Spartacus

  And Gershom ben Sanballat, coughing blood at night, would think of the orange groves of Kadesh as he heard the sleep-breath of Judith beside him, and wonder in his dark, closed heart when the end would come. For he knew it would come, and yet – and yet – the Strategos had saved them before. Might he not again?

  Such the hope that burgeoned through all the slave army, even while it shivered and food grew scarce. The Strategos would save them yet. And about that hope presently blossomed an insane flowering of rumour – of his power, his plans, how he had formed an alliance with the African princes, who were sailing to his aid, the legions in Iberia had revolted, Crassus would be summoned away to deal with them, the Pirates had been won over again, and were sailing back to transport the Free Legions to Sicily. . . .

  Gershom knew these fancies but fancies, striding back at nightfall to the house on the sea-wall where Judith awaited him. For he had taken the woman to his bed again, in that wave of knowledge of a hostile world that had come on all the slaves, in a sudden loneliness such as he had known never before. Sometimes there came between them still the shadow of the dead child whom she had strangled in the Picene camp, he would see it in the lamplight as he watched her disrobe; and the Jew would groan, and she come to him, thinking an old wound ached, as it did, and look down on his tangled beard and tormented eyes, and ask what she might do. And Gershom would growl: ‘Sleep.’

  But he thought of this son who might have prayed by his side in the Temple, bringing an offering there with him, where the sheen of the plumage of doves was blue in the blue-tiled courts; who might have made the last rites over him, dead; who might have known the winds of Levant, the cry of the Hasidim bands in salute; who might have endured the holy ceremony of circumcision, consecrating him to God. And to Gershom, who had never hated the Romans as Masters, knowing there would be slaves till the world ended, there came the cold Jewish fury in his heart as he looked at the broken woman who had murdered the fruit of her womb and his seed to save it from a Roman spear. If ever the Strategos led them against Rome again . . . !

  Twice Spartacus rode out to see the great dyke with which the Romans had hemmed him in Rhegium. Castus went with him, riding wistfully beside him that second time. But Spartacus was far in his own thoughts as he halted his stallion. Wrapped in his abolla, he looked on that line of earthworks driving straight as a sword-cut across the Peninsula, the black earth piled high on the further side, the near side a deep dyke, swimming with liquid mud, defended with pointed stakes. Beyond, and on the parapets in the cold winter light, gleamed the helmets of the Roman sentries. On the wind came the smell of their camp, the smoke and stench of a camp of the time. A little Iberian, a leader of velites, one Titul, came riding to where the two slave-generals sat, and pointed to a group of Romans riding the further side of the fosse.

  ‘It is the Lean himself,’ he said.

  So, beyond bowshot of each other, Spartacus and Crassus looked on each other for the first time. In the wind Crassus’ cloak was drawn tight about his mean body, his face, high and pinched, peered from under his peaked helmet, the face of a merchant, his tribunes said, cold and sharp, with clear eyes and the avaricious mouth.

  ‘It is the Gladiator himself,’ a tribune murmured.

  He was mounted on the great white stallion that all Italy knew well. His abolla shook out in the wind from the gilded armour that encased his body, a great body that fitly matched the great horse it bestrode. The Romans could see the blow of the uncut Thracian hair in the wind, for the slave wore no helmet. Crassus nodded.

  ‘We’ll yet have him on the cross. Bring a sagittarius.’

  So they brought an archer, and he bent a great bow, the wind in his favour, but the distance was too great. They saw the slave-general sit unmoved while three arrows were loosed. Then he turned about and rode back to his camp, and the Romans to theirs, while the stratus clouds thickened in the sky. And that night the frost began to loosen its grip on the Rhegine land.

  [ii]

  Next morning the snow began to fall, at first a fairy feathering of the greyed Italian sky. But as the day increased the wind rose, driving the snow ever thicker, in great gusts. Many of the slaves had never seen snow before. They ran out of doors, the women and children, and stared at it with astounded eyes and palms extended to the sailing flakes. The Negroes thought it salt and licked their hands, but it melted, leaving a cold, brittle taste. The Gaul and Teutone legions ceased their shivering. They knew this thing and were unafraid, and played great games in the piling drifts, rolling balls of the snow in effigies of Crassus and pelting these effigies with filth, rolling smaller balls with which they pelted the Eastern and African slaves, who stared astounded from their encampments at the antics of the Northern men. But these were remembering the long winter nights by the Baltic, forested dawns that came white in snow; and they hated Spartacus that he had led them to perish in this little Neck when they might have crossed the great mountains and by now have reached to their own lands.

  Kleon was strategos of the day. He rode the Rhegine boundaries, with two Bithynians in attendance. On the Neck he came to the encampment where Titul, the leader of the velites, crouched shivering by a fire. The Greek smiled at him, contemptuously.

  ‘Do you fear a storm worse than the Masters, Iberian? This stuff is no more than the spittle of Kokolkh.’

  Titul shivered. ‘Mighty were the great White Storms in the vanished Western Isle. Do you think the God calls for a sacrifice?’

  ‘Of Roman hearts, without doubt,’ Kleon said, and rode on. At the slave dyke he found the Bithynian legion marched back to the town, and Castus’ Gauls replacing it. Castus himself lay idle in his tent.

  ‘The Romans won’t move,’ said Castus. ‘This storm’s but begun.’

  ‘So Spartacus says.’

  ‘You’ve seen him to-day? He’ll ride out to the dykes?’

  Kleon shook his head, with a cold wonder over this love of the Gaul for the Thracian Gladiator. Many had loved him: but this was the strangest love of all. And because in the ancient Hellas there had been such loves, acknowledged and unashamed, Kleon found the essence unamazing, if the constancy of Castus inexplicable.

  ‘The Strategos has other tasks. Give up this hoping for him, Gaul. He’ll never lie in your bed, or you in his.’

  Castus flushed red, his hand on his dagger. But the eunuch merely smiled his dark, weary smile, and rode away with wrapped cloak and head bent against the bitter wind-drive.

  In the camp of the Bithynians he found Gershom ben Sanballat squatting over lists of gear and equipment, stores, all military supplies. Spartacus had called for these lists, and Gershom pulled angrily at his beard at sight of Kleon.

  ‘Your work, I suppose. What need have we of these lists until spring? We can’t move until spring – if then.’

  ‘Spartacus makes his own plans, seeking counsel from none.’

  ‘Unless it be the shade of the divine Plato, doubtlessly summoned from hell. Greek: Gannicus again is trying to stir revolt among the legions.’

  Kleon was unalarmed. He yawned. ‘We’d feel the Free Legions unhomely, were Gannicus not in our midst, attempting to stir up revolt.’

  The German lay on a couch in a rough wooden shelter, drinking warmed ale, a woman on either side of him, the look of a sated bull on his face. He barely stirred at Kleon’s entrance.

  ‘There’s nothing – nothing but snow and waiting here while we stagnate and the Thracian dreams.’

  ‘And what would you have him do?’

  ‘Drive out the Rhegine Masters. Cut their throats or drive them into the Rhegine Dyke. So we might have the food they now eat. Or send again to Sicily, offering a greater sum to the Pirates.’

  ‘Or send to Crassus, offering the head of Gannicus as the price of a free passage. It is you who dream, Scythian.’

  Evening was falling as he rode back to the town: with its fall the snow increased to a blind whirl that made seeing a matter of chance. The sky cascaded upon the earth,
Rhegium was wrapped in white, its hills and dales. In their houses, country and town, the Masters, starving, crouched above low-burning braziers and knew they might not survive until spring. Already there was famine and worse. And Crassus (they knew) would not move until Spring.

  Kleon found Spartacus asleep, and Ialo and Mella on tiptoe in the house. The Greek went and sat by the brazier in the room where the Strategos slept, covered with a cloth. Outside the wind whoomed through the narrow streets of the Messine town. Kleon sat and stared in the brazier, wearied with his ride, his thoughts dulled by the buffet of the storm, his eyelashes fringed with snow-rime. Once Mella came and looked in, then drew away at the vacant stare of the eunuch. Spartacus slept in the half-dark, silent, as one dead.

  Whither? Where? What thing could they next attempt? Spring would come, and over the dykes that hemmed them in come the freshened legions of Rome, trained and practised all the winter months for its coming. The legions, with food and fresh-ground swords – and the starved Free Legions to oppose them. And galley-loads of Romans crossing the Straits, assailing the town, undefended, for no engineer had taken the place of Hiketas. Was this the end? – or might Spartacus waken again?

  Now he could feel the house shake in each icy gust; and he thought of the shivering encampments where the slaves lay who could find no lodging in the crowded town. The women and children would perish first, that would leave more food for the men, a better defence when the spring at last came. But in this weather even the men, the southern and eastern men, were dying thickly enough out there in the dark.

  He heard Spartacus awake. The Thracian peered at him in the half-dark.

  ‘Kleon? It is still snowing?’

  ‘Thicker than ever,’ the Greek said.

  The Gladiator listened for a little to the sound of it. Then he stood up.

  ‘We’ll leave Rhegium tonight.’

  [iii]

  It was three hundred stadia in length, fifteen feet deep and fifteen feet wide, the Rhegine Ditch that Crassus had driven across the neck of the Peninsula. None might pass, north or south: and as the gale of that night, snow-blind, set in, the centurions withdrew their men from the emplacements on the dyke, for in the open no living thing might survive. Presently the Roman camp was white-swathed, and still the gale drove black, now sleet, now snow, south-westwards in the dark. From their camp the Romans presently heard the howling of wolves, and knew the scavengers of the night were abroad, hungrier than ever in the famine that held the Peninsula.

  No living thing could live or endure long in that darkness and storm. Spring would come. Until then. . . .

  The slave-army marched from the Messine town. Many perished ere they had gone ten stadia. Many were lost in the blinding gusts of the wind, and strayed into the hills and next day were surrounded and massacred by the Masters. Yet the main body held together, the horse moving at the pace of the women and the loaded baggage-wains that creaked softly forward, with muffled wheels, through the snow-covered tracks. For, by the order of Spartacus, they had swathed the wheels in straw that no noise might be heard; and all gear that might tinkle or clank on slave-armour was swathed in cloth, and no light was shown in all the length of the army as it moved up through the night.

  Sometimes a great gust of snow smote on the marching ranks so that the whole army paused, gasping, leaning against the wind, the Bithynians coughing and choking, the Gauls and Germans grimly enduring. Yet presently upon them all, even upon the women who stumbled and gasped through the unending darkness, a fierce hate and energy descended. Weeping and cursing, the slaves still marched forward, seeing but a hand’s-breadth in front of their eyes in the snow-swirl, unaware whither they were led, how it fared in front, or who were lost behind.

  Titul led the van, Spartacus and Ialo behind him, surrounded by the Gladiator guard. The Thracian Ialo had his hand on the tail of Titul’s horse, the other hand grasping a dagger that he might stab his fellow-slave to the heart at the least sign of treachery. This was the command of the Strategos, who rode composed and silent, peering into the snow.

  The snow fell thicker and thicker. Twice Spartacus sent back a message, asking if all was well, to Kleon who brought up the rear with stragglers. It passed from mouth to mouth, the message, the Gauls gasped the words in their clipped Latin argot, the Germans screamed it in their guttural throats, the Bithynians whispered it down the tracks, through the lanes of stumbling feet in the dark, the flash and glow in the snow of swaying shoulders and desperate faces. Twice the message reached Kleon and he sent back the word that all was well, though the message lied. Then no further message came, for by then, on the Neck, in the full pelt of the storm, the slaves cursed and refused any message, believing at last the Gods were to destroy them, that Spartacus had sold himself to the Masters and now led them out to die in the storm.

  Titul drew bridle. ‘The Dyke.’

  The Strategos rode to the verge and tried to peer down and across it. Then he turned and gave the order that it should be filled up.

  It was impossible. But it was done. The slaves fought and wept in the darkness, weeping with cold, dragging up great stones to the Neck and hurling them in the Roman dyke, piling earth and trees and baggage-wains in the great dark gap. The roar of the storm grew to a scream while they toiled and fought; and a great moan went south on the wind through the Rhegine night.

  [iv]

  The morning came. The wind had died away, save ever and again an icy gust that flapped the soft scud of the snow into drifting wreaths over the shrouded hills. All the world lay storm-raped and still, except for the howling of the wolves in the woods, their hunger still unsatisfied as another hungry day broke.

  The Roman camp awoke. Crassus had slept in his tent shiveringly, for he hated the south and the cold. Yet when they brought him warmed wine they found him already in his armour. He had resolved to leave the Peninsula, leave his tribunes to hold the slaves in their trap, and himself return to Rome and heed to his own interests until the spring came.

  He gave his orders swiftly, and a murmur of relief passed over the camp when the news was known. The legions might relax a little at last.

  The guards who had withdrawn from the dyke marched back there shiveringly, and took up their posts. But when the centurions came to the southern sector they stared aghast.

  Even the snow might not cover it. For a third of the dyke had been filled in the night; and, winding dark under the canopy of snow, a great black track rose out of Rhegium like the trail of a snake, and passed north, into the horizon’s whiteness.

  The Free Legions had filled in the ditch and marched unheard past the Roman camp in the storm. Spring was awaiting their feet as they pressed north. And once again all Italy lay at the feet of the Gladiator.

  VI. THE MASTERS

  Breaking-Point

  [i]

  THEY marched into Lucania and into the spring, Crassus toiling wearily in their wake – despairingly, his tribunes thought, out-generalled and out-manoeuvred. And the whisper ran through the legions that he planned himself to retire on Rome, leaving the war to other hands and the return of Pompeius. Meantime, the Romans passed through a land stripped bare in the famine-march of the slaves, the spring had wilted at their touch. Starving bands of nomads and robbers who had once been free citizens now roamed the land, with tales of the cruelties of the black Jew leader and the Greek eunuch who organized searches in houses and barns, looting everything that might be carried away, and destroying that which could not. To ease his fear and fury Crassus had numbers of these bandit nomads nailed to trees, and followed on in the trail of Spartacus.

  What was now his objective? The sea? – or again to march north through Gallia Cisalpina, and escape from Italy – not turn as once before, inexplicably, he had done?

  The Free Legions camped in North Lucania, near the city of Pola. There Spartacus called a counsel of his tribunes, a day of soft Italian sunlight, in the space outside the door of his tent. While they heard him speak the slave leaders lay ab
out his feet on the ground, and Spartacus looked at them with inscrutable eyes: faces with which he had grown so familiar, the bull-like brutality of Gannicus, the haughty Jew face of Gershom, Kleon’s thin, sardonic profile, the blond fairness of Castus. Oenomaus had died in Rhegium.

  In the slave-camp all around was a hammering on anvils and a sharpening of swords. Spring and war on the Masters had come again.

  Spartacus was short and plain in his speech. ‘Tomorrow we’ll march on Rome.’

  With many guesses as to their nature, they had assembled to hear his plans. But none had guessed this. For a little while they said nothing. Then Kleon spoke in his thin, eunuch’s voice:

  ‘There’s no other course. But I thought I alone saw that.’

  Gershom of Kadesh looked from one to the other, sardonically. ‘So? We’ll go peep again at Rome, and lick our lips, and scurry away – as we did before?’

  ‘We’ll not run this time,’ Spartacus said. ‘The Free Legions are of a different temper now.’

  And this was true. They had been welded as a blade in a fire in the months in Rhegium. But Gershom combed at his beard.

  ‘But Rome—’

  ‘It is madness.’

  This was Gannicus. He spoke not with his usual heat, the bull-bellowing that Kleon and Gershom, with their southern blood, found pitiful and contemptible, but with the coolness of strength and certainty. He said again, ‘It’s madness. And my legions’ll have no part in it.’

  Gershom looked at him. ‘You threaten the council?’

  The German laughed. ‘The Teutones need no threats to say what they will or will not.’

  Then Castus spoke. ‘Nor the Gauls.’

  At that all save Spartacus looked on him in astonishment – he who had followed the Thracian with such blind devotion, the open mock of the slave-camps, good general though he might be. Spartacus looked from one to other of his tribunes with the changing dark lights in his eyes – sombre and deep, yet shining still like the eyes of a snake.