CHAPTER XXVIII
"Nothing is secret, which shall not be made manifest."--ST. LUKEVIII. 17.
Caligula himself led the way to the triclinium and Dea Flavia followedhim.
He threw himself upon a couch and she, with her own hands, served himwith wine and fruit. He refused to eat but drank freely of the wine,whilst she stood beside him calmly waiting until he should be ready togo.
Seeing Blanca cross the atrium, she had called to her and ordered her toserve the soldiers. The men were grateful for they were exhausted. Theyhad not tasted food since the day before, and had been on the watchround the Caesar's person all night.
The underground passage which runs beneath the declivity between the twopoints of the Palatine, and by tortuous ways under the temple of JupiterVictor on its highest summit, did connect the house which Dea Flavia nowoccupied with the Palace of Augusta. The latter, since the death of thegreat imperator, had been used entirely as a hall of justice: a fewscribes alone inhabited the rearmost portion of the huge edifice.
The passage itself abutted in Dea Flavia's house on one of the smallrooms that lay round the triclinium. There were several such passagesconnecting the various palaces on the Palatine, but their existence wasnot revealed to the army of slaves, only a few responsible ones knewthat they were there. In this instance the Caesar could, from thetriclinium, reach this road to safety without again crossing the atriumand encountering the prying eyes of hundreds of cowardly slaves.
He had no thought of thanking Dea Flavia for what she did for him, buthaving drunk his fill, he rose from the couch and made ready to go.
She escorted him to the door of the passage and gave brief instructionsto the men how to proceed. She had lighted a small lamp which wouldguide the Caesar and his escort on their way. From the door, a flight ofprecipitous steps led down into the darkness. Caligula was the first todescend and his soldiers followed him; the one who held the lamp keepingclose to the Caesar's person.
Dea Flavia stood at the door until the footsteps of the men ceased tosend their echo back to her along the vaulted passage. Then, with a sighof relief, she closed the door on them and hastily fled from the room.
Her one desire now was to shut out, as completely as possible from hermental vision the picture of her shattered ideal, the degradation ofthat majesty which she had honoured all her life. So imbued was she withthat sense of honour and of reverence for the Caesarship, that she wouldnot dwell in thought on that awful sight of the Caesar grovelling inabject terror at her feet. She wished to forget it--to forget him--theman who, in her eyes, was already no longer the Caesar, for the Caesar wasa god, and like unto a god in glory and in dignity--whilst Caligula, herkinsman, had sunk lower than the beasts.
Almost involuntarily she had turned back toward the studio. A while agoshe had wished to look on the praefect of Rome as he lay in a druggedsleep, desiring to assure herself that all was well with him; then theadvent of the Caesar had interrupted her. Over an hour had gone by sincethen and the whole aspect of the world had changed.
The Caesar was a fugitive and a coward, and the people who had the upperhand were prepared to acclaim the hero of their choice.
The atrium now was gloomy and deserted. The slaves--gathered together intheir remote quarters--shunned the vastness and the enforced silence ofthe reception halls; they preferred to huddle together in close groupsin corners, distant from the noise of the street.
Dea Flavia stood quietly listening. Still from afar came the insistentcries of "Death!" and of "Vengeance!" Still overhead that lurid lightand smoke-laden atmosphere. But now those same cries seemed almostdrowned by a sound more persistent if less ominous: the sound of heavypattering rain on leaden roofs and into the marble basin of theimpluvium, whilst the roll of Jove's thunders appeared to be more nigh.
It was obvious that the storm which had been threatening all the morningfrom over the Campania, had burst over the great city at last. It wasJove's turn now to make a noise with his thunder, to utter cries andhowls of vengeance and of death through the medium of his storm, and todrown the fury of men in the whirl of his own.
Now a vivid flash of lightning rent the leaden sky overhead and searchedthe dark corners of the atrium. Dea Flavia uttered an involuntary littlecry of terror, and hid her face in her hands.
A high wind howled among the trees outside the house; Dea could hear thetiny branches cracking under the whip-lash of the blast, breaking awayfrom the parent stem and sending an eddy of dry dead leaves whirlingwildly along the narrow streets and into the open portals of thevestibule. She could hear the fall of the torrential rain, and theflames, which sacrilegious hands had kindled, dying away withlong-drawn-out hissing moans of pain. She could hear the wind in itsrage lashing those flames back into life again, and could see throughthe opening overhead the huge volumes of black smoke chased across thesky.
Smoke and flames were fighting an uneven battle against the persistent,heavy rain. The wind was their ally, but he was gusty and fitful: nowand then helping them with all his might, fanning their activity andrenewing their strength, but after a violent outburst he would lie downand rest, gathering strength mayhap, but giving the falling rain itsopportunity.
The rain had no need of rest; it fell, and fell, and fell, steadily andtorrentially, searching the weaker flames, killing them out one by one.
To Dea Flavia's straining senses it seemed clear that in this storm thenumber of rebels had greatly diminished; none, no doubt, but the mostenthusiastic remained to face the discomforts of drenched skin and bonechilled to the marrow. No doubt too the gale blowing the flames andsmoke hither and thither on the exposed slopes of the Palatine, hadrendered a stand in the open unmaintainable.
All this of course was mere conjecture, but the young girl, worn outmentally and physically with the nerve strain of the pastfour-and-twenty hours was grateful for the momentary sense of peace. Thesteady fall of the rain acted soothingly upon her senses; her weariedthoughts flew aimlessly hither and thither on the wings of herimagination.
Only the storm frightened her because she was not sure if it were anexpression of Jove's wrath, or whether his mighty hand had onlyscattered the infuriated populace so that she--Dea Flavia--could weighthe destinies of Rome in peace.
She thought of going quietly back to her room, to think a while in thesolitude; the danger being less imminent gave her leisure to ponder andto weigh in the balance her allegiance to Caesar, and that other namelesssense within her which she did not yet understand, but which invariablydrew her wandering thoughts back, and then back again to the man who layin a drugged sleep under her roof.
He slept, and throughout the great city the people called on him: "HailTaurus Antinor! Hail!"
She sighed and involuntary tears gathered in her eyes: but the sigh wasnot one of sadness, rather was it one of longing for somethingintangible and exquisite, and this longing was so sweet and withal somysterious, that instinctively she turned away from the magnificentreception hall toward her own room, with a wild desire to be alone andnurse that longing into an all-compelling desire.
It was at this moment that five or six men--all wrapped in dark woollencloaks--entered the atrium from the vestibule, and catching sight of theAugusta, called to her loudly with greetings of respectful homage.
She paused, angered at the intrusion; peace and solitude seemed indeeddenied to her to-day; but recognising the praetorian praefect as theforemost of her visitors, she could not--owing to his high rank--dismisshim from her presence.
Caius Nepos had already bent the knee before her. He looked flushed andagitated as did most of the others, only my lord Hortensius Martius whowas in the background, looked pale and wan from the terrible exposure ofyesterday.
She did not think to wonder how these men had entered her house, howthey had found their way to her presence, past her janitors, and withoutthe usual formalities and ceremonies of introduction which her high rankdemanded. She knew that her slaves were demoralised, that men who hadbeen friends o
f the Caesar were now fugitives, and vaguely thought thatthe praetorian praefect and his friends had found their way into herhouse as into a likely haven of refuge, and would, the next moment, bekneeling at her feet begging for protection and shelter, just as theirlord and Caesar had done on this selfsame spot half an hour ago.
"Your pleasure, my lords?" she asked.
"To speak with thee privately, O Augusta!" said Caius Nepos, sinking hisvoice to a whisper. "My friends and I have tried all the morning toforge our way through the mob and to reach thine ear. But the praetorianguard, faithful to me, was unable to make headway. Then did we think ofcovering ourselves with dark cloaks and of following the crowd, as if wewere one with it, until it led us to the precincts of thy house. Thestorm as it broke overhead was our faithful ally; the crowd has soughtrefuge against it under the arcades of the Forum, and the slopes of thePalatine are comparatively free."
"Yet, do ye want shelter and protection from me?" asked Dea Flavia.
She had no liking for these men, all of whom she knew. Caius Nepos,selfish and callous; Ancyrus, the elder, avaricious and self-seeking;young Escanes whom she knew to be unscrupulous; Philippus Decius whoseostentation and lavishness she despised. She vaguely wondered why mylord Hortensius Martius was among them.
"Nay, gracious lady!" said Caius Nepos suavely, "'tis not thy protectionwhich we crave, save for a few moments whilst we lay at thy feet ourdesires for the welfare of Rome."
"The welfare of Rome?" she queried vaguely. "I do not understand ye!What hath your coming hither to do with the welfare of Rome?"
"Allow us to make the meaning clear to thee, O Augusta. But not here,where prying eyes might be on the watch or unwelcome ears be prepared tolisten. Grant us but a brief audience in strict privacy ... thedestinies of Rome are in thy hands."
She made no immediate reply, but, as was habitual with her, she tried toread with searching eyes all that went on behind the obsequious maskswherewith these men sought to hide their innermost thoughts from her.
And as she peered into their smooth, humble faces, all at once she knewwhy they had come. She knew it even before they put their proposals intowords; she knew why the praetorian praefect was so servile, and why mylord Hortensius Martius, despite his obvious weakness, wore an air oftriumph.
They had come to betray the Caesar and to place the destinies of Rome inher hands. It was strange indeed that this mealy-mouthed sycophantshould be using those very words which had stood before her eyes likeletters of fire, searing her brain ever since she had stood here--halfan hour ago--with the grovelling Caesar at her feet.
The whirl of thoughts which rushed to her brain now made her giddy.Instinctively now, as she had done then, she looked down on herhands--those hands which were to guide the destinies of Rome--and herheart had a curious twinge of pain, almost of fear, for she realisedmore fully than before how small and delicate they were.
"Time walks closely on the heels of destiny, O Augusta!" urged MarcusAncyrus, the elder, in his gently insinuating voice; "for the nonce Jovehas damped the wrath of the people of Rome, but that wrath is onlydormant, it will break out afresh. The storm in the heavens will passby, but the tempest caused by a raging mob will reawaken with doublefury. In thy hands, Augusta, in thy hands!..."
She knew that all these men wanted was to use her as a tool--a puppet todance to their piping. She knew that anon they would be as ready tobetray her as they were betraying their Caesar now. Yesternight had theycome to her with their proposals she would have rejected them withunqualified scorn; but since yesternight she had seen the Caesar abject,cowardly, degraded, dragging his bespattered majesty across the floor ofthis house; she had measured him--not by what he represented, but bywhat he was, and she had taken his measure ... and that of another ...and the Caesar was lower than the brutes--and that other was greater thanmen.
A silent voice, a whisper which mayhap was an inspiration, caused her tolook toward the studio.
"In there, my lords," she said, pointing to the door, "we shall be safefrom watchful eyes and ears, and I will listen to what you have to say."
She chose not to see the look of triumph which flashed from six pairs ofeyes, but calmly led the way toward the studio.
Caius Nepos and the others followed her without a word. Dion and Nolusrose as she entered, and she dismissed them, whilst ordering them towait her pleasure outside the door. The two men--brought up in theschool of slavery, were too well drilled to marvel at the graciouslady's many moods; they did not even cast one look in the direction ofthe inner room where they knew that the praefect of Rome still lay in adrugged sleep.
As soon as they were gone Dea Flavia turned again to Caius Nepos and tohis friends.
"I pray you sit," she said simply.
She herself sat on a high chair with circular back carved of citruswood, but Caius Nepos and the others preferred to stand.