This morning, as usual, they walked together through the gardens just after dawn. Though high summer, it was still pleasantly cool before the sun rose too high, and the grass dripped dew as prismatic as a rainbow and the flowers exhaled sweetly in a medley of fragrance. The dark cypresses pointed against a sky as yet only a pale blue. The fountains rustled, speaking to themselves. The hills surrounding the city had burned to sepia, over which the climbing olive trees were a pattern of fretted silver against the brown and yellow earth. The temples scattered on the acropolis seemed formed of delicate white bones against the darker background and had already caught the first aureate light. The little temple to the Unknown God stood in its beatitude of isolated quiet, the unadorned altar waiting. Birds were busily conversing in the myrtles and sycamores and palms and the air was full of musical sound. It was the hour which pleased Pericles more, though Aspasia preferred the night.
“I have received a letter, some days ago, from a very rich young man who lives in Corinth,” said Aspasia, holding Pericles’ hand in her soft fingers, like a trusting child. “His parents died of the flux just recently, and he has been left with a little sister, thirteen years old. As he is often absent from his house he fears for her safety. Her name is Io. He has slaves to attend her, but is sedulous regarding her welfare. He has heard of my school, and wishes her to be with me, and so he is bringing her to see me. He spoke of her shyness and vulnerability, for she has been unusually protected, even more than is usual among the Greeks. He will arrive with his sister either today or tomorrow, for my inspection. He mentioned that she has had tutors and is considered very intelligent, in spite of her youth and inability to converse with strangers.”
“I hope she is handsomer than most of your young ladies,” said Pericles.
Aspasia laughed. “My maidens are not chosen for comeliness of countenance, but for their intellect. My house is not a house for the training of courtesans. However, many of my girls are pretty. It is just that I do not teach personal adornment, but insist on a severity of dress and hair, so they will not be distracted. The arts of luring a man are best taught by their mothers.”
“But what is more enchanting than beauty with intelligence?” asked Pericles, and bent his helmeted head to touch her lips lightly with his own.
“Ah, I am a rare vessel,” said Aspasia. Peace filled her; Pericles’ hand was strong and firm and protective, as it held hers. She sighed. She never doubted his love for her, his intense concern for her happiness, his devotion. She had dreamed of him during her years with Al Taliph, that inexplicable man whose moods were never reassuring, who could be furious at one moment then tender the next, leaving her always in a state of trepidation and uncertainty. Sometimes she was glad that she had never known that he had loved her, for then she would have stayed with him, to her calamity. There were other times when she remembered him with a gentle sorrow and a dim longing, even when she was with Pericles. A woman’s heart, once given, cannot be taken back without bleeding and pain.
The sun was rising higher. It was time for Pericles to leave. Aspasia never asked him when he would return, for this made men impatient and gave them an uncomfortable feeling of restraint, deadly to love. Pericles, on visiting Aspasia, brought with him but two guards, mounted like himself. He went to join them, after a last embrace with Aspasia, and disappeared behind the school. She stood there, enjoying the morning, and gazing about her with pleasure and comfort. Even when she was old, she thought, she would love all this and remember. She looked idly at the distant gates and the walls. Two guards stood inside the gates, well armed. She smiled. Pericles protected her thus, not that he truly considered she was in any danger, but because it gave him confidence.
A company stopped outside the gates, a handsome chariot with an awning, in which sat a young man and a young girl. It was accompanied by four horsemen, helmeted and armed. They sat on their horses like soldiers and the early morning light glanced off silver harness and helmet and made the hides of the animals glimmer sleekly. So the girl, Io, had arrived with her brother, with considerable ceremony. Aspasia walked slowly down the red gravel path, then paused. The guards were talking with the company. Then one came towards her and said, “Lady, the lord from Corinth, one Nereus, and his sister, Io, have arrived. They crave an interview with you.”
“Let them enter,” said Aspasia, and stood, waiting. The guard returned to the gates and opened them. The occupants of the chariot climbed down, and the chariot with its white horses, and the accompanying soldiers, remained outside the gates. The young man and the girl entered the gardens alone, which Aspasia idly thought was a little curious. She looked kindly on the approaching young people. The brother, Nereus, was fair and tall and dressed richly if quietly in a robe of crimson silk with a girdle of gold and a mantle the color of his robe. His smooth head was gilt; he did not affect the hyacinthine curls of the Athenians. Aspasia’s attention was directed at the girl, and she saw before her a child of an absolutely pure countenance, smooth as a lily, and as sweetly pale, with thick black hair, unbound, under a veil of blue the color of her wide and staring eyes. Her dress was white linen, bound with silver, and her mantle was of blue traced with a silver design. Her feet were shod in sandals of silver, twinkling with gems. In her hand she bore a small object wrapped in a red and blue silk cloth.
Callias, on his horse outside the gates, gloatingly observed that Aspasia was alone in the gardens, with not even a distant slave in evidence, or a gardener. His men outnumbered the guards; still, he was afraid, as a coward, of entering the purlieus of the house and the school. If the guards, after the fearful act, attempted to seize him and his companions, they would be unhesitatingly slaughtered. As for the two within the gardens, they were of no moment to him. They might be able to flee and rejoin the company. If not, then let them perish. This he had not told the spurious Nereus, who had been reassured that the company would wait and bear the two off in safety.
Nereus, who was a thief and a murderer, though young and fair, had heard of the beauty of Aspasia, but even he was surprised at the tall stateliness of her, her aspect of a statue wrought in marble and tinted deliciously. Her silvery-gold hair was not dressed; it blew about her in a radiant cloud in the morning breeze. For an instant his nefarious heart hesitated, thinking of the coming devastation of that face, that exquisite form, for he had been gently bred and had been forced from his father’s house for his incorrigible conduct. Callias had shrewdly chosen him well, for he had patrician manners and an educated tongue.
Nereus greeted Aspasia with a proper bow and said in his cultivated voice, “Lady, it is gracious of you to receive us, and we are humbly grateful. Here is my sister, Io, of whom I have written to you. I pray you will receive and nurture her, though she is shy and seldom speaks. She will observe her childish silence.”
Aspasia bent her head and smiled tenderly at the young girl, for always she was moved by youth. She saw the fixed eyes, and then she hesitated, for there was no intelligence in them, but just an empty staring which their beauteous color and form could not conceal. She said, “You say she has been tutored well, Nereus?”
“Well indeed,” he said. “But she has not been exposed to public gaze, and so does not speak readily to strangers.”
His left hand pinched Io’s upper arm, and this was her signal, which she had rehearsed many times under the brutal guidance of Callias. She began to unwind the silk which concealed the deadly vial of fuming acid. She did not look away from Aspasia, who said, “Let us withdraw to the outdoor portico, where we can converse. Then I will show you, Nereus, my school.” It was her thought to question Io, about whom she had become uncertain. The girl had an infant’s eyes, blank and uninhabited. She reminded Aspasia of Cleo, who, despite her lack of intellect, was now the tyrant mistress of an intimidated Cadmus, a fact which invariably amused Aspasia. There was no one more rigid in demands and rules than the stupid. Moment by moment Aspasia was becoming convinced, regretfully, that Io was not a candidate for her sc
hool. Still, she had been mistaken before. She would not dismiss the two until she was completely convinced of Io’s unsuitability.
She turned to lead the way to the outdoor portico of her house, but Nereus said, “My little sister has brought a gift for you, Lady, and wishes to present it to you now.”
Aspasia faced them again, smiling. The last fold of the silk fell from the vial and Io gripped the vessel in her hand, staring at Aspasia’s face. She had lifted the top from it with a swift movement. At that instant a buzzing wasp flew before Aspasia’s face and she quickly stepped aside and waved her hand at the menacing insect. It was this that saved her, for even as she moved and made her gesture the girl flung the contents of the vial in the direction where she had been standing.
Hissing, and flaring redly, the acid arched in the early sun, and fell on the grass near Aspasia, where it burst into flames and exuded a stench which was intolerable. Aspasia recoiled with a cry of terror.
Nereus had received his orders. If, by some unseen misadventure, the acid failed he was to stab Aspasia in the heart as rapidly as possible. He saw the blazing acid on the grass; it was creeping in a thin serpent of fire through it, away from Aspasia. He drew his dagger and furiously advanced upon the shivering and horrified woman, while Io merely stood there, blankly staring and expressionless. At that moment Pericles and his men rounded the side of the building. Nereus saw them. He was a brave murderer, however, and would have completed his task had not Aspasia, herself, seized his wrist and flung his arm upright and had brought her knee swiftly to his groin. She screamed wildly; Nereus dropped his dagger and doubled over with a yell of pain. Pericles struck his horse with his whip and rushed towards the three, seeing the crawling flame, and the struggles of Aspasia, for though agonized Nereus had gripped one of her ankles and was twisting it, intending to bring her down where he could the more easily kill her.
Callias saw all this from his safety beyond the gates. He made a signal and the empty chariot and his horsemen began to roar away. However, Pericles’ men raced after them, though they were outnumbered. They had one advantage which they did not know as yet: Callias’ men were not soldiers and though they carried swords they hardly knew how to use them with any dexterity. So, they all fled. Pericles’ horsemen pursued, and the guards at the gate ran in their wake with drawn swords.
Pericles shouted for more guards, and he seized Nereus by the hair and pulled him from Aspasia. Io simply sat down on the grass and began to fold and unfold the discarded silken kerchief, and gaze about her unwonderingly. It was not Pericles’ intention to kill Nereus, who was much slighter and smaller than himself, and so he had to control his murderous rage, for he wanted information about the assassins. He caught Nereus about the throat and choked him into submission, then threw him on the ground and held him there with his booted foot. He looked over his shoulder at Aspasia, who was hugging herself with her arms and shuddering and weeping. He said, in a very calm voice, “It is over. Do not fear, beloved. Return to your house and await me.”
“They wished to destroy me,” she said.
‘That I know. I will soon discover why, and they shall be punished.”
She repeated over and over, “They wished to destroy me. Why?”
“Go into your house,” he said with terrible sternness, and then she obeyed, her head bent, her face in her hands, her hair lifted about her in the wind. Pericles’ face had drawn itself into formidable lines. Nereus feebly tried to stir, and creep from under that inexorable foot, and Pericles deftly kicked him in the temple. Nereus sprawled laxly, unconscious.
In the meantime the house guards appeared, running over the grass, swords drawn. The acid had stopped its crawling, and now was just a small smoking trench in the grass, without fire, and only with smoldering sparks here and there. Pericles said, “Take this murderer and lock him in some room and guard him constantly. Do not injure him. He must be questioned.”
Alone, and waiting, Pericles looked down at the black trench in the grass and for the first time he, too, began to tremble both with rage and horror. He felt undone. He looked at the sitting girl, Io, who had begun to hum softly to herself, winding the multicolored scarf about her wrist and raising it now and then to see the glimmer of it. Pericles’ first impulse was to kill her, and then he saw the vacancy of her young face, the untenanted aspect of her eyes. She was no more guilty of this atrocity than the birds in the trees, he thought. He said to her, tempering the roughness of his voice, “Who sent you here, wench?”
She heard him, with her slow wits, then she lifted her face and gazed at him. She only knew that he was a man; she had been taught seductiveness. She inclined her head and regarded him with blue eyes as shallow as a puddle deposited briefly by rain. She said in an infant’s voice, “Hector. Do you—bed, lord?” Her voice was uncertain, like the voice of a very young child. She began to gurgle incoherently, and Pericles frowned. To Pericles the imbecility of the girl impressed him with a kind of frightfulness, as if she were an elemental and not a human being. He saw that she had no conception of the enormity she had tried to complete. She was beyond good or evil, for she had no soul. Pericles felt himself in the presence of something innocently appalling yet supra-natural, from which the human spirit must recoil.
A female slave came into the outdoor portico and Pericles called to her and she came running. “Take this child to your quarters,” he said, indicating Io. The slave led Io away by the hand, and Io went with docility and unasking, and without resistance. Pericles shuddered. The garden was bright and lonely about him, smiling in the risen sun, but there was only tumult and fury in his heart. The gardens seemed to mock him and he realized that nature was completely uninterested in the turmoil of humanity and its tragedies and therefore was direful in itself. Alas, he thought, we desire that even nature partake of our passions and despairs and fears, and when it does not it confuses and alarms us. We are insignificant before its forces and its own brutal designs, which are without thought or emotion. The Fates spun their webs with no tremors, no sympathies, no engagement with those they raised or destroyed. They were as indifferent as Io, and therefore as much to be feared. How presumptuous it is of us to think that the abysmal depths of some huge unknown consciousness is aware of us!
He looked at the temple to the Unknown God and he felt considerable bitterness, as if he had been betrayed. He dared not think of what Aspasia had escaped, as yet. His whole mind was set upon vengeance.
The soldiers and the guards, panting and dusty, returned with but one man, who was slightly bloody and disheveled. That man was Callias, surnamed “The Rich.” The others had been slain after a hard battle. The only reason the guards had not killed him was because he had cried, “I am the grandson of the Archon, Daedalus, Callias, and if you murder me you will pay to the last drop of blood! Take me to Pericles, for my mother was married to him.” To the last he was a coward, thinking only of his own life, and never of his grandfather or his mother, who could be crushed under this scandal and attempt at murder or worse.
He thought himself above the law, as all the stupid did, and therefore had privileges. He also believed that Pericles would spare him.
Pericles wondered at his own lack of surprise when Callias was dragged before him into the atrium, bleeding from several superficial wounds, and as grimy as a peasant. His face was bestial and defiant, though his eyes flickered when he saw Pericles.
Pericles contemplated him as one contemplates something unspeakably obscene. He said to the guards, “Take him away, and put the brand of slavery on his forehead.” Callias shrieked and struggled futilely, but the guards overpowered him and bore him away. Sudden nausea took Pericles. He bent his head to his knees for a moment or two, then accepted the iced wine a male slave mutely offered him. He found he was sweating coldly; the walls of the atrium appeared to move about him like white sails. He thought of Daedalus and Dejanira with enormous hatred and considered the pleasure he would feel when his soldiers flung Callias at their feet with the s
hameful brand of slavery on his brow. Forever he would be marked as a thing, and not a man. This was more desirable than any other punishment.
Aspasia, as pale as death still, came into the atrium and stood mutely before him, seeing his silent and mingled rage and hate and emotion. He was leaning back in his chair now, his eyes closed. After a little he became aware of her presence and looked up at her. She watched him as she said, “I have taken the liberty, lord, of countermanding your order to have Callias branded as a slave.”
He sat there and gazed at her and she had never seen the face he now presented to her, the blind and menacing face, and she stepped back, affrighted. But he said quietly enough, “You dared to do this thing, Aspasia? You dared to disobey me?”
“Yes, lord.” She clasped her hands tightly to her breast and felt her first terror of him. Never had he seemed so imperial in his short white tunic, his helmeted head, his fixed expression, and never so dangerous. She had often been afraid of Al Taliph; in comparison that fear was nothing to what she felt now. She trembled visibly, but kept her features as still as possible.
“You doubtless have an explanation for this mortal affront, woman?”
Never had he addressed her in such a voice and with such chill insult. She bowed her head and said, hardly audible, “I do, lord. You have two sons, and they are brothers of this Callias. Would you have Xanthippus and Paralus kinsmen of a slave?”