Domitia

CHAPTER XI.
AGAIN: THE SWORD OF CORBULO

Eboracus was able to open a way for the litter through the crowd, now clustered on the bank of the dyke, watching as the workmen threw down earth and stones, and buried deep that portion of the wall in which was the vault where the unhappy Abbess Cornelia was buried alive. And now the populace broke forth in sighs and tears, and in murmurings low expressed at the injustice committed in sentencing a woman without allowing her to know that she had been accused, and of saying a word in her own defence. Some of the crowd was drifting back into Rome, and by entering this current, the train of Domitia travelled along.

Eboracus returned from the head of the litter repeatedly to the side, to look within and ascertain whether his mistress were recovering. At the first fountain he stopped the convoy and obtained for her water to bathe her face, and at a little tavern, he procured strong Campanian wine, which he entreated her to sip, so as to nerve her.

As the litter approached the Forum, the crowd again coagulated and at last remained completely stationary. Again the street was blocked.

Eboracus went forward and forced his way through, that he might ascertain the cause, and whether the block was temporary and would speedily cease. He came back in great agitation, and said hastily to his mistress: —

“Lady, you cannot proceed. Suffer me to recommend that you go to the Carinæ and tarry there – with your lady mother for a while, till your strength is restored, and till the streets be more open.”

“Eboracus – what is going on? tell me.”

“Madam, there is something being transacted in the comitium that causes all the approaches to be packed with people. We might make a circuit – but, lady! I think if you would deign to repose for an hour at your mother’s house, after what you have suffered, it would be advisable.”

“Tell me what is taking place in the comitium.”

“I should prefer, lady, not to be asked.”

“But I have asked.”

“Then, dear mistress, do not require of me to make answer.”

“Answer truly. Tell me no lie. What is it?”

He hesitated. Then Domitia said: —

“Look at my hand, it is firm, it does not tremble. Nothing that I hear can be worse than what I have seen.”

“Lady – your strength has already failed.”

“And now I have gathered my resolution together, and can bear anything. I adjure you, by your duty to me – answer me, what is taking place in the comitium, what is it that causes the streets leading thereto to be impassable.”

“If I must reply – ”

“If you do not, I will have you scourged.”

“Nay, lady, that is not like thee. It is not fear that will make me speak, but because I know that if I do not, the information can be got from another.”

“Well – what is it?”

“The knight Celer, on the same charge as that which lost the Great Mother Cornelia, is being whipped to death with the scorpion.”¹⁵

“By the same orders? To my mother’s in the Carinæ.”

Hastily Domitia drew the curtains of her litter, and was seen no more, spoke no more till she reached the door of Longa Duilia.

Here she descended and entered the house.

“My dear Domitia! my august daughter! What a pleasure! What an honor!”

The lady Duilia started up to embrace the Empress.

Domitia received the kiss coldly, and sank silent on a stool.

Her mother looked at her with surprise. Domitia was waxen white, her eyes with dark rings about them, and unnaturally large and bright. The color had left her lips and these were leaden in hue.

Domitia did not speak, did not move. She remained for some moments like a statue.

“As the Gods love me!” exclaimed her mother after a long pause, “you are not going to be ill, surely – nothing dangerous, nothing likely to end unhappily. Ye Gods! and I have so much I want you to do for me. Tell me, I entreat you. Hide nothing from me. You are suffering. Where is it? What is it? Shall I send for a doctor?”

“Mother, no doctor can cure me. It is here,” Domitia pressed her hands to her heart – “and here,” to her temples. “I am the most miserable, the most unfortunate of women.”

“Ye Gods! He has divorced you?”

“No, mother. I would that he had.”

“Then what is the matter? Have you eaten what disagrees with you? As the Gods love me! you should not come out such a figure. Who was your face-dresser to-day? she ought to be crucified! Not a particle of paint – white as ivory. Intolerable – and it has given me such a turn.”

Domitia made no reply.

“But what is it? What has made you look like Parian marble?”

“The Great Mother Cornelia – ” Domitia could say no more, a lump rose in her throat and choked her. Then all at once she began to shiver as though frost-stricken and her teeth chattered.

“I have an essence – you must take that,” said the lady Duilia. “My dear, I know all about that. An estimable lady. I mean she was so till the Augustus decreed otherwise. I am sorry, and all that – but you know – well, these things do happen and must, and I dare be bound that some are glad, as it makes an opening for another needy girl, of good family of course. What is one person’s loss is another’s gain. The world is so and we can’t alter it, and a good thing, I say, that it is so.”

“Mother – she was innocent.”

“Well, well, we know all about that. Of course it was all nonsense what was charged against her, that we quite understand. It would never have done for the real truth to have been advertised.”

“And what was the truth?”

“My dear Domitia! How can you ask such a silly, infantile question? It was your doing, you must understand that. You threw yourself on her protection, embraced the altar of Vesta, and Cornelia with the assistance of Celer did what she could to further your object in leaving Rome. If people will do donkey-like things they must get a stick across their backs. It is so, and always will be so in this world, and we cannot make it otherwise.”

“I thought so. I was sure it was so,” said Domitia gravely. There was an infinity of sadness, of despair in her tone. “Mother, I bring misfortune upon all with whom I have to do.”

“Ye Gods! not on me! I hope to be preserved from that! Do not speak such unlucky words – they are of bad omen.”

“I cannot help it, mother, it is true. I am the most unfortunate of women myself – ”

“You speak rank folly. Ye Gods forgive me! saying such a thing to one who is herself divine. But, it is so – you are positively the most fortunate of women. What more do you desire? You are the Augusta, the people swear by your genius and fortune.”

“By my fortune! Alack poor souls!”

“And is it not a piece of good fortune to be raised so high that there is none above you?”

“My fortune! The Gods know – if they know anything – that I would gladly exchange my lot with that of a poor woman in a cottage who spins and sings, or of a girl among the mountains who keeps goats and is defended by a boisterous dog. Mother, listen to me. I have brought misfortune on Lucius Lamia, I have caused the death of that harmless actor Paris, I have been the occasion of Cornelia being – buried alive – watching the expiring of the one lamp. Ye Gods! Ye Gods! I shall go mad – and of Celer also. – He – ”

She held her face, rocked herself on the seat and sobbed as if her heart would break.

“Yes,” said the old lady, roused to anger at her daughter’s lack of appreciation of the splendor of her position. “Yes, child, and mischief you will work on every one, if you continue in the same course. Do men say that the Augustus is morose? Who made him so? – you by your behavior. Do they say that he is severe in his judgments? Who has hardened him and made him cruel? – You – who have dried up all the springs of tenderness in his breast. He was not so at first. If he be what men think – it is your work. You with your stinging words goaded him to madness and as he cannot or will not beat you, as you deserve, he deals the blows on some one else. Of course he cuts away such as you regard and love – because they obtain that to which he has a right, but which you deny him.”

“He – he – a right!”

Domitia started up, anger, resentment, hatred flared in her eyes, stiffened the muscles of her whole face, made her hair bristle above her brow.

“He a right, mother! he who tore me away from my dear Lamia, to whom I had given my whole heart, to whom I had been united by your sanction and our union blessed by the Gods! He who violated hospitality, the most sacred rights that belong to a house, who repaid your kindness in saving his life – when he was hunted like a wolf, by breaking and destroying, by trampling under his accursed heel, the brittle, innocent heart of the daughter of her who had protected him! No, mother, I owed him no love. I have never given him any, because he never had a right to any. Mother – this must have an end.”

She sank into silence that continued for some while.

Duilia did not speak. She did not desire another such explosion, lest the slaves should hear and betray what had been said. Presently, however, she whispered coaxingly: —

“My dear Domitia, you are overwrought. You have eaten something that has affected your temper. I find gherkins always disagree with me. There, go and take a little ginger in white wine, and sleep it off.”

Domitia rose, stiffly, as though all her joints were wooden.

“Yes, mother, I will go. But there is one thing I desire of thee. I have long coveted it, as a remembrancer of my father – may I take it?”

“Anything – anything you like.”

Domitia went to the wall and took down the sword of Corbulo, there suspended.

“It is this, mother. I need it.”

Then she departed.

“That sword – ah!” said Duilia. “It has been a little overdone. I have caught my guests exchanging winks when I alluded to it, and dropped a tear. O by all means she shall have it. It has ceased to be of use to me.”

CHAPTER XII.
THE TABLETS

Elymas the sorcerer stood bowing before Domitia, his hands crossed upon his breast.

She looked scrutinizingly into his dark face, but could read nothing there. He remained immovable and silent before her, awaiting the announcement of her will.

“I have sent for thee,” she said. “How long, I would know, before the sixth veil falls?”

“Lady and Augusta,” answered the Magian, “remember that when thou lookest out upon the Sabine Mountains, on one day all is so distinct that thou wouldst suppose a walk of an hour would bring thee to them. On the morrow, the range is so faint and so remote, that thou wouldst consider it must require days of travel to attain their roots. It is so with the Future. We look into its distance and behold forms – but whether near or far we know not. This only do we say with confidence, that we are aware of their succession, but not of their nearness or remoteness.”

“What! and the stars, will they not help thee?”

“There is at this time an ominous conjuncture of planets.”

“I pray thee, spare me the details, and tell me that which they portend.”

“Is it thine own future, Augusta, thou desirest to look into?”

“Elymas, my story has been unfolded – to what an extent it has been managed by such as thyself, that I cannot judge. But of a certainty it was thou who didst contrive that I was carried away from my husband’s house. Then what followed, the Gods know how far thou wast in it, but I have heard it said that the God Titus would not have had his mortal thread cut short but that, when in fever, thou didst persuade him to a bath in snow water. It is very easy to predict what will be, when with our hands we mould the future. And now – I care not whether thou makest or predictest what is to be – but an end there must be, and that a speedy one – for thine own safety hangs thereon.”

“How so, lady?”

“The Augustus has been greatly alarmed of late at sinister omens and prophesies; and he attributes them to thee. Perhaps,” with a scornful intonation, “he also is aware that fulfilment is assured before a prophesy is given out.”

The Magus remained motionless, but his face became pale.

“I know, because at supper with his intimates, Messala and Regulus and Carus, he swore by the Gods he would have you cast to savage dogs, and he would make an example of such as filled men’s minds with expectation of evil.”

“Lady – ”

But Domitia interrupted him. “Thou thinkest that I say this to alarm thee and bend thee to my will. If the Augustus has his spies that watch and repeat to him whatsoever I do, whomsoever I see, almost every word I say – shall not I also have a watch put upon him? Even now, Magus, that I have sent for thee, and that thou art closely consulted by me this has been carried to his ears, and as he knows how I esteem him, he will think this interview bodes him no good.”

“When, Lady Augusta, was this said?”

“The Emperor is this day returned from Albanum, and the threat was made but yesterday. Who can say but that the order has already been given for thy arrest, and for the gathering together of the dogs that are to rend thee.”

The man became alarmed and moved uneasily.

“Magus,” said Domitia, “I cannot save thee, thine own wits must do that. Find it written in the stars that thy life is so bound up with that of the Cæsar, that the death of one is the extinction of the other; or that thou holdest so potent a charm that if thou wilt thou canst employ it for his destruction. It is not for me to point out how thou mayest twist out of his grasp – thou art a very eel for slipperiness, and a serpent for contrivance. What I desire to know is – How much longer is this tyranny to last, and how long am I to suffer?”

Then the magician looked round the room, to make sure that he was unobserved; he raised the curtain at the door to see that none listened outside, and satisfied that he was neither observed nor overheard, he pointed to a clepsydra.

This was an ingenious, but to our minds a clumsy, contrivance for measuring time. It consisted of a silver ball, with a covered opening at the top, through which the interior could be replenished. About the base of the globe were minute perforations through which the liquid that was placed in the vessel slowly oozed, and oozing ran together into a drop at the bottom which fell at intervals into the bucket of a tiny wheel.

When the bucket was full, the wheel revolved and decanted the liquid whilst presenting another bucket to the distilling drops.

At each movement of the wheel a connection with it gave motion to the hand of a statuette of Saturn, who with his scythe indicated a number on an arc of metal. The numbers ranged from one to twelve, and the contrivance answered for half the twenty-four hours.

“Lady,” said the Magus, “before Saturn has pointed to the twelfth hour – ”

Steps were heard, approaching the room, along the mosaic-laid passage, and next moment, the curtain was snatched aside, and Domitian, his face blazing with anger, entered the apartment of his wife.

“So?” said he, “you are in league with astrologers and magicians against me! But, by the Gods! I can protect myself.”

He clapped his hands, and some of the guard appeared in the doorway.

“Remove him,” said the Emperor. “I have given orders concerning him already. Hey! Magus! knowest thou what will be thy doom, thou who pretendest to read the fate of men in the stars?”

“Augustus,” answered the necromancer, “I have read that I should be rent by wild dogs.”

“Sayest thou so? Then by Jupiter! I will make thy forecast come to naught. Go, Eulogius! – it is my command that he be at once, mark you, this very night, burned alive. We will see whether his prophecies come true. Here is my order.”

Domitian plucked a packet of tablets from his bosom, bound together with a string, drew forth one, and wrote hastily on it, then pressed his seal on the wax that covered the slab and handed it to the officer.

Then the guard surrounded the astrologer, and led him away.

Domitian waved his hand.

“Every one out of earshot,” ordered he, and he walked to the window and looked forth.

It was already night; to the south the sky was quivering with lightning, summer flashes, without thunder.

“A storm, a storm is coming on,” said the Emperor; “there’ll be storms everywhere, and lightning falling on all sides – portents they say. So be it! as the sword of heaven smites, so does mine. But it falls not on me, but on my enemies. Domitia,” said he, leaving the window, “there has been a conspiracy entered into against my life, and the fools thought to set up Clemens – he, that weakling, that coward; but I have sent him to his death, and those who were associated with him, the sentence is gone forth against them also.”

“I marvel only that any in Rome are suffered to live.”

“Minerva gives me wisdom – to defend myself.”

“Any wild beast can employ teeth and claws.”

“Domitia,” he came close to her, “I am the most lonely of men. I have no friends; my kinsmen either have been, or hate me; my friends are the most despicable of flatterers, who would betray their own parents to save their own throats; I use them, but I scorn them. You know not what it is to be alone!”

“I! I have been alone ever since you tore me from Lamia.”

“Lamia!” he ground his teeth; “still Lamia! But by the Gods! not for long. And you – you my wife whom I have loved, for whom I would have done anything – you are against me; you take counsel with a Chaldæan how long I have to live; the Senate, the nobles hate me, and by Jupiter, they have good cause, for I cut them with a scythe like ripe wheat. That was a good lesson of Tarquin to his son Sextus to nip off the heads of the tallest poppies. And the people – you have been currying favor with them – against me; the soldiers alone love me, because I have doubled their pay; let another offer to treble it and, to a man, they will desert me. By the Immortals! it is terrible to be alone – and to be plotted against, even by one’s wife.”

He walked the room, flourishing his tablets, then halted in front of the clepsydra.

“What said that star-gazer about the twelfth hour?” he asked. “Walls have ears, nothing is said that does not reach me. So, old Saturn, with thy scythe, dost thou threaten? Then I defy thee – ha! I saw the storm was coming up over Rome.”

A long-drawn growl of thunder muttered through the passages of the palace.

“I saw no flash,” said the prince, “yet lightning falls somewhere, maybe to kindle the pyre on which that sorcerer will burn; I care not. Fire of heaven fall and strike where and whom thou wilt!”

He went again to the window and looked forth. The air was still and close. The sky was enveloped in vapor and not a star could be seen. A continuous quiver of electric light ran along the horizon. Then the heavens seemed to be rent asunder and a blaze of lightning shot forth, blinding to the eyes.

Domitian turned away, and laid the tablets on the marble sideboard as he pressed his hands to his eyeballs.

“By the Gods!” he exclaimed a moment later, “here comes the rain; it descends in cataracts; it falls with a roar.”

He paced the room, halted, stood in front of the clepsydra and looked at the dropping water. The water had been reddened, and it seemed like blood sweated out of the silver globe. At that moment the wheel revolved, and sent a crimson gush into the receiver. With a jerk Saturn raised his scythe and indicated the hour ten.

The Emperor turned away, and came in front of Domitia.

“None have ever loved me,” he said bitterly, “how then can it be expected that I shall love any? my father disliked me, my brother distrusted me – and you – my wife, have ever hated me. I need not ask the cause of that. It is Lamia, always Lamia. Because he has never married you think he still harbors love for you; and you – you hate me because of him. It is hard to be a prince, and to be alone. If I hear a play – I think I catch allusions to me; if it be a comedy – there is a jest aimed at me; if a tragedy, it expresses what men wish may befall me. If I read a historian, he declaims on the glories of a commonwealth before these men, these Cæsars became tyrants, and as for your philosophers – away with them, they are wind-bags, but the wind is poisonous, it is malarious to me. When I am at the circus, because I back green – you, the entire hoop of spectators cheer, bet on the blue – to show me that they hate me. At the Amphitheatre, if I favor the big shields, then every one else is for the small targets. A prince is ever the most solitary of men. If you had protested that you loved me, had fondled me, I would have held you in suspicion, mistrusted your every word and look and gesture. Perhaps it is because that you have never given me good word, gentle look, and gesture of respect that I feel you are true – cruelly true, and I have loved you as the only true person I know. Now answer me – you asked after my death?”

“Yes,” answered Domitia.

“I knew it.”

“And,” said she, in cold, hard tones, looking straight into his agitated, twitching countenance, “I bear to you a message.”

“From whom?”

“From Cornelia, the Great Mother.”

“Well, and what – ” he stopped, some one approached the door. “What would you have?”

The mime Latinus appeared.

“Well – speak.”

“Sire, the rain extinguished the pyre, before that the astrologer was much burnt; then the dogs fell on him, as he was unbound, and they tore him and he is dead.”

“Ye Gods!” gasped Domitian, putting up his hand. “His word has come true after all.”

Domitia signed to the actor to withdraw.

“You have not heard the message of Cornelia.”

He did not speak.

“She has summoned you, the Augustus, the Chief Pontiff, the unjust Judge, to answer before the All-righteous Supreme Justice, above – before the scythe points to Twelve.”

Domitian answered not a word, he threw his mantle about his face and left the room.

He had left his tablets on the table.