Читать книгу Spartacus - J. Leslie Mitchell - Страница 13

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Gannicus, the Strategos for the day, set sentries on the neighbouring hills. Then the bucina blew again, summoning the slaves to a council. Meantime they had eaten, and new bands of slaves, herdsmen and hunters, had entered the camp. The most of them were Germans or Gauls, and drifted into the sub-camps of Castus and Gannicus. Looking on this gathering the eunuch Kleon spoke to Gershom.

‘Most of these are northern barbarians, with little desire to return to their own lands. They’ll mingle ill with your Bithynians.’

‘Or with your Greeks,’ said the Pharisee Jew. ‘But that’s a small matter. This army is a gathering of fools, as I’ll say aloud in this council. Now the Masters have twice suffered defeat they’ll move more slowly. In that space this army should split into fragments, and each band escape to the sea. There’s no hope else.’

Kleon smiled coldly, indifferently. ‘There’s little hope even so. To kill as many of the Masters as we may, and ourselves in the end be killed.... What of the leaders of the Gladiators?’

‘Two are wise fools: and the third—I don’t know.’

‘That third—the dark barbarian? Who is he?’

‘Spartacus, a Thracian.’

Kleon, being Greek, looked contemptuously on Thracians. ‘They are savages, eating horses and worshipping their dead.’

‘They may eat their dead and worship horses, if it please them,’ said Gershom. ‘If this leader Spartacus will show good sense in his leading. I: I am for the sea.’

‘And I: I am for nothing.’

In great circles, squatting on the grass, the slaves gathered to listen. Some gaped astonishment at the number of their fellows; some sat and rubbed at their eyes and broke into strange peals of laughter; some sat scowling, gripping their weapons, with twitching faces and eyes on the hills; some lolled half asleep in the sunlight, their scarred limbs showing through the rags of their clothing, resting and resting in blessed ease from toil and the whine of the lash. Half at least were slaves born in slavery, men of the fields and plantations and households, with uncertain Gods and rules and beliefs, fear for an urge by day, exhaustion their urge by night, uncertain their fathers, but glimpsing their mothers, mating a matter of stealth and chance unless they came from the great stud-farms, where children were bred with the care of cattle and sheep. Yet even so, alien to their own lost lands, they remembered dimly their rules and creeds, in which women were lesser beings than men, without reason, and voiceless in public places. So now they stared their astonishment at the centre of the circles where, on a pile of Roman loot, the Strategos Spartacus sat.

For a woman, a girl in a Gladiator’s tunic, had come threading the lines of squatting slaves, and now sat by the side of Spartacus. A murmur arose from the Gauls and the Eastern men, and all, save the Gladiators, looked on her in surprise and anger, or greedily and with desire.

The woman paid them no heed. She sat in the sunlight, by the side of the Thracian, her small face cool and composed under the dark line of brows. Presently the slaves saw a Gaul rise up. It was Brennus.

‘A woman for the brothel or a woman for the hut—yes. But a woman sitting in a council of war—no.’

With this, winking his sleepy eyes, he sat down. Growls of approval arose from the shepherds, mingled with the thin, tenor laughter of the Bithynians. Then a Gladiator spoke:

‘I’m of the men who came from Capua,’ he said. ‘We defeated two armies and camped by a marsh. And in the aftermath certain herds of asses wandered into our camp, braying “We have come with our valorous aid. But of this one and that of your band we do not approve.” Now of asses I know little, except that their smell is bad. But of Elpinice I and the other Gladiators know much.’ He looked towards the motionless figure by the side of the Thracian. ‘Who unlocked our chains in the ludus of Batiates? Who twisted the vine-ropes for our descent of the crater? I do not mind it was this Gaul. No doubt he was over-busied in hut or brothel.’

At this the jeers and bull-laughter of the Gladiators broke out, and the others were silent. Still neither the Thracian nor the woman spoke, though Gannicus laughed aloud and looked on Elpinice sneeringly. Castus the Gaul, who cared nothing for women, sat with his arm flung round the shoulders of Spartacus and his head bared in the sunlight. For a little, in the silence that was on the slave gathering, they could hear across the marsh the bleating of strayed and untended herds. Then Gershom ben Sanballat stood up, irritably tugging at his beard. For a moment his anger was quelled in scorn, looking at the slack slave mouths and leering eyes. What could these scum ever achieve? Then his anger was finding his lips.

‘By my God, are we here to quarrel over women and asses? There are too many of both in the world. Strategos’—he addressed the Thracian Gladiator directly. ‘What is your plan? Where will you lead us?’

Elpinice bent towards Spartacus and whispered. He nodded. ‘That is for this gathering to decide,’ he answered the Jew in that remote, brooding voice that came so strangely from the lips of the bloody leader who had held the passes of Vesuvius single-handed while his followers retreated, who had commanded the Gladiators with courage and skill at the Battle of the Lake. Gannicus spoke next.

‘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.