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Lion's Brood

<h3> IX. </h3> <h3> THE BAIT. </h3> Marcia crouched, huddled in the farthest corner of the cell, and listened to the receding footsteps of the visitors. Then she heard new sounds echoing through the house: the rushing feet of slaves descending from their quarters, striving to gain their stations unobserved; the sharp tongue of Calavius now loosed from the bonds of terror, and rating them soundly for their unfaithfulness and cowardice; the patter of excuses and protestations. In a few moments the quarters above resounded with the shrieks and groans of those condemned to the lash; for the wrath and indignation of Calavius, generally the mildest of masters, were spurred to vindictive bitterness by a consciousness of his late terror and abasement. "They were guilty of all crimes, and, worst of all, of the rankest ingratitude. Let them learn that their master was still strong enough to punish." So the scourges fell, and the victims screamed and writhed. All these things Marcia heard, but they meant little to a mind so full of internal conflict as was hers. What was she to believe of herself? Had she not marked out a course of self-devotion and sacrifice which was to gain respite and safety for her country, revenge upon its enemies? Had not others, notably Decius Magius, been forced unwillingly to admit the possible efficiency of her plan? Yet now, when the gods had shown her favour beyond all anticipation—had brought the chosen quarry into her net—she had thrown all aside and yielded to her womanly weakness, her instinct of modesty, her sense of personal repulsion. What right had she to think of herself as a woman! He, for whose love her sex had been dear to her, was gone—a pallid shade who could no longer be sensitive to her beauty, a vague being sent far hence into the land of the four rivers by these very men whom she had devoted to destruction. What though the virtues that had beaten down her resolves had been good once—good for Marcia the woman? They were evil for that Marcia who had resolved to be a heroine, and who was now learning how hard it is for the female to seek the latter crown without losing the former. Again and again she struggled with herself, swayed back and forth by the counter-currents of conflicting shames, until the thought of death, as a final possibility, revived to steel her purpose. The sacrifice and the shame would be short, and, in the consciousness of her work accomplished, she could die, going before the lady Proserpine with a pure heart that need not fear to meet the eyes of Sergius when they should ask its secret. Rising quickly, she hastened to her chamber by passages where she would not be likely to meet her host. Whatever intentions he might have entertained toward her had been effectually suspended, if not obliterated, by the course of events, and now he was much too busy setting in order his demoralized household to think of her presence. Therefore, she reached her apartment unnoticed, and, summoning her tirewomen, surrendered herself to the tedious process of adornment according to the accepted taste of Magna Graecia. The afternoon was spent, ere all had been finished. Then she ate hurriedly and with little appetite, drinking deeply of the Lesbian wine till her cheeks flushed through the rouge, and her eyes sparkled. Calavius had gone out, busy about affairs of state, and eager to collect the strained threads of his influence—threads that might be strengthened by their very straining, in the hands of a politician who realized how men were ready to grant every complaisance to one whom they had deserved ill of and whose vengeance they feared. Marcia found herself wondering whether Iddilcar would indeed return as he had said. Perhaps her attitude had seemed to him so unfavourable that he would strike first;—but when and how? Perhaps affairs of state detained him also. Perhaps, even, this man, Hannibal, whose eye pierced through all subterfuges, had already divined the danger and set himself to nullify it. Perhaps—and then, as she was reclining in the larger dining hall, one of the slaves entered and whispered in her ear. She rose quickly. "Tell my lord that she whom he favours awaits him at the hemicycle in the garden, and guide him to me." She spoke, marvelling at her steady tones, and, turning, walked, with drooping head, to the semicircular, marble seat;—not the single seat, back amongst the foliage, where she had met Perolla; "the philosopher's chair," as Calavius had called it laughingly, where his son retired to commune with thoughts too great for men. Sinking down at one end of the hemicycle, she studied the carved lion's head that ornamented the arm-rest, and the paw, thrusting out from the side-support, upon the pavement beneath. It troubled her that such wonderful handicraft had not considered that the head was entirely out of proportion with the paw; and yet, if the former were larger or the latter smaller, surely they would not fit well in the places they were intended to ornament. What a provoking dilemma, to be sure—and at such a time, for, glancing suddenly up, she saw Iddilcar's dark, repulsive features bent upon her with a terrible intentness. All her former loathing surged back over her heart with tenfold force, sickening her with its suffocating weight. "Light of the two eyes of Baal," he murmured softly. "Look kindly upon thy servant. Smile upon his love, that thy light and his worship may be eternal. Behold! for thee I cast aside the worship of the lord Melkarth!" He tore apart his long, violet tunic, showing his throat and bosom hung with necklaces. His arms, bare to the shoulders, glittered with heavy bracelets. "Lo! the spoils of Italy assigned to my Lord I give to thee,"; and, taking off necklace and bracelet, he knelt and piled them at her feet, raising and parting his arms in the attitude of oblation. Charmed as by a serpent, Marcia watched him with horrible disgust, yet unable to turn her eyes aside. "What is Tanis to thee!" he went on. "What, Ceres! What, Proserpine! Ashera! Derceto!—goddesses afar from men—goddesses whom, not seeing, we worship faintly with sacrifice and ceremony. But thou—thou shalt dwell forever in the temple upon the Square of Melkarth. Come!" Again, and in spite of every resolve, Marcia felt the overmastering sense of woman's loathing that stood so obstinately between herself and the rôle she had marked out. It was too much. She could not—could not suffer this man for a moment, even with the release of swiftly hastening death before her eyes. She struggled to her feet, groping about, turning, and, with a stifled scream, she sought to fly; but her strength refused her even this service. In an instant, he was up and beside her; his hand had roughly grasped her shoulder, half tearing away the cyclas; his little eyes blazed with vindictive fury; his nostrils dilated; his coarse lips writhed in hungry passion. "Ah, slave! You would escape? Where? where? In this house? Ah, fool! Could you not measure the comedy of this morning? Do you think this old imbecile, this man condemned to follow his mouse-killing son, can protect you from the meanest Nubian in the army? Do you think—ah!" and he raised his hand, as if to strike. Wrenching herself loose by a quick movement, Marcia turned and faced him with all the blood of the Torquati flushing in her cheeks, all their fire blazing in her eyes. "Dog of a pulse-eater!" she cried, and he shrank back before the vehemence of her tone. "Do I care what you do? Break your alliance with these people if you wish—an alliance of fools with fools, knaves with knaves! Break it, before it be cloven asunder for you by the sword of Rome. Doubtless your chief will sacrifice all his plans to your cowardly lust. Kill my protector, tear down his house, and—kill me!—me, for whom there is neither sowing nor reaping in this matter." All his arrogance and violence had vanished, cowed and crushed by her outbreak; but, even as he cringed before her, the gleam of Oriental cunning had taken its place. "Ah! now, indeed, art thou more beautiful than the lady Tanis," he muttered, clasping and unclasping his hands, as if in ecstasy. "Now, indeed, do I love thee." His voice sank to a whisper, and he glanced about timorously. "And so it is neither sowing nor reaping with you, my pretty?" he went on. "Fools we may be, but not the fools to be blind to your sowing—not the fools who shall not root up your seed before the day of reaping. Did not you, a Roman, counsel Mago to delay? Did you not, foolish one, even give such counsel at the banquet of welcome to the schalischim, until I laughed in my cup to see a silly girl who would cajole men of government and of war?" Marcia stood, rigid and pale. All her plans seemed shivering about her. She was doomed to fail then—fail after all, through the cunning of these vermin. Still she struggled to retain her composure. "Liar!" she said. "Do I not know that if you spoke truth I would already be buried under hurdles weighted with stones?" He laughed softly. "Why?" he asked. "What can you avail, coining lead for us who perceive its falseness? Nay, you are even of use to Hannibal, for, by your very eagerness, he has come to Maharbal's thinking, that all must be done speedily, if we would take Rome. Even now Capuans work night and day building our engines. Soon they will set them up before your gates. We shall winter in Rome, as the guests of the lady Marcia who has invited us. Therefore Hannibal grants you life and to be a comfort to his friend and father, Pacuvius Calavius, in his declining years;" and he laughed again, but harshly and sneeringly. Marcia could scarcely keep her feet under the crushing force of these blows. In what vain manner had she, an inexperienced girl, blind to all but a noble purpose, contended with men whose cunning had sufficed to snare the chiefs of her people! Worse even, she had herself forged the weapons for the destruction of all she had hoped to save. Iddilcar watched her from under half-closed lids, noting every line of her face, and reading its struggle and its despair. "And so it is wisdom for us to march north at once?" he said softly. "How do I know?—a woman?" He smiled subtly and ignored the change of front he had wrested from her. "Love me, and I swear by the crown of Melkarth that Hannibal shall winter in Capua." She started, as if from the touch of fire. Had her ears heard words of his, or was it only a belated thought coursing from her brain to her heart? He stepped nearer and spoke again:— "Love me, pretty one, and Hannibal shall winter in Capua,—yea, though he hangs on the cross for it,—though all the armies of Carthage become food for dogs." At first she had been dreaming of new snares; but these last words and the vehemence of his tone brought her to an intuitive realization that this man was indeed prepared to give up god, country, general, friends,—all, so only that he might gratify his overmastering passion. The gods were indeed with her, after all,—were guiding her aright; and the knowledge steadied her self-control and strengthened her resolve. What omen of favour could be more potent than this snatching of victory out of the very hands of ruin—this moulding of ruin into a source of victory? So she spoke, calmly and evenly:— "Perhaps you tell the truth, perhaps folly. How shall I know, any more than I know of this power to command commanders, of which you make such silly boast?" "Not I—-not I, lady," he protested eagerly. "Listen! It is the lord Melkarth that has always loved the colonies of Phoenicia, first among which is Carthage. It is he that has guided and guarded us through the perils of the deep and of the desert, of the skies and of the earth, of hunger and thirst, of beasts and men. What god equals him in our city! What god receives such gifts, such incense, such sacrifices! What though we fear Baal Moloch! Is it not the lord Melkarth whom we love? It is he who goes before our armies, that he may tell them when to attack, when to await the foe. I am his priest. Do you understand? I have spoken his words many times. Now he shall speak mine." Marcia could hardly fail to understand the nature of the power which this man now proposed to lay at her feet; yet it all seemed horribly impossible that he, a priest, could dare such sacrilege for such end. Had she been Fabius, Paullus, or even Sergius,—men who were already groping amid the Greek schools of doubt, and were coming to regard the religion of the state more as an invaluable means of curbing the vices of the low and ignorant than as a divine light for the learned,—had she been such as these, this proposal of Iddilcar would have seemed incredible only on account of its treason to his country. And yet, in one sense, she was better fitted than they to understand the Carthaginian. True scepticism had found little room under the mantle of the gloomy, the terrible cult that swayed the destinies of the Chanaanitish races. Even the priests, while they were ready enough to use the people's faith to minister to their own ends, trembled before their savage gods. Low, brutish, full of inconsistent wiles their faith might be, but such faith it was as an educated Roman could with difficulty comprehend. On the other hand, the minds of the women of Rome had not as yet swerved from unquestioning belief in the gods consulting and the gods apart, and the Torquati were most conservative among all the great houses. From childhood up—and in years she was scarcely more than a child—all these had been very real to her. Pomona wandered through every orchard beside her beloved Vertumnus; Pan and his sylvan brood sported behind the foliage of every copse. She would as soon have thought of questioning their presence as of doubting her own being. Marcia believed; the average Roman patrician affected to believe and indulged in his polite, Hellenic doubts; the Carthaginian priest, while he believed, with all Marcia's fervour, in a theology to which Marcia's was tender as the divine fellowship of the Phaeacians, yet conceived that it was entirely legitimate to play tricks upon his fiend-gods—to pit his cunning against theirs. If they caught him, perhaps they would laugh, perhaps consume him in the flames of their wrath. It depended on their mood—whether they had dined well, perhaps; and he would take his chances. He stood, now, toward his deities, just where the heroes of Homer had stood centuries before. He was a living evidence of the Asiatic birth of Greek theology—only, in the Asian races, religious feeling was not religious thought, did not arise from the mind or change, like the cults of Europe, as the mind that evolved or adopted them developed and outgrew its offspring. So it was that, while Marcia, but for her instinctive realization of the truth, might have been utterly unable to credit the sincerity of such prodigious wickedness, yet, armed with this intuition as a starting-point, she sought for and found reasons to support it. The purity of her own faith came to her aid. Perhaps the Punic gods were mere demons, as they seemed to be, and Iddilcar knew it and relied for protection upon the mightier gods of Rome. In a sense, she reasoned on false premises, but her conclusion was, none the less, more accurate than would have been that of either Paullus or Sergius. For the time, at least, Iddilcar was entirely sincere. To be sure, if he could gain his end by mere promises, he preferred to deceive Marcia rather than Melkarth, but his plotting had not gotten so far as that yet. Now, his fierce, Oriental nature was consuming with that passion which, in it, took the place of all love. This Roman woman had aroused desires that he had never known in the gardens of Ashera; her face was to the faces of the courtesans who thronged the sacred woods on feast days, as the glory of the crescent moon was to the sputter of the rancid oil in the lamp that illumined the cell of Fancula Cluvia. Cunning beyond his race, learned in the strange learning of the East that had come to a few in Egypt and to fewer yet in Phoenicia, Iddilcar read the struggle that was taking place in the girl's mind. "What do I care for Hannibal!" he cried; "for the Great Council! for Carthage! I would give them all to you for one kiss. To him who has learned all secret knowledge, the mind alone is God and city and home and friends,—everything, everything save love," and his voice, harsh, and strident, sank to a whisper in which was compassed all the fierceness of ungoverned and ungovernable desire. Marcia knew, now, that he was speaking the truth; that he would indeed stop at nothing; and, with the certainty, there came to her a strange mingling of exultation, terror, and calm. She saw this man, powerful with the power of the conqueror, learned with the learning of the student and of the ascetic, grovelling here at her feet—slave to a force against which no power, no philosophy could avail. She saw him crawl to her and press her robe to his lips; she heard him mumbling and whining like some animal, and she despised him and grew stronger in the light of her growing self-esteem. At last she spoke. "It is well. I have listened and determined. Yes, you are right. I have wished that the army should not march north; I have wished that it should winter in Campania. I am a Roman; why should I not wish it? You say you can accomplish this. Do so, and you shall have your reward." Iddilcar sprang to his feet and threw out his arms to draw her to him; the breath came from his chest in short gasps; his eyes were suffused with tears through which he saw something glitter; and his hands, clutching and unclutching, caught only air. Then his arms fell to his sides; he paused and looked stupidly at her. She had sprung back and was facing him defiantly with a short dagger raised to strike. "Not so soon, slave," she said, and her voice rang in his ears like steel. "He who would reap must first sow." "You do not love me," he said sheepishly, gnashing his teeth because he knew the foolishness of his words, and yet could say no others. She laughed; then her face grew sober. "No," she said; "I do not love you. Why should I? We love those who serve us well—" "Ah! but I have promised," he broke in. "I am giving you everything." "I want but one thing," she said, while the lines of her mouth hardened; "and, for that, I take no promise." He lowered his head to avoid the straight flash of her eyes. "It is I, then, who must trust—always I," he muttered. "How do I know you will give yourself when I earn you?—how do I know you will not kill yourself with that dagger? for you hate me," and then, with sudden fierceness; "why should I not take my own? What hinders me?" "This," said Marcia, touching the point with her finger. Iddilcar shuddered. "Listen now," she began, "and be reasonable. I have named my price, and you have said it is not too much. Why speak of love or hate? Earn me and take me." "Yes," he echoed; for he was braver when his eyes studied the pavement; "why speak of love or hate? It is you I want—your kisses, your embraces. Who shall say that hatred may not flavour them better even than love?" and he sneered. "Ah! but how shall I know?" "I am a Roman, and I have promised. Fulfil your Punic word as well, and I swear you shall have your pay, so surely,"—and then the memory of another day, happier, but oh! so bitterly regretted, came to her mind,—"so surely as Orcus sends not the dead back from Acheron. Now go." He drew back, step by step, still facing her, longing to rebel, yet not daring, cringing, skulking like a whipped cur. He reached the end of the path; the entrance to the garden was behind him. He raised his clenched hand to the heavens. "Ah, Melkarth!" burst from his lips, and, turning, he plunged into the house, running. Marcia listened eagerly to the fall of his sandals. They died away, and the distant door creaked. Tears filled her eyes, and, shivering in every muscle, she sank down upon the seat and buried her face in her hands. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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