"To make our submission to the Caesar," she said simply, "those of us at least who are not afraid of his wrath. For the others there is still time to seek a safe retreat far away from Rome."
"But this is monstrous!" cried Hortensius Martius, suddenly jumping to his feet and beginning to pace up and down the room in an outburst of impotent wrath. "This is miserable, cowardly, abject! What? Would ye allow that stranger, that son of slaves, to thwart your plans by his treachery? Are we naughty children that can thus be sent, well-whipped and whining to bed? Up, my lords, this is not the end! Caesar is not yet in Rome! The people are still dissatisfied. Hark to the noise in the Forum below! Does it sound as if the populace was accepting the news with rejoicing? Up now, my lords! It is not too late! Acclaim your new Caesar; it is not too late, I say. When the legions return with that mountebank at their head let them find Dea Flavia Augusta and her lord the acknowledged masters of Rome."
He looked flushed, excited and proud, feeling that even at this eleventh hour he could carry these men along with him if Dea Flavia put the weight of her power on his side. Now he paused in his peroration, standing above his fellow-conspirators as if already he were their ruler, and looking from one face to the other with eager restless eyes that expressed all his enthusiasm and all his hopes.
But the two older men had evidently no stomach for the situation as it now was. It had been easy matter enough to murder the Caesar treacherously and while his legions were three days" march away. But now everything was very different, the issues very doubtful; no doubt that a safe retreat away from the city would be by far the wiser course.
Caius Nepos, with vivid recollections of his last interview with the Caesar, shook his head with slow determination. Ancyrus, the elder, was silent and only the three younger men had followed Hortensius Martius in his heated argument.
"What sayest thou, Augusta?" asked Philippus Decius at last, looking doubtfully upon the young girl.
"That ye must make your plans without me, my lords," she said coldly.
"Since, as you say, the praefect of Rome is dead, I can make no choice worthy of him who is gone. I choose to return to mine allegiance, my loyalty to the Caesar and to my House."
"If the Caesar returns," urged Hortensius Martius, "he will vent some of his wrath on thee."
"Then will I suffer for my treachery, my lords," she rejoined proudly, "in accordance with my deserts."
"But Augusta ..."
"I pray you, my lord," she interposed haughtily, "do not prolong your arguments. My mind is made up. An you value your own safety in the future, "twere wiser to make preparations for a lengthy stay away from Rome."
"Hadst thou listened to us yesterday ..." sighed Ancyrus, the elder.
"A heavy crime had lain against us all," she said. "Be thankful, my lords, that in the history of Rome when it comes to be written, your deed will not have sullied the page that marks to-day. And now, my lords, I bid you farewell! You are in no danger if you leave the city forthwith. The rejoicings at the entry of the Caesar and the homecoming of his legions will last many days, during that time your names will be erased from the tablets of my kinsman"s memory."
"The G.o.ds grant it!" murmured Caius Nepos. "But thou, Augusta, what of thee?"
"I, my lords," she said with a gentle smile, the irony of which was lost on their self-centred intellects, "I pray you have no thoughts of me. I have been placed in the keeping of one who, I am told, is mightier than Caesar. There must I be safe; so farewell, my lords; we meet again, I hope, in happier and more peaceful times."
She stood up and one by one--for was she not still the Augusta and the favourite kinswoman of the Caesar?--they bent the knee before her and kissed the hem of her gown. After which act of homage they retired with backs bent and walking backwards out of the room.
My lord Hortensius Martius was the last to take his leave. He went down on both knees and would have encircled the Augusta with his arms, only she drew back quickly a step or two.
"Dea ... in the name of my love for thee ..." he began.
But she interrupted him gently, yet firmly.
"Speak not to me of love, my lord," she said. ""Tis but love"s ghost that moves to and fro when you speak."
Then as he would have protested, she put up her hand with a gesture of finality.
"It is no use, my lord. What love there is in me, that you could never have aroused--not even in the past. I entreat you not to insist. Love cannot be compelled. It is or is not. Whence it comes we know not; mayhap the G.o.ds do know ... mayhap there is only one who knows ... and he seems to give much, but also to take all.... Therefore mayhap love comes from him, and when we are not prepared to give up all for love"s sake, then doth he withhold the supreme gift and leave our hearts barren.... Mayhap! mayhap!" she sighed, "alas! I know not! and you, good my lord, do not look so puzzled and so scared. I bid you farewell now.
I"ll not forget you; to remember is so much easier than to love."
He had perforce to accept his dismissal. He felt rebellious against fate and would have liked to have forced her will. But as she stood there before him, clad all in white, so young and so chaste and yet a woman who knew what love was, an awed reverence for her crept into his heart and he felt that indeed he would never dare to speak again to her of love.
He too kissed the hem of her tunic now, just as the others had done, and just as they had done he walked out of her presence backwards with back bent and an overwhelming disappointment in his heart.
CHAPTER x.x.xVI
"The peace of G.o.d, which pa.s.seth all understanding."--PHILIPPIANS IV. 7.
Three months had gone by since then. Rome had acclaimed the Caesar and rejoiced over his homecoming. There were holidays and spectacles, chariot races and gladiatorial combats, and the people of Rome forgot that it had ever shouted: "Hail Taurus Antinor Caesar! Hail!"
Now the calls were for Caius Julius Caesar Caligula, and those who had most loudly shouted for his death, cringed most obsequiously at his feet. The very name of the ex-praefect of Rome was already forgotten.
His testament, made, it appears, just before his death, had been copiously commented on at first. All his slaves had received their freedom together with a sufficient sum to enable one and all to live in comfort in the new state of freedom. The rest of the vast property owned by the late praefect was being somewhat mysteriously administered, and up to this hour no one had been able to gain any definite information with regard to its ultimate destination. There were those who averred that a great deal of ready money--including the proceeds of the sale of the late praefect"s house in Rome and of his villa at Ostia--had found its way to a section of very poor freedmen who lived on the Aventine and who formed a somewhat isolated little colony not viewed altogether kindly by the official magistracy of the city.
But all that was mere gossip and did not withstand the test of time.
After three months people had plenty of other matters to think of and to talk about.
There were the festivals and games which had accompanied the re-entry of the Caesar into Rome. The city had been beflagged and adorned with banners and with garlands. For thirty days did the rejoicings last, and brilliant sunshine shone over the golden glories of autumn and kissed the foliage of oleanders until they blushed a brilliant crimson, and tinged the marble of palaces and temples every morning with rose.
The games in the great Circus went on without intermission for thirty days; there were military and naval pageants, combats between the lions from Numidia and the new hyenas and crocodiles; there were gladiatorial contests and chariot races. Much human blood was shed for the delectation of the masters of the world, much skill displayed, much prowess vanquished by prowess greater, much valour laid to dust.
But the Caesar"s pet black panther did not appear again in the Circus.
The mighty fist of the dead praefect had mayhap laid the creature low; in any case it were not safe to re-awaken dormant memories.
And Caius Julius Caesar Caligula, the father of his armies, the best and greatest of Caesars, showed himself at all these pageants more crazed than ever; he hardly ever spoke now to the people. "Twas averred that Caesonia, his wife, had given him a potion to cure him of his infatuation for Dea Flavia, his kinswoman, whom he had exalted above all the other Augustas, and whose absence from Rome and from all festivities had rendered him half distracted with wrath.
He would have liked to vent that wrath on Dea, but he could not lay hands on her. She had left her palace even before his re-entry into Rome, taking none but two of her most trusted slaves with her; the others did not know whither she had gone. Some thought that she had gone on a journey to a villa which she possessed in Sicilia, others thought that she was living a life of retirement in a lonely dwelling on the Sabine Hills, preparatory to devoting her virginity to the glory of Vesta.
Caius Julius Caesar Caligula prepared to have her sought for throughout the length and breadth of his Empire, and would no doubt have succeeded in time in this search had not a few months later Chaerea, the praetorian tribune, done the work with his hands which the dagger of young Escanes had failed to do.
The winter had been slow in coming, but it had come at last. An icy wind blew from across the sea. Overhead the sky was the colour of lead and great banks of clouds chased one another wantonly above the hills that tower over Jerusalem.
There was hardly a path up the rugged incline, the rains and winds and snows of the past seven years had obliterated the marks which a surging crowd had once made in the wake of the sacred feet.
It was close on the ninth hour and the shadows of evening were already drawing in very fast. A tall figure dressed in sombre garments walked slowly up the hill which is called Calvary.
His head was uncovered and he had no wand wherewith to ease his footsteps; the bl.u.s.tering gusts of wind blew the tawny hair over his brow.
He held his head erect and his eyes did not watch the places where trod his feet. They were fixed on ahead, up toward the summit of the hill, there where a Cross stood broken and lonely with wooden arms outstretched and the birds of heaven circling all round it.
Every day for seven days now had the pilgrim wandered up the steep desolate hill. Every day for seven days he had reached the summit ere the ninth hour was called from the city walls. He lived at a small inn just inside the third wall, and every day at noon he set out upon his pilgrimage and only came home when the darkness of the night lay dense upon the valley.
To-day he was more weary than he had ever been before. His feet felt like leaden weights that seemed to be dragging him down and ever downwards, and the loneliness of the place had its image within his heart.
On the summit he fell on his knees and knelt at the foot of the Cross, leaning his aching forehead against the cold, dank wood.
"How long, oh my G.o.d, how long?" he murmured. "The misery is more than I can bear. I am ready to do Thy work, oh G.o.d, to speak Thy Word where Thou dost bid me go, but take her image, dear Lord, from before mine eyes, it stands for ever "twixt Thy Cross and me. Break my heart, oh G.o.d, since her image fills it and its every beat is not in Thy name.
Take the cup from me, dear Lord! It is too bitter and I cannot drink!"