CHAPTER XLI THE KING OF THE GROVE

‘Vallis Aricinæ sylva præcinctus opaca

Est lacus, antiqua religione sacer.’

Ovid, Fast. iii. 263.

When Onesimus recovered full consciousness he did not recognise his unfamiliar surroundings, and was too weak to piece together the broken threads of his memory. Gradually he recalled the incidents of the past. He remembered the gladiators’ school, the fight in the amphitheatre, the death of Glanydon, the recoil of feeling which prevented him from killing the Samnite Kalendio, even the sensation which he felt when the sword-thrust pierced his ribs. All the rest was darkness. Where was he? How had he been rescued from the spoliarium? How had he escaped the finishing blow of the confector?

Old Dromo, the vineyard-keeper, was very reticent, for he did not wish to endanger any of those who had taken part in the youth’s deliverance. But the quick intelligence of Onesimus, working upon broken hints conjectured that Nereus and Junia, as members of his old familia, must have had some share in saving his life. Pudens, when he visited his vineyard to receive his accounts, came and saw him, and spoke a few kindly words; but the youth could see that the centurion had lost his old regard for him. He saw no one else, except occasionally one of the peasant neighbours. Junia, of course, came not. Such a visit would have been impossible to her maiden modesty. What could she do but silently combat a love which she felt to be hopeless? How could she ever marry a gladiator with such a past, and with so hopeless a probable future—a renegade, to all appearance, from the faith of Christ? She could but pray for him, and then strive to prevent her thoughts from turning to him any more. And Nereus came not to see him. He distrusted him, as he thought of all the crimes through which he must have fallen, from the position of a Christian brother, into such a sink of degradation as a gladiators’ school.

Lonely, disgraced, abandoned, in deadly peril of his life from a hundred sources if once he should be recognised, prostrated by weakness, often suffering torments from the pain of wounds which as yet were but half healed, Onesimus sank deeper and deeper into despair. Repentance and the love of God may often grow in the midst of adversity, like some Alpine gentian amid the snows; but sometimes there is a deadliness in the chill of hopeless misfortune which kills every green leaf of faith. The youth, smitten by so many calamities, began to feel as though the river of his life, which might have been so full and rejoicing, had lost itself in mud and sand. His sun had gone down while it yet was day. What was he to do? How could he live? Why had they saved him? If Nereus and Junia and Pudens had done it, by what means he knew not, it was a cruel kindness. Why should they have preserved him to a destiny so miserable? Junia must despise him now: why should she have wished that his life should be spared?

He murmured against God in his heart. He cursed the day of his birth. He had had many chances and recklessly flung away one after another. Sometimes he thought of Christ and of all that he had heard from the lips of Paul in Ephesus about the Friend of publicans and sinners. But had he not denied the faith? Had he not lived like an apostate? If Christ could still love him, why was he left in all this misery and hopelessness? Why did no ray of light gleam through his darkened sky?

And thus he made his heart like the clay which the fire does but harden, not like the gold which it melts. But, notwithstanding his despair, he grew stronger. In two or three months his wounds healed, and he was free to leave his couch of hay and beechen leaves and to wander about the exquisite scenery of his temporary home. Aricia was built in a valley, the crater of an extinct volcano, at the foot of the Alban Mount. Below it the Lacus Nemorensis, ‘the Mirror of Diana,’ lay gleaming like a transparent emerald, while the steep lava slopes which descended to its level were rich with vineyards and groves and flowers.

But he seldom ventured out in the broad daylight. Aricia lay on the Appian road, only sixteen miles from Rome, and its hill was the haunt of a throng of clamorous beggars, who assailed with their importunity every vehicle that passed along that ‘queen of ways.’ Hundreds were familiar with the features of Onesimus, and, though their beauty was now impaired by pallor and emaciation, he might again be recognised, with fatal consequences. He only went out after sunset, and by the unfrequented paths which led him towards the grove of Diana and the Nemorensian lake. The lower slopes of the Alban Mount were so overshadowed with dense foliage that, among the woods, he could easily escape observation and indulge without disturbance in his melancholy thoughts.

One day, as he sat under a huge chestnut-tree, he heard the pipe of a shepherd lad driving home his herd of goats from the upland pastures; and, as the hut of the boy’s parents adjoined the lodge of Pudens’ vineyard, he recognised him as an acquaintance whose name was Ofellus. But instead of coming up to talk with him, as usual, the boy gave a low whistle and beckoned. Onesimus thought that Ofellus only wanted to play a game at mora after he had herded his goats, but the boy laid a finger on his lip, and made signs to him to be on his guard until they had got some distance from the place where he was sitting.

‘What is the matter?’ whispered the Phrygian, in alarm. ‘Is any one pursuing me?’

‘No,’ answered Ofellus, ‘but if the king sees you he will think you mean mischief.’

‘The king! What king?’

‘Don’t you know?’ said the boy. ‘Come and help me to drive in my goats, and I will tell you.’

When they were well out of the grove, and the goats, with their frisking kids, which gave Ofellus so much trouble, were safe in their pen, the boy said: ‘We may speak aloud now; but don’t you really know who the king is?’

‘I did not know that Romans had had a king since Tarquin the Proud,’ said Onesimus, laughing; ‘unless you mean some Jewish or Eastern Alabarch, like Herod or Izates.’

‘No, no,’ said Ofellus, ‘but the priest of yon temple has been called for ages “the King of the Grove.”’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know why, except that there are some sacrifices which only a king can offer; so they have to call him king, just as they call one of the priests at Rome “the King of the Sacred Rites.”’

‘Well, but why were you in such terror of this so-called king?’

Again the boy lifted up his hands in astonishment, with the question, ‘Don’t you know?’

Onesimus explained that he was an Asiatic, and did not know much about the neighbourhood of Rome. Ofellus therefore garrulously poured out the legend of the place. ‘There was once some Greek or other,’ he said, ‘named Hippolytus, who had vowed to live a virgin life for Diana. He was killed by the jealousy of his father, who got Neptune to frighten his chariot horses with a sea monster. So the poor youth was flung out of his chariot, and dragged to death. Then Diana brought him here, and raised him to life again, and called him Virbius, and he was her priest. But, because he was raised to life, every priest has to murder his predecessor before he can be priest himself.’

‘And may any one kill the priest who can?’

‘Yes, but first they’ve to pluck the golden bough.’

‘The golden bough?’

‘Yes. It is not really golden, you know; it is that yellow-white plant, which grows on an old oak in the wood.’

‘Mistletoe?’ said Onesimus.

‘Yes. If a man wants to be king he has to pluck it, and then fight or murder the present king. If he fails he is killed; if he wins he kills the king, and becomes king in his place.’

‘Is the king often killed?’

‘Very often. Some runaway slave is sure to kill him, and so escape the cross or the branding-iron. Hardly a year passes that he is not attacked. My father says that, before I was born, one king, who was very strong and fierce, was priest for a good many years; and then the Emperor Caligula, out of sheer mad malice, sent a strong young slave on purpose to kill him.’

‘But what harm would the king have done to us?’

‘None to a boy like me, nor to one who is free-born; but—’

‘You take me for a runaway slave?’ asked Onesimus.

Ofellus nodded his head, and added, ‘I saw the king among the trees.’ And then he quoted an old Roman song about—

‘The dim lake that sleeps

Beneath Aricia’s trees;

The trees in whose dim shadow

The ghastly priest doth reign:

The priest who slew the slayer,

And shall himself be slain.’

Onesimus, too, had seen the Priest of Diana; but, as he was some distance off, had not observed him closely. Now, however, the goat-boy’s words seized his attention. Whoever succeeded in killing the Nemorensian King was secure from the consequences of all past misdeeds, and had ample maintenance and a fine spacious temple to live in. Wandering down the rocky bed of the stream sacred to Egeria, Onesimus had seen the shrine, and had wondered why the trees around it were hung with so many gay woollen streamers, and so many votive tablets; and why women came to it from Rome with garlands on their heads and torches in their hands; and why they treated the priest with so much reverence.

Surely the man’s life was a ghastly one, with a murder on his conscience and a murderer on his track! Yet a terrible purpose gradually fixed itself in the mind of Onesimus. He persuaded himself that he was utterly God-forsaken; that such a deluge of calamities could not otherwise have come upon him. Every hope of his life was frustrated; for him there seemed no future possibility of honesty, or happiness, or home, and his heart was burdened with the sore weight of a hopeless love. Why should he not become the King of the Arician Grove? ‘The king is always a runaway slave.’ Those words of Ofellus rang in his ear. He was regaining strength. He was swift of foot. His gladiatorial training had taught him how to wield a sword. If Christ had forsaken him, why should not he forsake Christ? What mattered it that he would soon be murdered in his turn? For a few years, at any rate, he might keep his life, and be in honour, and share in gay festivals. He resolved to watch for his opportunity, and to try his chance.

Full of his desperate purpose, he stole under the dark shadows of the trees, with no guide but the straggling starlight, to find the great oak which Ofellus had described to him. It grew deep in the green hollow close beside the lake, and the hoary mistletoe tufted its upper branches. He climbed the tree, plucked ‘the golden bough,’ and waited for the rising of the moon to attack the Arician priest if he came out of the temple, as he usually did, before he went to rest.

It was not long before the moon began to silver the dense foliage of the grove, and then he heard a wicket open, and from the place where he knelt crouched among the brushwood he saw the tall figure of the priest, whose shadow fell across the sward and almost reached his hiding-place. He was a gaunt-looking man, but of powerful frame. He carried a large sword in his hand and looked round him suspiciously on every side.84 In his excitement Onesimus moved, and a fallen branch snapped under his foot. The priest looked round with a startled glance, and Onesimus could see his features working in the moonlight. He had armed himself for his frightful purpose with the only weapon he could find—a reaping-hook, which he took down from Dromo’s wall. Listening intently, the priest walked along the grassy path, but as no other sound followed he seemed to relax his vigilance and turned back. Then, with a sudden shout, Onesimus sprang upon him.

But habitual terror had made the priest an adept at self-defence. It was impossible to take him wholly off his guard. At the first sound he turned, quick as lightning, and, dropping his sword, seized with one arm the hand which grasped the reaping-hook—the gleam of which he had caught in the moonlight—and with the other dealt Onesimus a blow on the face which knocked him stunned upon the turf. To stoop over his prostrate form and wrench from his grasp the reaping-hook, was the work of a moment. With a scornful laugh he flung the weapon over the wall which enclosed the sacred shrine, and then placed his foot on the youth’s breast.

Onesimus came to his senses, felt the heavy foot on his breast, and opened his eyes.

‘So,’ said the priest, with a grim laugh, ‘you wanted to be Rex Nemorensis, did you? It’s none so enviable a post, let me tell you; and it will take a stronger and craftier man than you to kill Croto when his day comes.’

‘Kill me at once,’ said the Phrygian, with a groan.

Croto stooped to pick up his sword, and placed its point at the throat of his assailant; but he paused. ‘By Hercules,’ he said—‘or perhaps officially I ought to say by Virbius—I have seen this face before!’

Onesimus looked up at him, and dimly recalled the slave-prison at Antium.

‘Do you know me?’ asked the priest.

‘I once gave an aureus to a man named Croto to let me escape from a slave-prison. You are like him.’

‘I am Croto,’ said the priest, again laughing grimly. ‘Is that how you repay your benefactor? Do you know that it is through you I am here, and am never sure any day of not being murdered before evening? Some sneaking slave betrayed that I had let you escape from Antium. I was threatened with chains and torture. I had seen enough of that sort of thing, so I fled. I thought of Aricia; plucked the golden bough, as I see you have done; and killed Manius, my predecessor.’

‘I did not know,’ answered Onesimus. ‘Kill me. I ask nothing better.’

But Croto still did not drive home the sword. ‘Poor wretch!’ he said. ‘You are but a youth, and are you tired of life already?’

‘Utterly tired, or I should not have been the wicked fool I have shown myself to-night.’

‘Why should I kill thee?’ said Croto. ‘Swear never again to attack me, and thou shalt go unscathed.’

‘It would be kinder to kill a wretch whom God hates.’

‘Go,’ said Croto. ‘Diana has so many victims, she can spare this one. Give me your “golden bough,” and let us part good friends.’

Onesimus rose, miserable and crestfallen. ‘I am penniless,’ he said, ‘or I would try to show myself grateful.’

‘Tush!’ answered Croto. ‘I am King of the Grove and priest of Diana and of Virbius—whoever Virbius was,’ he added under his breath. ‘The women give me so many offerings that, but for the never knowing where or when the sword will smite, I should be as fat as a Salian, and I feed nearly as well. Nay, poor lad, I can well do something for thee and never feel the loss. I have more money than I know what to do with, for I can never leave the grove. Take some. I dare say you will need it.’

He forced into the youth’s hands a leather bag, full of silver coins, and turned away. Onesimus stood abashed in the moonlight. Then he burst into tears. He had found pity and magnanimity in the heart of the doomed and murderous fugitive! Was there no hope for such a man? Shall any germ of good in man’s soul perish unperfected? Shall generosity and forgiveness pass without their reward? The unexpected mercy extended to him by the grim priest of Virbius, in that dark wood of Nemi, brought a blessing to Onesimus, and as he went back to Dromo’s hut, the whole scene—the lake, the white mist, the moonlit-silvered foliage, the twinkling of the stars, the song of the nightingale, the silence of the hills—fell with a healing touch on the anguish of his heart.