A Pillar of Iron

by Taylor Caldwell

  They sprang apart, their swords whistling. Marcus knew only one thing: that he must drive this hated man to his knees. His purpose was like a power in him, a drive, a lethal determination. He experienced no fear, no dismay, no hesitation. His muscles tightened lustfully; his knees, which were his weakest point, pulsed with alien strength.

  Lucius’ sword moved like a thin streak of lightning and the guarded point stung Marcus’ left shoulder. Had the point been bare Marcus would perhaps have been fatally wounded. Lucius laughed with delight and his friends raised a cry of pleasure.

  He is like a snake, thought Marcus, giving way a little. But, like a snake, he must have a weak point. Lucius struck at Marcus’ throat but this time his sword was dashed aside. He is reckless, thought Marcus. Lucius was frowning. Yes, he is reckless, said Marcus to himself. I will goad him to more recklessness. So Marcus, suddenly bending his knees, reached under Lucius’ guard and struck him full in the chest.

  Cneius and Curius raised a shout of anger and outrage. But Lucius was silent. He actually fell back. Marcus did not pursue him. He waited.

  As if seized by a disgusted impatience, Lucius lunged forward, seeking by sheer force to drive Marcus back, to cause him to stumble and fall. Marcus deftly stepped aside, and Lucius ran several paces with his sword into emptiness.

  “What?” said Marcus, tauntingly, as Lucius recovered himself. “Did you see a mirage of me?” It was the first word he had spoken.

  Lucius could not believe it. His face turned a deathly white with fury. He was incredulous. He must have done with this at once! He sprang at Marcus with all his strength now, refusing to believe that the younger man had actually reached under his guard, refusing to believe the blow he had felt. No one had pierced his guard before.

  I will madden him, thought Marcus. He saw no one but Lucius; his quick eye held itself on the other’s sword. When Lucius, who was beginning to lose his head with umbrage and loathing, plunged his sword directly at Marcus’ face the younger man struck it aside with an easy motion. The clashed weapons made a plangent sound, loud in the breath-sucked silence.

  I am dreaming, thought the intent Gaius. This Marcus had always been bored by fencing. He fenced as a duty, as something without pleasure or interest. Truly, I am dreaming. He is like a dancer. There, how nimbly he danced aside at that lunge! But what is wrong with Lucius, who won all the prizes in this school when I taught him personally?

  Gaius had been wounded many times on the field, and he had scored many hundreds of times with the finest fencers in mock fights. But he had never been spurred by hatred; he had never experienced the deadly hatred that Marcus was experiencing. Even in battle, he had wanted only to disarm, for he was a good-tempered man.

  The swords clashed, crossing. Marcus and Lucius stared into each other’s faces. “Am I on my knees?” asked Marcus, gently.

  Lucius sprang back. His teeth clicked together. He was wild with mortification before his friends, who were muttering uneasily. He must have done with it at once! This slave was weaker and younger, though he danced like an actor. And, he was mocking Lucius Sergius Catilina, and that was not to be endured. He, Catilina, an officer in one of the finest legions, experienced, dexterous, a man who had killed easily face to face with the most skillful foes! This was not to be endured.

  Now he ran at Marcus in a very blaze of lightning moves, acid on his lips and in his throat, as if he were about to vomit. His eyes sparkled with rage. His attack was so fierce that Marcus indeed fell back, circled, stumbled once or twice, was stung several times on shoulder, on the breast, on the arms. But never once did he feel uncertain; never once did his hate lessen or his determination. He fell back and around; he retreated, only fending off the blows aimed at his face. Lucius pursued him, smiling again, sure of victory. His friends applauded, howled with laughter, as the two circled the room. Sweat stood on the antagonists’ faces in great drops, then rolled down their cheeks and into their eyes.

  Marcus was not wearying, though he moved back dexterously, and merely defended himself. During lessons, he would have exhausted long ago. But this was no lesson.

  Again their swords crossed, halfway up the hilts. Marcus said with that soft gentleness, as they stared at each other, “What! Did they not teach you better on the field, or did you fight with unarmed men, or maidens?”

  They sprang apart. It was then that Lucius suddenly struck the floor with his sword and disengaged the guard.

  Gaius shouted, “No, no! This is but fencing, not murder!”

  But Lucius’ friends roared with blood-thirsty joy, and the teachers and pupils screamed. The sword came lancing, naked, at Marcus’ breast. For the first time fear touched him lightly. Lucius meant to kill him. He fell back, and as he did so he struck the guard from his sword also. Now they faced each other with shining and flickering death.

  Gaius groaned. But all the others were seized with blood lust. This was no game any longer. It was serious; it would end, if not in death, with desperate wounds. This was the sport of the battlefield, of the arena.

  “Dishonorable wretch!” cried Marcus. “Liar! Coward!”

  But Lucius smiled. His tongue licked over his lips. He was now so sure that he made a deadly mistake. He lunged, and his foot slipped. Instantly he felt the sting of naked metal in his right shoulder. Before he could recover himself Marcus’ sword was at his throat and he was on one knee. Marcus’ sword flashed, hurled aside Lucius’ sword, and the point returned to his throat, at a fatal spot.

  The room roared with voices. Gaius came plunging forward. Marcus said in the most quiet of voices, “No. Let one man move and I run him through and that will be the end of him.”

  He meant it to be the end in any event. But he wanted to savor this moment of victory over this cruel and vicious man. He wanted Lucius to know death before he actually experienced it. He said, “I will kill you in a moment. But I must enjoy the thought first.”

  Lucius’ stiff arms were bent straight backward and he was supporting himself now on the palms of his hands. He looked up into Marcus’ face and saw the joyful hatred, the contorted mouth, the exultation. And he knew he was about to die.

  “It was your choice,” said Marcus. “You struck the guard off your sword. You meant a fight to the death. You have had it. Now you must die, you, the great and noble Catilina, the liar, the coward, the bruiser of children, the fool and the detestable slave in his soul.”

  Lucius said, “Kill me. Have done with it.”

  The point edged gently into his flesh. “Not too swiftly,” said Marcus. “I am taking my pleasure, and my pleasures are slow and calm. A little more, now,” and the sword slipped in just another fraction.

  Never was anyone to say that Catilina was not a man to face death bravely. He did not wince before the metal. He even tried to smile. The pain was like a fire in his throat.

  And then Marcus saw his eyes, wide and unblinking. He saw their full intense blue, fringed with ruddy lashes. And they were the eyes of Livia.

  Agonizing grief smashed upon Marcus’ heart, causing it to cringe and shake. His own eyes filled with tears and despair. He stepped back, withdrawing his sword. He could not speak.

  “Noble fighter! Gracious victor!” shouted Gaius, and flung his arms about his pupil. He wept aloud with joy and relief. “Magnanimous warrior! He restores life; he does not take it, for all he was challenged to the death! I salute you, Master of all!”

  The pupils and the students raised their voices in salutation and embraced each other as if they had won the victory themselves.

  Cneius and Curius came to their friend and in silence helped him to his feet and pressed a kerchief against his bleeding throat. But Lucius put them aside after a moment. He looked at Marcus, standing at a little distance, and saluted him mockingly.

  “I felicitate you, Chick-pea,” he said.

  Years later Marcus said to himself with anguish, “I should have killed him. I should never have let him live. Livia, Livia! Let my hand wither, that I
betrayed you.”

  In those later days, Catilina said once to Marcus, “Why did you not kill me, Chick-pea? Were you seized at last by the knowledge that one who kills an officer of the Republic, a mere nameless citizen, would be punished and put to death?”

  But Marcus was not able to answer.

  The news went about the city, which desperately seized on trifles to give it relief from the gloom of war. The noble patrician of the house of Catilinii, Lucius Sergius, and an officer of the army and of one of the most famous legions known for its valor, had been overcome in a duel with bare swords by an unknown law clerk, the son of a humble knight, a country youth born not in Rome but in Arpinum, and of a family distinguished for nothing! (It annoyed the gleeful spreaders of the news when they learned that Marcus’ mother was one of the noble Helvii, so this was not mentioned as of anything important.)

  There were those who delighted that Lucius had been so humiliated, even among his friends and fellow patricians. Marcus often saw faces peering at him from rich litters, and smiling. Groups of artisans and shopkeepers, thinking of him affectionately as one of them, waited on Scaevola’s doorstep for him to emerge.

  Scaevola was silent about it all for several days, then he said to his pupil, “Tell me, my dear, did you refrain from killing him out of mercy?”

  Marcus shook his head.

  “No?” cried the old man, with pleasure. “Why, then?”

  Marcus had now a deep affection for his teacher. He could not offend or disappoint him by telling him the truth, which would have seemed unmanly to Scaevola.

  “Not,” said Scaevola, losing his pleasure, “because you feared punishment as a civilian who killed a notable officer, and a patrician?”

  “No,” said Marcus.

  “Good! Then you spared him so that he might suffer mortification, which, in a man like Lucius, would be unbearable?”

  Scaevola was so pleased by his own reasoning and so delighted with Marcus that he embraced the youth.

  “Lucius will never forgive you,” said Scaevola, showing all his old yellow teeth in a joyous smile.

  Helvia said to her son, “Did you spare Catilina because you feared the consequences of his death?”

  “No,” said Marcus.

  Helvia meditated. Then she smiled. “You had disarmed him. You could not kill an unarmed man. You are a hero, my son. I am proud of you.”

  “I, too, am proud,” said Quintus, his brother. “I did not know you were so splendid a swordsman.”

  I did not know, either, thought Marcus with some wryness.

  “Why did you not kill him, my friend?” asked Noë ben Joel. Noë’s bright brown eyes began to dance. “Not,” he exclaimed, “that you were remembering the Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’?”

  “No,” said Marcus. “I wished to kill him.”

  Noë clucked mockingly. “Then, why did you not?”

  Marcus felt that Noë, an actor, an artist, a lover of plays and romances, would understand where others would not, and wished to unburden himself.

  “Because he has the eyes of the girl I love, for he is distantly related to her, and has married her. Had I not seen those eyes fully, an instant before I was prepared to thrust the blade into his throat, he should have died.”

  He had not been wrong. Noë was delighted. “What a play this would make!” he cried. “Fear not; I will not give the hero your name nor the vanquished Catilina’s. But someday, I will use this episode.” He said exactly what Scaevola had said: “He will never forgive you.”

  “Nor,” said Marcus through his teeth, “will I ever forgive him.”

  *From Cicero’s Law.

  PART TWO

  The Man and the Lawyer

  Protexisti me, Deus, a conventu malignantium, alleluia; a multitudine operantium iniquitatem—

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “There is but one thing certain,” said old Scaevola wrathfully. “What these new rascals call democracy is only confusion! You will discover this for yourself, if your life is spared, which I doubt. You are not likely to enjoy an old age like mine, with your absurd theories of the rights of man and democracy.

  “Look at the law of Sulpicius, which granted to the freedmen—the base freedmen!—equality with the old citizens of Rome! Cinna, who prates of democracy and liberty and the Constitution of our nation and who is a monstrous despot, revived that law for he knows where his power lies, the exigent rascal! He nominated himself Consul every year, without consulting the people whom he alleges he loves. He will reduce taxes and debts, he declares, and he has done so, to our economic ruin, and the bareness of our treasury which has been looted for wars and the benefits of foreign dependencies and nations. We can be certain of one thing, my dear: this temporary alleviation of taxes will result in greater taxation and final collapse. It is pure bookkeeping. But are the people concerned with budgetry, and the hard fact that one cannot spend what one does not have, without bankruptcy? No! They cry ‘Hail!’ to the tyrant, Cinna, for an immediate gain at the expense of the nation.”*

  The noble old pontifex maximus shook his head despondently. “Marius, another famous democrat, spared my life, after the massacres he instigated when he returned to Rome. Why, I know not, for I detest all hypocrites. It was no accident that he was one with that vulgarian, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who now so oppresses us in the name of democracy.” He scratched his ear and chuckled sombrely. “Nevertheless, I am sometimes inclined to believe in the old myth that there is some wisdom in the people. When Marius died in his bed—very sad, he should have been murdered as he had murdered thousands of others without mercy—there was no public mourning on the part of the people for their self-appointed liberator. All Italy, and Rome, herself, raised their heads as if a sword had been lifted and deliverance announced. It is very puzzling. Those who shouted the loudest for the franchise and freedom are quite content with the bloody oppressions of Cinna—”

  “They need to breathe, to collect themselves, after all these years of war,” said Marcus. “They are exhausted. But surely we will rid ourselves of Cinna!”

  “No,” said Scaevola. “A restoration of the Constitution will only breed fresh social wars, and dumbly the people realize this. Better oppression with peace, they say, than freedom with war. This is the voice of the new freedmen, who strut about Rome and know nothing of her history, and rejoice in Cinna the tyrant, who embraces them in his vulgarity, with cries of ‘democracy!’ I am disappointed in our provinces, where I thought some manhood remained.”

  “They wish peace,” said Marcus, again.

  “Ha, ha,” said Scaevola, in a voice of gloating. “There is still Sulla, in exile, in the East! Has he forgotten? No. We shall hear from him soon. Wars breed wars, as locusts breed locusts, and there are always ambitious men.

  “In the meantime, let us consider that tomorrow you present your first case to the Senate. I will not plead with you, but I will be in the audience. You are twenty-one years old, and I have taught you conscientiously, for you have been less stupid than my other pupils, who are still only clerks. I have informed a number of my friends, and they will be there to applaud you—”

  “If I win,” said Marcus. He stood tall and thin and long-necked and quiet before his mentor, who narrowed his eyes upon him and tilted his great old head.

  “A lawyer must not permit himself an ‘if,’” said Scaevola. “Have I not told you? You cannot appeal to any established law of Rome in the case of your client, for there is no such law. Your client was a small farmer, a husbandman, with a wife and two young children, and three slaves who assisted him on his farm. But, like all of us, he fell on evil times and economic ruin. He could not pay his taxes. Therefore, the tax-gatherers have seized his small property, have imprisoned him and are prepared to sell your client into slavery, and his wife and children into slavery also. That is the law: a bankrupt, one who fails to pay his taxes, or cannot, or has debts he cannot pay, is seized, his property confiscated, and himself and his family sold into
slavery, to satisfy his debtors or his avaricious government. That is the law of Rome, and who is not always celebrating the laws of Rome but you, my dear?”

  “Once the heart of Rome was humane,” said Marcus, in distress. “That evil law should have been repealed, and that it would have been done had it not been for the Social Wars. It remained for decades on the books without being enforced.”

  “The government needs money. That is always its plaint,” said Scaevola, with contempt. “Let us translate that properly: Tyrants need money with which to buy votes and influence. Ergo, they revive evil laws. Their bureaucrats delve into dusty manuscripts and come upon a regulation or a little obscure law which will justify their oppressions. It is all very legal, and very virtuous. When that law appeared on the books, centuries before this, it was to discourage profligacy and irresponsibility in our then new nation, and to impress men that they must not undertake more than was consistent with their abilities, and the intelligence with which nature had seen fit to endow them. But now the government, eagerly seeking revenue, exploits an ancient law which was never enforced because the people were frugal and provident and their rulers humane. Now it is being enforced because the people are profligate and irresponsible, and their rulers monsters. It is a paradox, but governments are not noted for consistency. And, does not the government need money? Your client is but one of thousands.”*

  Marcus sat down and leaned his elbow on the marred table where so many pupils of Scaevola had studied. He bent his chin into the palm of his hand and stared at the table.

  “I shall appeal to the humanity of the Senate,” said Marcus.

  Scaevola rocked his fat buttocks with mirth on his chair and slapped the table in an ecstasy of laughter. “Humanity? The Senate? My dear, you are mad! You appeal to a government for clemency, the very government which is a destroyer by nature? The government, you remember, which needs money—the money of your client? You are appealing to a lion to release a gazelle, for which it has an overpowering appetite, being eternally hungry. No, no, my downy-bearded one. You must seek another passage than that of appealing to the lion.”