Not more than a few words of the commencement of a formal (and a lengthy) salutation had Vergil read when he was interrupted. “The date, man. The date? What date?”
“Ser Legate.” He scanned it swiftly. “The thirteenth of September.”
“The thirteenth? The thirteenth? How comes this to be dated the thirteenth? — when you both assure me that today is the eleventh?”
Vergil. “Merely at a hazard. . a guess. . documents are sometimes dated in advance in preparation for them to be signed subsequently. . on the date designated, for — ”
Said Casca, “These are already signed.”
Vergil’s eyes went at once to the bottom of the document in his hands. Whose signature was there he could not at once make out, he had a swift impression it had been signed in stencil, that great invention to aid those who could not write even their own names; but signed it had been. Perhaps Casca had made another gesture, for the decurion, not skilled in the subtle movements of the accomplished secretary, had attempted to remove the sheet from Vergil’s hands. Vergil did not yield it over, there was a silent struggle (Iohan said later that the lictor declared the decurion had actually put his other hand to his sword), then the thing passed from the one man to the other. And Vergil cried, “O the gods, Casca!”
He had seen one line, inscribed in ink as black as black ever was, but it burned as though written in fire. — the sentence of death having been thus executed upon the traitor Cadmus, it — It had been signed, it had been sealed, it had not been as intended delivered, it spoke in the past tense as of a thing accomplished, it was dated two days hence — “ ‘O the gods,’ indeed,” said Casca.
Casca, at their first meeting (over the good wine mingled with fresh clean spring water), had said of those in power in Averno, “… though they are savages and swine, they know well enough I’ve only to send one signal, and,” he blew an imaginary trumpet, “down comes the legion. And that’s the end of that.” But now he was saying something else, in a voice that was only intermittently firm.
“It is not the life of one lunatic that concerns me, that is not of any concern to me in the least. Those who are insane are sacred?” The question, purely rhetorical, was followed by no pause. Casca swept on, quavering voice or not. “Sacred because they have been touched by the sacred gods? ‘Let the gods avenge offenses against themselves.’ I was looking, I had been looking in the wrong place. Gazing altogether in the wrong direction — as they intended I should dol Intelligence they have none, but cunning, craft, slyness and guile — of this they have enough, enough, more than enough, they — ”
“By they your Honor means the magnates of Averno?”
A gesture. “Whom else could I mean? Look, look at those damnable documents.” Another gesture. “The magnates? Yes! But not all the magnates. I haven’t even scanned all those decrees, sentences, documents, declarations. I can’t tell you every name that is on them, because be sure that not every name has a sheet all to itself — there are lists! Ah, what lists! Listen, Master Vergil. There is a faction of the magnates that intends to make a clean sweep of every other faction. Much of what they mean, and what the reasons for meaning it, is unclear to me, it is too murk, too thick. But I can tell you that they don’t mean merely to put one man, mad or not, to death. They have down there the names of hundreds, Messer Vergil! I say hundreds. I say hundreds. Whom they mean to kill.
“Hundreds …”
And so Vergil came to know, knowledge swift and heavy and as sickening as a blow, what that dull, recurrent, and deep demand for “… Hecatombs …” had really meant. Hundreds were to be sacrificed indeed. But it was not hundreds of oxen that were meant. Hundreds of men.
“Your Honor had spoken once to me of blowing one blast of the trumpets and bringing down the legion. Has — ”
“ ‘Send one signal,’ is what I said,” Casca corrected him, almost absently. True: the trumpet-blowing had been mimed. “I was about to inform you that there must actually be three: one to the Commander of the Legion, one to the Viceroy, and one. . for one last chance we must give them to shrink back from this series of — obviously — false trials of so many Roman citizens. . and one to Averno. I — ” A new and sudden thought struck him. “Would you bear this last one? We would give you an armed escort. You are already known there, so — ”
Vergil had begun to consider the manner in which he might do this, when he was of a sudden overwhelmed by memories of why it was perhaps not the best thing in the world — for himself, for Cadmus, for Armin. He forced himself to stop thinking thus, useless catalogue of names, useless waste of time — “Ser Legate, here is what happened,” he began. Got no farther.
“You would not wish to. Very well. Tell me later why not. One moment later.” He pointed to an open set of tablets. “Take up the style, if you please, me ser, and write these words: S. Apponal Casca, Legate Imperial, to the Very Rich City of Averno, Greetings. This is the decree. All trials and all other judicial processes are to be estopped and to stay estopped and in abeyance till further notice. Utterly forbidden that You execute any sentences of capital nature. At once acknowledge obedience. Now seal it. — Decurion!”
“Ser!”
“Send this.”
“Ser!”
The decurion saluted, left the room, could be heard barking his orders. Send this! Not, take your decade and bring this, this — and, if so, Vergil tried to imagine the entire ten men on their mounts riding calmly and confidently up to the gated walls of the Very Rich (very filthy, very decadent, very bad) City: he could imagine it. He could, even, imagine a one or at most a two of the cavalrymen thus matter-of-factly delivering these orders; what he could not, in this case, imagine, was the reaction thereto. “Would the Legate Imperial not consider assigning the entire force of the soldiery here encamped to this task?”
“And leave this post unmanned? Messages must pass, must be exchanged, you know. If I were well, if you were willing — However. What. A thought. Just now. An obvious one. What, what, what …”
But someone else had had that thought, someone from whose mind it had not escaped; from nowhere, there he stood before them.
The lictor.
“Your Honor. Permission to draw a third ration.”
“Granted.”
“Your Honor. Permission to depart on duty.”
“Go.”
“Ser. Hail and farewell.”
“Hail and farewell.”
In a moment Vergil saw through the tiny window three men on horseback: two soldiers, armed as usual, one with the sealed tablets and the tablets’ purple badges, and the lictor, bearing the fasces. Naught else. Place there might be and time there might come, that so-far august emblem of order and of cogent rule and of well-tempered strictness sink, as all emblems might, and be degraded: not here and not yet. Vergil heard the hooves depart at a slow and steady pace, now almost soft upon the enclosed ground of the guard-station post, now hollow upon the bridge, then (with a single, threefold whoop of human voice) at the gallop along the stone-paved, the Imperial road.
Twice more did he, at command, indite the burthen of that message on other tablets. To the Commandant, the Legion: One cohort at once to Averno, in danger of sedition, misprision, and misrule. CASCA. (No need to add, “Have all in ready if more be needed”; it would be done. Automatically.) The Commandant would of course notify the Viceroy and this did not of course excuse the Legate from doing the same; the Legate did the same. At rather greater length, but not at much greater. One man sufficed for each message. The decurion departed, reappeared, departed; once Casca murmured something to him, the decurion responded with an official-sounding syllable; later Vergil was to learn that this ensured Iohan would receive a soldier’s meaclass="underline" bread, garlic, salt, parsley, and the rough-and-ready wine of the ration; next the Legate put his hands before his face, at once removed them.