The Young Carthaginian: A Story of The Times of Hannibal by G. A. Henty (funny books to read TXT) 📗

a beautiful woman—the fairest he had ever seen, Malchus thought, with her light brown hair with a gleam of gold, her deep gray eyes, and tender, sensitive mouth.

“And your mother?” he asked.

“She was with my father in the battle, and was left for dead on the field; but I heard from a captive, taken a month after I was, that she had survived, and was with the remnant of the tribe in the well nigh inaccessible fastnesses at the head of the Orcus.”

“We had best meet as strangers,” Malchus said. “It were well that none suspect we have met before. I shall not stay here long—if I am not exchanged. I shall try to escape whatever be the risks, and if you will accompany me I will not go alone.”

“You know I will, Malchus,” Clotilde answered frankly. “Whenever you give the word I am ready, whatever the risk is. It should break my heart were I left here alone again.”

A footstep was heard approaching, and Clotilde, dropping Malchus' hands, fled away into the inner apartments, while Malchus walked quietly on to the part of the house appropriated to the slaves. The next day, having assumed his new garments, and having had a light gold ring, as a badge of servitude, fastened round his neck, Malchus accompanied Flavia and her daughter on a series of visits to their friends.

The meeting with Clotilde had delighted as much as it had surprised Malchus. The figure of the Gaulish maiden had been often before his eyes during his long night watches. When he was with her last he had resolved that when he next journeyed north he would ask her hand of the chief, and since his journey to Carthage his thoughts had still more often reverted to her. The loathing which he now felt for Carthage had converted what was, when he was staying with Allobrigius, little more than an idea, into a fixed determination that he would cut himself loose altogether from corrupt and degenerate Carthage, and settle among the Gauls. That he should find Clotilde captive in Rome had never entered his wildest imagination, and he now blessed, as a piece of the greatest good fortune, the chance, which had thrown him into the hands of the Romans, and brought him into the very house where Clotilde was a slave. Had it not been for that he would never again have heard of her. When he returned to her ruined home he would have found that she had been carried away by the Roman conquerors, but of her after fate no word could ever have reached him.

Some weeks passed, but no mode of escape presented itself to his mind. Occasionally for a few moments he saw Clotilde alone, and they were often together in Flavia's apartment, for the Roman lady was proud of showing off to her friends her two slaves, both models of their respective races.

Julia had at first been cold and hard to Malchus, but gradually her manner had changed, and she now spoke kindly and condescendingly to him, and would sometimes sit looking at him from under her dark eyebrows with an expression which Malchus altogether failed to interpret. Clotilde was more clear sighted. One day meeting Malchus alone in the atrium she said to him: “Malchus, do you know that I fear Julia is learning to love you. I see it in her face, in the glance of her eye, in the softening of that full mouth of hers.”

“You are dreaming, little Clotilde,” Malchus said laughing.

“I am not,” she said firmly; “I tell you she loves you.”

“Impossible!” Malchus said incredulously. “The haughty Julia, the fairest of the Roman maidens, fall in love with a slave! You are dreaming, Clotilde.”

“But you are not a common slave, Malchus, you are a Carthaginian noble and the cousin of Hannibal. You are her equal in all respects.”

“Save for this gold collar,” Malchus said, touching the badge of slavery lightly.

“Are you sure you do not love her in return, Malchus? She is very beautiful.”

“Is she?” Malchus said carelessly. “Were she fifty times more beautiful it would make no difference to me, for, as you know as well as I do, I love some one else.”

Clotilde flushed to the brow. “You have never said so,” she said softly.

“What occasion to say so when you know it? You have always known it, ever since the day when we went over the bridge together.”

“But I am no fit mate for you,” she said. “Even when my father was alive and the tribe unbroken, what were we that I should wed a great Carthaginian noble? Now the tribe is broken, I am only a Roman slave.”

“Have you anything else to observe?” Malchus said quietly.

“Yes, a great deal more,” she went on urgently. “How could you present your wife, an ignorant Gaulish girl, to your relatives, the haughty dames of Carthage? They would look down upon me and despise me.”

“Clotilde, you are betraying yourself,” Malchus said smiling, “for you have evidently thought the matter over in every light. No,” he said, detaining her, as, with an exclamation of shame, she would have fled away, “you must not go. You knew that I loved you, and for every time you have thought of me, be it ever so often, I have thought of you a score. You knew that I loved you and intended to ask your hand from your father. As for the dames of Carthage, I think not of carrying you there; but if you will wed me I will settle down for life among your people.”

A footstep was heard approaching. Malchus pressed Clotilde for a moment against his breast, and then he was alone. The newcomer was Sempronius. He was still a frequent visitor, but he was conscious that he had lately lost rather than gained ground in the good graces of Julia. Averse as he had been from the first to the introduction of Malchus into the household, he was not long in discovering the reason for the change in Julia, and the dislike he had from the first felt of Malchus had deepened to a feeling of bitter hatred.

“Slave,” he said haughtily, “tell your mistress that l am here.”

“I am not your slave,” Malchus said calmly, “and shall not obey your orders when addressed in such a tone.”

“Insolent hound,” the young Roman exclaimed, “I will chastise you,” and he struck Malchus with his stick. In an instant the latter sprang upon him, struck him to the ground, and wrenching the staff from his hand laid it heavily across him. At that moment Flavia, followed by her daughter, hurried in at the sound of the struggle. “Malchus,” she exclaimed, “what means this?”

“It means,” Sempronius said rising livid with passion, “that your slave has struck me—me, a Roman patrician. I will lodge a complaint against him, and the penalty, you know, is death.”

“He struck me first, Lady Flavia,” Malchus said quietly, “because I would not do his behests when he spoke to me as a dog.”

“If you struck my slave, Sempronius,” Flavia said coldly, “I blame him not that he returned the blow. Although a prisoner of war, he is, as you well