“Princess! We both saw it, we saw it, we are not drunk, it's the truth! A tiger, a gigantic tiger, alive, in the wine vault—it came at us—what could we do, we ran—it was going to attack us….”
Aurelia stood dumb. It was Julius who spoke, in a calm, level tone. “All right, nothing happened to you. Why did you go into the vault?”
Aurelia turned to stare at him. In the wake of his own shock of despairing realization, he was taking charge.
One of the servants blurted out, “We heard a crash. We opened the door to see what it was—”
“The jar with the master's finest wine—smashed—”
“The tiger did it—”
“It wasn't our fault—”
“And the rear door?” With a hand that trembled only slightly, Julius pointed. “How long has that been open?”
The two men froze. They looked at each other. Then one of them began to whine and plead, pawing at Julius's arm.
“We'd just stepped outside for a breath of air—don't betray us, friend, I beg you, it's as much as our lives are worth—”
Julius brushed the man aside and ran to the rear door. Aurelia watched him without breathing. He stood there, his arms braced against the frame, his head turning this way and that. Then he pushed himself away from the frame and began to run up the hill, his bare legs beneath his tunic pumping desperately. He was soon out of sight.
The two servants slunk away. What their fate would be, when everything was revealed to the senator, Aurelia didn't dare to think—she didn't bother to think. All she could think about was Boots, and what would happen to Julius.
Their fault.
It was Marcus's fault and hers. But they wouldn't be punished—oh, no. They were too precious, too important, too highborn and rich. The children of mighty men of Rome were never made to pay for their mistakes, for their follies. They wouldn't suffer for what they'd done, not if Boots was never caught, not if he ran wild and killed someone. Not if, valuable and rare as he was, he came to some harm.
In all her life, Aurelia had never felt such a weight of guilt. She sank down under it, as Julius had. She felt what he had felt—the awfulness of what a moment's inattention, thoughtlessness, stupidity had brought about, and its probable cost. She remembered his agonized cry, “I'm a dead man!” and his childlike plea to his mother to forgive him. His mother. Yes, she would pay too, when her only son and support was dragged away in chains.
When Marcus got tired of sitting alone in the darkening atrium, and, growing uneasy when the others didn't come back, finally went after them, he found Aurelia lying on the cold stone floor of the passage, weeping inconsolably.
He stood beside her, taking in the empty vault, the smell of spilled wine, the cool evening wind blowing in from the hillside beyond the open rear door. At last he bent down and pulled Aurelia up by the arm.
“Get up, Relia,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Get up. You've got to go home now.” He forgot the difference in their rank. They were just two frightened children now. He shook her impatiently. “Stop crying, it's no use, it's done now. They won't blame us, we'll just say what I told Julius, that we fell asleep and Boots disappeared.”
Aurelia hung limp from his hand, still on the ground, sobbing. He got hold of her under the arms and hauled her unceremoniously to her feet.
“Listen! It wasn't our fault. It was Julius's. And the slaves’. They should have been watching. They're the ones to blame, not us!”
Aurelia could hardly speak for choking sobs. “Of course we were … to blame. If we hadn't … taken him away … he'd never have left me … everything would be all right. Why didn't we think? Why didn't we think what could happen? It's our fault, Marcus! Of course it's our fault!”
“How in the name of all the gods could we guess someone would let him out? That there'd be two doors open? Even if it all comes out and we have to admit we played a joke, we can truthfully say we shut him in safely. It was sheer accident and because of some stupid ape of a servant that he got out! Oh, do stop your silly crying, Relia. Some-one'll hear you.” He looked over his shoulder anxiously. “We have to behave as if nothing important has happened. Come on!”
He pulled her along by the hand back to the atrium, now in twilight, and sat her down on the couch. He told her to wipe her face, and, when she had, he clapped his hands. After a longer wait than usual, a manservant came running. He brought a torch that threw flickering shadows around the darkening atrium. Aurelia shuddered and put her face in her hands, but Marcus pinched her arm hard to make her brace herself.
“The Lady Aurelia is leaving now,” he said curtly. “Call her carriage.”
It was sheer chance that Marcus's mother had not returned to her son's apartment an hour before to say goodbye to Aurelia formally and make sure she got safely on her way. Some important guests had arrived unexpectedly, and she had had to entertain them in a remote part of the villa. When they finally left, she hurried to the atrium, hoping she was not too late, only to find it empty.
“Marcus!” she called.
There was no answer. She went into his bedroom. He wasn't there, either. She sat down on one of the couches to wait.
Marcus, having seen Aurelia off in her carriage, with sharp, whispered orders to keep silent, was lingering outside in the dark, afraid, now he was alone, to return to the villa and face the situation. Several horse-drawn chariots clattered by over the cobbled road. The twinkling lamps of the city were coming on below the overlook where he stood. He gazed at them unseeingly, fighting against his conscience, against beginning to see the justice in what Aurelia had said. At last loneliness and creeping guilt drove him inside the walls of his home.
He met his mother coming out of his apartment. The lamps had been lit now and there was a deceptive normality about the big stone rooms with their colorful murals, animal skin rugs, embroidered drapes, and comfortable gilded furniture.
“There you are, Marcus! I was looking for you. Tell me all about the visit! How did it go?”
Evidently she had heard nothing. Of course, by now the whole staff knew, but none had had the courage to tell their mistress. Marcus drew several deep breaths, his mind coming out of its frightened torpor. She would have to hear, probably within the next few minutes. It would be better if she heard from his mouth—his version.
“Mata, I'm afraid something happened. Something … serious.”
His mother's hand flew to her heart. In our house! she thought. “What? What happened? Something to do with Aurelia?”
“No. It was the tiger—Boots. He—he ran away.”
She couldn't grasp it. “He ran away? How could he? What do you mean?”
Marcus was thinking furiously. He could at once put the blame on Julius, but that might rebound against him later. Better to take some small share of it from the beginning.
“Well, Aurelia and I, you know, we were talking, and we ate a lot, and … we got a bit sleepy … and Boots was asleep, as we thought, and …” His mother was staring at him. No. It wouldn't do. Since he was a young child he had hardly ever fallen asleep in the daytime, even when the house was in its afternoon silence…. She wouldn't believe it—not with Aurelia to be entertained. Not that they had both fallen asleep! He drew a deep, shaky breath.
“Mata, I want to tell you the truth.” Not the whole truth, but as near as he dared come. She waited, a look of deep anxiety on her face, her hand still pressed to her heart.
“This is what happened. We—that's to say, I mean, mainly it was me—we thought we'd take Boots for a bit of a walk around the servants’ quarters.”
His mother continued to stare at him. She knew him very well. He wanted to drop his eyes but he made them go on meeting his mother's. His brain was working frenziedly. She said, “Am I to understand you wanted to frighten the servants?”
He hadn't thought of that, but, yes, that was probably his best bet. Now he averted his eyes, and nodded shamefacedly.
“And where, pray, was the young keeper while y
ou were doing this very stupid and unmannerly thing?”
Ah. Now. To drop Julius into deep trouble, or not to? He had to decide on the instant. He didn't care two straws for Julius or what happened to him—on the contrary. So what decided him was not the memory of Julius's wretchedness, but of Aurelia's reaction to it. If Marcus betrayed Julius, Aurelia would never forgive him, and he definitely didn't want that to happen.
“Well, he had to leave us for a few minutes. You know.”
“And the slaves who carry the cage?”
Marcus was completely indifferent to their fate. “Oh, they were fast asleep.”
His mother's brow darkened. “Well? What happened?”
“We led Boots down the servants’ passage and we were … looking for someone to—”
“Terrify the wits out of—”
“Mm, but there wasn't anybody, and suddenly the tiger must have smelled something in one of the storerooms. The door was open. He went in and before we could stop him he'd pushed against one of the wine jars and smashed it. That gave us a fright. So we tried to get him out of there but he just rushed past us and then there was this door open to the outside and before we could do anything, he was through it.”
There was a long silence. Marcus's mother sank down on one of the couches. She beckoned him to come close to her, and the second he was within reach she seized him and forced him to sit facing her. She was very pale.
“Is that the whole story, Marcus? Is that the story I'm to tell your father? Because this is a disaster, you know that. That beast is loose somewhere and only the gods know what it'll do. I dread to think what Caesar's going to say when he finds out. As for Aurelia! She must be in a dreadful state, poor child—she loved that creature! So you'd better be quite certain of your facts, because you're going to be asked to repeat that story until you're sick of it. If there are any untruths in it, they'll be uncovered sooner or later.”
Marcus felt a sudden wave of fear. His lies might not hold up. There might be something he'd missed. But he couldn't go back on it now.
“It's the truth, Mata! I swear by Jupiter!”
She looked him full in the face for another second. Then she stood up without another word and swept out of the room.
Freedom
A WILD CREATURE released or escaped from captivity will usually run as fast and far away from its prison as it can before stopping to rest and take stock. But Boots was no longer a wild creature. Since he was a cub he had not been free. He was tame now, not wild. And there is nothing much more helpless and pathetic than an animal that has always lived with man, and had all its needs taken care of, finding itself out in the open with no idea where to go or how to look after itself.
So, although he went bounding quite happily away from the senator's villa and spent half an hour strolling and rolling about in the scrub, sniffing the air with all its myriad enticing smells of food and freedom, by the time it was completely dark he was already bewildered and hungry and lost.
He made a few halfhearted forays after small creatures that crossed his path, but they easily evaded him. After a while he grew tired. He found a sheltered place under an overhanging rock, and lay down to sleep. For the first time in many long months, he felt a dim sense that something was missing. He shook his heavy head in the darkness. Another should be lying beside him. But that other was not there. He was quite alone.
If only Julius had not been too distraught to look at the ground for signs of footmarks, he might have found his charge quite quickly, and put his own agony to an end. But he simply ran blindly up the hill, stared wildly around him at the broken landscape, and, not seeing the tiger immediately, ran off in the wrong direction. By the time he came to his senses, darkness had fallen and it was too late to do any sensible tracking.
What was he to do? He dared not go back to the menagerie where Boots was kept, without him. He dared not go home to face his mother—she would know at once that something life-changing had happened. So he found an olive tree and sat down on the inhospitable ground at its foot.
He believed his life was as good as over. In his despair, he thought his best course might well be to wedge his sword between two large stones and fall on it. It seemed to him that he had nothing to expect now but some terrible doom far worse than anything he could do to himself. Yet his gods argued against self-ending. They had given him life, and expected him to respect it and live it out to its natural end. But truthfully, it wasn't the gods or the thought of his mother's grief that kept his sword in his belt, and, after a long period when time seemed to have stopped, brought him to his feet with a kind of despairing resolve to face it out. It was the thought of Aurelia—of leaving Aurelia, never seeing her again. Of leaving her, moreover, with the memory of him as a coward.
So, to prove his courage, he took the most difficult option.
He could have gone to the menagerie first, and reported his loss. Instead, he stumbled through the stony darkness toward Caesar's palace.
How he would face the mighty Emperor and confess his dereliction of duty, he could not foresee. He only knew that it had to be done.
But Caesar already knew.
Aurelia had arrived home in a state that couldn't easily be hidden from her mother, who was waiting, as Marcus's mother had been, to hear all about the visit. To do Aurelia justice, she tried. She composed herself as well as she could during the journey back in the carriage. She was determined to say nothing, to betray nothing. But the moment her mother saw her, she knew something had happened.
“cara! What is it? You're as pale as death! Did you and Marcus quarrel?”
All Aurelia's resolution collapsed. She fell crying into her mother's arms.
“We lost Boots! He ran away! He's gone, and Julius is going to be blamed for it! Oh, Mata! Please don't let anything happen to Julius!”
After that, events moved quickly. Aurelia was asked a few essential questions, was briefly soothed and handed over to her nurse, who was brusquely summoned from her peaceful retreat. The Empress hurried away. Aurelia was in despair. She had failed Julius. It was out of her hands now. But at least she hadn't said anything about his falling asleep. She, too, pretended he had merely left his post to answer a call of nature.
“Don't fret, precious! It's not so bad!” the nurse kept repeating. “Why are you so concerned about that young scamp of a slave boy? He should have been looking after you! And you couldn't help it if that nasty ungrateful beast ran away!”
The nurse understood nothing. Nothing. Every kindly word made things worse. But Aurelia was now beyond tears. She went to bed and lay there, dry-eyed, numb and sleepless, thinking only of Julius. Once or twice, almost for relief, her thoughts strayed to her tiger. She thought of him out there in the night somewhere. At least he was free. Free? But no, that was no comfort. She knew he would be fearful, helpless, and alone. But at least not in danger. No. Surely he would be caught. Perhaps if he was, Julius would be pardoned and it would all blow over….
She was too far away to hear the commotion when Julius reached the palace, entered by the servants’ door at the rear, and asked to see the Emperor.
He was almost paralyzed with fear when he was led into the great receiving hall and saw Caesar seated in majesty on a gilded thronelike chair. This was the most powerful man in the world, and, some said, the most ruthless and intolerant. He was generous to those who served him well—merciless to those who fell short, or disobeyed. He had entrusted his beloved daughter into Julius's care and Julius had failed in his trust. The valuable animal on which so much expense had been lavished had vanished. Absurdly, Julius remembered the collar. All those jewels … But Aurelia was the jewel beyond price that Julius had risked with his moment of forgetfulness.
“So. You have lost the tiger,” said Caesar in a voice of iron.
Julius fell on his face.
“Before I tell you what I intend to do with you, a question. Stand up.” Before Julius could move, the two slaves escorting him hauled him to his feet
. “You understand animals. What will the tiger do?”
At first, Julius couldn't speak. But as he thought about this question, he found his voice, though it croaked and wobbled. “Caesar, I think he will do what a pet cat would do. Try to find his way home.”
“Home? Do you mean, to the menagerie?”
Julius struggled with the wool of fear that was clogging his brain. “Perhaps. Or … he might try to come here.”
“Could he find his way to this palace, through the streets of the city?”
“I don't think so, Caesar. There would be too many confusing scents, and he would be seen and chased.”
“If he is chased, will he attack?”
“I think only if he's cornered. He's lost his natural ferocity. His claws are covered. If—if I could find him, I think he'd come quietly.”
“He won't enjoy freedom?”
“He'll be hungry by now. He's never learned to hunt. He can't hunt with his feet muffled. Perhaps he has lost the instinct. I think …”
“Well? Speak up, boy!”
“I think he'd be glad to be recaptured.”
Suddenly the Emperor, who had kept his voice down till now, let out a roar of rage. “Is this some trick to postpone your punishment?”
Julius stood perfectly still, his knees melting under him.
“Answer me! For you will not escape what is due to you, whatever you do!”
“Caesar, I don't ask for mercy. Whatever you do to me, I deserve. But I would like to do what I can to right the wrong I've done. I'd like a chance to catch the tiger and restore him to the princess. She loves him.”
The Emperor's stern face darkened like a thunder cloud covering Julius's sky.
“Do you imagine I will let her play with him after this? Yes, you will find him if you can. That I will allow you, because I need you to do it. But when you have the beast back, he won't be trusted, any more than you.” He seemed about to say something more, something Julius sensed would have terrible import for him. But he stopped himself, and gestured to the two slaves who had brought Julius in.
Tiger, Tiger Page 9
