"Unto Caesar"
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Then as the girl made ready to obey, the Augusta put out her hand to detain her.
"Wait! Hast seen Licinia?"
"No, gracious lady."
"She is not hovering somewhere near my room?… or in the atrium?"
"No, gracious lady."
"And the night-watchers?"
"They are in the vestibule, gracious lady."
"And all my women?"
"They are all in bed and asleep."
"That is well. Thou canst go."
Blanca's naked little feet made no sound as she crossed the room, and went out by the door which led to the sleeping-chamber of the Augusta's women.
Dea Flavia waited for a while, straining her ears to catch every sound which came from this portion of her palace.
Her sleeping-chamber, together with all those on this floor gave directly on the atrium, which formed a large irregular square in the centre of this portion of the house. The north side of it was taken up with the Augusta's apartments and those of her women, the south side with the reception rooms and with the studio and its attendant vestibules, whilst the main vestibule of the house and the first peristyle gave on either end.
From the main vestibule came the subdued hum of voices, and throughout the house there was that feeling of wakefulness so different to the usual placid hush of night.
Dea Flavia held her breath whilst she listened attentively. In the vestibule it was the night watchmen who were talking, discussing, no doubt, the many events of the day: and that sound—like the buzzing of bees—showed that the women were awake and gossiping, and that up in the slaves' quarters tongues were still wagging, despite Blanca's assurance and the overseer's sharp discipline. But on the other side of the atrium, where were the reception halls and the studio, everything was still.
The young girl threw herself back upon her bed. Sleep refused to visit her this night; the thin streak of silvery moon, which persistently peeped in through the curtain, flicked the tiny atoms in the air until they assumed quaint, minute shapes of their own, like unto crawling panthers and grotesque creatures crowned with a golden halo, and brandishing a mock thunderbolt in one hand and a dagger in the other. Then suddenly all these shapes would vanish, smothered beneath a cloak, and Dea Flavia, still wide awake, would feel drops of moisture at the roots of her hair, and her whole body, as if sinking into a black abyss, where monsters yelled and wild beasts roared and huge, black, snake-like creatures tore the flesh off human bones.
The hours of the night sped on, borne on the weighted feet of anguish and of horror. Gradually, one by one, the sounds in and about the house died away; the slaves in their quarters must have turned over on their rough pallets and gone to sleep, the women close by had done gossiping, only from the vestibule came the slow measured tread of the watchmen guarding the Augusta's house, and from far away that ceaseless, rumbling noise which meant that discontent was awake and astir.
Once more Dea Flavia sat up, unable to lie still. Her golden hair was matted against her temples and in her breast her heart was beating furiously. The waning moon had long since now sunk behind the western clouds, a gentle breeze stirred the curtains with a soft, sighing noise as of some human creature in pain. In the far corner of the room, in a tiny lamp of gold, a tiny wick threw a feeble light around.
Dea Flavia put her feet to the ground. The heat in the room was oppressive; no doubt it was that which had caused her restlessness, and the dampness of her brow. She shuddered now when her bare feet touched the smooth coldness of the mosaic floor, but she stood up resolutely, and anon crossed over to the door which gave on the atrium.
For a few seconds she listened. Everything was still. Then very gently she pushed open the door.
On the marble table, in the centre of the atrium, another light glimmered in a jewelled lamp; but the atrium was vast and the diminutive light did not reach its far corners. The gentle trickle of water along the gutters in the floor made queer, ghost-like sounds, and in the great pots of lilies all round currents of air sent weird moanings in the night.
Dea Flavia, like an ethereal figure clad all in white, and with waves of golden hair shimmering over the whiteness of her gown, glided softly across the atrium.
A tiny vestibule led into the studio, she crossed it, guided by her knowledge of the place, for the light in the atrium did not penetrate to this recess. Her bare feet made no noise as she glided along the floor, her hand pushed the door open without raising a sound.
Now she was in the studio. The place in which she did the work that she loved, the place in which day after day she loved to sit and to idle away the hours. In an angle of the room, stretched out upon the bare floor, Dion and Nolus were lying, their even breathing showing that they slept. On the right was another door, which led to an inner chamber, where she oft used to retire for rest from her work. It was a private sanctum which none dared enter save with special permission from herself. Blanca kept it swept and free from dust, and Licinia tidied it only when she was so allowed.
Dea Flavia went across the studio and pushed open the door. It was masked by a curtain, and this too she pulled aside, slowly and nervously like some small animal that is timid and yet venturesome. She knew every corner of the place of course, and the very creaking of the hinges and gentle swish of the curtain was a familiar sound to her ear.
Nevertheless she was almost frightened to advance, for the big dark shadow right across the stuccoed wall awed her by its mysterious blackness. It was caused by a large object in the centre of the room, a couch covered with coverlets of soft, white woollen stuffs, on which the night-light burning fitfully threw patches of ruddy lights.
Dea Flavia had paused on the threshold, with one hand behind her still clinging to the curtain, the other pressed hard on her bosom, trying to still the wild beatings which went on hammering inside her just below her breasts. She thought that she either must be dreaming now, or being awake, must have been dreaming before.
Once or twice she closed and then reopened her eyes, thinking that perhaps the flickering night-light was playing her drowsy senses some elusive trick. For surely Blanca had told her that Dion and Nolus had laid the praefect of Rome on an improvised couch in the chamber beside the studio, and that the praefect was helpless and weak with pain and loss of blood.
The improvised couch was certainly in its place, the light of the lamp danced upon pillow and coverlet, but no one was lying there, even though the pillow still bore the impress of the head which had rested on it.
The silence was oppressive, for through the thick walls and heavy curtains of the Augusta's favourite room there penetrated no sound from without, and she herself stood so still, so still by the door, that she was sure the beatings of her heart must be heard through that awful stillness.
Suddenly she started, and her fingers closed more convulsively than before on the curtain behind her. Imperceptible as the sound of a swallow on the wing, there came a long-drawn sigh to her ear. Her brow contracted, her eyes narrowed in a great effort to peer past the light into the darkness.
On the further side of the couch now and masked by its shadow, she saw something that was immovable and yet seemed pulsating with life. Gradually as she peered, that something detached itself from the surrounding gloom. She saw a bowed head with wealth of tawny hair which gleamed like copper against the white coverlet, two hands white as the pillow beside which they rested, whiter still by contrast with the copper of the hair against them; she saw a pair of broad shoulders, and a powerful body and limbs that lost themselves in the darkness beyond the couch.
The face was hidden and the body was quite still. It would have seemed like that of the dead but for that long sigh, which, intangible though it was, had broken the silence of the night.
Dea Flavia could not now have moved, even if she would. Her small bare feet seemed glued to the cold mosaic of the floor, her hand seemed fastened with clamps of steel to the curtain which it clutched.
She had never seen a man thus kneeling alone in the stillness and in the gloom. Why should a man kneel thus? and to whom?
Yet she would not have disturbed him, not for all the world. She never dreamed that he would be awake; she had thought of him lying—as Blanca said—exhausted from loss of blood.
She had only meant to look on him for a moment, to look into his face as he slept, to try and read in its wonted harsh lines the secrets of his soul.
He had rushed to the Cæsar trying to protect him, when thousands on thousands of throats were acclaiming his name as future lord of Rome. Why?
He had rushed into the arena and risked his life to save a man who two days ago had insulted him, who—at best—was nothing to him. Why?
These questions she had meant to ask him when he was sleeping: now she could not ask them from that bowed head, nor yet from those clasped hands. And yet, somehow, it seemed that something of the man's soul was revealed to her at this moment, though she could not as yet fathom the meaning of this strange answer to her questions.
Her eyes had become quite accustomed to the darkness beyond the light. She could see clearly the powerful figure on bended knees, the wide shoulders with the bandages disposed over them by the physician for the healing of those horrible wounds, and the fingers linked together in a manner which she had never seen before. And now the hands stirred ever so slightly, the light caught the fingers more directly, and Dea Flavia saw that—clasped between them—there was a small wooden cross.
And she knew now—all in a moment—that the answer to her questions lay there before her, not in the man's face, for that she could not see, but in his clasped hands and in the cross which they held. She knew that it was because of it—or rather because of that which had gone before, and of which that little cross was the tangible memory—that he had been ready to give his life for an enemy, and to give up all ambition and all pride for the sake of his allegiance to Cæsar!
A sigh must have escaped her lips, or merely just the indrawing of her breath; certain it is that something caused the kneeling man to stir. He raised his head very slowly, and then looked up straight across the light—to her.
For one second he remained quite still, on his knees and with that white vision before him, ghost-like and silent, against the crimson background of the curtain. Then softly, as a sigh, one word escaped his lips:
"Dea!"
He rose to his feet but already she had fled, noiselessly as she had come, but swiftly across the studio and the atrium and back to her room, but even while she fled it seemed to her that on the silent night air there still trembled the sound of a voice, vibrating with longing and with passion, mournful as a sigh, appealing as the call of a bird to its mate:
"Dea!"
CHAPTER XXVI
"There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked."—Isaiah xlviii. 22.
When after a few hours of light and troubled sleep Dea Flavia woke to partial consciousness, it seemed to her as if Phoebus Apollo had been driving his chariot through a sea of blood; for through the folds of the curtains over the windows she caught a glimpse of the sky, and it was of vivid crimson.
The heat was oppressive, and as the young girl tossed with ever increasing restlessness on the pillows, beads of moisture rose on her forehead and matted the fair curls against her temples.
She felt too tired to get up, even though she vaguely marvelled how wonderful must be the dawn, since its reflection was of such lurid colour. She lay back drowsy and with nerves tingling; she closed her eyes for they ached and burned intolerably.
Gradually to her half-aroused consciousness sounds too began to penetrate. It seemed to her that the usual stately quietude of her house was gravely disturbed this morning, shuffling footsteps could be heard moving across the atrium, voices—scarce subdued—were whispering audibly, and the shouts of the overseers echoed from across the peristyle, and through it all a dull, monotonous sound, distant as yet and faint, came at long intervals, the sound of Jove's thunder over the Campania far away.
Dea Flavia listened more intently, and one by one through the veil which kindly sleep had drawn over her memory, the events of the past day and night knocked at the portals of her brain.
She remembered everything now, and with this sudden onrush of memory of the past, came fuller consciousness of the present.
Through the hum of varied noises which filled her own house, she distinguished presently more strange, more ominous sounds that came from afar, like the thunders of Jove, and like them sounded weird and threatening in her ear; hoarse cries and shouts which seemed like peremptory commands, and groans that rose above the muffled din with calls of terror and of pain.
In a moment Dea Flavia had put her feet to the ground. She ran to the window, drew back the curtains and peered into the narrow street which, at this point, separated her house from the rear of the Palace of Tiberius.
A dull grey light enveloped the city in its mantle of gloom, and it was not the torch of Phoebus which had spread the rosy gleam of dawn over the sky! As Dea Flavia looked, she saw a canopy of dull crimson over her head, and from beyond the Palace of Tiberius there rose at intervals heavy banks of purple smoke.
Dea Flavia stood there for one moment at the window, paralysed with the dread of what she saw and of what she guessed, and even as a cry of horror died within her throat, Licinia, with grey hair flying loosely round her pale face, and hands held out before her with an agonised gesture of fear, came running into the room.
"The miscreants! the miscreants!" she shouted as she threw herself down on to the floor before her young mistress and squatted there on her heels, wringing her hands and uttering moans of terror. "They have set fire to the palace! They are on us, my beloved! Save thyself! Save thy house! Oh ye gods! protect us all!"
The awesome news which Licinia thus blurted out was but a confirmation of what Dea had already feared. Every drop of blood within her seemed to turn to ice, horror gripped her heart, the oncoming catastrophe appeared suddenly before her, vivid, swift and inevitable. But she contrived to steady her voice and to appear outwardly calm as she said:
"I do not understand thee, Licinia, speak more clearly. What is it that hath happened?"
"The rabble are invading the Palatine," said Licinia, to the accompaniment of many groans. "They are on us I tell thee."
"On us!" retorted Dea Flavia scornfully. "Tush, woman! they'll not heed us.... But the Cæsar … Hast news of the Cæsar?"
"No! no! my beloved, I have no news. I only know what the watchmen say."
"What do they say?"
"That the rabble is invading the hill. The miscreants have forced their way into the Forum. They have surrounded the palace of the Cæsar and set fire within its precincts."
"Ye gods!…" exclaimed Dea Flavia.
"Dost hear their shouts? the villains! the villains! Dost hear Jove's thunder, my beloved? His vengeance is nigh! May his curse descend on the villains and on their children."
"Silence, woman!" commanded the Augusta peremptorily. "Get me a robe—quickly—no, no! not that one," she added, as Licinia, with trembling hands had snatched up the gorgeous jewel-studded gown which Dea Flavia had worn the day before, "a dark robe—haste, I tell thee! go thou fetch it and send Blanca quickly to me."
Moaning and trembling, the woman endeavoured to obey and to make as much speed as her limbs, paralysed with terror, would allow her. She called to Blanca, who together with the Augusta's tire-women had her quarters close at hand, and the young girl hastened to her mistress's room whilst Licinia went in search of a dark-coloured robe.
"The praefect?" whispered Dea Flavia quickly, as soon as she felt assured that she was quite alone with her slave. "Hast seen Dion or Nolus?"
"My brother spoke to me in the atrium just now, gracious mistress," replied Blanca, who seemed scarce less excited than her mistress, "he and Dion heard a thud in the night, which roused them from a brief sleep which they had snatched, for they were very tired … their long hunt in the Amphitheatre...."
"Yes! yes! go on! I know that they slept … and they heard a thud … what was it?"
"They ran to the resting-chamber, gracious lady, and found the praefect of Rome lying senseless on the floor."
"Great Mother!… and what did they do?"
"They lifted him as best they could; for the praefect is over tall and mightily powerful. But they succeeded in laying him back on to the couch, and Dion ran to rouse the physician."
"And now?"
"The physician hath given the praefect a drug to make him sleep, for it seems that fever was upon him with the pain of his wounds and he talked incoherently like one bereft of reason."
"Hush!…" interrupted Dea Flavia hurriedly, "not before Licinia."
Even as she spoke the old woman returned, carrying a robe of dove grey cloth, the darkest one that she could find. She had collected the tire-women round her, and they flocked in her wake like frightened sheep that have been driven into a pen. Licinia herself was evidently the prey of abject terror, for her teeth were chattering, and all the while that she helped her mistress to make a hasty toilet, she uttered low moans as if she were in pain.
"The traitors! the miscreants!" she murmured at intervals.
But Dea Flavia paid no heed to her. Her women had brought her fresh water, perfumes and fine cloths, and she was hastily bathing her face and hands. Then, she slipped on the dull-coloured robe and Licinia's trembling fingers fastened a girdle round her waist.
And all the while, from far away, came the dull sound of Jove's thunders hurled by his wrath, and above it as a constant din, like the roaring of a tempestuous sea, the hoarse cries which—borne upon the wings of the oncoming storm—seemed to gain distinctness as their echo reached this distant house.
"Dost hear the cries, Blanca?" asked Dea Flavia, as the young slave, leaning out of the narrow window tried to peer out into the street.
"I hear them, gracious lady," replied the girl in an awed whisper.
"And canst distinguish any words?"
"Aye, one word, gracious lady … Hark!"
And that word sent its dismal echo even to Dea Flavia's ear.
"Death!"
Then Blanca uttered a terrified scream and quickly drew away from the window; from beyond the Palace of Tiberius, there where the new Palace of Caligula reared its gigantic marble pillars above the temples below, a huge column of flames had shot upwards to the sky. And a cry, louder than before and more distinct, came clearly from afar.
"Death to the Cæsar! Death!"
"Ye gods protect him," murmured Dea Flavia fervently.
"They'll murder him! they'll murder him!" shouted Licinia at the top of her trembling voice.
She had fallen on her knees and the other women squatted round her like a huddled-up mass of terror-stricken humanity, with hair undone and pale, quivering lips and staring eyes dilated with fear.
But Dea Flavia, now that she was dressed, took no further notice of them; she left them there on the floor, moaning and whimpering, and hurried out into the atrium. Here too the sense of terror filled the air. Beyond the colonnaded arcade in the corridors and the peristyle could be seen groups of slaves—men and women—squatting together with head meeting head in eager gossip, or clinging to one another in a state of abject cowardice.
Here too, through the open vestibule, the sounds from the streets came louder and more clear. That awful cry of "Death" echoed with appalling distinctness, and to Dea Flavia's strained senses it seemed as if they were mingled with others, more awesome mayhap, but equally ominous of "The praefect of Rome! Where is the praefect of Rome! Hail! Taurus Antinor! Hail."
The noise grew louder and louder, and from where she stood now—it seemed to her that she could trace in her mind the progress of the rebels, as they spread themselves from the foot of the Palatine and from the Forum, upwards to the heights until they had the palace of the Cæsar completely surrounded.
It was from there that weird cries of terror came incessantly, and in imagination Dea saw an army of cowardly, panic-stricken slaves, huddled together as her own women had been, with palsied limbs and chattering teeth, whilst a handful of faithful men of the praetorian guard were alone left to protect the sacred person of the Cæsar.
Above her, through the apertures in the tiled roof, she could see the sky aglow with lurid crimson, and the smell of burning wood and of charred stuffs filled her nostrils with their pungent odour.
"Death to the Cæsar! Death!" The cry seemed almost at her door. Only the Palace of Tiberius, with its great empty halls and basilicas stood between her and the rallying-point of the rebels.
She called loudly for Tertius—her comptroller—and he came running along from the slaves' quarters with an army of howling men and women at his heels.
"What news, Tertius?" she demanded. "Hast heard?"
"They have surrounded the Cæsar's palace," said Tertius excitedly, "and demand his presence."
"Oh! the sacrilege!…" she exclaimed, "and what doth the Cæsar?"
"He will not appear, and his guards charge the mob as they advance upwards from the Forum. They have invaded the temple of Castor, and already some are swarming in the vestibules of the palace. The guard are behind the colonnades and were holding the crowd at bay with fair success until...."
"Until?" she asked.
"Until some of the rebels skirting the palace, set fire to the slaves' quarters in the rear. The flames are spreading. The Cæsar will be forced to face the people, an he doth not mean to be buried beneath the crumbling walls of his palace!"
"The miscreants have set fire to the palace of the Cæsars?" she exclaimed.
"Alas!" replied the man, "they will force the Cæsar to show himself to them. And they loudly demand the praefect of Rome."
"The praefect of Rome?"
"Aye, gracious lady. The people had thought that the Cæsar killed him; some strove, it seems, to recover his body in the imperial tribune, where he was seen to fall. But the body had disappeared, and the rumour hath gained ground that the Cæsar had it thrown to his dogs."
"It's not true," she cried out involuntarily.
"No, gracious lady. Men of sense do know that it is not true. But an infuriated mob hath no sense. It is like an overgrown child, with thousands of irresponsible limbs. It is tossed hither and thither, swayed by the wind of a chance word. But it were as well, mayhap, if it were true."
"Silence, Tertius, how canst say such a thing."
"I think of the Cæsar, gracious lady," rejoined the man simply, "and of thee. If the mob found the praefect of Rome now alive or dead, then surely would they murder the Cæsar and make of the praefect their Emperor if he lived, their god if he were dead."
And as if to confirm the man's words, the morning breeze wafted through the air the prolonged and insistent cry:
"Taurus Antinor! Hail!"
With a curt word, Dea dismissed her comptroller, and he went, followed by his train of shrieking men and women.
She remained a while silent and alone in the atrium, while the moanings of the slaves and Tertius' rough admonitions to them died away in the distance.
"If the mob found the praefect of Rome now alive or dead," she murmured, "then surely would they murder the Cæsar and make of the praefect their Emperor if he lived, their god if he were dead!"
Dea Flavia cast a quick glance all round her. The atrium itself was deserted, even though from every side beyond its colonnaded arcade came the sound of many voices and those persistent, cowardly groanings which set the young girl's nerves tingling and caused her heart to sink within her, with the presage of impending doom.
Only in the vestibule the watchmen sat alert and prepared to guard the Augusta's house; they were gossiping among themselves and seemed the only men in the place who were not wholly panic-stricken.