recall.
I thought of my mother. She was different from all the other women I had known as a child. She had been very young-much younger than my father-and she had been beautiful. She had been very kind. Not all the women of the Britons are kind, for we are a fierce race and kindness is often thought of as a weakness.
I recalled the battles in which I had driven the war chariot of my father. I lived again those thrilling moments when I held the nervous, plunging horses, excited by the cries and tumult of battle, and followed my father into the thick of the fight: and I felt a tingling of pride as I realized that never had I failed to have the chariot in the right place when my father's fighting men were ready to leap to the pole and run back to it between the rearing, dancing horses. Father had always been last: his great sword red with blood, his proud mustachios bristling fiercely.
I had gone into the forests with him when he hunted: those days were the pleasantest memories of my childhood. My father feared nothing on the earth or in the heavens. I think he was the bravest man I have ever known. He hunted the wild boar and the bear with sword and spear, and on foot. He never gave an inch, even in the face of the fiercest charge, and he carried scars from his scalp to his toes. He wore them with pride, as the Roman legionaries wear their medals.
But I saved my happiest memory for the last, and I fell asleep thinking of Attica. I would not allow Numerius to even enter my mind.
Chapter XI
A.U.C.776 [A.D. 23]
WHEN I awoke the next morning, I lay with my eyes closed, slowly gathering together the rambling threads of consciousness. It was good to be alive. I stretched the muscles of my young body in voluptuous repose, wondering if Caligula were yet awake and what we should do with this new day. Then I opened my eyes!
Where was I? For an instant I was bewildered and confused. These bare walls of cut stone! This gloomy chamber! The truth rushed upon me like a ravening demon as full consciousness returned. I turned over and buried my face in my poor pallet, trying to shut out the hideous truth that my eyes had revealed.
O, benign sleep! Why have you deserted me? Would that I might sleep forever! But I soon shall: that is all that I have to look forward to. It is what lies between that terrifies me.
"They shan't! They shan't!" I cried aloud. There must be some way. I bit at the vein in my wrist. I would cheat them of the pleasure of the torture. I would die thus before they could nail me to their cross.
The old guard came hurrying in. "What you yellin' about?" he demanded, and then he saw what I was trying to do. He jerked my wrist roughly from my teeth. "So, ho!" he cried. "That is the way you were trying to cheat us! Now I suppos
e I shall have to sit here and watch you until they come for you. I should beat you for this but what is the use? My little beating would be but a happiness for you compared with what will soon be coming to you."
My breakfast was brought to me and I ate. I was not hungry, but I did not want them to think that I was afraid. Old Sunshine regaled me with detailed accounts of the agonies he had seen endured upon the crosses of the Via Flaminia. After about so much of a thing like that, one becomes insensitive to more. All of the terrors that he recounted could not equal those that I had already suffered in imagination.
Between the fourth and fifth hours, another guard entered my cell. "I think they are coming for you." he said. "There's a detachment of the city watch coming down the street. They would not be coming for any other purpose at this time in the morning." I stood up. I stood very straight, as my father had stood before the Emperor that day in the Forum.
"I'd hate to be in your boots," said the guard. "I'd certainly be scared stiff."
"I am not afraid," I said.
He eyed me intently for a moment, and then he shook his head. "May Jupiter blast me! you don't look afraid, but maybe you don't understand just what they are going to do to you."
"Old Sunshine, here, has been giving me all the details for the past two days-not omitting the ravens and the vultures."
" 'Old Sunshine'!" The fellow laughed uproariously.
Just then the chief jailer came down the corridor followed by a detachment of the city watch. He swung open the door and they entered. Behind them were two slaves carrying a great wooden cross.
"Help him get it on his back," said the chief jailer to the two slaves. "Walk beside him; he may need a little help-the cross is heavy." He turned to me. "I'm sorry for you, my boy," he said. He must have been a decent sort of fellow at heart.
The men of the city watch surrounded me, and we marched from the Tullianum out into the streets of Rome. Sunshine, true to his prediction, accompanied me. He carried some spikes and a heavy hammer.
"I'm going to nail you on," he announced cheerfully. "I'll try not to miss the head of the spikes too often."
"That is kind of you," I said.
The cross was heavy. I had to walk bent almost doubled beneath it. Some street urchins tagged along with us. They shouted gibes and taunts at me. They did not know me. They did not know what I had done. They would have thrown stones at me had not the city watch threatened them. Theirs was the inborn, primitive cruelty of children.
The men who guarded me were not unkind. They seemed genuinely sorry for me. I have found that soldiers are usually neither so bloodthirsty nor cruel as civilians. Presently some women joined the procession. They laughed and talked and gossiped and seemed to be deriving much anticipatory pleasure from the show they were about to witness: they might have been on their way to the theater to see a comedy enacted. Soon there were fully a hundred spectators marching with us-men, women, and children-and the crowd was constantly being augmented by new recruits. All the world loves a free show.
The cross was very heavy. I tried hard not to stagger, but I could not help it. Then the slaves took hold of it and helped me. They had kind hearts. Perhaps they were thinking that some day they might be carrying such a cross out to the Via Flaminia.
I thought that that march of death would never end. I wanted it to end. I wanted to get the whole horrible thing over with. Over and over I swore to myself that I would make no outcry. I would show them how the great-grandson of Cingetorix could die. No matter how much it hurt, I would make no sound. I would not give the Roman mob that satisfaction.
At last we were outside the city on the Via Flaminia, and presently we came to the place beside the road where I was to be crucified. They told me to throw down the cross; then four members of the watch took hold of me to throw me down upon it. I shook them off. "I will lie down myself," I said. "You will not have to hold me down." One of them slapped me on the back. "Good luck!" he said.
I lay down upon the cross. I felt the rough, unsmoothed surface against my back. I stretched my arms out along the crossbeam. Sunshine knelt beside me. In the distance I could hear someone shouting. Sunshine was placing the point of a spike against the palm of my right hand. The shouting sounded closer and closer. Sunshine's old fingers fumbled the spike and it dropped into the grass. He swore lustily and pawed around searching for it.
"Don't worry, sonny," he said, encouragingly, "I'll have you nailed on in no time at all, just as soon as I can find this damned spike."
The crowd was pressing in all around us, only kept from trampling on us by the guard.
The people were poking fun at Sunshine. "Hurry, old greasy fingers," shouted someone. "How much longer do you think we're going to wait for the show?"
Now the shouting that I heard was much louder and closer. It had risen to a bellow.
Sunshine had recovered the spike. "Now, sonny," he said, "I'll have you spiked on in no time. You said you wouldn't scream, but you will, sonny. All ready now!" He placed the spike again and raised the hammer, and just then something struck that crowd from the rear that burst it wide asunder as though a wild bull had hit it. Even the members of the city watch were hurled aside, and a giant hand seized Sunshine and tossed him a good fifteen feet to one side. It was Tibur!
The city watch came for him with drawn swords, but he waved them off with a sheet of parchment. "A pardon!" he gasped breathlessly. "A pardon from the Emperor."
The officer in charge read it and then helped me to my feet. "You're in luck, sonny," he said. "You're a free man."
Tibur looked haggard, but he was smiling. "That was a close call, my boy," he said.
"How did it happen?" I asked.
"It is quite a long story," he said, "but I'll make it short and tell you about it as we walk home. First, I went to Agrippina and asked her to try to save you. I was sure that if she asked, it would be granted; but the old she-wolf just laughed at me. 'Good riddance,' she said. 'I am glad to have seen the last of that nasty little barbarian.'
" 'But Caligula!' I reminded her. 'He is very fond of Britannicus. He will be very angry'
"'It's time he got over being fond of the slav e,' she said. 'He hasn't seen him for two weeks now; so he's used to it. It couldn't have happened at a better time.'
"'But-' I started.
"'Enough!' she snapped. 'I wish never to hear his name mentioned again. You may go.'
"Then I tried to see Caligula, but she must have anticipated something like that, for the guard at the door wouldn't let me near him. After that I spent two days trying to get an audience with the Emperor, and I only just succeeded this morning. I told him the whole story, and when I had finished, he called a secretary and dictated the pardon. He didn't hesitate a moment.
"After he had signed it, he handed it to me and smiled. 'There,' he said; 'I cannot permit them to crucify one of my friends. I have not too many at best.'
"I started on a run for the Tullianum; and it is well that I ran, for when I got there, they told me that you had already been taken out; then I ran all the way out the Via Flaminia until I found you."
When I think of Germanicus and Tiberius and Tibur, I am often ashamed of myself that I hate the Romans so. They are not all bad. It has just been my misfortune to have been thrown among some of the worst of them. The fawning nobles and senators, whom Tiberius held in contempt, as he did all sycophants, accused him of being haughty and arrogant; yet he could be kind and even friendly to a slave boy. Tibur, a brutal gladiator, who would as gladly have killed a man as he would a cockroach, was, toward me, always gentle and sympathetic; and Germanicus, during the little more than two years that I knew him before his death, always treated me with great kindness. I have known other fine Romans, but these three were outstanding.
When Tibur and I arrived at the palace of Agrippina and the old girl saw me, I thought that she was going to throw a fit. "You back?" she shouted at me. "I thought they were going to crucify you. If you have escaped from the Tull
ianum, you needn't think that you are going to hide yourself here, for I shall send you right back."
"I did not escape from the Tullianum," I said. "The Emperor pardoned me."
The cords on her long neck stood out and she turned almost purple in the face. I thought that she was going to burst out into one of her tirades, but she only grunted, "Hmm!" and said, "He would!" You would have been surprised at how much violence and viciousness a person could compress into those two little words.
The following day, Caligula was allowed to come from his room, and the regular routine of my life was resumed. He was much interested in the account of my fight in the alley, my trial and sentence, and my imprisonment in the Tullianum, and he had the grace to say that he was glad that I had not been crucified.
"That Praefect had a lot of nerve," he commented, "sentencing the slave of a Caesar to death. If you are ever crucified, it will be I who order it."
"That will make it much nicer," I said.
Although I no longer studied or recited with Caligula, I kept up my studies, and the tutors often helped me in their spare time. I was particularly interested in mathematics, engineering, and military science. I could speak, read, and write Latin and Greek, and I had a working knowledge of Egyptian. I had almost forgotten my native language, but it would have been of little use to me. All of the great and important works were in Latin or Greek. My little island had as yet no literature; maybe it will never have any. Perhaps it will be as well, if culture produces such creatures as the Romans.
The Roman patrician is haughty, arrogant, and heartless to those of lesser blood, unless they have great wealth, and a fawning sycophant in the presence of the emperor. The knights are avaricious money-grubbers, usurers, and worse. They are notoriously dishonest. The common people, the plebs, are a race of undisciplined beggars, degraded by generations of public charity: the dole has reduced them to the status of whining, snarling mendicants. They are without loyalty or courage or honor, and they are rotten with vice and crime.