Forty pairs of eyes encouraged Hortensius Martius as he rose. In their minds they had already crowned him with laurels. For the moment they had accepted him as their future Emperor and were prepared to acclaim him as Caesar when Escanes had done his work.
It was at this moment that Caligula recovered from his swoon. His l.u.s.t of revenge and of hate brought him back to reality. He had planned to make the arch-traitor betray himself, and now, when he caught sight of Hortensius Martius preparing to descend into the arena, a cry as of some prowling, savage beast rose and died in his throat.
He was sufficiently cunning to control himself, sufficiently of an actor to play his part without betraying his thoughts. Though he would gladly have strangled Hortensius then and there with his own hands, he called the young man to him with kindly benevolence and placed a fatherly hand upon his shoulder.
"Thou, O Hortensius Martius?" he said, in well-feigned astonishment.
"Even I, O Caesar!" replied Hortensius calmly.
"For love of the Augusta thou wouldst risk thy life?"
"To prove my valour, gracious lord, since thou didst desire it."
"On thy knees then, O my son!" rejoined the mountebank solemnly, "and receive the blessing of the G.o.ds."
The public watched this little scene with palpitating interest. The Caesar looked magnificent in his fantastic robes, and beside him Dea Flavia--like a G.o.ddess in her white tunic--was beautiful to behold.
The Caesar laid three fingers on the young man"s head, and turned his bloodshot eyes up to the vault of heaven. Then Hortensius Martius rose from his knees and went up to the Augusta Dea Flavia, and knelt down before her. She took no heed of him whatever. She did not look upon his bowed head as he stooped very low and kissed the hem of her gown; some who watched the scene very closely declared afterwards that she s.n.a.t.c.hed her robe away from his hands.
And from the arena down below was heard again the snarl of the thwarted beast.
From the Emperor"s tribune, to right and left, wide marble steps led down to the floor of the arena. At the bottom of these steps huge iron gates, wrought with gold and studded with nails, guarded them against access from below. Two legionaries were stationed at these gates.
When Hortensius Martius appeared at the top of the steps the audience screamed with delight and cheered him to the echoes.
He was indeed a figure like to please the most hardened spectator. Not over tall, and slight of build, he looked elegant and graceful in his short white tunic, with the deep purple bands that proclaimed his patrician rank.
A young exquisite, with well-groomed hands and hair delicately perfumed and curled, the tense expression of his face gave him nevertheless an air of determination and of strength. He had taken off his cloak and was winding it round his left arm, otherwise, of course, he was unarmed as the Emperor had directed.
The women blew him kisses across the width of the arena, and some of the more enthusiastic--or the younger--ones pelted him with roses as he came down the steps.
And down below the panther, as if scenting this new prey, sent a roar of expectation into the vibrating air.
Caligula smiled with hideous complacency as he looked down on the descending figure of the young man, and when the people cheered, and the shower of roses fell in a blood-red ma.s.s at Hortensius" feet, the Caesar snarled even as the panther had done, showing a row of yellow teeth, like fangs.
At last Hortensius Martius had reached the foot of the steps. The ma.s.sive iron gates stood alone between him and the black panther, which cowered some twenty feet away behind a low monticule covered with tufts of gra.s.s, its tiny eyes of topaz fixed upon the oncoming prey.
Hortensius gave the order for the opening of the gates. They swung upon their hinges and he pa.s.sed out through them. And they fell to behind him with a mighty clang.
Thunderous applause greeted him when he set his foot upon the sands of the arena. The panther did not move. It had even ceased to snarl, but its sinewy tail beat a dull tattoo upon the ground.
Then over the whole arena there rose a curious sound, like the sighing of two hundred thousand souls, an indrawing of the breath in two hundred thousand throats. Hortensius Martius looked up, for the sigh had sounded very strangely in his ear, and it had been followed by a still stranger silence, as if two hundred thousand hearts had momentarily ceased to beat.
And as he looked he understood the sigh, and also the death-like silence that followed.
He saw that from the niches all round the arena the safety ladders of crimson silk had all been taken away.
And up in the imperial tribune the mighty Caesar laughed loudly and long.
CHAPTER XXII
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."--ST. JOHN XV. 13.
No doubt that for that first tense moment all thought of treachery, of the conspiracy, of the imperium and even of Dea Flavia, was absent from the young man"s mind.
It must have come upon him suddenly then and there that his life was now in almost hopeless jeopardy. He was unarmed, and all around him the smooth marble walls of the arena rose, polished and straight, to a height of at least twelve feet, to the row of niches which alone might afford him shelter. From the bases of the fluted columns the iron rings to which the silken ladders had previously been attached, now hung at an unattainable height: the narrow ledge--four feet from the ground--had ceased to be a stepping-stone to safety.
All this, of course, came to him in a flash, as does to a dying man, they say, the varied pictures of his life. Hortensius Martius, in that one flash, realised that he was a doomed man, that he had been trapped into this death-trap, and that nothing now but a miracle stood between him and a hideous death.
Men up above in the tribunes held their breath; some women began to whimper with excitement. But the man and the panther stood for a moment eye to eye. No longer the hunted and the hunter, but the hungry beast of the desert and his certain prey. The baffled creature, tantalised with the blood of his other victims, was ready to satiate its l.u.s.t at last.
There was a moment of absolute silence, while two tiny golden eyes, measured the distance for a leap.
The young man now, with the cunning born of a mad instinct for life, was waiting with bent knees, body slightly leaning forward and eyes fixed upon the brute. He had unwound the cloak from round his arm and held it in front of him like a shield. The man and the beast watched one another thus for a few seconds, and to many those few seconds seemed like an eternity.
Then with a snarl the panther bounded forward. The man held his ground for the s.p.a.ce of one second, and as the brute landed within an arm"s length of him, quick as lightning he threw his cloak right in its face.
Then he began to run. The panther, entangled in the folds of the cloak, savage and snarling, was tearing it to pieces, but Hortensius ran and ran, driven by the blind sense of self-preservation. He ran and ran the whole length of the arena, skirted the oval at the eastern end, and still continued to run, with elbows firmly held to his hips and with swift winged steps that made no sound in the sand.
But already the creature, realising that again it was being cheated, started in pursuit. With leaps and bounds that seemed erratic and purposeless, it gradually diminished the distance between itself and the running man. Once it alighted on the outstanding branch of a gnarled tree, then from thence it took shelter in a clump of shrubs, then across the stream, swimming to the opposite sh.o.r.e; for the running man had rounded the oval and was now swiftly coming this way. Here in the tall gra.s.s it paused--cowering--once more on the watch.
And Hortensius, while he ran so blindly along, had failed to notice where his enemy lay hiding.
"In the gra.s.s!" shouted a dozen voices.
"There!"
"On ahead!"
"Further on!"
"No! no! Not there! Not there!"
There was little exquisiteness left in the young man now. It was but a few moments since he had stepped smiling into the arena, kicking aside the rose-leaves which enthusiastic hands had thrown in his path. It was but some minutes since he had begun to run, and now the perspiration was pouring from his body, his face was as grey as the sand of the arena, the fear of death had raised the death-sweat on his brow.
His breath came and went hot and panting through his nostrils, his eyes, dilated with terror, were vainly searching for the cowering enemy.
Once more he turned to run. The panther seemed to be playing with him. A dozen times it could have reached him, a dozen times it bounded to one side, giving his prey another chance to run, another short respite for the agony of despair.
Men, women and children screamed with excitement. No longer did they cheer the handsome young patrician, no longer did they throw roses at his feet. They shouted to him to run because they knew that running was no use. They urged the panther to leap because they fanned its rage with their screams.
"Habet! Habet!" they shouted with every bound of the ferocious creature.
"Habet! Habet!" now that Hortensius at last paused in his run.