Roma - Saylor Steven (книги полностью .TXT) 📗

Whatever his intentions, the Decemvir’s desire for Verginia had nothing to do with politics, yet the girl’s father and betrothed managed to convince their fellow plebeians otherwise. A merciless patrician had despoiled a plebeian virgin, beaten and humiliated her outraged plebeian suitor, and driven her distraught plebeian father to an act of uttermost shame and desperation.

All the discontent sewn by the Decemvirs’ tyranny came to a head over the outrage committed against Verginia. For the first time in a generation, the plebeians staged a secession, such as the one which had won them the right to elect tribunes. Plebeian city-dwellers withdrew from the city; plebeian farmers put aside their plows; plebeian soldiers refused to fight. Their demand was the end of the Decemvirs, and in particular, the arrest, trial, and punishment of Appius Claudius.

In the end, after much bombast and negotiation, all ten Decemvirs resigned. Some managed to escape trial. Others were charged with misconduct and forbidden to leave the city, including Appius Claudius, who barricaded himself in his well-guarded house and refused to come out. His abuses were the most egregious of the Decemvirs, yet he seemed to be the least repentant.

Bitter and unwavering to the end, Appius Claudius hanged himself rather than face the judgment of the court.

Marcus Claudius, the accomplice of the Decemvir, was too cowardly to follow his master’s example; he was brought to trial and condemned. Verginius himself requested that the villain be spared the penalty of death, and Marcus was allowed to flee into exile. It was said that on the day he left Roma, the ghost of Verginia, which for months had wandered from house to house across the Seven Hills, weeping and moaning in the night, terrifying children and rending the hearts of their parents, at last found peace and ceased to haunt the city.

The Senate reassembled. New magistrates were elected. Among the new tribunes of the plebs were Verginius and young Lucius Icilius.

The bitterness felt toward the Decemvirs as men and as tyrants was almost universal, but their labor as lawmakers was widely respected. The Twelve Tables were accepted by a consensus of both patricians and plebeians, and became the law of the land.

The new laws were cast in tablets of bronze, which were posted in the Forum, where any citizen could read them, or have them read aloud to him. No longer would Roman law be a matter of oral tradition—an accretion of moldering precedents, momentary whims, hazy surmises, and recondite deductions—known only to experienced senators and jurists; instead, the Twelve Tables were there for all to see. Virtually every citizen had a quibble or two with some provision of the new laws, but these objections were swept aside by the overwhelming value of the Twelve Tables as a whole. Once the spoken word of kings had been the highest authority, then that of the elected consuls; now the written word was king, to which each citizen had access.

On the day the bronze tablets were posted, Icilia dressed in the plain tunica of one of her slave girls and slipped away from her house. She waited in the secluded place near the market where her child had been conceived. Titus was to meet her there. He did not yet know of the child’s existence.

Titus arrived late. As he slipped past the dense foliage of the cypress tree, he managed to smile. He kissed her. When he drew back, the smile had vanished. The grimness on his face mirrored her own.

“I came from the Forum,” he said. “They’ve posted the Twelve Tables.”

“You’ve read them?”

“Not all. But I read the part about marriage.” He lowered his eyes. “It’s just as we feared. There can be no marriage between a patrician and a plebeian.”

Icilia drew a sharp breath. She had been hoping against hope that, somehow, a marriage to Titus might still be possible. She had clung desperately to this fantasy for as long as she could; now it was gone. She felt frightened and utterly alone, despite the arms that encircled her.

“Titus, there’s something I must tell you.”

He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, and felt warm tears on this fingertips. “What must you tell me, Icilia? Whatever it is, it can’t be as bad as what I’ve just told you.”

“Titus, there’s a child growing inside me. Your child.”

His arms stiffened. After a moment, he hugged her fiercely, and then, just as abruptly, drew back, as if afraid he might harm her. On his face was an expression she had never seen on anyone before, joyful and despairing at the same time.

“Your brother?”

“Lucius doesn’t know yet. No one knows—except you. I’ve hidden it from everyone. But I can’t hide it much longer.”

“When? How soon?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t know about such things…and there’s no one I can ask!” Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Icilia, Icilia! What are we to do? You’ll have to tell Lucius. The two of you have always been close. Perhaps—”

“Not anymore! I’m afraid of him now. Ever since Verginia died, he’s a different person. He suffers from the beatings he took from the lictors; one of his eyes will never be the same. There’s so much anger in him, so much bitterness. He never used to hate patricians; now he’s more vengeful than Father ever was. He talks of nothing but harming those he hates. We can’t look to him for help, Titus.”

“But he’ll have to know, sooner or later. The decision will be his to make.”

“Decision?” She was not sure what he meant.

He drew back from her, just enough to reach up and lift the necklace over his head. A bit of sunlight glittered on the golden talisman he called Fascinus.

“For our child,” he said, placing it over her neck.

“But Titus, this belongs to your family. It’s your birthright!”

“Yes, passed from generation to generation, since the beginning of time. The child inside you is mine, Icilia. I give this talisman to my child. The law prevents our marriage. Even if the law allowed it, your brother would forbid it. But no law, no man—not even the gods—can stop us from loving one another. The life inside you is the proof of that. I give Fascinus to you, and you will give it to the child you bear.”

The pendant was cold against her flesh, and surprisingly heavy. Titus had claimed it brought good fortune, but Icilia remembered her doubts.

“Oh, Titus, what’s to become of us?”

“I don’t know. I only know I love you,” he whispered. He thought she meant the two of them, but Icilia was thinking of herself and the helpless life within her. At that moment, she felt the baby stir and give a kick, as if pricked by its mother’s fear.

The midwives, when Lucius angrily consulted them, all agreed: while there existed means by which a pregnancy could be ended—the insertion of a slender willow branch, or the ingestion of the poison called ergot—it was much too late to do so without gravely endangering Icilia herself. Unless he cared nothing for his sister’s life, she must be allowed to bear the child.

The news clearly displeased Lucius. The oldest and most wizened of the midwives, who had witnessed every possible circumstance attending the birth of child, drew him aside. “Calm yourself, Tribune. Once the baby is delivered, it can easily be disposed of. If you wish to save your sister and avoid gossip, this is what I advise…”

Icilia was sent away from Roma, to stay with a relative of the midwife who lived in a fishing camp outside Ostia. There was no need for Lucius to invent excuses for his sister’s absence. A young, unmarried woman had little public life; few people missed Icilia, and those who did readily accepted the explanation that she was in seclusion, still mourning her father.

Icilia’s labor was long and difficult. The ordeal stretched over a day and a night—time for word to reach her brother in Roma, and time for him to arrive in the fishing camp even as the baby was being born.