Roma.The novel of ancient Rome - Saylor Steven - Страница 64

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Pinaria stared at him, dumbfounded. No man had ever spoken to her in such a crude fashion. Few slaves had ever spoken to her at all, except in response to her orders. No one had ever looked her in the eye and grinned at her in such a brazen way.

The slave looked her up and down. “You must be a Vestal.”

“I am!”

“What are you still doing here? I should have thought you’d have left yesterday.”

Pinaria was suddenly on the verge of tears. She drew a breath to steady herself. “You’re very impertinent.”

“Is that what you’ll say to Brennus when he has you staked spread-eagled in the middle of the Forum, and the line of Gauls queued up to make your acquaintance runs all the way to the Aventine?”

Pinaria slapped him across the face, then began to weep uncontrollably. The slave made no move to touch her, but stepped back and crossed his arms. “Have I frightened you?”

“Yes.”

“Good! Because more Gauls will be here at any moment, and this is not a very good place to hide.”

Pinaria fought back her tears. “I must get out of the city.”

“Impossible.”

“Then where can I go?”

“Take my hand.”

“What?”

“More Gauls are coming. Can’t you hear them?”

Pinaria listened. From nearby, she heard men braying a marching song in the ugly language of the Gauls. They sounded drunk.

“My name is Pennatus, by the way. Now take my hand, and don’t let go. We’re going to run, very fast.”

“Where?”

“How should I know? We’ll trust the gods to guide us.”

“The gods have left Roma,” said Pinaria, but she took his hand nonetheless.

This way and that they ran, uphill and downhill, heading nowhere, striving only to avoid the Gauls. As more and more Gauls appeared, overrunning the city like rats overrunning a ship, eluding them became harder. Sometimes they were seen, and the Gauls cried out and ran after them, but each time they escaped. Pennatus seemed to know each winding alley and every hole in every wall in the city.

They saw many terrible things. Like the Pontifex Maximus, others had decided to greet the Gauls fearlessly, seated like statues before their houses. Some, like the Pontifex Maximus, had been beheaded. Others had been strangled or stabbed to death. Some had been hanged from trees.

There seemed to be a surprising number of Romans in the city who, like Pinaria, had intended to flee but had failed to do so before the Gauls arrived. The city became a killing field; the Gauls were the hunters, the Romans the prey. Men were slaughtered and women and children were raped while Pinaria watched.

Shops were looted. Buildings were set on fire. The Gauls gawked at the opulent houses on the Palatine, and gawked even more at the crude Hut of Romulus, preserved as a rustic monument in the midst of the city’s finest dwellings. Could such unfeeling, half-human creatures understand what the sacred hut represented? While Pinaria watched from the shadows, a group of drunken Gauls stood in a circle around the hut and urinated on it, whooping and making a contest of their desecration. No other sight that day offended Pinaria as deeply, or made her feel more desperately that the history of Roma was finished forever.

The dreadful day seemed endless. At last, passing below the Tarpeian Rock, Pinaria and Pennatus heard voices calling from above. “Here! Up here! You’ll be safe if you can get to the top of the Capitoline!”

Looking up, they saw tiny figures peering over the rock. The figures beckoned to them, then frantically pointed.

“Gauls! Very near you, just behind that building! Run! Hurry! If you can get to the path that winds up the Capitoline-”

Pinaria was too frightened to think, too weary to move. It was Pennatus who dragged her forward, holding her by the hand. Crossing the Forum, they were spotted by the same troop of Gauls who had beheaded the Pontifex Maximus; one of the giants still toted the priest’s head as a trophy, carrying it by the beard. Pinaria screamed. The Gauls laughed and ran after them.

They came to the path which would take them to the top of Capitoline, the same route by which every triumphal procession reached the Temple of Jupiter. Drained by grief, immobilized by terror, Pinaria had reached the end of her endurance, yet, with Pennatus pulling her along, she seemed almost to fly up the winding path. Truly, she thought, the slave must have wings, as his name suggested, for how else was she being transported when her limbs had failed and her will was utterly spent?

With its steep slopes, the Capitoline had always presented one of the most naturally defensible positions among the Seven Hills. Over the generations, an accretion of monuments and buildings linked by walls and ramparts had essentially made it into a fortress. The defenders at the top had only to fill a few openings and passageways with rubble to secure the perimeter. They were doing so even as Pennatus and Pinaria reached the top of the winding path.

A narrow gap still remained amid the stones and bits of timber that were being hastily piled up to block the passage. A man stood in the breach, waving frantically. “The Gauls are right behind you!” he cried. Another Roman appeared atop the barrier, raised a bow, and let fly an arrow that very nearly parted Pinaria’s scalp. The buzzing of the arrow was followed by a scream, so close behind her that Pinaria flinched. The pursuers were very near, practically breathing on her neck.

Pennatus rushed through the breach, pulling her behind him. She tripped on the rubble and scraped her shoulder against a jagged bit of wood as she passed through to safety.

More arrows whizzed through the air, even as men rushed to fill in the breach. The archer gave a whoop of triumph. “They’re retreating! I got one in the eye, and another in the shoulder. Even giants turn tail and run if you show them who’s in charge.”

The archer jumped down from the barricade, rattling his armor. He removed his helmet to reveal a clean-shaven face, bright green eyes, and a shock of black hair. He squared his broad shoulders and stood stiffly erect. “Gaius Fabius Dorso,” he announced in a deep voice, taking such pleasure in enunciating his name that the effect was almost comical. He glanced at her vestments. “Can it be possible that you’re one of the Vestals?”

“My name is Pinaria,” she said, trying to steady her voice.

“What’s this?” Dorso peered at her shoulder. The fabric of her gown had been torn. The pale flesh was marred by a scrape and bright red speckles of blood. He averted his eyes, conscious of the sanctity of her body. “How did such a thing happen? The slave must have treated you very carelessly! If he needs to be punished-”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Pinaria. “The wound is nothing, and the slave saved my life.”

She covered the exposed scrape with her hand and winced, suddenly aware of the pain. She looked at Pennatus. Perhaps he was not as handsome as she had thought; seeing him next to Gaius Fabius Dorso, he looked slightly ridiculous, with his badly cropped hair and shabby clothes. Nonetheless, when he grinned at her-such cheek, from a slave! — she could not help but return his smile. Her face grew hot and she lowered her eyes.

“If you truly had wings, you could fly away from here,” said Pinaria. “If only…”

She stood behind a rampart on the Capitoline, overlooking the Forum and the hills that surrounded it. Many days had passed since the coming of the Gauls. The sight of Roma occupied by savages-horrifying and bizarre at first, almost beyond comprehension-had now become commonplace. Rarely now did the beleaguered Romans atop the Capitoline hear the screams of some hapless citizen being rousted from a hiding place by the Gauls to be tortured and raped. Most of those in hiding had been discovered in the very first days of the occupation; a lucky few had made their way to the Capitoline. Nonetheless, the Gauls’ assaults upon the city itself continued, day after day. After a house was ransacked, the Gauls often set it on fire, apparently for no reason other than to delight in its destruction or to infuriate the Romans watching from the Capitoline. On this day, from all over the city, great plumes of smoke rose into the air. High above the hills, the smoke coalesced into a grey miasma that obscured the midsummer sun and turned midday into twilight.

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