Spartacus (9 page)

‘The Masters won't leave us unmolested long. Let's march to the nearest town and take it by stealth or assault. There are women and plunder in plenty in this land you've helped to till.'

Murmurs of approbation rose from the squatting, scratching, ill-weaponed slaves. For all desired women and plunder, save the eunuch Kleon, who had use for neither, and the Gaul Castus, who loved Spartacus, and Gershom ben Sanballat, who loathed the thought of a Gentile woman as he loathed the thought of a Gentile Master. Then Titul spoke.

‘We'll keep the women, but the men we can sacrifice to our Gods, and so ensure victory in the future. Gladdened is the heart of Kokolkh by a sacrifice of blood.'

And to many who listened this seemed a good plan, remembering dimly their ancient Gods and the cold still faces in the peristyles of the enemy Gods that the Masters followed. Now out of nights and days made free of toil, strange, lost Gods arose to memory again, giving new fears to the dark of the slave shelters, new fierceness with the mutter of half-remembered chants. Then they turned their eyes as the Jew rose again, and a murmur of his name spread round the circles, the Eastern slaves had heard of the Jews with a name through Asia for pride and ferocity, cunning and greed.

‘Let us split into many small bands and escape to the sea. There we may seize ships and so escape Italy.'

But at this the Gauls and Germans cried that they were being deserted, and broke into an angry clamour which Gannicus made no attempt to still. The Gladiator who had spoken in defence of Elpinice pulled at the Gladiator's tunic she wore.

‘Shall we Games-men quieten these shearers of sheep?'

Spartacus was standing up. Silence fell at his first word, for most had already seen him and all knew of him.

‘I remember hunting wolves,' he put up his hand to his head, ‘long ago. When the packs were about us in the winter-time I and the others kept in a band and reached home in safety. We neither stayed among the wolves nor scattered and ran—'

He stopped, staring, a troubling, tremendous figure to the eyes of the slaves; and then sat down. Elpinice stood up, her woman's voice strange and mild in the bass rumblings of the ragged horde.

‘The Wolf is Rome. Spartacus will lead us from Italy, but only as a united army. Let us march and meet the next army of the praetor's.'

‘What will that help?' asked Gershom ben Sanballat, and he voiced the slave-army.

‘If we defeat the Masters we can arm ourselves and be strong enough to fight a way through Italy.'

Hearing this, the slaves were again divided, some favouring the boldness of the woman, others crying that she was mad. In the warmth of the increasing day, a dull stench arose from the squatting circles. Hunger came on the slaves and certain of them drew away, lighting cooking-fires. The hum of argument rose and fell, with occasional wild bursts of laughter from a group of demented slaves who had escaped the mines. The literatus Kleon had stood on the verge of the gathering, listening in a cold amusement. Now he made his way through the circles to the side of Gershom the Jew.

Hating all Greeks and loathing eunuchs, the haughty Pharisee shivered with a secret repulsion whenever Kleon approached. Yet also, himself dazed in the discovery, he would look on the Greek with an angry, wondering compassion doubtlessly planted in his brain by some wandering Italian devil. Kleon looked in the Jew's heart, cold and amused, passionless but for the ice of his hate to the Masters, yet sometimes teasing the haughty solemnity of the slave-aristocrat as a wasp a tail-switching leopard. He did so now.

‘I thought you found this Spartacus a possible leader? He's no more than a savage, uxorious at that.'

The hill-leopard struck back. ‘The last at least is denied you, Greek.'

Kleon's pale face barely twitched. Gershom's swarthy face flushed. He spoke again, angrily at unease, as the other said nothing.

‘I have spoken with these Gladiators. This woman is favoured by a God, some devil of these heathen lands. In my country she would be stoned till her shameful body was hidden from the sight of men.'

‘A meek and gentle people, your countrymen,' agreed Kleon. ‘How came the woman to join the revolt?'

‘Of that there's that tale and this, each of these Gladiators being a bigger liar than his neighbour. Some say she was a concubine of that Batiates whom they've escaped; others that Spartacus was her lover for years, and they bandited together in Thrace. While this new-come scum maunder as slaves will, being fools.'

‘You yourself are a slave, Jew.'

‘I am a noble of the Maccabees.'

‘Who sold you from Bithynia to the Roman slave-market!'

‘Some day I'll redress that, with a forest of spears against the Bitch in Jerusalem.'

Kleon squatted on the ground and drew forth the roll of
The Republic.
‘Then you're in need of advice on how to model the perfect state. I'll read to you now from Plato the divine.'

‘No, no.' The wasp had stung again. ‘He was doubtlessly a very worthy Greek, but I've no taste for his counsel. Some other time, when we are out of Italy. Here comes a sentry with two more recruits. Gauls both, by their look. Which is no great accession.'

For Gershom ben Sanballat had little faith in Northern men.

[v]

A German posted on the outlying hills by Gannicus, the sentry came striding through the squatting slaves. With him came two men, small men and dark in the Celtic way, clad in short linen tunics. They were clad in the armour of mirmillones, with images of fish on their iron helmets, and decorated leg-sheaths shielding their knees. Those of the slave-host who had escaped the school of Batiates stared at the newcomers and their shameful armour. For since the rout of Clodius all the Gladiators had flung away their arena weapons and re-armed themselves as legionaries.

Spartacus sat staring blindly, intently south, seeing nothing of the approach of the sentry. A German and a mines-slave, the latter halted in front of the seated Strategoi and addressed only Gannicus.

‘These Gauls say they've come from Capua and that they have been Gladiators.' He sneered. ‘Myself, I believe they've been bed-men.'

Gannicus laughed, surveying the small men without pleasure, for his humour was evil. ‘Where did you steal the arena gear?' he asked, jeeringly.

The younger of the two Celts, slight and dark and mild of face, had long lashes drooping like a woman's over mild eyes. He looked through those lashes at Gannicus and stroked his chin.

‘Where Gannicus won his palms – when his adversary stumbled. In the arena. I've watched you there at Rome with net and trident, and wished for you as opponent. For I'm a timid man who desires to live long.'

‘You Gaulish swine—'

The little Gladiator held up a mocking hand. ‘Now you're angry. Yet this sentry tells me you're a strategos, a word for a captain, I believe. An ill choice, for I see you're a man of little wisdom.' His eyes strayed to the silent Spartacus. He suddenly saluted. ‘Thracian, we heard of you and came to join you.' The banter came into his voice again. ‘And for reward we seem like to be killed and, for all I know, roasted and eaten by a redheaded Teutone.'

A smile came seldom enough on the thick lips of Spartacus. It came now. Crixus watched it come, and relaxed that watchful tension his banter had barely concealed.

‘We were mirmillones, Crixus and Oenomaus.'

‘You are welcome. I was a Threce, Spartacus.'

‘Now I know we are really free, Oenomaus. All the way in the ditches and thickets that line the road from Capua I've sworn it a dream; once I frightened a flock of goats half-way over Campania when I pricked myself with my gladius in order that I might wake.' He explained to the blank stare of Spartacus. ‘We were at Rome and heard nothing till we were brought back to Capua and the school of Batiates. There they told us the news and how it was now impossible to escape, such precautions were taken. So Oenomaus and I, one misty morning, gained by stealth the rooms of Batiates himself, and forced him at the dagger-point to lead us out by a private gate. Or at least Oenomaus forced him, for I hung back, fearing strong men with beards. Then we hid in a wine-cart that was making out from Capua, and so escaped the city. For the rest, we've wandered and hid and fared ill till this morning when we came on three scouts of Furius, the legate of Varinus. Two of those scouts we slew by stealth; the third we put to the question. From him we heard of Clodius' rout, and that Publius Varinus, the new praetor, has been sent south by the Senate, with a legion and a half, to eat up and excrete all the rebel slaves in Italy. So we tied this third scout to a tree and came away. Then we fell in with this German and prevailed on him not to eat us, though as yet we're untried men and he a veteran.'

But Castus was on his feet. ‘Masters? How far away is this legion and a half?'

‘Four leagues, I'd say, or less.'

[vi]

The clamour of the roused camp around them, Elpinice sat in the tent with the head of the giant Thracian in her arms. He had ceased to groan and claw at his head in that madness that had come in him as he stumbled into the tent from the sunlight. But now a torrent of broken Latin poured from his lips.

‘But I can't understand! Who am I? I can't remember! Darkness . . . and the forests, and waking. Night killing of men. Why should I kill them? I want only to hunt, to swim in the rivers, and lie in the hunt. I cannot kill them. Why should I kill?'

She had heard this raving before, though never in such frantic tones; she had soothed him from it before, the strange alien barbarian who, with his sword broken, had broken men with his bared hands and torn at their throats with his teeth; and who, outside the blindness of fighting, shuddered from the thought of killing like the frightened girl she herself had long ceased to be. Who was he, what origins had been his in that wild Thrace where he was captured?

And sometimes a terror would come on her, bright and dreadful, yet with joy in it also, as the great, glazed eyes turned to her for help, and the great hands held her, in appeal, in the lazy play of a drowsing beast that sheathed its claws and played in the sun, in the urgent hot hours of desire when she quivered alive as never before in the hands that had held her throughout four years. Dim and remote her own beginnings, she yet remembered again and again those faces in stone in the Violet City, and would sometimes shudder and stare at the Thracian. What God had stolen his reason and set there the strength of a lion when roused at last, the cunning and speed of a striking serpent – these, companioned with the dread of a child?

So she soothed him now, as before, and he sighed, holding the hands that held him. Then he raised his head and smiled, suddenly, as on Crixus.

‘Better now. Elpinice, there are forests where I'll take you and we'll go alone, only the bears and the deer are there; and caves; and the moon coming at night.' His face crinkled in sudden anger. ‘After. There are the Masters who would stop us.'

She helped him with his armour, and armed herself; and as always, he plotted a plan in his mind, and traced it aloud, a hunter's plan, one who had hunted and waylaid beasts. She whispered beside him, agreeing, amending; till a bucina captured from the Roman rout roared outside the rallying signal of the horde.

And Elpinice, once mistress of the lanista Batiates, raised up her small head, her young eyes old. And she knew that bucina ended a phase: the revolt was over, it was WAR that began.

The War Begins

[i]

THE Senate had despatched Publius Varinus, with nine thousand men, to retrieve the shameful defeat of the Battle of the Lake and free the land from the threat of another servile war. Varinus, a tall, melancholy man weighted down with debts and the caprices of a young and unvirtuous wife, went forth slowly and reluctantly, and took the southwards road.

Presently he was in a land that another army seemed to have devastated. Houses stood looted and roofless, with the smoke still curling from the charred beams and starving dogs snuffling amid the ruins; farms were deserted, the storehouses sacked, gates open and herds straying untended. For the slaves, deserting to join the Gladiator revolt, had maimed or mutilated that which they could not carry away. Cattle, slashed and hamstrung, lowed amidst the hills; milldams had been raised and vineyards flooded; the statues of the Gods overturned or defaced with filth. And, seeing these things, the heart of Varinus kindled to a slow anger, and he forgot his debts and the lovers of his wife.

With him, as his legate, rode Furius, a young man who had lately served in Iberia with Pompeius, and before that had wandered many years in Greek lands, and more eastwards still, through Asia to the Persian kingdom. His slim figure was enclosed in a breastplate of silver, sewn on a leather coat. Ocrea of the same metal were bound on his legs. He wore a Greek helmet with a horsehair crest, and rode carelessly a great stallion from Cisalpine Gaul, white, with a bristling mane and red-rimmed eyes and over-ready hooves, as the legionaries knew.

Beside him, dropping vindictively, rode Varinus, unadorned and in plain armour. Behind, rank on rank, marched the legionaries, short brown men bearing the Samnite shield and the Spanish sword, adopted by the Republic after Cannae's rout. On each legionary's back five stakes were strapped to erect on the palisades of the nightly camps.

It was bright weather. The great southwards track that left the Appian Way grew thick in dust, so that Furius, cursing, maintained he would rather march with a company of scavengers. He had little respect for Varinus, who was no soldier.

‘Scavengers we are,' said Varinus, looking at him sourly, ‘and on no holiday jaunt. If you cared so much for soldiering you'd have done better to stay in Iberia.'

But Furius yawned. ‘The Gods – the dear, old smutty Gods! – forbid. I'm no more a goat than a scavenger. Clambering Iberian mountains in pursuit of the unscrubbed savage wearies me. Given flat country, the chasing of runaway slaves should yield twice the sport.'