Keptah paled. He stood up. “I will see them immediately. Have you offered them wine?”
“Yes, Master. But they refused.”
Keptah halted in the very motion of walking, and he closed his eyes spasmodically. Then he entered the house and went to the great hall, with its rough mosaic floor in blue, yellow, red, and white, and its squat columns and simple furniture. The crimson beams of the sun flowed into the hall, and in their ominous light the physician saw the Praetorians, their armor as red as blood, their helmeted heads high and grim.
As Keptah approached, searching their faces with quiet desperation, he saw that the superior officer’s eyes were rimmed with dry scarlet and that his young face expressed complete misery under its layer of dust.
“I am a physician, a citizen of Rome, and I care for this household,” Keptah said to the officer, bowing. “I understand you wish to see the noble tribune, Diodorus.”
The officer looked at him for a moment, then he said, “Yes. I come directly from the Divine Augustus, with a message of great moment.”
Keptah studied him and saw more keenly the scorched rims of the young soldier’s eyes, and he considered. “Is it possible that you know Diodorus?” he asked.
The officer’s head lifted, and he shifted his fierce Roman eyes away from Keptah. He said truculently, “He was my general when I was very young and new in the field, and he was my father’s friend. My name is Plotius Lysanias. The tribune knows me well. He was sponsor for my little son, born a year ago, and I gave that son the name of Diodorus, in honor.” His throat was suddenly convulsed, then he raised his head still higher. “I must see the tribune at once.”
Keptah said, very gently, “It will grieve you to the heart to know that Diodorus is dying. He returned from Rome today and collapsed in this very hall, in my arms. He has been dying for two years. Now he has been stricken with the last mortality, and he will expire before the moon fully rises. His wife and his children are with him now.”
The officer stared at him disbelievingly for a few moments, then suddenly his youthful eyes were filled with tears. He looked at his soldiers, and said, “Leave me alone with this physician.”
When they were alone, Keptah said to him, “And what will your message be, noble sir, to a heroic Roman who is dying as a soldier dies, full of wounds?”
Plotius was silent. Then he sheathed his drawn sword and looked at Keptah proudly. “As the tribune’s junior officer I know how to address my general.” He hesitated. “My uncle was the brave young senator, Plotius, for whom I was named, who was done to death in the Senate some years ago, and not by a soldier’s sword and not protected by a soldier’s shield. He died ignominiously by the poison of men’s minds.”
“He did not die ignominiously,” said Keptah, with sadness. “No hero truly dies so. He lives in the hearts of his countrymen forever, and in the shining core of history.”
He led the way to Diodorus’ chamber. The tribune was lying on his bed in the deep crimson sunset, and he was very still. But he was conscious, surrounded by his wife and young children. Plotius, overcome though he was, saw that Diodorus’ wife was as beautiful and as regal as Venus as she sat by the bed holding her husband’s hand, and that her demeanor held in it love and devotion and a spiritual fortitude. The children stood by their father’s bed, weeping pitifully, and the tribune was trying to soothe them.
“Ah, my Priscus,” he was saying to the oldest child in a loving but feeble voice, “you must not grieve. You are my son, and you will be a soldier, and soldiers do not weep. You must care for your mother, and your brother and sister, and must always remember that death is preferable to dishonor.”
He suddenly panted and gasped. Iris bent over him and kissed his pallid forehead, which was running with the death sweat, and then his lips. Her golden hair fell over him like a veil. He lifted a weak and trembling hand and stroked that hair. Iris laid her head on his heaving breast, and was very still.
“My dearest, my most beloved wife,” he murmured. “The mother of my children. I go, but I do not go forever. I will wait outside these portals for you, and when your day comes I will be there, to take your hand again in eternal peace and brightness.”
Keptah and Plotius approached the bed, and Diodorus became aware of them. His dying eyes were vivid and alive. “Ah, Plotius,” he said, in faint wonder, “you have heard that I have had a summons to the halls of Pluto. Thank you for coming, for you were as a son to me.”
The arrogant Praetorian knelt on the other side of the bed and looked at the tribune, and his soldier’s eyes ran with a soldier’s tears. He said, “Noble Diodorus, I have a message for you from Caesar, which I am to deliver to you personally.”
Diodorus’ gray face changed. He tried to lift his head. He looked at Iris after a moment, then at his children, and his face dwindled, and the last agony he was to suffer ran like a livid tide over his features.
The soldier lifted his voice and said clearly, “Caesar will weep this night. For the message I have brought to you, my general, is a summons to his presence in order to discuss certain unsatisfactory general’s replacement in the field. He wishes you to make that replacement in your own person.”
A great wave of joy engulfed Diodorus’ face. He regarded his wife with rapture. “Have you heard that, my beloved? I spoke against Tiberius today, implying he was a false and corrupt and bloodthirsty Caesar, yet at the last he remembered that he was a soldier and that I am a soldier, and he wishes to give me a soldier’s honor! Ah, then I know that he is not as venal as I thought, and that there is now hope for Rome, my dear country!”
His wavering hand sought the hand of Plotius, and the young officer bowed his head and kissed that hand, feeling its deadly coldness against his lips.
Diodorus spoke in a louder voice. “Tell Caesar that Diodorus Cyrinus cannot answer his call, for I have been summoned by One greater than he, into Whose hands I must commend my spirit.”
He tried to raise Plotius, but Plotius only knelt and wept.
Then Iris uttered a broken cry and fell across her husband’s body like a white birch tree struck down by the lightning.
Keptah and Plotius returned to the hall, and heard the sound of wailing raised from every quarter. Plotius stood in silence, his head bent, his stern lips quivering. Finally he looked at the physician and said:
“It was Carvilius Ulpian who went to Caesar, but in any event the result would have been the same.” He paused. “Do not be anxious for the wife and children of the tribune. With my own ears I heard Tiberius give the word that they would not be injured, and that the wife of Diodorus would be appointed the guardian of the children and their wealth, and her genealogy would be inscribed in the public books of Rome, testifying to her patrician ancestry.”
“God is merciful,” said Keptah. “Even out of evil He can evoke good, blessed be His Name.”
The Senate, hearing of Diodorus’ sudden death, decided furtively among themselves that they would not dare to attend his funeral for fear of Caesar’s wrath. They were stunned with bewildered astonishment when Caesar commanded them all to be present, with full honors and in their senatorial togas. They could not believe it when they also learned that Tiberius’ own Praetorian Guard would escort the body to the pyre in complete military regalia, and that a detachment of old soldiers, members of Diodorus’ former legion, were to carry the body draped in the banners of the Empire. The last stupefying report was that Tiberius himself would deliver the funeral oration, dressed in his military garb and standing in his own military chariot. Ten trumpeters were also to be there, and ten drummers.
Before the body was consigned to the pyre Tiberius said, “Here was a soldier of Rome, simple in his speech, tender in his heart, quick to righteous wrath and quick to mercy. Here IS a soldier of Rome, who helped to forge the Empire with his courageous sword, who was never known to lie, to deceive, to betray either his country or his fellow man. We, standing here, cannot do him honor, for honor was given to him at bi
rth, stood beside him on the battlefield, and lay down with him when he died! It is not we who deliver him to the ashes of his fathers and into the hands of his gods. He never deserted them.”
A few days later Carvilius Ulpian was mysteriously poisoned. When Keptah was told of this he said, “Let him have peace, as Diodorus has peace.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
It had been the most miserable of winters. The Seven Hills shouldered up like mounded graves, still as death, crusted with snow for long and bitter days. The Campagna alternately crackled with ice, then blackened with spongy marshiness. Snow blew into the faces of the people; the roads glittered like mirrors, steamed coldly at noonday, glittered again under a steely moon. The white palaces stood like upended slabs and bones against the whiteness that surrounded them, and their columns dripped with deathly water, and their cornices shivered with icicles. The Tiber stilled sluggishly, and sometimes its current ran between the snow like the dark current of the Styx, reflecting a pale sky and a pale sun. Smoke rose from the centers of temples and from the homes of the wealthy, but in the Trans-Tiber there was a quietness like the plague, and the people, poor, desolate, and hungry, huddled together closely in tiny and fetid rooms for warmth. At times the wintry gale bellowed through the great clustered city in godlike wrath, and the people declared that it was filled with savage and unearthly voices. Few went abroad, not even the ladies in their rich fur coats and their warmed litters. They preferred to sit in the smallest and warmest rooms in their homes, drawn close to braziers red with embers. Sometimes multitudes gathered in the Pantheon, in the center of which, and on the very marble floor protected by a sheet of iron, had been built a great fire. The statues of the gods and goddesses, in their gilded niches, seemed alive and moving in the flickering crimson shadows. The smoke of burning wood and incense revealed then hid them, then revealed them again, as if through clouds. The mighty hole in the ceiling belched out the smoke; then when the wind capriciously changed the hole was choked, and the smoke driven back into the temple, where it almost smothered the shivering inhabitants. The statues slowly took on a griminess, and the white feet darkened.
The old graybeards said pompously to their youth, “This is not the worst winter. I remember when the Tiber lay in frozen arms for weeks, and the bridges resembled icy marble and glittered so blindingly in the sun that passengers going across were dazzled. You youngsters are weak and soft!”
The pigeons gathered in hordes under eaves; some froze, and their bodies dropped on the pavement. Their voices were silent.
His Majesty, Augustus Tiberius, his court, all the Senate, all the knights and the Augustales and their households and favorite slaves and freedmen and concubines and wives and children and gladiators and singers and dancers and wrestlers and pugilists and charioteers left Rome in a vast exodus to the warm islands in the Bay of Naples, or to Pompei or Herculaneum. There, in the warm green and gold of a gentler clime, they sunned themselves and sailed on brilliant blue waters and gave and attended banquets. Couriers on fast horses raced between the city and Naples and its islands with the latest gossip and news and market quotations and reports on the weather. The granaries were reported to be ominously emptying, the people despairing and vindictive. But the court and its entourage shrugged. It was pleasant to see the plum-colored sea at sunset, drifting with red reflections from the burning sky, to dine on terraces and in enclosed gardens filled with the sound of restless birds and fountains, to visit Tiberius and to gamble and drink, and to laugh and be amused by the motley entertainers who had followed them like scavengers. Tiberius had built great baths on the island of Capreae, and colorful boats ran to them regularly, filled with laughter and the tinted faces of ladies.
Then almost between one day and one night the south wind softly roared over the northern blasted land, filled with the scent of life and the fragrance of far fields of flowers and the promise of summer. In Rome everything began to drip and tinkle in the sudden thaw; columns blazed with light; cornices ran like cataracts; the Seven Hills and their crowded palaces and fora shone with lively sun. The streets overflowed with water of a bad odor, but the people were happy. The shops opened, and the markets rampaged again with life, the movement of animals and humans, the color of merchandise. The wineshops filled; a perfume of pastries and roasting meat fluttered in the warm wind. Streams of travelers appeared eagerly on the roads leading into the city. The fields blew with sheets of little red poppies, like living blood. The Campagna, as usual, stank, and clouds of mosquitoes appeared. Even these did not annoy the people too much; they were all heralds of spring again. The winter and its iron miseries were forgotten. The Tiber ran greenly under the sun, and the bridges swarmed. And Tiberius and his court returned to the city.
“It is too bad the Senate is returning, too,” said some skeptics, sourly. “At least in the winter we did not have to endure them and their corruption. Eheu!”
Tiberius was not popular; his cold nature and fixed pallid face did not endear him to the volatile Roman populace, who preferred a certain vividness and histrionics in their Caesars. Gaius Octavius, a simple soldier, had not suited their temperament, and Tiberius suited them even less. Some of the old men talked of Julius Caesar and the liveliness of his friends. They only shook their heads when their sons and grandsons reminded them that Julius had been a potential dictator and a despiser of the Senate, and that Gaius Octavius and Tiberius deferred to the Senate in accordance with law. “Do you call these laws?” demanded the old men, with superb contempt. “The Senate may have the show of power, but Tiberius is the power. They abdicated to him in order that they have more power themselves! It is not a paradox at all.”
The multitudes flocked to the Ostian Gate to watch the return of Tiberius and his retinue even before the sun rose in golden splendor over the most eastern houses and palaces and hills. Caesar had first stopped in Antium to visit his villa and to entertain in his parsimonious way, and to sacrifice to Ceres and Proserpine now that the latter had returned to her mother from the crepuscular halls of death. Even his own still and colorless face seemed to take on a glow of returning life, and his tone was less nasty than usual with the senators. When he saw the vast mobs awaiting him at the Ostian Gate, surrounded as he was by his Praetorians carrying the eagles of Rome, he even smiled in his wintry fashion. Contemptuous of the teeming rabble, he was yet human enough to be warmed by the thunderous ovation they gave him. He stood in his golden chariot like a racer and held up his right arm stiffly in a soldierly salute. Yellow dust, illuminated by the sun, glittered about him, and this too, after the wet and icy winter, delighted the people. Though they whistled at the ladies, shouted laughing imprecations at the senators, and even commented sardonically on Tiberius himself, and mocked the Augustales and the patricians, they were happy.
The grim dark winter, lashed with snow like biting sand, had been forgotten, too, on the estates of the dead tribune, Diodorus. Almost overnight, it seemed, the hills burst with green, the olive groves glimmered with fresh silver, the stream glistened with the most heavenly blue, the sky softened to delicate azure, the fields danced with poppies, the black pointed cypresses, leaning against the skies, lost their rigidity. Buds swelled and unfurled on the trees, the pastures velveted and turned emerald, the new lambs capered behind their mothers, the horses took up their eternal lewd jesting with the mules, the cattle ambled forth and stood in their reflections in the small blue eddies of the narrow river, tiny leaves appeared on the rose bushes in the gardens, and the released fountains sparkled and chattered again. Doves with purple breasts murmured among the porticoes and arches and colonnades; birds cried vehemently as they prepared to build new nests. And at sunset the air beamed with wide warm gold, and the evening star was newborn, and the copper moon hovered low on the horizon in a haze of last scarlet. Sweetest of all, and the most exciting, was the passionate and all-pervading scent of the earth, at once holy and carnal, at once peaceful and perturbing.
Lucanus had never seen a Roman spr
ing before. The turbulent red East had merely taken on a more tumultuous form at this time of year. Now this green and springing softness, this murmuring sweet clamor, this gentle contrast of hues enchanted him for all his grief and his chronic uneasiness of spirit. Even in the small sanitorium for the slaves he could not refrain from lifting his head in the very midst of grave examinations and listening to the voices of the earth and smelling the divine and insistent perfumes and feeling the warmth of the soft wind against his cheek. Sometimes then he would actually smile, and was young again.
“Even the most hardened wretch must feel a promise in the spring,” said Keptah to Cusa one blessed evening as they sat in an outdoor portico and looked at the sky. “It is the deep promise of God, and no man can resist it though his heart be as empty as a broken vessel.”
“Lucanus resists it with more or less success,” said Cusa.
“He thinks of Diodorus too much,” said Keptah, sadly. “Once he upbraided me for permitting the tribune to go to the city on that last fatal day. I should have drugged him, he cried at me. That the tribune’s fate was inevitable, as a man of character and integrity and honor, did nothing to ease this young man’s anger against me. Like all youth, he is inconsistent. He is determined to pursue his way along the Great Sea, on the noisome ships and in the stinking ports and towns and cities, for that, he believes, is his duty. I tell him that Diodorus was concerned with his own duty as savagely as he is concerned.”