Glory and the Lightning (60 page)

Aspasia bent her head and smiled tenderly at the young girl, for always she was moved by youth. She saw the fixed eyes, and then she hesitated, for there was no intelligence in them, but just an empty staring which their beauteous color and form could not conceal. She said, “You say she has been tutored well, Nereus?”

“Well indeed,” he said. “But she has not been exposed to public gaze, and so does not speak readily to strangers.”

His left hand pinched Io’s upper arm, and this was her signal, which she had rehearsed many times under the brutal guidance of Callias. She began to unwind the silk which concealed the deadly vial of fuming acid. She did not look away from Aspasia, who said, “Let us withdraw to the outdoor portico, where we can converse. Then I will show you, Nereus, my school.” It was her thought to question Io, about whom she had become uncertain. The girl had an infant’s eyes, blank and uninhabited. She reminded Aspasia of Cleo, who, despite her lack of intellect, was now the tyrant mistress of an intimidated Cadmus, a fact which invariably amused Aspasia. There was no one more rigid in demands and rules than the stupid. Moment by moment Aspasia was becoming convinced, regretfully, that Io was not a candidate for her school. Still, she had been mistaken before. She would not dismiss the two until she was completely convinced of Io’s unsuitability.

She turned to lead the way to the outdoor portico of her house, but Nereus said, “My little sister has brought a gift for you, Lady, and wishes to present it to you now.”

Aspasia faced them again, smiling. The last fold of the silk fell from the vial and Io gripped the vessel in her hand, staring at Aspasia’s face. She had lifted the top from it with a swift movement. At that instant a buzzing wasp flew before Aspasia’s face and she quickly stepped aside and waved her hand at the menacing insect. It was this that saved her, for even as she moved and made her gesture the girl flung the contents of the vial in the direction where she had been standing.

Hissing, and flaring redly, the acid arched in the early sun, and fell on the grass near Aspasia, where it burst into flames and exuded a stench which was intolerable. Aspasia recoiled with a cry of terror.

Nereus had received his orders. If, by some unseen misadventure, the acid failed he was to stab Aspasia in the heart as rapidly as possible. He saw the blazing acid on the grass; it was creeping in a thin serpent of fire through it, away from Aspasia. He drew his dagger and furiously advanced upon the shivering and horrified woman, while Io merely stood there, blankly staring and expressionless. At that moment Pericles and his men rounded the side of the building. Nereus saw them. He was a brave murderer, however, and would have completed his task had not Aspasia, herself, seized his wrist and flung his arm upright and had brought her knee swiftly to his groin. She screamed wildly; Nereus dropped his dagger and doubled over with a yell of pain. Pericles struck his horse with his whip and rushed towards the three, seeing the crawling flame, and the struggles of Aspasia, for though agonized Nereus had gripped one of her ankles and was twisting it, intending to bring her down where he could the more easily kill her.

Callias saw all this from his safety beyond the gates. He made a signal and the empty chariot and his horsemen began to roar away. However, Pericles’ men raced after them, though they were outnumbered. They had one advantage which they did not know as yet: Callias’ men were not soldiers and though they carried swords they hardly knew how to use them with any dexterity. So, they all fled. Pericles’ horsemen pursued, and the guards at the gate ran in their wake with drawn swords.

Pericles shouted for more guards, and he seized Nereus by the hair and pulled him from Aspasia. Io simply sat down on the grass and began to fold and unfold the discarded silken kerchief, and gaze about her unwonderingly. It was not Pericles’ intention to kill Nereus, who was much slighter and smaller than himself, and so he had to control his murderous rage, for he wanted information about the assassins. He caught Nereus about the throat and choked him into submission, then threw him on the ground and held him there with his booted foot. He looked over his shoulder at Aspasia, who was hugging herself with her arms and shuddering and weeping. He said, in a very calm voice, “It is over. Do not fear, beloved. Return to your house and await me.”

“They wished to destroy me,” she said.

‘That I know. I will soon discover why, and they shall be punished.”

She repeated over and over, “They wished to destroy me. Why?”

“Go into your house,” he said with terrible sternness, and then she obeyed, her head bent, her face in her hands, her hair lifted about her in the wind. Pericles’ face had drawn itself into formidable lines. Nereus feebly tried to stir, and creep from under that inexorable foot, and Pericles deftly kicked him in the temple. Nereus sprawled laxly, unconscious.

In the meantime the house guards appeared, running over the grass, swords drawn. The acid had stopped its crawling, and now was just a small smoking trench in the grass, without fire, and only with smoldering sparks here and there. Pericles said, “Take this murderer and lock him in some room and guard him constantly. Do not injure him. He must be questioned.”

Alone, and waiting, Pericles looked down at the black trench in the grass and for the first time he, too, began to tremble both with rage and horror. He felt undone. He looked at the sitting girl, Io, who had begun to hum softly to herself, winding the multicolored scarf about her wrist and raising it now and then to see the glimmer of it. Pericles’ first impulse was to kill her, and then he saw the vacancy of her young face, the untenanted aspect of her eyes. She was no more guilty of this atrocity than the birds in the trees, he thought. He said to her, tempering the roughness of his voice, “Who sent you here, wench?”

She heard him, with her slow wits, then she lifted her face and gazed at him. She only knew that he was a man; she had been taught seductiveness. She inclined her head and regarded him with blue eyes as shallow as a puddle deposited briefly by rain. She said in an infant’s voice, “Hector. Do you—bed, lord?” Her voice was uncertain, like the voice of a very young child. She began to gurgle incoherently, and Pericles frowned. To Pericles the imbecility of the girl impressed him with a kind of frightfulness, as if she were an elemental and not a human being. He saw that she had no conception of the enormity she had tried to complete. She was beyond good or evil, for she had no soul. Pericles felt himself in the presence of something innocently appalling yet supra-natural, from which the human spirit must recoil.

A female slave came into the outdoor portico and Pericles called to her and she came running. “Take this child to your quarters,” he said, indicating Io. The slave led Io away by the hand, and Io went with docility and unasking, and without resistance. Pericles shuddered. The garden was bright and lonely about him, smiling in the risen sun, but there was only tumult and fury in his heart. The gardens seemed to mock him and he realized that nature was completely uninterested in the turmoil of humanity and its tragedies and therefore was direful in itself. Alas, he thought, we desire that even nature partake of our passions and despairs and fears, and when it does not it confuses and alarms us. We are insignificant before its forces and its own brutal designs, which are without thought or emotion. The Fates spun their webs with no tremors, no sympathies, no engagement with those they raised or destroyed. They were as indifferent as Io, and therefore as much to be feared. How presumptuous it is of us to think that the abysmal depths of some huge unknown consciousness is aware of us!

He looked at the temple to the Unknown God and he felt considerable bitterness, as if he had been betrayed. He dared not think of what Aspasia had escaped, as yet. His whole mind was set upon vengeance.

The soldiers and the guards, panting and dusty, returned with but one man, who was slightly bloody and disheveled. That man was Callias, surnamed “The Rich.” The others had been slain after a hard battle. The only reason the guards had not killed him was because he had cried, “I am the grandson of the Archon, Daedalus, Callias, and if you murder me you will pay to the last drop of blood! Take me to Pericles, for my mother was married to him.” To the last he was a coward, thinking only of his own life, and never of his grandfather or his mother, who could be crushed under this scandal and attempt at murder or worse.

He thought himself above the law, as all the stupid did, and therefore had privileges. He also believed that Pericles would spare him.

Pericles wondered at his own lack of surprise when Callias was dragged before him into the atrium, bleeding from several superficial wounds, and as grimy as a peasant. His face was bestial and defiant, though his eyes flickered when he saw Pericles.

Pericles contemplated him as one contemplates something unspeakably obscene. He said to the guards, “Take him away, and put the brand of slavery on his forehead.” Callias shrieked and struggled futilely, but the guards overpowered him and bore him away. Sudden nausea took Pericles. He bent his head to his knees for a moment or two, then accepted the iced wine a male slave mutely offered him. He found he was sweating coldly; the walls of the atrium appeared to move about him like white sails. He thought of Daedalus and Dejanira with enormous hatred and considered the pleasure he would feel when his soldiers flung Callias at their feet with the shameful brand of slavery on his brow. Forever he would be marked as a thing, and not a man. This was more desirable than any other punishment.

Aspasia, as pale as death still, came into the atrium and stood mutely before him, seeing his silent and mingled rage and hate and emotion. He was leaning back in his chair now, his eyes closed. After a little he became aware of her presence and looked up at her. She watched him as she said, “I have taken the liberty, lord, of countermanding your order to have Callias branded as a slave.”

He sat there and gazed at her and she had never seen the face he now presented to her, the blind and menacing face, and she stepped back, affrighted. But he said quietly enough, “You dared to do this thing, Aspasia? You dared to disobey me?”

“Yes, lord.” She clasped her hands tightly to her breast and felt her first terror of him. Never had he seemed so imperial in his short white tunic, his helmeted head, his fixed expression, and never so dangerous. She had often been afraid of Al Taliph; in comparison that fear was nothing to what she felt now. She trembled visibly, but kept her features as still as possible.

“You doubtless have an explanation for this mortal affront, woman?”

Never had he addressed her in such a voice and with such chill insult. She bowed her head and said, hardly audible, “I do, lord. You have two sons, and they are brothers of this Callias. Would you have Xanthippus and Paralus kinsmen of a slave?”

He had not thought of this. He considered what she had said with profound shock. She continued, “Would you also have it laughed through Athens, by your enemies, that you had been married to the mother of a slave?”

He stood up and slowly paced up and down the atrium, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bent. She watched him and said in a shaking voice, “The disgrace would be bad enough. But the punishment you decreed for him is beneath you, lord.”

He stopped with his back to her and said in a tone hard with scorn, “What would you suggest, O Sibyl?”

She went to him and touched his bare arm imploringly. He did not turn to her and she saw the inflexible profile. “I suggest that he be beaten soundly by my overseer of the hall, before my slaves, then taken in chains before the King Archon, who is your friend. Let Callias be exiled for life. Are you not Head of State, even above the King Archon? He will not deny your demand.”

“Callias is pestilential,” said Pericles. But he was thinking; he rubbed his jaw with his hand and stared before him. “He deserves death. Would it not be better to have him killed and then buried in some unknown spot?”

“It is beneath you, lord,” she repeated.

He thought of Turnus and smiled grimly. He knew that Aspasia was appealing to his pride and not to his justice. She was a woman and thought as a woman. Wise as she was, she did not fully understand a man. He said, “Had that wasp not saved you, Aspasia, you would be deformed for life, hideous to the eye, or you would have been murdered. Yet you appeal to me for mercy for the assassin who would have done these things to you!”

“I am not insensible to what I escaped, lord,” she said, and tried to get him to look at her, but he would not. “I, too, have imagination. I am not as weakly compassionate as you may think. I was less his intended victim than you. He wished to strike at you, through my destruction. For, have I offended him in any way? No. For what he tried to do to you death is too feeble. My suggestion is far more ghastly. When he is thrown before the King Archon, command that Daedalus be present. Daedalus is your enemy, and mine. He will never outlive the shame, that his grandson attempted murder, that Callias is a miserable demon, worthy of the utter contempt of honorable men, that he stood before an assemblage in chains, like a common criminal.”

He looked at her now and she saw the tight ruthlessness of his smile. “You are very artful, beloved. Still, there is much merit in what you have said. Let it be done.” He clapped his hands loudly and the overseer of the hall entered the atrium, and slowly and carefully Pericles gave his orders. The slave bowed. Pericles said, “Bring to me one Nereus, who is under your guard.”

Nereus was dragged into the atrium, manacled, and flung on the floor before Pericles, who spurned him with his foot. Then Nereus rose, and he had the quiet manner of the born aristocrat, for all his face was bruised and bloody. His eyes momentarily struck Aspasia. She saw disdain in them.

“What have you to say for yourself, O son of a female Cyclops?” asked Pericles.

But Nereus said nothing. He wiped blood from his mouth with one of his chained hands. Pericles contemplated him, his eyes narrowing. “I know your father,” he said, “one of my friends, and he is of a noble house and a man of probity and honor. I recognize him in your face, and I saw you as a child. Your father drove you from his house, with grief and despair and just anger. I know your crimes.”