by Allan Massie
'Reckon they've scarpered,' said one of the two remaining unknown soldiers.
'Or had their throats cut,' his companion said. Through the firelight they fixed their eyes on me, and I had nothing to say.
Time passed. I longed to sleep. I drew my cloak tighter about me, but the ache in my head did not diminish, my thigh still throbbed, and I felt a new dull but persistent pain in my heart.
My mouth was dry and my tongue touched salt-caked and broken lips. At such moments, men say, the mind flies to happier places. Broken soldiers are reputed to dream of home. But I had no thought of Livia, no longing for her. I felt emptiness. My attention was held by the dying flames, but there were no patterns in them. When I moved my leg it was like trying to lift the hoof of an unwilling horse.
One of the soldiers started to snore. He had stretched out like a dog and gave no more thought to the future than a dog gives. His companion slipped his hand under his tunic and began to masturbate. My gaze was held by the pumping movement, and I felt envy of the pair of them, then shivered. The screech of a hunting owl broke the night. I crawled to the entrance of the cave. The rain had stopped at last. The moon, emerging through breaking clouds, laid a pale yellow hand on the still sea. Behind us, somewhere on the island, Pompey's troops slumbered.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
'Can you walk, General?' Septimus said.
I shook my head doubtfully. He flicked a glance back into the cave. Both our companions now seemed still. The first still snored deeply. The other now lay, with his hand still under his tunic, and his legs curled up, but his head now rested on his comrade's chest. Septimus crossed light-footed and shook him gently. The only response was a deep and incomprehensible muttering.
'Reckon that's all right,' Septimus said. 'But I don't trust these two no more. I didn't like the way they put their heads together a while back when you were dozed out. We'd best get out of here, General. Can you slide down the rock to the beach, if I go first and get ready to hold you at the bottom?'
Septimus unbuckled his sword and threw it down on the sand. Then he went back into the cave and collected mine, and a shield and the knapsack which, alone among us, he had retained in flight. These followed the sword. He slipped down to the sand himself. The fall was perhaps the height of three men, and I hesitated before lowering my body. My foot searched for a toehold. My nails dug into the loose earth. I felt myself giving way. For a moment my left heel found a hold. I shifted my hand to grab a scrubby bush that grew out of the rock-face. I lowered myself a little. Then, with my right arm at full stretch, the bush began to tear itself out of the rock. My foot slipped off its hold. For an instant I dangled in the air. Then the bush ripped away and I tumbled to the beach. I fell awkwardly and knew at once that my thigh-wound had opened again and was bleeding.
Septimus helped me to my feet and hooked my arm round his neck. We began to hobble along the beach. Every step was painful. We had hardly gone more than fifty paces before I felt faint. He turned towards me, his face swimming in my eyes.
'This'11 never do,' he said. 'I maun get you on my back.'
He crouched down before me and got his arms round my legs. My own flopped round his neck, and he straightened his legs, and, at first waveringly, like a drunken man, started to march along the beach. Gradually he found his rhythm, I hung there, helpless and dependent, like old Anchises when Aeneas brought him out of burning Troy.
I do not know for how long he carried me, or how far, nor whether he paused to rest, for I fainted, and was therefore borne, a mere sack of flesh and bone and guts, through the night and even into the morning. The dawn was up when I recovered consciousness, and I lay under a thorn-bush, with dew glistening, and Septimus lying at my feet, as a dog might sleep. He awoke as abruptly as a dog, on sensing that I was stirring.
'I didn't like to leave you, General,' he said, 'for fear that you'd wake and think I'd deserted you. But if we're to get out of this I've got to find something for us to eat and drink. I think you're safe here for the moment.'
He laid his hand on my shoulder and let it rest there a moment, even giving me a squeeze, as to a comrade. There was a wind blowing and I watched the sea-grasses slap his ankles as he marched off. He turned once and waved to me. I remained in wonder, pain and bemusement.
I do not know how long he was gone, for despite my danger and my determination to watch lest I be surprised by the enemy,
I drifted into unconsciousness again. I had no dreams, though my sleep must have been fitful for I found on waking that I had torn up and shredded a plant growing by my side and I had no awareness of having done so.
I lay for some time. The clear weather promised by the moon had disappeared and the sky was low, grey and heavy. A sour wind blew through the scrub and rushes of a world empty but for a few sea birds. There was no sound or sign of man. It was as if the legions which had met yesterday had been swallowed up. It had been a sad helter-skelter affair after our ships had been driven to shore and Pompey's men, a legion of cut-throats and troops of Numidian cavalry, had swept down on us before we had time to recover our organization. It had hardly been a battle; no more than a melee; and I had received my wounds in a vain attempt to rally a group of fugitives.
Away to the left, on the edge of a promontory I could now discern the columns of a temple. I could not believe the Gods inhabited it. Then below the temple two figures descended a winding track: a man and a horse. They moved very slowly as if the going was rough, or as if they were old or tired. When they reached the bottom of the track, they turned towards me. I eased my hand round my sword hilt, and waited, my eyes fixed on the black shapes moving across the grey sands. Then I relaxed; the horse was only a donkey; and then I saw that it was Septimus who led it.
He said, 'Things are looking up, General. I've found a farm up in the hills. They've run away from it, whoever's it is, but I found some wine and a sort of biscuit and some olives. Here,' he began pulling them out of a bag strung round his neck. 'Have a bite and a drink. Not too much now on an empty stomach.' He crouched down beside me. 'I haven't seen a soul,' he said. He picked up the goatskin and handed it to me. The wine was thin and sour, but I forced down two mouthfuls. He rubbed his palm over the lip of the goatskin and swallowed deeply himself. 'We're going to be all right, General,' he said, 'just you see.'
The donkey was a bony ride, with an awkward gait. We hadn't gone far before I grew dizzy and Septimus had to place his hand against me to hold me steady on its back. This'll never do, General,' he said, 'you're as weak as a kitten.'
And I was; but Septimus, this peasant from the Sabine Hills, with his ungrammatical Latin and long vowel sounds, was not only strong; he knew what to do in a crisis where I found myself lost. Of course, even at the time, I could excuse myself on account of my wound, of my battered head and the little fever that afflicted me. Yet the old saying is true: whoever makes excuses for himself, accuses himself. The fact was: our disaster - the wreck of the ships, the scattering of my legions by a numerically inferior enemy - had for the moment at least annihilated my faculties. I was incapable of thought, decision, action. I was reduced to a state of utter dependency on this nineteen-year-old farmboy.
He got me to the farm and dressed my wound and I slept while he kept watch. I woke again in the dark night and he was sitting on a barrel by the doorway gazing into the rustling vacancy of the macchia.
'Have you slept?' I said, and he shook his head, abruptly, even angrily, as if I had been accusing him of dereliction of duty. I placed my hand on his shoulder.
'Where have they all gone?' I said. 'We might be alone.'
'We're not alone. There have been rustlings and sounds of distant movement, and before the light failed, I saw a troop of horse ride out of the next valley and turn to the coast. But we're safe enough for the moment.'
'Safe?' I said. 'There are no stars,' and by that, I meant that my own star was invisible; for the first time since Caesar died.
He said, 'I would it would r
ain. You were bleeding the last few miles. They could follow us by the blood.'
He fell silent, and fell asleep. Poor boy. The donkey shifted in the room behind me. The boy's words echoed in my ears: 'They could follow us by the blood.' So might anyone tracing my career work, following me by the blood shed. Yet none was shed for joy of killing; only for necessity. But, I thought in that night which seemed already Stygian, as I imagined Pompey's cavalry ranging the valleys in search of me, if I died now, if it ended here, then all that blood was shed to no purpose. The Proscriptions, Philippi, Mutina, would have served Rome not at all, and my soul would descend blood-stained and worthless to the world below. I had believed myself a man of destiny - I had told that group of soldiers among whom I first encountered Septimus, as they huddled round a camp-fire, fearful of battle, that I knew my destined work for Rome - and here I was, wounded and dizzy with defeat, hiding in an abandoned farm on a Sicilian hillside, with my fleet scattered and my only companions a thin boy with a fighter's ear and a lame donkey. 'We have to pray to the Gods Agrippa comes,' the boy had said, but my messenger might never have reached Agrippa.
Towards morning the wind dropped. Cocks crew from higher up the valley, alarming me lest the evidence of life there might attract Pompey's soldiers. I hobbled back into the room and took a swig of wine from the goatskin. Septimus muttered and shifted in his sleep. I thought, for the first time since the disaster, longingly, of Livia. Was I failing her as well as Rome?
All my life I have lived much in my own mind. Yet at the same time I have little experience of solitude. We are a social people, our households tumbling over with slaves and family; our business taking us to the forum, the law-courts, the Senate House and the camp. Thoughts are pursued in the midst of chattering distraction; Cicero hated to be alone. His mind worked at its most agile in the press of men. Caesar too detested solitude; he used to say that one should never trust the lonely man; who knows what he is brooding? Only Virgil of all my acquaintances knows how to hearken to the long silences of lonely places; his senses vibrate in tune with the numinous. I now found the stillness of that Sicilian hillside oppressive, and -for I have vowed to myself that I shall tell the truth and conceal nothing however shaming in these confessions - fearful. I longed to wake Septimus merely to hear his rough and homely tongue. Some pride restrained me; let the lad have his necessary sleep, I told myself. But my hands shook, and little needles of fear or apprehension darted up my arms.
We rested in that cottage for two days. On the second morning the intermittent bleeding of my thigh-wound ceased. Gradually my headache dulled. The feeling of nausea never quite left me, though Septimus found more wine with which we calmed our stomachs. I could not but admire his composure, as I still was disturbed by the little tremors in my hands and arms. It was easy to tell myself that he had nothing but life to lose, nothing but death to fear - whereas I ... but at that time I stopped; Rome was far off.
The second day it rained with a steady drab intensity. Mist had rolled in from the sea and the mouth of the valley was obscured. By late afternoon visibility was reduced to less than fifty paces; only the nearest olive trees emerged twisting grotesquely from the thin edge of the mist. In the morning Septimus had said to me, 'What we both need, General, is rest. Sleep, turn about, eh, and keep guard.' I nodded; it seemed natural to abdicate command to the boy.
By evening I was refreshed, but hardly more confident that we could escape. Yet the long sleeps had done something to calm my nerves. Septimus, perhaps sensing my change of mood, talked freely for the first time. His conversation was mostly about his family. His father's holding (he said) was small; it could not possibly support the seven grown sons. Three of his brothers had taken off for Rome; but not him. He had seen something of their life; it wasn't for him. There was no work for them in Rome. They depended on the corn dole, and spent their time hanging about taverns hoping someone would buy them a drink, and their chief interests were lottery tickets and the Games. Two of them were married; 'To foreigners, would you believe it, General; no, the city's no life for a man. I mean, it degrades him,' he said. 'On the other hand, I have to tell you, General, that my father's lot is hardly any happier. It's true he works his fields, and there's some satisfaction in that, and we grow our own grain for bread, and make our own wine from our own grapes, and my mother's brother supplies us with oil and olives in exchange for wine; and we do have a small flock of sheep that my elder brother takes to the summer pastures. All that may sound all right, but it gets more difficult every year. You see, my dad can't compete in the markets with the big landowners and their ranches with slave labour. None of the small farmers can. They undercut our prices all the time. All that's no good.
He'll have to sell out if things don't get better. He's more and more in debt every year. So I saw no future, and joined the army. Join the army and see the world, they say. Some world, eh, we're seeing now?'
The next morning the sky cleared and the sun shone in a sparkling world. My spirits lifted with the mist. I began to feel for the first time that we might escape. I even hobbled (being still a little lame) out of the cottage to the corner of the olive grove, from where one could see beyond the mouth of the valley and down to the coast road.
I must set down baldly what followed. As I gazed down to the plain with a new peace in my heart in the brittle beauty of that October morning, I was suddenly chilled. A troop of horse turned off the coast road and up the valley track. It was impossible that they should miss our farm; it was impossible that they should not see us in flight. Our security had proved fool's gold. These were my immediate certainties: I had lost.
I called out to Septimus. He ran towards me. I indicated what it was hardly necessary to indicate.
'Bring my sword,' I said.
'There's no use in fighting,' he said.
'No,' I said, 'there's no use in fighting. Bring my sword.'
He looked at me, but did not obey. I hobbled into the hut, swearing at him, and seized my weapon. I took it by the point and held it out to him. His hand closed round the hilt, but he looked past me. I knelt down before him and pulled my tunic away at the neck . . .
'Strike,' I said.
Still he looked past me and did not move.
'Strike,' I cried again, near tears. My heart beat fast and I could feel myself beginning to tremble all over. 'Strike in the name of the Gods. Let me at least die a Roman death. Do you not see that I have no wish to fall into Pompey's hands, to be made a fool of and a mockery for all time? Strike, if you love me . . .'
But he threw down the sword and knelt beside me, and put his arms round me . . . 'General,' he said, 'you're not yourself. Listen,' he spoke very gently, yet with an urgency that came from the heart, 'I have believed in you. That's why I've done what I've done these last days. When you came to us by the camp-fire and talked of your star and what you would do for Italy, I believed you, and loved you for it. Are you telling me now it was all a lie? That you and your star are cheats too, like everything else? I won't do it, even if you weep and beg me' -(and I was weeping, I was shaking with sobs). 'If you're determined to do so, you must kill yourself, but I'll not promise to follow. I'll leave the job of killing me to others. I'll cling on to life' (and he hugged me tighter as if I was life myself) 'though if they find me by your dead body they'll think I've done it, and either slay me too to give themselves the credit or, who knows, reward me? Only I'd not want that sort of reward. Do you hear me?' he was shouting now. 'Be a man, General. You say you're sent to save Rome, and I believe you, even if you're greeting like a bairn now . . .'
We knelt there a moment, joined together. Then the gentleness returned to his voice, and he said,
'Come now, General, on your feet. Let's meet whatever fortune brings us, whether it be ill or whether it be good, like men. What happens after death is known to none, but all men I have heard talk on the matter agree that it is better to face the prospect of death with a cheerful countenance.'
His words renewed me.
I pulled myself up, and took the cloth he passed me, and wiped my eyes.
'And with your star,' he said, 'we may survive whatever is in store for us.'
'That's all right,' I said, 'I'm myself again. I'll not forget what you have done for me today.'
The horsemen were close enough now for us to hear the horses' hooves and the clatter of harness. The troop halted when they saw us standing there. Then three or four trotted forward and again paused about fifty yards distant. The man in front turned in his saddle and called out, 'It's him, it's the General himself,' and they broke ranks and in a moment surrounded me. I looked up and saw Agrippa's face.
'Where the devil have you sprung from?' I called out. 'How have you happened on me?'
'Soldier's instinct,' he said, looking smug for he had often told me he possessed this, and I didn't. 'Are you all right?'
I glanced at Septimus: 'We're all right,' I said, 'thanks to this man here . . .'
* * *
You may wonder, my sons, that I can bring myself to tell this story, and tell it in such detail. It would have been easy to ignore it. The skirmish in which we were defeated was an unimportant episode in the scrambling war with Sextus Pompey. It was a little setback in a contest we could hardly fail to win in the end. There is nothing in the story which redounds to my credit. I lost my nerve; I behaved like a poltroon. I was embarrassed to see Agrippa, and could not meet his eye.
Yet I would be dishonest to omit mention of my failure of nerve and resolution, and I am trying to tell you (and posterity) the truth about myself. This was the one occasion in my life when my certainty of victory evaporated, and I found no defences within myself against fear and despair. I really wanted Septimus to kill me, and I was saved only by this farmboy's confidence in me. His fortitude and the happy chance of Agrippa's discovery of our refuge (and the horsemen might not have been Agrippa's; they might indeed have been Pompey's for he still controlled by far the greater part of the island) together reassured me that the Gods favoured my cause. I had henceforth no doubts.
