Читать книгу Spartacus - J. Leslie Mitchell - Страница 7

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It was near to dawn and the morning cold with a drizzling rain before Kleon, Titul, and the four Ionians came to the slave camp. They had twice lost their way, wandering up stark ravines or into cane-brakes. By accident they stumbled upon the camp, nor did they know it the camp at first, for the fires were long dead, no sentries placed, no trench had been dug or stake-fence erected. The slaves were men from the Eastern world, and they slept under dripping sycamore trees, shivering, numbed in their dreams. But one was awake and he challenged them on the verge of the camp, in a whining, sibilant Latin.

‘We’re slaves,’ said Kleon, peering at him in the dawn-gloom, ‘seeking freedom and empty bellies, not to mention a band of Gladiators.’

The man held an axe in his hand. Now he came from under the dripping fronds and looked at Kleon with a frowning face. The Greek saw before him one stout and black-haired, with a curling beard and a curling nose, bright, scowling eyes as black as his hair. He was clad in an ill-fitting toga, edged with a senator’s fringe.

‘If you seek empty bellies you’ve been misdirected, for these hogs are filled with the wine we looted. As for the Gladiators of Capua, they’ve surrendered at last, or so it’s said, betrayed by a Thracian who led them.’

The eunuch shrugged. ‘Then we don’t seek the Gladiators. Couldn’t the fools find a leader other than a Thracian savage? And who is your leader here?’

The bearded man scowled upon the morning. ‘I am the leader—may Jehovah give me wit. Half of these’—he waved an arm at the dim groups huddled under the trees—‘are Bithynians, newly-come from Brindisium and speaking no Latin. I and twenty household slaves of Crassus the Lean freed them, for we surprised their guards on the marsh and strangled them.’

‘That was well. I am Kleon of Corinth, a Greek.’

‘That’s ill, for I’ve no love of Greeks. I am Gershom of Kadesh, a Pharisee and a Jew.’

In revolt against Jannaeus and his Hellenistic priests, Gershom ben Sanballat had twice raised the standards of the Hasidim, and twice had been defeated. But so dourly had he held his own in the mountains around Kadesh, that the King had been forced to grant him a pardon, and thereafter left him in peace. Gershom had retired to cultivating his farms and engrossing himself in the Ochian mysteries of the synagogue. These practices lost him his following. In two years’ time Jannaeus died and his widow Salome Alexandra reigned in Jerusalem. Among the first to fall was Gershom, secretly seized and sold into slavery in Syria, from there re-sold to Rome, from there re-sold to the household of Marcus Licinius Crassus. For less than a year a slave, his iron spirit was but faintly bent when he heard the news of the Gladiators’ revolt, and stirred his fellows to emulation. Now he fronted Kleon, unclean, a Greek, the old, strong Gentile hate in his face, that hate forgotten while he was a slave, stirring now to a flame from old embers.

But also, the Greek had a strange attraction. The flame died down. Scowling, Gershom raised a hand to head and heart. Kleon responded, and they then touched hands, watched by Titul and the Ionians. But Gershom secretly cleansed his palm against his tunic, remembering that the touch of a Gentile was defilement.

‘This is an Iberian,’ said Kleon, pointing to his company, ‘and these are Ionians.’

‘There’s Greek wine under these cloths,’ said the Jew. ‘And unclean meat. Eat, if you’re hungry.’

Titul and the Ionians squatted on the ground, and drank, and were warmed with the strong Greek wine, choking and gulping on the mouthfuls at first, being slaves unaccustomed to wine. Famished, they tore with their fingers at the roasted meat, Kleon eating but sparingly, hungered though he was. For even hunger in his mutilated body was only a faint ghost of the lusts he had known. Slave or free, that would alter never, and a moment that thought came twisting his mouth. Then he filled a silver cup with wine and went to Gershom, who had drawn away.

‘This is a fine cup of good workmanship,’ he said.

‘I stole it from the pantry of Crassus the Lean,’ said Gershom, moodily. ‘He will crucify his overseer because of its loss: unless the man has fled. Which is unlikely: for he was a fool.’

‘Why is he named the Lean?’

‘His soul is lean,’ said Gershom. ‘May it howl for ever in the wastes of Sheol. Which is hell.’

A taciturn and calculating man, the attraction of the Greek was growing upon him. Looking at Kleon, he combed his curled beard with long, brown fingers, and sighed, remembering Kadesh, though memory and heart and soul alike were encased in an armour of iron. Kleon drank the wine in a cold amusement, and answered with sardonic politeness.

‘I hadn’t heard of your hell. Also, but a little while back you spoke of an unknown God. Who is he?’

‘Jehovah, the One God. Your Greek and Roman Gods are but idols of demons. No idols are reared to the One True God—unless by Salome’s Hellene rats.’

‘There are no Gods,’ said Kleon, ‘but Time and Fate. I worship neither, which doubtlessly vexes them. This Iberian also has a new God—with a name like a cough and a serpent’s head and its home, I gather, the sea.’

‘Doubtlessly it is Behemoth, the Beast of the Waters,’ said Gershom, looking at Titul contemptuously. ‘For he is a Gentile.’

‘He is also mad,’ said the eunuch, indifferently, and looked about him. ‘Your Bithynians are awakening.’

The rain and the morning gloom had passed away. Above the ridged Italian hills uprose the sun, trailing a translucent veil that shivered and faded like a bubble-wall. In the air was the smell of green life rain-drenched. From under the trees the slaves thronged forth to stand by Gershom and peer into the East. As the sun rose full and rested upon the brow of the hill, round, splendid and scintillant as a new gold coin, the shivering Bithynians droned an Ormuzdic hymn, their arms upraised in adoration, their mouths engaged in singing and yawning. Titul, the Iberian, prostrated himself, howling at the sun like a dog. But Kleon, Gershom, and the Ionians did not worship, knowing the sun to be but a ball of fire three leagues away.

One slave still lay asleep under a sycamore. Yet presently he awoke and looked at the worshippers, companioned by those who did not worship. One of these attracted his attention. He crawled to his feet and came softly behind Titul.

‘As big a fool as ever, Iberian. Your God’s a slave like yourself, and cannot keep his bed.’

His sleepy bass laugh boomed out, disturbing the hymn. Then he turned his face towards Kleon the eunuch, who saw that it was Brennus.

His tale was short:

‘At the ford I broke the knees of a horse. Horse and rider fell on me. I took the man by the throat and lay with him under the horse, strangling him. I held his throat till he ceased to move and his skin grew cold in my hands. Then the Masters came slicing their swords in the dead and cutting the throats of the wounded. So I feigned death, but looked out a little, the shine of the moon was on us by then. Petronius and his wife stood by the ford and near them stood two others. Petronia wept like a bleating sheep, and knelt, and wrung her hands. The two other Masters cried out at Petronius, and pleaded with him, but he grunted and spat. Then he put his arm round Petronia and drove his dagger in her heart. I hid behind the dead horse and saw no more. She was strong in love, as I found that night I took her in bed. But a bitch.’

He ruminated a little, vexed with some memory. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt her then—overmuch. Pity that that fool should kill a good bedmate. He’ll not spare the daughter either, if she tells—Gods, she was ripe and fair!’

‘Fair from the womb were the children of women in the vanished Western Isle,’ said Titul, being mad.