He reached for his pouch and brought out a vial of syrup of opium. Ramus must sleep; he must not begin to think of what had happened to him and the people who had afflicted him. He held the vial to Ramus’ lips and said, “Take but a mouthful.” He wondered why he did not say, “Drink it all.” But his physician’s training admonished him even while his spirit was embittered beyond imagining. Though death was merciful, he was constrained not to give it. After Ramus had drunk and become drowsy, Lucanus still sat and held his hand, and finally Ramus slept, a faint smile of peace on his large lips.
It seemed to Lucanus that too long a time had passed. Had the cowardly and sniffling Siton been too afraid to obey him? I do not doubt it, thought Lucanus. These are dogs and sheep and ravening jackals by nature. I shall have mercy on them no more, and shall turn from them forever. My life is over. What is left I shall devote to my poor and loving friend, and be eyes and voice to him. He touched his dagger, and he longed to use it as some dagger had been used on Ramus.
The huge and shining silence enveloped the house. Lucanus put his fingers tenderly on the bandaged eyes, and whispered, “I have scorned and hated You because You afflicted men, and had no mercy for them, and left them in darkness. But now I know that You are sternly just, and that we deserve no more than what we have, and even less than that. If You have rejected man, it is because he is not worthy of acceptance. Give me some wisdom. Let my reason know why You created this world, for You are omniscient, and You must have known what the world would be, and how detestable. How can You, who throw the radiant constellations into darkness, forgive me for my blasphemies against You? Enlighten me! And do You have mercy on this good, dear friend, who has been seeking You and weeping for You, until his voice was lost. Have mercy. Mercy!”
His fingers, on the bandaged eyes, began mysteriously to vibrate. He wished to remove them, fearful that the trembling would cause Ramus fresh pain. But he was like one paralyzed; the gently shaking fingers remained on the bandages. Finally, after long moments, he could lift away his hands. There was a strange weakness in them, a numbness, which began to run over his body as if his blood were draining away.
There was a sudden commotion in the court and garden, the tramping of purposeful feet, and Lucanus sprang up and pulled his dagger from its sheath. He felt the longing to kill like a passionate hunger in his bowels. The torn curtain was pushed aside, and it was Turbo who entered, Turbo with a shaken and tear-stained face, and behind him stood armed slaves. At the sight of him Lucanus began to sob, dryly. He held out his arms and staggered to the potter, and Turbo caught him and held him to his breast.
“Do not be distressed, dear Master,” said the potter. “I am here to take you to my house, and your servant also. I am honored!”
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Roman proconsul in Athens was a young and ambitious and expedient man. He had never been a soldier; his family was great in Rome, and he had committed some considerable indiscretions which had made it necessary for his family to use their money and their influence to remove him from Rome for some time. He had been educated in the law, and was very intelligent.
Lucanus, all this week, had been flinging the name of his adopted father in the proconsul’s face when he demanded justice. The proconsul, while admiring Lucanus’ appearance, his intellect, and his forcefulness, found the Greek becoming tedious. Lucanus was evidently a gentleman, and the proconsul, a gentleman himself, was inclined to be lenient and grave. But the matter was so petty! The proconsul leaned an elegant elbow on his table and regarded Lucanus kindly. Behind him, in his office, the banners of Rome hung in majesty, and the soldiers stood with the fasces surmounted by the imperial eagles.
“My dear Lucanus,” said the proconsul, in the most mellifluous accents. “One understands, as I have told you before, your vexation. The rich peasant in question is penitent; he is willing to pay for the repairs to your house. What more can you ask? He is anxious to ask your pardon in public; he admits his wife attempted the miscarriage herself. He will grovel before you. He will weep at your feet. Let us be reasonable.”
Lucanus looked at him with all the powerful concentration of his angry blue eyes. “I want him punished. I want him sentenced to a long period in prison. What is his penitence to my friend, Ramus, who is blind? Will the peasant’s tears restore his sight and remove his wounds and bruises?”
“You are so remorseless,” sighed the proconsul. He offered Lucanus wine, but the Greek repudiated it with a gesture of contempt. “Let us consider, Lucanus. Your servant, a black man, is your slave — ”
“I have told you a thousand times that he is not a slave!” cried Lucanus. “It is true he was wrongfully accused of some nonsense and imprisoned, and I bought him, and I have shown you the papers of his freedom, which I gave him! How can you ask me to accept the peasant’s penitence in his behalf? If he had injured my person, I might be brought to forgive him. But I have no right to offer such forgiveness in behalf of my friend, who is not only mute, but now is blind. Where is Roman justice?” he went on, bitterly. “I have heard of Roman law all my life; my adopted father revered it. ‘Equal justice for all men!’ What a travesty! What a lie!”
The proconsul sighed again. “Your servant is not only a black man, but he is a barbarian. The peasant is a citizen of Greece, though privately I think the Greeks are overrated. I am speaking of the modern Greeks; they eat the reputations of their old great men as bankrupts eat their capital. Let me read you a rule and regulation,” and he picked up a scroll and read from it. “ ‘A citizen of Rome, or a citizen of any country under the jurisdiction of the Pax Romana, has certain rights of dignity, recourse to law, and justice by his peers’. But your barbarian servant is a man of no clear origin; he is not even an Egyptian. He has no status. He is a man of color, not a white man. And you ask me to punish a rich citizen of Greece, who sends his taxes to Rome, and who is a friend of Grecian politicians, and send him to prison! One has to look at matters in a frame of reference, without prejudice, and with common sense. Did you consider what the citizens of Athens would think of a prison sentence imposed on this simple peasant, who honestly believed that Ramus had the evil eye?”
“A curse on your rules and regulations!” shouted Lucanus, and slapped his hand hard on the fine table. “What is law, as opposed to justice? Lawyers and judges are nefarious asses, and should be suspect. I demand justice for Ramus. He is a man, and has been injured almost mortally by a man; if I had not come in time he would have died. Has he no rights as a man, whatever his origin? Is his manhood to be despised?”
He drew a loud and furious breath. “What is Athens to me? I shall never return here, where mercy was repaid by hatred.”
The proconsul smiled an almost coquettish smile. “That will not displease the Athenian doctors, who are much incensed against you. The doctors say you deprive them of patients who would pay them a fee. They feel that you have injured them by your free ministrations; patients wait for your return.”
“I have only helped those who could not pay — ”
The proconsul shrugged. “Who cares for such irresponsible cattle? Besides,” and he coughed, “I have reports that you have sometimes accepted rich patients, whose cases were hopeless, and who could pay valuable fees.”
“I have cured many of them whose physicians have said they were beyond hope. If I have proved the doctors wrong, and have humiliated them because of their ignorance, it is not my fault.” Lucanus clenched his fists on the table, and his color was high and choleric.
The proconsul coughed more extensively. “I have not brought it to your attention before, but the doctors have written me complaints that you practice magic and sorcery, and that is a serious offense.”
Lucanus was astounded. “Are you attempting to tell me that the physicians of Greece, these modern physicians! give credence to such barbaric superstitions?”
“Oh, you must know they go to oracles at Delphi, and all men are superstitious, Lucanus! Even physicians. One co
mplaint, in particular, speaks of a wealthy merchant who was afflicted with cancer, and was given but a month to live, and you cured him!”
“I know that merchant. His name is Callias. That was two years ago. I told him his physicians were right, but gave him a potion to help his pain. He is dead; I am certain of that!”
“He is not dead. He is alive and healthy, and has retired to his estates in Cos.”
Lucanus was incredulous. “Then his doctors were wrong, and I was wrong. He came to me with all his flesh filled with sores. It is probable he had some skin disease which simulated cancer — we were all mistaken.”
The proconsul shook his head. “No. The doctors were correct; you were correct. By some magic you cured him, and magicians are held in deep suspicion, it being believed that they are in league with the darker forces of hell.”
“I have heard ridiculous things before, but this is the worst! The doctors merely resent me. What of those who cannot pay their fee? Must they die for lack of help?”
“I honor your compassion, Lucanus, though I deplore it. I must tell you now that the peasant will make amends, but you must forget the injury to your servant. For me to punish the peasant will set all Athens about my ears, and it is the policy of Rome, the explicit policy of Tiberius Caesar, our divine Emperor, to keep peace in the provinces.”
“Have you ever thought that an act of Roman justice would inspire respect in Greece, which invented democracy? Have you heard the people deride Rome, as I have heard them? It is not that they practice democracy themselves, but like all hypocrites, they pretend to revere it. Declare to them that all men have equal recourse to the law — ”
“Even a former slave, a black man, a servant, who was stupidly injured by a Greek? What is your servant?”
Lucanus clenched his teeth. The argument had gone on for days, and it always ended this way. He glanced down at his hands vaguely; he always wore the ring of Diodorus, and the ring which Tiberius had given him. He never gave thought to them any longer. But now his face flushed, and he became excited. He removed the ring of Tiberius and sent it spinning on the table.
“Look upon that ring!” he exclaimed. “I swear to you, by all the gods, that Tiberius himself, who honored my father and honored me, gave it to me to wear forever! Do you doubt it? Write to Plotius, the beloved Captain of the Praetorians, in the Imperial Palace, who is my friend, and ask him! Tiberius loves him as a son, and trusts him above all other men, and he is as a brother to me.”
The magnificent ring lay on the table, shining and glittering, and the proconsul, who was a fancier of rings, and knew the enormous value of this one, was struck dumb. He was frightened. He picked up the ring reverently and examined it with awe.
“If you do not execute justice on this peasant,” said Lucanus, who despised those who used names and influence, “then I shall send this ring to Caesar and ask him to give his own justice, for he will not permit me to be humiliated and my requests contemptuously rejected.”
The proconsul held the ring in his hand as one holds a holy thing, and he said in a shaking voice, “Why did you not tell me of this before, noble Lucanus?”
“I did not think of it. I did not think that a Roman official would need the name of Caesar to do his duty!” Lucanus’ face was bright with scorn. “My adopted father was a noble man and a tribune, and just, but his kind is dead. He would not have needed a trinket from Caesar to move him!”
The proconsul wet his lips. He rose, still holding the ring, bowed to Lucanus and, begging his pardon, replaced the ring on his finger. Then he turned to his soldiers and said in a raging voice, “Arrest that rascal immediately, and throw him into prison, to await my pleasure! Shall a Roman cavil before his duty? Be gone! The noble Lucanus has been unpardonably insulted by a mere peasant, and I will avenge him!”
“You shall not go unavenged,” said Lucanus to Ramus, as he prepared to remove the bandages from the blind eyes. “I have had the word of the Roman proconsul, yesterday, that he would arrest the husband of Gata and deliver him to justice.”
He reached gently for the bandages, but Ramus tore his head from that gentle touch, and his big mouth writhed. Lucanus stood back, and was appalled when he saw a tear drip from below the cloth. “What is it?” he asked, in consternation. Ramus seized his hand, mouthing silently but with despair. “Do not weep,” said Lucanus, frightened. “You will injure what remains of your eyes.”
The fine chamber which Turbo had assigned to his guests glittered with sunlight. Lucanus, shaking his head at his own thoughtlessness, drew the curtains over the windows. Then he remembered, with a fresh sinking of his heart, that Ramus would never see the sun again. He turned to his servant, and saw the dripping tears. He put his hand to his forehead. “Do not weep,” he said, again, and in a muttering voice. Then louder, he said, “Do you think it gives me pleasure to know that even that peasant, who destroyed your eyes, must suffer for what he did? Do you not understand that I wished him only to learn that he cannot do these things to the innocent, that he cannot, with impunity, desecrate a man’s home, that he cannot injure those who have not injured him? He will be a better man after a few stripes and a brief time behind bars. Law is law.”
He came back to Ramus, who seized his hand once more. Turbo entered the chamber, humbly cheerful. “Ah, the bandages are to be removed today,” he said, and patted Ramus’ shoulder in passing. He looked significantly at Lucanus, and bowed. He seemed overwhelmed. “Master,” he whispered, “the proconsul himself, the Roman proconsul! waits without for a word with you.”
“Bring him here,” said Lucanus. “I wish him to see for himself what can be done under his jurisdiction, and what can be redressed only upon insistent demand.”
His tone of authority made Turbo bow again. “I shall send in my finest wine!” he exclaimed, eagerly. “And wine for his centurions, in the court.” He paused. “Do you think the noble proconsul would so honor this house?”
“The Roman proconsul,” said Lucanus, wryly, “will appreciate any thing of value.”
Lucanus almost forgot the proconsul. With a touch as light as a feather he began to remove the thick bandages from the stricken eyes. He tried to ignore the slow slipping of tears from under them. He hoped only that healing had been accomplished, that there was no infection. But he sighed, knowing that the dimmed light would reveal that the eyes had sunken, the lids withered, and the pupils destroyed forever. “Ah,” he murmured, “if I could give you one of my eyes, my dear Ramus! Would I not then pluck it from its socket and deliver it to your own! I ask only that you will not suffer any pain from this time on, and that you will be able to resign yourself.”
“Resignation, with a fortune, even without eyes, can be a recompense!” said an agreeable voice close to Lucanus, and he turned to see the proconsul, who was smiling pleasantly. “Greetings, noble Lucanus! I bring you excellent news.”
“Good,” said the physician, frowning, and returning to his work. “You will see that this is most delicate. I am hoping that the eyes of Ramus have been healed, and no inflammation is present.”
The proconsul shifted himself to an elegant attitude and pursed his lips as he looked at the black man. All this furor over a miserable, nationless wretch, who was little better than a slave! These Greeks, it was impossible to understand them. Naturally one remembered Thucydides and Xenophon and Aeschylus, who considered all men valuable and God all-merciful and loving all His children. But this was philosophy only. Men had to deal with the raw stuff of life; it was only during relaxation, with such wine as this, that one could utter noble platitudes with virtue and congratulate himself on his sensibility.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I have delivered the peasant to justice, my dear Lucanus. The magistrates have today informed me that when he is brought before them they will order his execution. Moreover, and this will please your servant, his land and money will be confiscated and delivered to the victim in recompense.”
Lucanus started violently, and Ramus, lying
on his bed, sat upright, wringing his hands. “Execution!” cried Lucanus. “I asked you for justice, not murder!”
The proconsul was not accustomed to anyone speaking to him like this, and especially not a Greek. He frowned formidably at Lucanus.
“Do not talk to me in that fashion, adopted son of Diodorus Cyrinus,” he said, in a cold voice. “You may be a physician, and a citizen of Rome, and the heir to a Roman’s fortune — for so I was informed yesterday — but I — I am a Roman!”
“And I am a man!” exclaimed Lucanus, his face darkening. “And what is a Roman, after all, but a man too? Hah! I will have to appear before the magistrates. Then I shall say what I must say, that justice must be tempered by mercy.”
The proconsul smiled, and again sipped at his wine. “It was you, dear Lucanus, who haunted me like a shade and demanded punishment for the peasant. Now you withdraw.”
Lucanus clenched his hands; he looked into the proconsul’s mocking eyes, and he was anguished. “Yes,” he said, “I demanded justice, believing it would be only a few stripes, a few weeks in prison. But this is monstrous.”