Unto Caesar Part 7

Once she raised her eyes to the praefect and encountered his gaze--strangely contemptuous and wrathful--fixed upon her own, and anon she shuddered when a pitiable moan from Nola echoed from end to end along the marble walls around.

And the crowd of idlers began slowly to disperse. In groups of twos and threes they went, their sandalled feet making a soft rustling noise against the flagstones of the Forum, and their cloaks of thin woollen stuff floating out behind them as they walked.

The young patricians were the first to go. The scene had ceased to be amusing and Dea Flavia was not like to bestow another smile. They thought it best to retire to their luxurious homes, for they vaguely resented the majesty of death which clung round the dead freedwoman and the young living slave. They hoped to forget in the course of the noonday sleep, and the subsequent delights of the table, the painful events which had so unpleasantly stirred their shallow hearts.

Dea Flavia paid no heed to them as they murmured words of leave-taking in her ear. 'Tis doubtful if she saw one of them or cared if they went or stayed.

At an order from the praefect the auction sale was abruptly suspended.

The lictors drove the herds of human cattle together preparatory to taking them to their quarters on the slopes of the Aventine where they would remain until the morrow; whilst the scribes and auctioneers made haste to scramble down from the heights of the rostrum, the heat of the day having rendered that elevated position well-nigh unbearable. Only Dea Flavia's retinue lingered in the Forum. Standing at a respectful distance they surrounded the gorgeously draped litter, waiting, silently and timorous, the further pleasure of their mistress; and behind Dea Flavia her two Ethiopian slaves, stolidly holding the palm leaves to s.h.i.+eld her head against the blazing sun which so mercilessly seared their own naked shoulders.

"Grant me leave to escort thee to thy litter, Augusta!" murmured a timid voice.

It was young Hortensius Martius who spoke. He had approached the catasta and now stood timid, and a suppliant, beside Dea Flavia, with his curly head bare to the scorching sun and his back bent in slave-like deference. But the young girl seemed not to hear him and even after he had twice repeated his request she turned to him with uncomprehending eyes.

"I would not leave thee, Dea," he said, "until I saw thee safely among thy slaves and thy clients."

Then at last did she speak. But her voice sounded toneless and dull, as of one who speaks in a dream.

"I thank thee, good Hortensius," she said, "but my slaves are close at hand and I would prefer to be left alone."

To insist further would have been churlish. Hortensius Martius, well versed in every phase of decorum, bowed his head in obedience and retired to his litter. But he told his slaves not to bear him away from the Forum altogether but to place the litter down under the arcades of the tabernae, and then to stand round it so that it could not be seen, whilst he himself could still keep watch over the movements of Dea Flavia.

But she in the meanwhile remained in the same inert position, standing listlessly beside the body of Menecreta, her face expressing puzzlement rather than horror, as if within her soul she was trying to reconcile the events of the last few moments with her previous conceptions of what the tenor of her life should be.

The curse of Menecreta had found sudden and awful fulfilment, and Dea Flavia remained vaguely wondering whether the G.o.ds had been asleep on this hot late summer's day and forgotten to s.h.i.+eld their favoured daughter against the buffetings of fate. A freedwoman had roused superst.i.tious fear in the heart of a daughter of the Caesars! Surely there must be something very wrong in the administration of the affairs of this world. Nay, more! for the freedwoman, unconscious of her own impiety, had triumphed in the end; her death--majestic and sublime in its suddenness--had set the seal upon her malediction.

And Dea Flavia marvelled that the dead woman remained so calm, her eyes so still, when--if indeed Jupiter had been aroused by the monstrous sacrilege--she must now be facing the terrors of his judgments.

And Taurus Antinor watched her in silence whilst she stood thus, unconscious of his gaze, a perfect picture of exquisite womanhood set in a frame of marble temples and colonnades, a dome of turquoise above her head, the palm leaves above her throwing a dense blue shadow on her golden hair and the white tunic on her shoulders.

He had heard much of Dea Flavia--the daughter of Claudius Octavius and now the ward of the Emperor Caligula--since his return from Syria a year ago, and he had oft seen her gilded and rose-draped litter gliding along the Sacra Via or the Via Appia, surrounded with its numberless retinue: but he had never seen her so close as this, nor had he heard her speak.

She was a mere child and still under the tutelage of her despotic father when he--Taurus Antinor--tired of the enervating influences of decadent Rome, had obtained leave from the Emperor Tiberius to go to Syria as its governor. The imperator was glad enough to let him go. Taurus Antinor, named Anglica.n.u.s, was more popular with the army and the plebs than any autocratic ruler could wish.

He went to Syria and remained there half a dozen years. The jealousy of one emperor had sent him thither and 'twas the jealousy of another that called him back to Rome. Syria had liked its governor over well, and Caius Julius Caesar Caligula would not brook rivalry in the allegiance owed to himself alone by his subjects--even by those who dwelt in the remotest provinces of the Empire.

But on his return to Rome the powerful personality of Taurus Antinor soon imposed itself upon the fierce and maniacal despot.

Caligula--though he must in reality have hated the Anglica.n.u.s as much and more than he hated all men--gave grudging admiration to his independence of spirit and to his fearless tongue. In the midst of an entourage composed of lying sycophants and of treacherous minions, the Caesar seemed to feel in the presence of the stranger a sense of security and of trust. Some writers have averred that Caligula looked on Taurus Antinor as a kind of personal fetish who kept the wrath of the G.o.ds averted from his imperial head. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that tyrant exerted his utmost power to keep Taurus near his person, showering upon him those honours and t.i.tles of which he would have been equally ready to deprive him had the stranger at any time run counter to his will. Anon, when the Caesar thought it inc.u.mbent upon his dignity to start on a military expedition, he forced Antinor to accept the praefecture of the city in order to keep him permanently settled in Rome.

The Anglica.n.u.s accepted the power--which was almost supreme in the absence of the Caesar. He even gave the oath demanded of him by the Emperor that he would remain at his post until the termination of the proposed military expedition, but it was easy to see that the dignities for which others would have fought and striven to their uttermost were not really to the liking of Taurus Antinor.

Avowedly wilful of temper, he had since his return from Syria become even more silent, more self-centred than before. Many called him morose and voted him either treacherous or secretly ambitious; others averred that he was either very arrogant or frankly dull. Certain it is that he held himself very much aloof from the society of his kind and persistently refused to mix with the young elegants of the day either in their circles or their baths, their private parties or public entertainments.

Thus it was that the praefect found himself to-day for the first time in the near presence of Dea Flavia, the acknowledged queen of that same society which he declined to frequent, and as he grudgingly admitted to himself that she was beautiful beyond what men had said of her, he remembered all the tales which he had heard of her callous pride, her cold dignity, and of that cruel disdain with which she rejected all homage and broke the hearts of those whom her beauty had brought to her feet.

For the moment, however, she struck him as more pathetic than fearsome; she looked lonely just now like a stately lily blooming alone in a deserted garden. He was wroth with her for what she had done to Menecreta and for her childish caprice and opposition to his will, but at the same time he who so seldom felt pity for those whom a just punishment had overtaken, was sorry for this young girl, for in her case retribution had been severe and out of all proportion to her fault.

Therefore he approached her almost with deference and forced his rough voice to gentleness, as he said to her:

"The hour is late, O Dea Flavia. I myself must leave the Forum now. I would wish to see thee safe amongst thy women."

She turned her blue eyes upon him. His voice had roused her from her meditations and recalled her to that sense of proud dignity with which she loved to surround herself as with invisible walls. She must have seen the pity in his eyes for he did not try to hide it, but it seemed to anger her as coming from this man who--to her mind--was the primary cause of her present trouble. She looked for a moment or two on him as if trying to recollect his very existence, and no importunate slave could ever encounter such complete disdain as fell on the praefect at this moment from Dea Flavia's glance.

"I will return to my palace at the hour which pleaseth me most, O praefectus," she said coldly, "and when the child Nola, being more composed, is ready to accompany me."

"Nay!" he rejoined in his accustomed rough way, "the slave Nola is naught to thee now. She will be looked after as the State directs."

"The slave is mine," she retorted curtly. "She shall come with me."

And even as she spoke she drew herself up to her full height, more like, he thought, than ever to a stately lily now. The crown of gold upon her head caught a glint from the noonday sun, and the folds of her white tunic fell straight and rigid from her shoulders down to her feet.

It seemed strange to him that one so young, so exquisitely pure, should thus be left all alone to face the hard moments of life; her very disdain for him, her wilfulness, seemed to him pathetic, for they showed her simple ignorance of the many cruelties which life must of necessity have in store for her.

As for yielding to her present mood, he had no thought of it. It was caprice originally which had caused her to defy his will and to break old Menecreta's heart. She had invoked strict adherence to the law for the sole purpose of indulging this caprice. Now he was tempted also to stand upon the law and to defy her tyrannical will, even at the cost of his own inclinations in the matter.

He would not trust her with the child Nola now. He had other plans for the orphan girl, rendered lonely and desolate through a great lady's whim, and he would have felt degradation in the thought that Dea Flavia should impose her will on him in this.

He knew her power of course. She was a near kinswoman of the Emperor, and the child of his adoption; she was all-powerful with the Caesar as with all men through the might of his personality as much as through that of her wealth.

But he had no thought of yielding nor any thought of fear. It seemed as if in the heat-laden atmosphere two mighty wills had suddenly clashed one against the other, brandis.h.i.+ng ghostly steels. His will against hers! The might of manhood and of strength against the word of a beautiful woman. Nor was the contest unequal. If he could crush her with a touch of his hand, she could destroy him with one word in the Caesar's ear. She had as her ally the full unbridled might of the House of Caesar, while against her there was only this stranger, a descendant of a freedwoman from a strange land. For the nonce his influence was great over the mind of the quasi-madman who sat on the Empire's throne, but any moment, any event, the whisper of an enemy, the word of a woman, might put an end to his power.

All this Dea Flavia knew, and knowing it found pleasure in toying with his wrath. Armed with the triple weapon of her beauty, her purity and her power, she taunted him with his impotence and smiled with scornful pity upon the weakness of his manhood.

Even now she turned to Nola and said with gentle firmness:

"Get up, girl, and come with me."

But at her words the last vestige of deference fled from the praefect's manner; pity now would have been weak folly. Had he yielded he would have despised himself even as this proud girl now affected to scorn him.

He interposed his ma.s.sive figure between Dea Flavia and the slave and said loudly:

"By thy leave, Nola, the daughter of Menecreta, is the property of the State and 'tis I will decide whither she goeth now."

"Until to-morrow only, Taurus Antinor," she rejoined coldly, "for to-morrow she must be in the slave market again, when my agents will bid for and buy her according to my will."

"Nay! she shall not be put up for sale to-morrow."

"By whose authority, O praefectus?"

"By mine. The State hath given me leave to purchase privately a number of slaves from the late censor's household. 'Tis my intention to purchase Nola thus."

"Thou hast no right," she said, still speaking with outward calm, though her whole soul rebelled against the arrogance of this man who dared to thwart her will, to gainsay her word, and set up his dictates against hers, "thou hast no right thus to take the law in thine own hands."

"Nay! as to that," he replied with equal calm, "I'll answer for mine own actions. But the slave Nola shall not pa.s.s into thy hands, Augusta! Thou hast wrought quite enough mischief as it is; be content and go thy way.

Leave the child in peace."

In these days of unbridled pa.s.sions and unfettered tyranny, a man who spoke thus to a daughter of the Caesars spoke at peril of his life. Both Dea Flavia and Taurus Antinor knew this when they faced one another eye to eye, their very souls in rebellion one against the other--his own turbulent and fierce, with the hot blood from a remote land coursing in his veins, blinding him to his own advantage, to his own future, to everything save to his feeling of independence at all cost from the oppression of this family of tyrants; her own almost serene in its consciousness of limitless power.

For the moment her sense of dignity prevailed. Whatever she might do in the future, she was comparatively helpless now. The praefect in the discharge of his functions--second only to the Caesar--was all-powerful where he stood.