Spartacus (18 page)

‘Take these away. What is your name, woman?'

‘I am Lavinia,' she said, in a white whisper.

‘A Roman?'

She found his thick Latin barely intelligible. But she understood. She nodded.

And that night, when at length he slept and she drew shudderingly back from his arms, far off and ringingly she heard a wolf howl; and, harlot though she was, listened with quivering nostrils.

[v]

All the next day and all the next night the smithy fires flared in the guarded camp of the slaves under Papa. Twice forced to evacuate it in the campaign waged with Varinus, it had yet grown homely to many of them, they had garlanded its huts and shelters with boughs; and the women in autumn days had strewn flowers in its shelters, and daubed its posts with images of the gods, while the mountain soared guardian through the passing days. Now, in the flare of the watchfires, Mount Papa watched their last night.

There was a calling of orders, a crying of names, mustering of companies rising shrill above the noise of the beaten anvils. Slaves knelt by the fires and hammered their shield-rims or sharpened their swords; a wail of unsleeping children rose all around. The legion of Thracians, appointed to march under Spartacus himself, wrought through sweating hours to forge the javelins with which he desired them to arm. As with Gershom's legion he planned to possess a body of soldiers neither legionaries nor hoplitai, but modelled on the peltasts of whom Kleon had told.

Greek literati sat everywhere, copying-slaves who had joined the revolt, making notes of provisions and armour, numbers and companies. Four men, three Gauls and a Greek, appointed spies by Kleon the eunuch, wandered from legion to legion, learning the secret opinions and complainings of the slaves. None knew what was towards in the northern march, but the wildest rumours were spread about – that Spartacus the unconquered would seize the land, and make himself king with them as his guard, and defy the power of the Masters for ever. And a growing murmur swelled to a shout, a shout that echoed through the listening hills:

‘AVE, SPARTACUS! AVE, REX SERVORUM!'

Crixus, alone undisturbed, slept in his tent, dreaming of that unhomely Gaul he had little desire to regain. Elpinice came once and troubled his dreams; but in a little while his God arose and drove her back into the land of shades.

And in the early dawn the Free Legions were on the march, northward, up through the tracks they had descended early that year. But now the ground was white with hoar-frost, and a chill wind blew from Lucania. Great baggage-waggons rumbled up the track, the oxen labouring deep-breathing, dragging northwards the spoil of South Italy. Above, Papa was wreathed in mist, but the slaves knew little of augurs, for their Gods were but ill remembered.

The Gauls had wreathed their hair with chaplets of brown leaves and marched out with their helmets slung on their backs, the great Gaul swords slung with them, their spears upended as staves. Once slaves of the mine, the portico, the plantation, they led the legions north, and, singing, vanished into the morning dimness.

The German bands of Gannicus tramped heavily after. Lastly, the Thracians, three thousand strong, with new-welded javelins in their belts and Spartacus riding his stallion in their midst, marched northwards just as the wintry sunshine lifted the cloudy streamers from Mount Papa's crest.

Crixus, who commanded the rearguard, laden with baggage, knew nothing of this departure. He slept in the almost deserted camp till roused by a slave who desired to dismantle his hut. Thereat, yawning, he arose and went out to look at Papa for the last time. Then he looked from that to the track that led north.

‘Our Gods have a Fortune awaiting us there.'

Winter in Nola

[i]

NOLA was stormed by the Gaulish advance-guard of the Free Legions. Castus hurled wave after wave of attackers upon it, and took it after great slaughter. But with its seizure the southern half of the peninsula, which Kleon and the Thracian designed to make a great slave state, was now defended by two strong towns. Nuceria was strongly garrisoned, but the body of the slave-horde quartered in Nola.

It was a bitter winter. None but velites and such light troops might move while it lasted, and throughout the months of inaction the slaves might have sunk in a placid torpor, but for the ceaseless urging of Spartacus and the eunuch Greek. These knew that unless the horde was welded into an army, the consuls would destroy them in the spring. For now, and at last, the Republic was aroused. The Wolf had wakened on her hills, and was crying her packs to defence. It was even told that a great shipment of timber had been sent for to the Sardinian forests: to make crosses for the captured slaves.

So drilling and training in weapon-play went on unceasingly under the walls, despite the bitter winds from the north. The furnaces glowed unceasingly, while hastae and pila were hammered and sharpened in preparation for the spring. Kleon even conceived the idea of the construction of rams and catapults for the taking of the southern cities still unmolested by the slaves. That idea might never have passed to fulfilment, but that the slave-horde was joined in Nola by a Greek named Hiketas, neither slave nor freedman, but an Argive noble. He brought with him his sister, Eradne, with whom he lived in incest. Traversing the roads from Rome, he offered his services to the staring eunuch.

‘This is the slave-army,' Kleon said, with a cold distrust. ‘You are of the Masters.'

The young Greek laughed; and yawned daintily, eating a comfit from a silver box. ‘I am tired of this life of Masters and slaves. Your slave-bands offer diversion. So I and Eradne would join them.' He waved a negligent hand at the tall, slight figure clad as a man, who had ridden with him to the Nola guardhouse. Kleon said: ‘She is your woman?'

‘She is my sister, and we live in incest.' The young Greek ate another comfit, and dusted his hands. ‘But we've no ambition to live in this guardhouse, unless your Strategos rejects our help. In that case we've another plan to follow.'

‘What is that?' Kleon asked.

‘To charter a boat in Sicily and sail west through the Pillars to the Outer Seas. I'd put to the test this tale of old Plato's that the Western Isle was really sunk.'

Kleon thought of Titul and smiled on him bleakly. And then thought: ‘You may join the Free Legions if you will. But I'll set a guard to watch you and your woman.'

Hiketas raised plucked eyebrows in his painted face. ‘Set a legion, if you'll sleep better of nights.' And then, as he was led through Nola, broke from his half-captivity to gesture at the single ram in the market-place. ‘And you hope to assail the cities with that?' He had lost his languor. ‘Give me men, materials, and time until spring . . .'

Kleon had given him all three. And now to the other sounds of preparation the forum of Nola rang with the sound of the mallets wielded under the orders of the renegade Master, upbuilding two great helepolites for the siege of such cities as might resist the slaves, giant towers of wood that were scaled with brass. In addition to these, the Argive noble set to the construction of five tormenta, great catapults for hurling rocks on the roofs and walls of cities they might assail. Kleon withdrew his guard upon Hiketas, in time the slaves ceased to stare as he passed, and he and the woman Eradne found quarters near the Nola Forum, close to their labours. When the springtime came. . . .

[ii]

Spartacus summoned Kleon to his quarters. It was late afternoon as the eunuch crossed the city, and the cold bit deep, for his blood was thin. Coming to the quarters of the Thracian, he passed the guard of Ialo. Spartacus sat, as of old, on a little stool, without his armour, his head in his hands.

‘When will the consular armies move?'

Kleon had already debated this with him, and looked at the brooding figure in surprise. ‘Not for a month yet, I think.'

‘Then we must move before them. If we wait till they are defeated, the south will stir against us. It is stirring already.'

Kleon said coldly, ‘With you to order the battle, no army of the Masters can stand against us.' And thought: ‘Until they bring Pompeius from Iberia.'

The Thracian nodded. ‘Until they bring Pompeius. When that day comes, we can meet that day. Meanwhile, we do not risk what we've taken already. Southern Italy we can hold if we choose – yet only if we choose. I'll send Castus into Apulia to put down the country and hold the great Stone Way.'

‘Castus?' Kleon shook his head. ‘Now I would not send him.'

‘Why not?'

‘He's a lover of yours, they say.' The brooding figure did not move. ‘And at least too unready to hold a separate command for long, with you not by him. There's only one tribune you can send.'

The Strategos knew it also; but he seemed to avoid the knowledge.

‘The Jew?'

Kleon smiled acidly and shook his head. ‘He would rend out his beard by the roots and suspect he was being sent out of the way while I prepared to anoint you king – that cry of REX SERVORUM has haunted him since Papa. Though he is faithful enough. Nor can you send Oenomaus, for the same reason that Castus cannot be sent. Nor Gannicus, for, with a separate command, he would loot and murder to his heart's content. There's only one fit commander.'

It was snowing, gustily, in a bitter wind. The two slave leaders sat at a window and looked out through the slats at the white, waving curtain, with beyond it the walls of Nola and the mountains into which they proposed to despatch an army. In the coming dark, despite the storm, the city shone lighted and secure, warming a little the Greek heart of Kleon, hating the wastes of the countryside. He sat in silence and watched the Thracian, marvelling a little that there should endure in him such love for a fellow-slave of the arena.

When even the memory of Elpinice was dead.

And thought of Elpinice came on Kleon again. She often disturbed his thoughts, reasonlessly, seeing she was dead, and if not nothingness only a pale shadow in a world of dreams – the Land of Mist, as the Thracians called it. She had stood between him and Spartacus, and though he had no fear that this other love of the Strategos would so stand, it was the one defect he saw in that passionless statesman he was moulding from the fluid clay of the Gladiator of Capua.

Then Spartacus stood up and called his attendant, the same Thracian Ialo as had ridden with him to the Roman house in the pit of the hills.

‘Bid Crixus come to me.'

Then he turned round and met the nod of the Greek. ‘I'll send him into Apulia.'

[iii]

The quarters of Gershom ben Sanballat were above the wall-gate of Nola itself. From there the Pharisee hater of Gentiles saw to the guarding of the slave-host in Nola. Captain of the town's defences, his was the appointing of guards and sentinels, the periodical inspection of all the wall's circuit, the questioning of arrivals and departures of merchants. Accustomed to the bleak winds of the hills of Judaea, the winter weather had but little effect on him. Clad in a long mantle and a leather helmet, he would stride from guard-room to guard-room, followed by two Bithynians, shivering, and keeping a slight trot in order to maintain pace with their Jewish General.

Coming from his council with Spartacus, Kleon the Greek made his way to the house above the Northern Gate. Darkness had come, and all the house was in shadow but for the glow from the charcoal brazier in the room where Gershom sat. Gershom he found not seated alone. Beside him was a woman who, at the appearance of the Greek, rose to her feet and walked out of the room by another door. Kleon stopped and stared after her sardonically.

‘A priestess of Jehovah, doubtlessly?'

The ex-leader of the Hasidim combed his beard. ‘It is Judith, the woman who opened the gates of Nyceria for us. She is a very good cook.'

The Greek shrugged mockingly. ‘And no doubt a passable bed-woman. Hear the word of the Strategos, tribune: you'll relieve all Germans from guard duties immediately, and send them armed to their own quarter.'

The Jew stood up and reached for his helmet. ‘What foolishness is now afoot? Where are the Germans going?'

‘Crixus is taking them into Apulia. The Strategos proposed you, but I told him you were over-busied.' He glanced at the door through which Judith had gone. ‘As apparently you are.'

The Jew's brows drew into a scowling line, for a moment again the noble addressing the eunuch slave. ‘Such business as I have is my own. Heed you to yours.' And added irrelevantly: ‘Has not Spartacus his Lavinia?'

Kleon sat down. He nodded moodily. ‘Yes, that was my mistake. I should have cut her throat on the Northern Road or else handed her over to the Gauls.'

It was Gershom's turn to sneer. ‘Has she no faith in the New Republic, then?'

But Kleon was not listening. For long after Gershom had gone, to the walls and relieving the Germans, he sat in that room by the Northern Gate and stared in the brazier's glow. The Jew with his Judith, Spartacus with Lavinia – every slave who could find or steal or win a woman this night might sit by his fire in comfort and drowsing content. Or rouse into warmth and tenderness, the stinging bliss of lust. Except himself.

And that bitter hatred he had of the Masters pierced him like keen knives, till he laughed a little at himself, shakenly, and it passed. Then he went out, through the darkness and noise of Nola. The snow had cleared and far up, cold and clear, shone the stars.

He stood and looked at them for a little, and with a nameless comfort.

[iv]

Next morning half the German legion was detached from the command of Gannicus, and marched out by Crixus on the road to Apulia. And Crixus and the Strategos kissed; and the Snake standards shone above the marching slaves. And long from the walls of Nola, Spartacus watched that departure.

Crixus in Apulia

[i]

THAT year Gellius and Quintus Arrius were elected consuls at Rome, and waited for an unusually bitter winter to pass before setting out with the legions on the principal object of their election.