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A Friend of Caesar by William Stearns Davis

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Agias with Fabia stood at the end of the atrium near the exit to the
peristylium. Demetrius, seemingly hardly breathed by his exertions,
leaned on his captured long sword at his cousin's side. The multitude,
for an instant, as they saw the ruin and slaughter, drew back with a
hush. Men turned away their faces as from a sight of evil omen. Who
were they to set foot in the mansion of the servants of the awful
Vesta? But others from behind, who saw and heard nothing, pressed
their fellows forward. The mob swept on. As with one consent all eyes
were riveted on Fabia. What had happened? Who was guilty? Why had
these men of violence done this wrong to the home of the hearth
goddess? And then out of a farther corner, while yet the people
hesitated from reverence, staggered a figure, its face streaming with
blood, its hands pressing its side.

"_Quirites_," cried a voice, the voice of one speaking with but one
remaining breath, "ye have rewarded me as the law demands; see that
_she_" and a bloody forefinger pointed at Fabia, "who led me to this
deed, is not unpunished. _She_ is the more guilty!"

And with a groan the figure fell like a statue of wood to the
pavement; fell heavily, and lay stirring not, neither giving any
sound. In his last moment Publius Gabinius had sought a terrible
revenge.

And then madness seized on the people.

"She is his sweetheart! She is his paramour!" cried a score of filthy
voices. "She has brought down this insult to the goddess! There is no
pontifex here to try her! Tear her in pieces! Strike! Slay!"

But Demetrius had turned to his cousin.

"Agias," he said, making himself heard despite the clamour, "do you
believe the charge of that man?"

"No villain ever would avenge himself more basely."

"Then at all costs we must save the lady."

It was time. A fat butcher, flourishing a heavy cleaver, had leaped
forward; Fabia saw him with glassy, frightened eyes, but neither
shrieked nor drew back. But Demetrius smote the man with his long
sword through the body, and the brute dropped the cleaver as he fell.

"Now," and Demetrius seized the Vestal around the waist, as lightly as
a girl would raise a kitten, and flung her across his shoulders. One
stride and he was in the passage leading to the peristylium; and
before the mob could follow Agias had dashed the door in their faces,
and shot the bolt.

"It will hold them back a moment," muttered Demetrius, "but we must
hasten."

They ran across the peristylium, the pirate chief with his burden no
less swift than Agias. The door to the rear street was flung open, and
they were out in a narrow alleyway. Just as they did so, a howl of
many voices proclaimed that the peristylium door had yielded.

"Guide me by the straightest way," commanded the sea rover.

"Where?" was Agias's question.

"To the wharves. The yacht is the only safe place for the lady. There
I will teach her how I can honour a friend of Sextus Drusus."

Agias felt that it was no time for expostulation. A Vestal Virgin take
refuge on a pirate ship! But it was a matter of life and death now,
and there was no time for forming another plan. Once let the mob
overtake them, and the lives of all three were not worth a sesterce.
Agias found it necessary to keep himself collected while he ran, or he
would lose the way in the maze of streets. The yacht was moored far
below the Pons Sublicius, and the whole way was full of peril. It was
no use to turn off into alleys and by-paths; to do so at night meant
to be involved in a labyrinth as deadly for them as that of the Cretan
Minos. The mob was on their heels, howling, raging. The people were
beginning to wake in their houses along the streets. Men bawled "Stop
thief!" from the windows, imagining there had been a robbery. Once two
or three figures actually swung out into the way before them, but at a
stray glint of lantern light falling on Demetrius's naked long sword,
they vanished in the gloom. But still the mob pressed on, ever gaining
accessions, ever howling the more fiercely. Agias realized that the
weight of his burden was beginning to tell on even the iron frame of
his cousin. The pursuers and pursued were drawing closer together. The
mob was ever reenforced by relays; the handicap on Demetrius was too
great. They had passed down the Vicus Tuscus, flown past the dark
shadow of the lower end of the Circus Maximus. At the Porta Trigemina
the unguarded portal had stood open; there was none to stop them. They
passed by the Pons Sublicius, and skirted the Aventine. Stones and
billets of wood began to whistle past their ears,--the missiles of the
on-rushing multitude. At last the wharves! Out in the darkness stood
the huge bulk of a Spanish lumberman; but there was no refuge there.
The grain wharves and the oil wharves were passed; the sniff of the
mackerel fisher, the faint odour from the great Alexandrian
merchantman loaded with the spices of India, were come and gone. A
stone struck Agias in the shoulder, he felt numb in one arm, to drag
his feet was a burden; the flight with the Caesarians to the Janiculum
had not been like to this,--death at the naked sword had been at least
in store then, and now to be plucked in pieces by a mob! Another stone
brushed forward his hair and dashed, not against Demetrius ahead, but
against his burden. There was--Agias could hear--a low moan; but at
the same instant the fleeing pirate uttered a whistle so loud, so
piercing, that the foremost pursuers came to a momentary stand, in
half-defined fright, In an instant there came an answering whistle
from the wharf just ahead. In a twinkling half a dozen torches had
flashed out all over a small vessel, now barely visible in the night,
at one of the mooring rings. There was a strange jargon of voices
calling in some Oriental tongue; and Demetrius, as he ran, answered
them in a like language. Then over Agias's head and into the thick
press of the mob behind, something--arrows no doubt--flew whistling;
and there were groans and cries of pain. And Agias found uncouth,
bearded men helping or rather casting him over the side of the vessel.
The yacht was alive with men: some were bounding ashore to loose the
hawsers, others were lifting ponderous oars, still more were shooting
fast and cruelly in the direction of the mob, while its luckless
leaders struggled to turn in flight, and the multitude behind,
ignorant of the slaughter, was forcing them on to death. Above the
clamour, the howls of the mob, the shouts of the sailors, the grating
of oars, and the creaking of cables, rang the voice of Demetrius; and
at his word a dozen ready hands put each command into action. The
narrow, easy-moving yacht caught the current; a long tier of white
oars glinted in the torchlight, smote the water, and the yacht bounded
away, while a parting flight of arrows left misery and death upon the
quay.

Agias, sorely bewildered, clambered on to the little poop. His cousin
stood grasping one of the steering paddles; the ruddy lantern light
gleamed on the pirate's frame and face, and made him the perfect
personification of a sea-king; he was some grandly stern Poseidon, the
"Storm-gatherer" and the "Earth-shaker." When he spoke to Agias, it
was in the tone of a despot to a subject.

"The lady is below. Go to her. You are to care for her until I rejoin
my fleet. Tell her my sister shall not be more honoured than she, nor
otherwise treated. When I am aboard my flag-ship, she shall have
proper maids and attendance. Go!"

Agias obeyed, saying nothing. He found Fabia lying on a rude pallet,
with a small bale of purple silk thrust under her head for a pillow.
She stared at him with wild, frightened eyes, then round the little
cabin, which, while bereft of all but the most necessary comforts, was
decorated with bejeweled armour, golden lamps, costly Indian
tapestries and ivory--the trophies of half a score of voyages.

"Agias," she faintly whispered, "tell me what has happened since I
awoke from my sleep and found Gabinius's ruffians about me. By
whatsoever god you reverence most, speak truly!"

Agias fell on his knees, kissed the hem of her robe, kissed her hands.
Then he told her all,--as well as his own sorely confused wits would
admit. Fabia heard him through to the end, then laid her face between
her hands.

"Would that--would that they had murdered me as they wished! It would
be all over now," she agonized. "I have no wish again to see the
light. Whether they believe me innocent or guilty of the charge is
little; I can never be happy again."

"And why not, dear lady?" cried Agias.

"Don't ask me! I do not know. I do not know anything! Leave me! It is
not fit that you should see me crying like a child. Leave me! Leave
me!"

And thus conjured, Agias went up to the poop once more.

The yacht was flying down the current under her powerful oarage.
Demetrius was still standing with his hands fixed on the steering
paddle; his gaze was drifting along in the plashing water. The shadowy
outlines of the great city had vanished; the yacht was well on her way
down the river to Ostia. Save for the need to avoid a belated
merchantman anchored in midstream for the night, there was little
requiring the master's skill. Agias told his cousin how Fabia had sent
him away.

"_A!_ Poor lady!" replied the pirate, "perhaps she was the Vestal I
saw a few days since, and envied her, to see the consuls' lictors
lowering their rods to her, and all the people making way before her;
she, protected by the whole might of this terrible Roman people, and
honoured by them all; and I, a poor outlaw, massing gold whereof I
have no need, slaying men when I would be their friend, with only an
open sea and a few planks for native land. And now, see how the Fates
bring her down so low, that at my hands she receives hospitality, nay,
life!"

"You did not seem so very loath to shed blood to-night," commented
Agias, dryly.

"No, by Zeus!" was his frank answer. "It is easy to send men over the
Styx after having been Charon's substitute for so many years. But the
trade was not pleasant to learn, and, bless the gods, you may not have
to be apprenticed to it."

"Then you will not take me with you in your rover's life?" asked
Agias, half-disappointedly.

"Apollo forbid! I will take you and the lady to some place where she
can be safe until she may return vindicated, and where you can earn an
honest livelihood, marry a wife of station, in accordance with the
means which I shall give you, dwell peaceably, and be happy."

"But I cannot accept your present," protested the younger Greek.

"_Phui!_ What use have I of money? To paraphrase AEschylus: 'For more
of money than I would is mine.' I can't eat it, or beat swords out of
gold, or repair my ships therewith."

"Then why amass it at all?"

"Why drink when you know it is better to keep sober? I can no more
stop plundering than a toper leave a wine-jar. Besides, perhaps some
day I may see a road to amnesty open,--and, then, what will not money
do for a man or woman?"

"Quintus Drusus, my patron, the Lady Cornelia, and the Lady Fabia all
are rich. But I would not take up their sorrows for all their wealth."

"True," and Demetrius stared down into the inky water. "It will not
give back those who are gone forever. Achilles could ask Hephaestus for
his armour, but he could not put breath into the body of Patroclus.
_Plutus_ and _Cratus_[162] are, after all, but weaklings. _A!_ This is
an unequal world!"

[162] Riches and strength.

When Agias fell asleep that night, or rather that morning, on a hard
seaman's pallet, two names were stirring in his heart, names
inextricably connected: Cornelia, whom he had promised Quintus Drusus
to save from Ahenobarbus's clutches, and Artemisia. In the morning the
yacht, having run her sixteen miles to Ostia, stood out to sea, naught
hindering.

* * * * *

It was two months later when Quintus Drusus reentered Rome, no more a
fugitive, but a trusted staff officer of the lawfully appointed
dictator Julius Caesar. He had taken part in a desperate struggle
around Corfinium, where his general had cut off and captured the army
with which Domitius had aimed to check his advance. Drusus had been
severely wounded, and had not recovered in time to participate in the
futile siege of Brundusium, when Caesar vainly strove to prevent
Pompeius's flight across the sea to Greece. Soon as he was
convalescent, the young officer had hurried away to Rome; and there he
was met by a story concerning his aunt, whereof no rational
explanation seemed possible. And when, upon this mystery, was added a
tale he received from Baiae, he marvelled, yet dreaded, the more.




Chapter XIX

The Hospitality of Demetrius


I

While grave senators were contending, tribunes haranguing, imperators
girding on the sword, legions marching, cohorts clashing,--while all
this history was being made in the outside world, Cornelia, very
desolate, very lonely, was enduring her imprisonment at Baiae.

If she had had manacles on her wrists and fetters on her feet, she
would not have been the more a prisoner. Lentulus Crus had determined,
with the same grim tenacity of purpose which led him to plunge a world
into war, that his niece should comply with his will and marry Lucius
Ahenobarbus. He sent down to Baiae, Phaon,--the evil-eyed freedman of
Ahenobarbus,--and gave to that worthy full power to do anything he
wished to break the will of his prospective patroness. Cassandra had
been taken away from Cornelia--she could not learn so much as whether
the woman had been scourged to death for arranging the interview with
Drusus, or no. Two ill-favoured slatternly Gallic maids, the scourings
of the Puteoli slave-market, had been forced upon Cornelia as her
attendants--creatures who stood in abject fear of the whip of Phaon,
and who obeyed his mandates to the letter. Cornelia was never out of
sight of some person whom she knew was devoted to Lentulus, or rather
to Phaon and his patron. She received no letters save those from her
mother, uncle, or Ahenobarbus; she saw no visitors; she was not
allowed to go outside of the walls of the villa, nor indeed upon any
of its terraces where she would be exposed to sight from without,
whether by land or sea. At every step, at every motion, she was
confronted with the barriers built around her, and by the
consciousness that, so long as she persisted in her present attitude,
her durance was likely to continue unrelaxed.

Cornelia was thirsty for the news from the world without. Her keepers
were dumb to the most harmless inquiry. Her mother wrote more of the
latest fashions than of the progress of events in the Senate and in
the field; besides, Claudia--as Cornelia knew very well--never took
her political notions from any one except her brother-in-law, and
Cornelia noted her mother's rambling observations accordingly.
Lentulus studiously refrained from adverting to politics in letters to
his niece. Ahenobarbus wrote of wars and rumours of wars, but in a
tone of such partisan venom and overreaching sarcasm touching all
things Caesarian, that Cornelia did not need her prejudices to tell her
that Lucius was simply abusing her credulity.

Then at last all the letters stopped. Phaon had no explanation to
give. He would not suffer his evil, smiling lips to tell the story of
the flight of the oligarchs from Rome, and confess that Lentulus and
Claudia were no farther off than Capua. The consul had ordered that
his niece should not know of their proximity and its cause,--lest she
pluck up hope, and all his coercion be wasted. So there was silence,
and that was all. Even her mother did not write to her. Cornelia grew
very, very lonely and desolate--more than words may tell. She had one
consolation--Drusus was not dead, or she would have been informed of
it! Proof that her lover was dead would have been a most delightful
weapon in Lentulus's hands, too delightful to fail to use instantly.
And so Cornelia hoped on.

She tried again to build a world of fantasy, of unreal delight, around
her; to close her eyes, and wander abroad with her imagination. She
roamed in reverie over land and sea, from Atlantis to Serica; and
dwelt in the dull country of the Hyperboreans and saw the gold-sanded
plains of the Ethiops. She took her Homer and fared with Odysseus into
Polyphemus's cave, and out to the land of Circe; and heard the Sirens
sing, and abode on Calypso's fairy isle; and saw the maiden Nausicaa
and her maids at the ball-play on the marge of the stream. But it was
sorry work; for ever and again the dream-woven mist would break, and
the present--stern, unchanging, joyless--she would see, and that only.

Cornelia was thrown more and more back on her books. In fact, had she
been deprived of that diversion, she must have succumbed in sheer
wretchedness; but Phaon, for all his crafty guile, did not realize
that a roll of AEschylus did almost as much to undo his jailer's work
as a traitor among his underlings.

The library was a capacious, well-lighted room, prettily frescoed, and
provided with comfortably upholstered couches. In the niches were a
few choice busts: a Sophocles, a Xenophon, an Ennius, and one or two
others. Around the room in wooden presses were the rolled volumes on
Egyptian papyrus, each labelled with author and title in bright red
marked on the tablet attached to the cylinder of the roll. Here were
the poets and historians of Hellas; the works of Plato, Aristotle,
Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius and the later Greek philosophers.
Here, too, were books which the Greek-hating young lady loved best of
all--the rough metres of Livius Andronicus and Cnaeus Naevius, whose
uncouth lines of the old Saturnian verse breathed of the hale, hearty,
uncultured, uncorrupted life of the period of the First Punic War.
Beside them were the other great Latinists: Ennius, Plautus, Terence,
and furthermore, Pacuvius and Cato Major, Lucilius, the memoirs of
Sulla, the orations of Antonius "the orator" and Gracchus, and the
histories of Claudius Quadrigarius and Valerius Antias.

The library became virtually Cornelia's prison. She read tragedy,
comedy, history, philosophy,--anything to drive from her breast her
arch enemy, thought. But if, for example, she turned to Apollonius
Rhodius and read--

"Amidst them all, the son of AEson chief
Shone forth divinely in his comeliness,
And graces of his form. On him the maid
Looked still askance, and gazed him o'er;"[163]

[163] Elton, translator.

straightway she herself became Medea, Jason took on the form of
Drusus, and she would read no more; "while," as the next line of the
learned poet had it, "grief consumed her heart."

Only one other recreation was left her. Artemisia had not been taken
away by Phaon, who decided that the girl was quite impotent to thwart
his ends. Cornelia devoted much of her time to teaching the bright
little Greek. The latter picked up the scraps of knowledge with a
surprising readiness, and would set Cornelia a-laughing by her
_naivete_, when she soberly intermixed her speech with bits of grave
poetical and philosophical lore, uttered more for sake of sound than
sense.

As a matter of fact, however, Cornelia was fast approaching a point
where her position would have been intolerable. She did not even have
the stimulus that comes from an active aggressive persecution. Drusus
was in the world of action, not forgetful of his sweetheart, yet not
pent up to solitary broodings on his ill-fated passion. Cornelia was
thrust back upon herself, and found herself a very discontented,
wretched, love-lorn, and withal--despite her polite learning--ignorant
young woman, who took pleasure neither in sunlight nor starlight; who
saw a mocking defiance in every dimple of the sapphire bay; who saw in
each new day merely a new period for impotent discontent. Something
had to determine her situation, or perhaps she would not indeed have
bowed her head to her uncle's will; but she certainly would have been
driven to resolutions of the most desperate nature.

Cornelia had practically lost reckoning of time and seasons. She had
ceased hoping for a letter from her mother; even a taunting missive
from Ahenobarbus would have been a diversion. She was so closely
guarded that she found herself praying that Drusus would not try to
steal a second interview, for the attempt might end in his murder.
Only one stray crumb of comfort at last did she obtain, and it was
Artemisia who brought it to her. The girl had been allowed by Phaon to
walk outside the grounds of the villa for a little way, and her pretty
face had won the good graces of one or two slave-boys in an adjoining
seaside house. Artemisia came back full of news which they had
imparted: the consuls had fled from Rome; Pompeius was retreating
before Caesar; the latest rumour had it that Domitius was shut up in
Corfinium and likely to come off hardly.

The words were precious as rubies to Cornelia. She went all that day
and the next with her head in the air. Perhaps with a lover's subtle
omniscience she imagined that it was Drusus who had some part in
bringing Domitius to bay. She pictured the hour when he--with a legion
no doubt at his back--would come to Baiae, not a stealthy, forbidden
lover, but a conqueror, splendid in the triumph of his arms; would
enter the villa with a strong hand, and lead her forth in the eyes of
all the world--his wife! and then back to Praeneste, to Rome--happy as
the Immortals on Olympus; and what came after, Cornelia neither
thought nor cared.

On those days the sea was lovely, the sunlight fair, and all the
circling sea-gulls as they hovered over the waves cried shrilly one to
the other; "How good is all the world!" And then, just as Cornelia was
beginning to count the hours,--to wonder whether it would be one day
or ten before Drusus would be sufficiently at liberty to ride over
hill and dale to Baiae,--Phaon thrust himself upon her.

"Your ladyship," was his curt statement, "will have all things
prepared in readiness to take ship for Greece, to-morrow morning."

"For Greece!" was the agonized exclamation.

"Certainly; it is useless to conceal matters from your ladyship now.
Caesar has swept all Italy. Corfinium may fall at any time. His
excellency the consul Lentulus is now at Brundusium. He orders me to
put you on board a vessel that has just finished her lading for the
Piraeus."

This then was the end of all those glittering day-dreams! Caesar's
victories only would transfer Cornelia to a more secure bondage. She
had enough pride left not to moan aloud and plead with an animal like
Phaon not to crush her utterly. In fact she was benumbed, and did not
fully sense the changed situation. She went through a mechanical
process of collecting her wardrobe, of putting her jewellery in cases
and boxes, of laying aside for carriage a few necessaries for
Artemisia. Phaon, who had expected a terrible scene when he made his
announcement, observed to himself that, "The domina is more sensible
than I supposed. I think her uncle will have his way now soon enough,
if Master Lucius does not get his throat cut at Corfinium." And having
thus concluded to himself,--satisfactorily, if erroneously,--he, too,
made arrangements for the voyage impending.


II

Cornelia's sleeping room was large and airy. It had windows
overlooking the sea--windows closed by the then extravagant luxury of
panes of glass. When these were swung back the full sweep of the
southwest wind poured its mild freshness into the room. The apartment
was decorated and furnished with every taste and luxury. In one corner
was the occupant's couch,--the frame inlaid with ivory and
tortoise-shell, the mattress soft with the very choicest feathers of
white German geese. Heaped on the cushion were gorgeous coverlets, of
purple wool or even silk, and embroidered with elaborate figures, or
covered with rare feather tapestry. Around the room were silver
mirrors, chairs, divans, cabinets, dressers, and elegant tripods.

On one of the divans slept Artemisia, and just outside of the door one
of the Gallic maids, whom Cornelia detested so heartily.

When Artemisia's curly head touched her pillow, its owner was fast
asleep in an instant. When her patroness sank back on the cushions
worth a king's ransom, Somnus, Hypnus, or whatever name the drowsy god
may be called by, was far from present. Cornelia tossed on the
pillows, tossed and cried softly to herself. The battle was too hard!
She had tried: tried to be true to Drusus and her own higher
aspirations. But there was some limit to her strength, and Cornelia
felt that limit very near at hand. Earlier in the conflict with her
uncle she had exulted in the idea that suicide was always in her
power; now she trembled at the thought of death, at the thought of
everything contained in the unlovely future. She did not want to die,
to flicker out in nothingness, never to smile and never to laugh
again. Why should she not be happy--rightly happy? Was she not a
Cornelian, a Claudian, born to a position that a princess might enjoy?
Was not wealth hers, and a fair degree of wit and a handsome face? Why
then should she, the patrician maiden, eat her heart out, while close
at hand Artemisia, poor little foundling Greek, was sleeping as
sweetly as though people never grieved nor sorrows tore the soul?

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