Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

The word coming up from the populus now was pardon : the hangman would not stop for it; why should he? He received the deadman’s clothes as a perquisite: even if they were rags (and they were not always rags) they had their value and their price as ingredients of the Black Rite; he got to receive everything which was, or at the time of prisonment had been, on the body of the dead-man-to-be; and he also received his fee for making the liveman’s body dead by pushing it off the ladder at the gibbet and at once leaping onto his shoulders and jumping up and down on them — thus assuring that the caitiff’s neck must break if it had not already been broken by the drop. Of these benefits the hangman would receive none at all in case of pardon, so why should he stop for it? and lastly, it would deprive him of all the pleasure of the death scene: the hangman, howl the mob as it would, would not stop. And who might stop him?

(The lictor, fasces bundled into his arms, was by now rather far ahead, stooped, aloof, deep in thought: of what, who could say? Perhaps that time there was, ere Roma’s woes began …perhaps not.)

Who else? Himself, the August Caesar? Where was he? not here. From what other place, then, did the musty multitude seem to think that help might arise? The woman in the wagonette commenced to rise, in a slow and flowing motion like a hieratical dancer: though, perhaps actually not: only…somehow…it seemed so. The brute would not see her. I caught her eye, and again, that ambiguous impression, that impression deep yet perhaps false. Had I caught her eye at all? Erect, like a statue of the golden age, she seemed.

The lictor, perhaps grown somewhat aware of the hideous shriek and hum from that mass of men — here and there some women: not trulls alone: vendors of fragrant citrons, of pickled samphire for relish, of sieves and baskets in many sizes, fishwives going down to the river to renew supplies of mullet and sardines and dogfish with double-lobed livers; others — the lictor at once saw all. Quint, keenly enjoying everything, was telling me nothing; scarcely he raised a thin and hairy hand to brush the ever-deliquescent ointment from his bleary eyes — his physicians were generally agreed ’twas from an excess of some humor, but they never yet agreed on which humor, though there were not many, but prescribed this salve or that; they might as well, I thought, have told him to graze grass like an ox…whoever saw a blear-eyed ox? And, “Ow!” shouted the throng, and “Yow!” shouted the throng. “Pardon! Pardon!” it howled. And ever and again, “Uptails, all!” and “A louse for the hangman!”

The hangman may or may not have gotten a louse (close-pressed in that stinking swarm, it would have been no surprise if he had) but what he very quickly got was the lictor at his side; and the lictor said to him, more in astonishment than anger, “Where are you going, turd of a toad? Don’t you see the highborn Virgin lady? Stop! — Or I’ll let the populus have you, and may they eat your liver!”

The Vestal, meanwhile, remained standing in her wagon all but motionless, the very image of aristocratic calm. Silence took a while. When things were almost silent, the felon seemed to emerge from his daze. One could almost read — no, one could read — the play of thoughts coursing over across his sword-slashed and much-confused face. Where was he? What was hap pening? Why had they stop ped? Why was everything quiet? Answer: they were arrived and halted at the place of execution; any minute now he might have a small and ill-tasting coin thrust into his mouth and feel nothing beneath his feet, and a sharp brief pain in his neck. With a sound like the lowing of a yearling ox he spread his hobbled legs, and pissed.

The swarm went wild with laughter. Only the lictor’s leather face, the Vestal’s marmoreal countenance, did not change, for all that her little maid, hand hiding mouth, seemed to whisper in her ear. At length silence was again achieved, and in that silence — though the punks and pogues still rolled their painted eyes and smirked at potential clients — the Vestal rose completely to attention, put out her white arm and hand and in a lovely ringing tone declared, “I pardon that man.” No one word more. And sat down. It had been a completely legal formula, sans emotion. “I divorce you; herewith your dowerfund.” “Slave, thou art henceforth free.” “Bear witness: I sell this horse-stud for six solids.” I pardon that man . No one word more. And sat down.

The crowd went wild again. A soldier in a swift second slashed the bonds about the elbows; another slightly stooped and severed those around the ankles. For a second more the thug gaped. Then he started to run at a stumbling trot. Many hands caught at him: he fought against them. Many cries of, “Not yet, man!”

“Not yet! Thank the holy lady! Go and kiss the Virgin’s foot! Thank her for your life!”

But one might as well have spoken to a pig escaped from the shambles; loose , was he? Then he meant to stay loose. And this meant to flee. For a full minute (so I guessed) the absurd scene continued, the pardoned man butting furiously against the arms and bodies which would have had him first do his duty by giving thanks for that pardon; the crowd all of one mind now (the whores most of all: could it have been they fancied a slight upon that one quality which they universally lacked, and lacked, one might say, almost by definition?), the crowd’s sense of amour propre was seriously offended; while the lictor covered his grim face with his free hand and gazed through his spread and ringless fingers as though he could not believe his eyes — And then herself the Vestal: something which might have been a mere flicker of rueful amusement passed over her fine face and was in an instant gone (more than Caesar’s wife must a Vestal Virgin be above suspicion, she must be above suspicion of vulgar emotion). She raised her hand at an angle to her wrist, slightly pushed it away from her; the other hand fluttered the colored leathers on the mule’s neck. The crowd released the fool felon and laughed to hear his running feet; at once made way for the Vestal’s wee carriage, and saluted her with the utmost respect. Did the little maid murmur something, something, anything, with well-practised and almost motionless lips? did the sea-silk sunshade dip for a second a fraction of an inch in a particular direction? this was not certain.

Certain it was that a mule was not a horse, all horses were hysterical more or less, the most placid old cob was likely to behave like a northish bear-shirt if — if, whatever; this would differ from cob to cob — horse to horse. But mules were mysterious creatures, that this one was a small mule did not make its potential mystery any smaller; probably it had been bred for the service it now performed out of a pony-mare by one of the jack-donkeys of the northern lands, lighter in build and in size than the asses of the south, brought to Rome or its countryside for just this purpose. And in view of what was about to happen it was necessary to consider also the probable history of the street-bed. Quint might know just when the street had last been paved, I not. But in some short moment I envisioned the scene — a man engaged in ramming the gravel turning aside for a moment to go piss or to get a drink of water, another workman not waiting for his return or not even considering the matter of had the gravel been rammed sufficiently — and it had not — the second workman perhaps, then, mechanically setting down the pave-stone; the first workman returning and, likely even without so much as a shrug, picking up his implement and moving on a few feet to commence the work of ramming a bit further on. And then the passing of the years, the rains, many years of rains, the not-fully-packed gravel shifting, moving; then perhaps the fall of a heavier stone from an improperly-laded wagon passing by in the torchlight: the paving stone sustaining a crack not observed in the night, more years passing, the incessant traffic at last splitting the pave-stone. Somehow the inspectors had missed it…or, their reports ignored…the night-traffic cared nothing for any bad spot which their heavy wagons could lurch across…had, anyway, the drivers and teamsters, no time to spend on complaints: into the city by nightfall, incargo laded-off, out-cargo laded-on, out of the city by nightrise: so.