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A Friend of Caesar by William Stearns Davis

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The friends took leave of Artemisia; the slave-women kissed her;
Pisander, presuming on his age, kissed her, albeit very sheepishly, as
though he feared the ghosts of all the Stoics would see him. Iasus
cast an angry jealous glance at the philosopher; he contented himself
with a mere shake of the hand.

Agias swung Artemisia into the gig and touched the lash to the swift
mules.

"Good-by, dear friends!" she cried, her merry Greek smile shining out
through her bronze disguise.

The gig rolled down the street, Agias glancing to right and left to
see that no inquisitive eye followed them.

"Oh! Agias," cried the girl, "am I at last going away with you? Going
away all alone, with only you to take care of me? I feel--I feel
queerly!"

Agias only touched the mules again, and laughed and squeezed
Artemisia's hand, then more gravely said:--

"Now, makaira, you must do everything as I say, or we shall never get
away from Pratinas. Remember, if I tell you to do anything you must do
it instantly; and, above everything else, no matter what happens,
speak not a word; don't scream or cry or utter a sound. If anybody
questions us I shall say that I am a gentleman driving out to the
suburbs to enjoy a late party at a friend's villa, and you are my
valet, who is a mute, whom it is useless to question because he cannot
answer. Do you understand?"

Artemisia nodded her little head, and bit her pretty lips very hard to
keep from speaking. The fear of Pratinas made her all obedience.

It was after sundown, and driving was permitted in the city, though
nearly all the teams that blocked Agias's way, as he drove down the
crowded streets to turn on to the Via Appia, were heavy wagons loaded
with timber and builders' stone.

So far, all was safe enough; but Agias knew perfectly well that
Pratinas was an awkward man to have for an enemy. The critical moment,
however, was close at hand, and Agias called up all his wits to meet
it. Under the damp arch of the ancient Porta Capena were pacing
several men, whose lanterns and clinking sword-scabbards proclaimed
them to be members of the city constabulary. There was no possibility
of evading their scrutiny. No doubt any other gate was equally well
watched. Agias drove straight ahead, as though he had seen nothing.

"Hold!" and one of the constables was at the heads of the mules, and
another was waving a lantern up into the face of the occupants of the
gig.

"Rascals," roared Agias, menacing with his whip, "are you highwaymen
grown so impudent!"

"We have an order from the triumviri," began one officer.

"_Eho!_" replied Agias, settling back, as though relieved not to have
to fight for his purse, "I can't see what for; I owe nothing. I have
no suit pending."

"We are to search all carriages and pedestrians," recommenced the
constable, "to find if we may a certain Artemisia, a runaway
slave-girl of the most noble Greek gentleman, Pratinas."

"My good sirs," interrupted Agias, "I am already like to be very late
at my dear friend Cimber's dinner party"--he mentioned the name of
the owner of a very large villa not far down the road; "I have with me
only Midas, my mute valet. If you detain me any longer I shall
complain--"

And here a denarius slipped into the hands of the officer with the
lantern.

"I think it's all right, Macer," was his report to his comrade. The
latter left the heads of the mules.

"_Mehercle!_ how handsome some of those Egyptians grow!" commented the
first constable.

But the rest of his remarks were lost on Agias. He was whizzing down
the "Queen of Roads," with a good team before him, Artemisia at his
side, and a happy consciousness that two excellent officials had
missed a chance to earn one thousand sesterces.

Hardly were they beyond earshot, when Artemisia burst out into an
uncontrollable fit of giggling, which lasted a long time, only to be
renewed and renewed, as often as a desperate effort seemed to have
suppressed it. Then she drew the robes of the carriage round her, laid
her head on Agias's shoulder, and with a confidence in her protector
that would have inspired him to go through fire and water for her
sake, shook out her dark locks and fell fast asleep, despite the fact
that the mules were running their fastest. Agias grasped the reins
with one hand, and with the other pressed tight the sleeping girl. He
would not have exchanged his present position for all the wealth of
Sardanapalus.

* * * * *

Five days later Agias was back in Rome. He had succeeded in reaching
Baiae, and introducing Artemisia into the familia of the villa of the
Lentuli, as a new waiting-maid from Rome sent by Claudia to her
daughter. For the present at least there was practically no chance of
Pratinas recovering his lost property. And indeed, when Agias reached
Rome once more, all fears in that direction were completely set at
rest. The fashionable circle in which Claudia and Herennia were
enmeshed was in a flutter and a chatter over no ordinary scandal.
Valeria, wife of Calatinus, and Pratinas, the "charming" Epicurean
philosopher, had both fled Rome two days before, and rumour had it
that they had embarked together at Ostia on a ship leaving direct for
Egypt. Of course Calatinus was receiving all the sympathy, and was a
much abused man; and so the tongues ran on.

To Agias this great event brought a considerable gain in peace of
mind, and some little loss. Valeria had taken with her her two maids,
Agias's good friends, and also Iasus. Pisander ignominiously had been
left behind. Calatinus had no use for the man of learning, and Agias
was fain to take him before Drusus, who had returned from Ravenna, and
induce his patron to give Pisander sufficient capital to start afresh
a public school of philosophy, although the chances of acquiring
opulence in that profession were sufficiently meagre.




Chapter XIII

What Befell at Baiae


I

Cornelia was at Baiae, the famous watering-place, upon the classic
Neapolitan bay,--which was the Brighton or Newport of the Roman. Here
was the haunt of the sybarites, whose gay barks skimmed the shallow
waters of the Lucrine lake; and not far off slumbered in its volcanic
hollow that other lake, Avernus, renowned in legend and poetry,
through whose caverns, fable had it, lay the entrance to the world of
the dead. The whole country about was one city of stately villas, of
cool groves, of bright gardens; a huge pleasure world, where freedom
too often became license; where the dregs of the nectar cup too often
meant physical ruin and moral death.

Cornelia had lost all desire to die now. She no longer thought of
suicide. Lentulus's freedmen held her in close surveillance, but she
was very happy. Drusus lived, was safe, would do great things, would
win a name and a fame in the world of politics and arms. For herself
she had but one ambition--to hear men say, "This woman is the wife of
the great Quintus Drusus." That would have been Elysium indeed.
Cornelia, in fact, was building around her a world of sweet fantasy,
that grew so real, so tangible, that the stern realities of life,
realities that had hitherto worn out her very soul, became less
galling. The reaction following the collapse of the plot against
Drusus had thrown her into an unnatural cheerfulness. For the time the
one thought when she arose in the morning, the one thought when she
fell asleep at night, was, "One day," or "One night more is gone, of
the time that severs me from Quintus." It was a strained, an unhealthy
cheerfulness; but while it lasted it made all the world fair for
Cornelia. Indeed, she had no right--from one way of thinking--not to
enjoy herself, unless it be that she had no congenial companions. The
villa of the Lentuli was one of the newest and finest at Baiae. It
rested on a sort of breakwater built out into the sea, so that the
waves actually beat against the embankment at the foot of Cornelia's
chamber. The building rose in several stories, each smaller than the
one below it, an ornamental cupola highest of all. On the successive
terraces were formally plotted, but luxuriant, gardens. Cornelia, from
her room in the second story, could command a broad vista of the bay.
Puteoli was only two miles distant. Vesuvius was ten times as far; but
the eye swept clear down the verdant coast toward Surrentum to the
southward. At her feet was the sea,--the Italian, Neapolitan
sea,--dancing, sparkling, dimpling from the first flush of morning to
the last glint of the fading western clouds at eve. The azure above
glowed with living brightness, and by night the stars and planets
burned and twinkled down from a crystalline void, through which the
unfettered soul might soar and soar, swimming onward through the sweet
darkness of the infinite.

And there were pleasures enough for Cornelia if she would join
therein. Lentulus had ordered his freedmen not to deny her amusements;
anything, in fact, that would divert her from her morbid infatuation
for Drusus. The consul-designate had indeed reached the conclusion
that his niece was suffering some serious mental derangement, or she
would not thus continue to pursue a profitless passion, obviously
impossible of fulfilment. So Cornelia had every chance to make herself
a centre to those gay pleasure-seekers who were still at Baiae; for the
summer season was a little past, and all but confirmed or fashionable
invalids and professional vacationers were drifting back to Rome. For
a time all went merrily enough. Just sufficient of the Lucius
Ahenobarbus affair had come to the Baiaeans to make Cornelia the object
of a great amount of curiosity. When she invited a select number of
the pleasure-seekers to her dinner parties, she had the adulation and
plaudits of every guest, and plenty of return favours. Lucius
Ahenobarbus soon had a score of hot rivals; and Cornelia's pretty face
was chipped on more than one admirer's seal ring. But presently it
began to be said that the niece of the consul-designate was an
extremely stoical and peculiar woman; she did not enjoy freedom which
the very air of Baiae seemed to render inevitable. She never lacked wit
and vivacity, but there was around her an air of restraint and cold
modesty that was admirable in every way--only it would never do in
Baiae. And so Cornelia, without ceasing to be admired, became less
courted; and presently, quite tiring of the butterfly life, was thrown
back more and more on herself and on her books. This did not disturb
her. A levee or a banquet had never given her perfect pleasure; and it
was no delight to know that half the women of Baiae hated her with a
perfect jealousy. Cornelia read and studied, now Greek, now Latin; and
sometimes caught herself half wishing to be a man and able to expound
a cosmogony, or to decide the fate of empires by words flung down from
the rostrum. Then finally Agias came bringing Artemisia, who, as has
been related, was introduced--by means of some little contriving--into
the familia as a new serving-maid. Such Artemisia was in name; but
Cornelia, whose gratitude to Agias had known no bounds, took the
little thing into her heart, and determined to devote herself to
instructing an innocence that must not continue too long, despite its
charming naivete.

Thus the days had passed for Cornelia. But only a little while after
Agias left for Rome,--with a very large packet of letters for
Drusus,--the pleasant, self-created world of fantasy, that had given
Cornelia some portion of happiness, vanished. Like a clap of thunder
from a cloudless sky Lucius Ahenobarbus suddenly arrived in Baiae. He
was tired of Rome, which was still very hot and uncomfortable. He
loathed politics, they were stupid. He had lost a boon companion when
Publius Gabinius was driven into outlawry. Marcus Laeca was too deeply
in debt to give any more dinners. Pratinas was fled to Egypt. And so
he had come to Baiae, to harass Cornelia by his presence; to gibe at
her; and assure her that her uncle was more determined than ever that
she should marry him--say and do what she might.

Ahenobarbus quartered himself in the Lentulan villa as the prospective
nephew-in-law of its owner. He brought with him his customary train of
underlings, and had travelled in appropriate state, in a litter with
eight picked bearers, lolling on a cushion stuffed with rose-leaves,
and covered with Maltese gauze, one garland on his head, another round
his neck, and holding to his nose a smelling-bag of small-meshed linen
filled with roses.

With all his effeminacy, he was beyond the least doubt desperately
determined to possess himself of Cornelia. His passion was purely
animal and unrefined, but none could doubt it. Cornelia feared to have
him near her, and knew peace neither day nor night. He assumed all a
master's rights over the slaves and freedmen, sending them hither and
yon to do his bidding. He had recovered from the fear Cornelia had
struck into him, in her first defiance, and met her threats and
hauteur with open scorn.

"You are a most adorable actress!" was his constant sneer. And his
every action told that he did not intend to let Cornelia play with him
a second time. With all his profligacy and moral worthlessness, he had
a tenacity of purpose and an energy in this matter that showed that
either Cornelia must in the end bow to his will, or their contest
would end in something very like a tragedy.

And if a tragedy, so be it, was the desperate resolve of Cornelia;
whose eyes were too stern for tears when she saw that Lucius was still
the former creature of appetite; full of intrigue, sweethearts,
seashore revels, carouses, singing, and music parties and water
excursions with creatures of his choice from morning until midnight.
She could not altogether shun him, though she successfully resisted
his half blandishments, half coercion, to make her join in his wild
frivolities. One revenge she found she could take on him--a revenge
that she enjoyed because it proclaimed her own intellectual
superiority, and made Ahenobarbus writhe with impotent vexation--she
had him at her mercy when they played at checkers;[133] and at last
Lucius lost so much money and temper at this game of wit, not chance,
that he would sulkily decline a challenge. But this was poor
consolation to Cornelia. The time was drifting on. Before many days
Lentulus Crus and Caius Clodius Marcellus would be consuls, and the
anti-Caesarians would be ready to work their great opponent's undoing,
or be themselves forever undone. Where was Drusus? What was he doing?
What part would he play in the struggle, perhaps of arms, about to
begin? O for one sight of him, for one word! And the hunger in
Cornelia's breast grew and grew.

[133] _Latrunculi_.

Many are our wishes. Some flit through our hearts like birds darting
under the foliage of trees, then out again, lost in the sunshine;
others linger awhile and we nestle them in our bosoms until we forget
that they are there, and the noble desire, the craving for something
dear, for something that bears for us as it were a divine image, is
gone--we are the poorer that we no longer wish to wish it. But some
things there are--some things too high or too deep for speech, too
secret for really conscious thought, too holy to call from the
innermost shrines of the heart; and there they linger and hover,
demanding to be satisfied, and until they are satisfied there is void
and dreariness within, be the sunshine never so bright without. And so
Cornelia was a-hungered. She could fight against herself to save
Drusus's life no longer; she could build around herself her dream
castles no more; she must see him face to face, must hold his hand in
hers, must feel his breath on her cheek.

Is it but a tale that is told, that soul can communicate to distant
soul? That through two sundered hearts without visible communication
can spring up, unforewarned, a single desire, a single purpose? Is
there no magnetism subtle beyond all thought, that bounds from spirit
to spirit, defying every bond, every space? We may not say; but if
Cornelia longed, she longed not utterly in vain. One morning, as she
was dressing, Cassandra, who was moving around the room aiding her
mistress, let fall a very tiny slip of papyrus into Cornelia's lap,
and with it a whisper, "Don't look; but keep it carefully." The
injunction was needed, for several other serving-women were in the
room, and Cornelia more than suspected that they were ready to spy on
her to prevent unauthorized correspondence with Drusus. When she was
dressed, and could walk alone on the terrace overlooking the sea, she
unrolled the papyrus and read:--

"Delectissima, I have come from Rome to Puteoli. I cannot live longer
without seeing you. Great things are stirring, and it may well be that
ere long, if your uncle and his friends have their way, I may be a
proscribed fugitive from Italy, or a dead man. But I must talk with
your dear self first. Agias was known by the familia, and had no
difficulty in seeing you quietly; but I have no such facility. I
cannot remain long. Plan how we may meet and not be interrupted. I
have taken Cassandra into my pay, and believe that she can be trusted.
_Vale_."

There was no name of the sender; but Cornelia did not need to
question. Cassandra, who evidently knew that her mistress would
require her services, came carelessly strolling out on to the terrace.

"Cassandra," said Cornelia, "the last time I saw Quintus, you betrayed
us to my uncle; will you be more faithful now?"

The woman hung down her head.

"_A!_ domina, your uncle threatened me terribly. I did not
intentionally betray you! Did I not receive my beating? And then
Master Drusus is such a handsome and generous young gentleman."

"I can rely on you alone," replied Cornelia. "You must arrange
everything. If you are untrue, be sure that it is not I who will in
the end punish, but Master Drusus, whose memory is long. You have more
schemes than I, now that Agias is not here to devise for me. You must
make up any stories that are necessary to save us from interruption,
and see that no one discovers anything or grows suspicious. My hands
are tied. I cannot see to plan. I will go to the library, and leave
everything to you."

And with this stoical resolve to bear with equanimity whatever the
Fates flung in her way for good or ill, Cornelia tried to bury herself
in her Lucretius. Vain resolution! What care for the atomic theory
when in a day, an hour, a moment, she might be straining to her heart
another heart that was reaching out toward hers, as hers did toward
it. It was useless to read; useless to try to admire the varying
shades of blue on the sea, tones of green, and tones of deep cerulean,
deepening and deepening, as her eye drifted off toward the horizon,
like the blendings of a chromatic series. And so Cornelia passed the
morning in a mood of joyful discontent. Lucius Ahenobarbus, who came
to have his usual passage of arms with her, found her so extremely
affable, yet half-preoccupied, that he was puzzled, yet on the whole
delighted. "She must be yielding," he mentally commented; and when
they played at draughts, Cornelia actually allowed herself to be
beaten. Ahenobarbus started off for Puteoli in an excellent humour.
His litter had barely swung down the road from the villa before
Cassandra was knocking at her mistress's chamber door.

"_Io!_ domina," was her joyful exclamation, "I think I have got every
eavesdropper out of the way. Ahenobarbus is off for Puteoli. I have
cooked up a story to keep the freedmen and other busybodies off. You
have a desperate headache, and cannot leave the room, nor see any one.
But remember the terrace over the water, where the colonnade shuts it
in on all sides but toward the sea. This afternoon, if a boat with two
strange-looking fishermen passes under the embankment, don't be
surprised."

And having imparted this precious bit of information, the woman was
off. Drusus's gold pieces had made her the most successful of
schemers.


II

Cornelia feigned her headache, and succeeded in making herself so
thoroughly petulant and exacting to all her maids, that when she
ordered them out of the room, and told them on no account to disturb
her in any respect for the rest of the day, they "rejoiced with
trembling," and had no anxiety to thrust their attentions upon so
unreasonable a mistress. And a little while later a visit of a
strolling juggler--whose call had perhaps been prompted by
Cassandra--made their respite from duty doubly welcome.

Cornelia was left to herself, and spent the next hour in a division of
labour before her silver wall-mirror, dressing--something which was
sufficiently troublesome for her, accustomed to the services of a bevy
of maids--and at the window, gazing toward Puteoli for the
fishing-boat that seemed never in sight. At last the toilet was
completed to her satisfaction. Cornelia surveyed herself in her best
silken purple flounced stola, thrust the last pin into her hair, and
confined it all in a net of golden thread. Roman maidens were not as a
rule taught to be modest about their charms, and Cornelia, with
perfect frankness, said aloud to herself, "You are so beautiful that
Drusus can't help loving you;" and with this candid confession, she
was again on the terrace, straining her eyes toward Puteoli. Boats
came, boats went, but there was none that approached the villa; and
Cornelia began to harbour dark thoughts against Cassandra.

"If the wretched woman had played false to her mistress again--" but
the threat was never formulated. There was a chink and click of a pair
of oars moving on their thole-pins. For an instant a skiff was visible
at the foot of the embankment; two occupants were in it. The boat
disappeared under the friendly cover of the protecting sea-wall of the
lower terrace. There was a little landing-place here, with a few steps
leading upward, where now and then a yacht was moored. The embankment
shut off this tiny wharf from view on either side. Cornelia dared not
leave the upper terrace. Her heart beat faster and faster. Below she
heard the slap, slap, of the waves on the sea-wall, and a rattle of
rings and ropes as some skiff was being made fast. An instant more and
Drusus was coming, with quick, athletic bounds, up the stairway to the
second terrace. It was he! she saw him! In her eyes he was everything
in physique and virile beauty that a maiden of the Republic could
desire! The bitterness and waiting of months were worth the
blessedness of the instant. Cornelia never knew what Drusus said to
her, or what she said to him. She only knew that he was holding her in
his strong arms and gazing into her eyes; while the hearts of both
talked to one another so fast that they had neither time nor need for
words. They were happy, happy! Long it was before their utterance
passed beyond the merest words of endearment; longer still before they
were composed enough for Cornelia to listen to Drusus while he gave
his own account of Mamercus's heroic resistance to Dumnorix's gang at
Praeneste; and told of his own visit to Ravenna, of his intense
admiration for the proconsul of the two Gauls; and of how he had come
to Puteoli and opened communications with Cassandra, through Cappadox,
the trusty body-servant who in the guise of a fisherman was waiting in
the boat below.

"And as Homer puts it, so with us," cried Cornelia, at length: "'And
so the pair had joy in happy love, and joyed in talking too, and each
relating; she, the royal lady, what she had endured at home, watching
the wasteful throng of suitors; and he, high-born Odysseus, what
miseries he brought on other men, and bore himself in anguish;--all he
told, and she was glad to hear.'"

So laughed Cornelia when all their stories were finished, likening
their reunion to that of the son of Laertes and the long-faithful
Penelope.

"How long were Penelope and Odysseus asunder?" quoth Drusus.

"Twenty years."

"_Vah!_ We have not been sundered twenty months or one-third as many.
How shall we make the time fly more rapidly?"

"I know not," said Cornelia, for the first time looking down and
sighing, "a lifetime seems very long; but lifetimes will pass. I shall
be an old woman in a few years; and my hair will be all grey, and you
won't love me."

"_Eho_," cried Drusus, "do you think I love you for your hair?"

"I don't know," replied Cornelia, shaking her head, "I am afraid so.
What is there in me more than any other woman that you should love;
except--" and here she raised her face half-seriously, half in
play--"I am very beautiful? Ah! if I were a man, I would have
something else to be loved for; I would have eloquence, or strength,
or power of command, or wisdom in philosophy. But no, I can be loved
for only two things; an ignoble or a poor man would take me if I were
hideous as Atropos, for I am noble, and, if my uncle were an honest
guardian, rich. But you need not regard these at all, so--" and she
brushed her face across Drusus's cheek, touching it with her hair.

"O Cornelia," cried the young man, out of the fulness of his heart,
"we must not waste this precious time asking why we love each other.
Love each other we do as long as we view the sun. O carissima! we
cannot trust ourselves to look too deeply into the whys and wherefores
of things. We men and women are so ignorant! We know nothing. What is
all our philosophy--words! What is all our state religion--empty form!
What is all our life--a dream, mostly evil, that comes out of the
eternal unconscious sleep and into that unconscious sleep will return!
And yet not all a dream; for when I feel your hands in mine I know
that I am not dreaming--for dreamers feel nothing so delicious as
this! Not long ago I recalled what old Artabanus said to King Xerxes
when the millions of Persia passed in review before their lord at
Abydos, 'Short as our time is, death, through the wretchedness of our
life, is the most sweet refuge of our race; and God, who gives us
tastes that we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in His very gift, to
be envious.' And I thought, 'How wise was the Persian!' And then I
thought, 'No, though to live were to drag one's days in torture and in
woe, if only love come once into life, an eternity of misery is
endurable; yes, to be chained forever, as Prometheus, on drearest
mountain crag, if only the fire which is stolen be that which kindles
soul by soul.'"

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Along the journey they manage to cure each other, and "none of them ever knew or suspected that the Fountain's waters carried no enchantment at all".

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Additional footnotes by Rowling only serve further to confuse the lay reader. This one is strictly for the fan base, and it should make them very happy.

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