Neæra. A Tale of Ancient Rome

‘Have I put it into his head?’ replied Cestus, with concentrated scorn. ‘Oh, to be sure. Had I put it into his head, in the first place, I should hardly have taken the trouble I have to drive it out again.’

His sister being silenced he said no more, and sat tilting himself backward and forward, in moody silence, on his stool.

Neæra bestowed on him one or two lofty glances, which plainly showed that her ideas flowed in the same direction as the dame’s. She said nothing, however, and glided hither and thither, in and out, in her occupation. Presently she went quietly to the door of the workshop, and, tapping gently, asked for admission. Cestus caught the sounds and stopped his restless motion. The door creaked open, and by and by it closed again, and Neæra returned into the passage. The Suburan’s quick ear heard the voices of the two females mingling outside. There was a smothered sob, and presently a light foot sped up the stairs. Tibia then came into the room to give a parting touch to its arrangements before retiring for the night. Her face was more dejected than ever.

‘She has been in to see him,’ observed Cestus.

Tibia nodded yes.

‘And did no good, I can tell.’

The dame this time shook her head, and remained standing, with one hand on her hip and the other underneath a kind of apron which she wore over her gown, as if ready to lift it to stanch the drops which struggled into her patient eyes.

‘Very well, then,’ continued her brother, ‘we may as well give the matter up, for the man will go his own way. It’s of no use to show him his madness. That being the case, there is something you must know without any further delay, since he is determined to throw himself away. Wait and I will bring him in.’

‘He is busy, Cestus,’ dissuaded she.

‘He will have to make a few moments’ leisure, however,’ was the reply, and the Suburan went accordingly to summon the potter.

The latter obeyed without demur on learning the reason for his required presence. Cestus shut the door and took his former position on his stool.

‘Brother-in-law, since you will not listen to reason concerning this errand of yours to Capreae, and since I have small hope of ever seeing you return, Tibia must hear, in your presence, what I have already told you alone. Your life is your own, and if you are determined to shorten it at once you can do so, I suppose. That is your own matter, and you can settle it with or without your wife’s help. But in the matter of the child called Neæra, I am concerned; and as you are about to rob me of my best witness in her case, I must arrange matters as best I may, so as to be able to do without you.’

‘You put it in a pleasant way, kinsman,’ returned Masthlion, smiling; ‘but as you are bent on putting me to death I won’t argue the point. Nevertheless I agree with you that it is time Tibia should know what we know about our child – I still call her ours, you see. It was only at your wish that I have kept silence as long as this. Tell her the story – I cannot.’

Tibia sat looking from one to the other in her mute way, her hands lying folded in her lap, and her eyes full of anxious curiosity. What new trouble was this which was about to be launched upon her? Was it the secret which had darkened her husband’s face so long? Was it not enough to be told that he was about to throw away his life on the morrow? Cestus, her brother, was the cloud upon her house. It was time he left it, since matters had seemed to go strangely wrong with the hour of his arrival. What of the child Neæra? He had brought her there – did he want to take her away again?

Her gaze fixed on the Suburan as this thought broke upon her slow brain. Her brows knitted slightly, and her eyes seemed to contract and congeal, for a moment, into lifeless glassy balls. She had a manner of meeting bitter trouble, as it were, with a motionless, voiceless, passive numbness. It resembled the action of some animals and reptiles when seized in the grip of a ferocious enemy. The functions of body and brain seemed withdrawn into an impenetrable inner casket, leaving all else relaxed, lifeless, and torpid. It is the supreme effort to resist exquisite torture, this power of self-paralysation, this contraction of all sense into the numbness of oblivion; whilst to the beholder the spectacle of mute suffering is the most heartrending of all.

Cestus, without further delay, began the same narrative he had already related to Masthlion. Tibia sat like a carven image, with her hands clenched in her lap and her head half bowed. Once only during the recital she started slightly, when she heard the noble parentage of the child she had tended, and she gave a swift, half-startled glance, first at Cestus, and then at her husband. When the end came and the speaker’s voice ceased, and she heard the decree that Neæra was to be given up to her own people, her fingers twitched nervously for a time.

‘This, then, is what has haunted thee and darkened the house!’ she cried out sharply to her husband, as she threw her apron over her head.

The anguish of her glance cut the potter to the heart. A silence fell on the room for a minute. Masthlion could not summon a word, and Cestus swung uneasily on his stool. Then the latter cleared his throat and tried to smooth matters, with arguments already familiar to the reader.

‘Why, Tibia, you have tended the child till she has become like your own, and it is hard, I admit, to hear she must leave you. But consider, she was bound to go, for the Centurion will marry her and take her away to Rome, at all events. Why trouble them? The only way, if you cannot abide without being near her, is to go after her. I have already told Masthlion this, with all the common sense one can be capable of, and shown him how it is the best place for employment in all his work.’

‘I have already agreed; if Tibia is willing we will go to the great city,’ said Masthlion.

‘Ay – but not now – not at once!’ replied Cestus sharply. ‘Only, as you say, when you come back from Capreae. That is another thing altogether. It is a promise on condition with a vengeance, when there is every chance you will not be alive to perform it. Hark’ee, Tibia, I am eager for us all to go at once, for this reason, that I am anxious concerning the girl. There have been a couple of fellows from Capreae in the shop lately, for nothing in the world but to see the child herself. I saw them, heard them, watched them. What does this mean? Why, that some fine night your house may be broken into, and the girl carried off to the island by a gang of Caesar’s blackguards. Once there, you may cry for ever to get her back. Is it not time, think you, to be moving such a good-looking lass out of the reach of the tiger’s claws? Will you leave her to the chance of such a fate, for the sake of a fool’s errand, on the score of a glass bowl?’

‘The fool’s errand shall be carried out, look you,’ interposed Masthlion sternly, ‘so no more of that. Nevertheless, if you scent danger so close, there is nothing to prevent you all taking ship or horse to-morrow, if need be. I will follow when I am ready to bid farewell to Surrentum.’

‘And that is your determination?’

‘It is – I leave the rest to Tibia.’

‘Then she and the girl and myself will go hence without delay.’

‘Speak for yourself, brother,’ said Tibia, standing. ‘When I go my husband goes also.’

‘The girl, then, I shall take alone,’ cried Cestus furiously.

‘If she will go with thee,’ said Tibia.

He started up so violently that he upset his stool, and he stood, for a moment, stuttering with passion. Failing to produce an intelligible sound, he stamped his foot savagely and rushed out of the room.

Masthlion gave a grim sort of a smile and went to his workshop. Ere he could shut the door, Tibia slipped silently after him.

CHAPTER XVI

To return to Plautia, whom we left on the way from Tucca’s cottage to the villa Jovis, in the stormy, gray dawn.

Her litter was set down at a side door of the palace, and Zeno, the steward, stood by to hand her out. His proffered courtesy was loftily ignored, so he turned on his heel and led the way inside.

Not a living soul was to be seen; it was, doubtless, before the usual hour for any one of the Imperial household to be astir about the duties of the day.

The Greek brought them into a small peristyle close at hand. He threw open the door of a handsomely appointed room, and the noise brought forward, from within, three or four young female slaves, particularly noticeable for their good looks.

‘My prison?’ ejaculated Plautia grimly.

The Greek’s face grew pitiable with an injured look.

‘Caesar has ordered these apartments for your use; and these slaves will be under your orders,’ said he, bowing her in with a deep obeisance. Plautia gave a haughty nod and passed in with her own attendant. Zeno gently closed the door upon them, and his deprecating look gave place to a satisfied grin, as he hurried away to a different portion of the palace, in order to report to his master.

Plautia found that the room formed one of a suite. After the unwonted experience of a husbandman’s kennel, the space and luxurious arrangements of these apartments could not fail to draw from her a sigh of satisfaction, in spite of her position.

The state of her mind was indeed unenviable.

After the horror and misery of the night in her wretched quarters, the brief moments of slumber, which fell, finally, on her exhausted senses, had not sufficed to relieve her fevered mind. They had seemed, instead, to have only sunk her faculties into the first leaden state of suspension, – to have lulled the wakefulness of her tortured brain, and plunged it into the horrors of a narcotic sleep, amid whose heavy vapours, her struggling reflections became the distorted phantasms of an oppressive dream.

Even yet her mind had not recovered sufficient elasticity to entirely throw off this soporific load. Stupor still seemed to clog her senses and maintain her in a condition of waking sleep. The scenes of the past night still floated through her brain and mingled with what was actually occurring, as if on common ground of unsubstantiality. The pale, soft crescent of the moon hung phantom-like in her distempered mind, just as it had struck upon her gaze over the Pretorian’s shoulder; save that now its bulk swam magnified, and its paleness shone intensified to ghastliness. Then the play of his warm breath on her forehead, and one or two of his gestures, which lived, as if fire-impressed in her brain – all the sharper, in relief to the dark, blurred, frenzied moments of sudden agony and despair which had followed, like a gulf of blackness. After this her mental awakening in the pitchy darkness and crash of the sudden storm, the misery of the night, the phantoms of her short drowsiness, the coming of Caesar’s messenger, the cold gray of sea and sky, the palace – it was all like the unbroken course of a shadow-play.

She moved through the rooms, and, in the furthest, found the marble basin of a bath with all appliances. With more animation, she turned instantly, and bade the flock of young slaves prepare it for her immediate use. To have been obliged to forego, for a considerable period, this luxury so necessary to a Roman, had been not the lightest privation she had incurred in her headstrong expedition.

The crystal water, foaming and flooding out of the brazen dolphin’s mouth into the polished basin, was so welcome a sight as to rouse her not a little. Whilst preparing to enjoy it, one of the slaves answered a summons at the outer door, and brought back a message, saying, that Caesar would pay her a visit in an hour.

Infinitely revived and invigorated, Plautia returned from the bath to eat and drink. She had recovered also so much of her ancient humour, as to visit with a sharp word and a frown, a slight clumsiness on the part of the trembling girl who served her on bended knee. The lady’s face had lost some of its customary richness of colour, whilst dark rings showed under her eyes, as evidences of the night’s passionate tumult; but to one of her physical robustness and wanton health, it required an enormous and continuous strain to make any material inroads on her outward appearance. The slaves apportioned to her, who had dwelt in secret on the splendid form and beauty of their new mistress, wondering what princess she might be, and whence she had come, now marked the imperious flash of her eyes with inward quaking.

Plautia dismissed them, and awaited the coming of her Imperial visitor. The thoughtful knitting of her brows and lips were beginning to relax under the drowsiness which crept over her, when the pale, blotched face, and tall, stooping form of Tiberius glided slowly into her presence.

He stopped in the middle of the room, and his brilliant eyes fixed themselves upon her with a scrutiny which she seemed to feel in every part of her frame. Not a sign, however, glimmered in their depths, or stirred the gravity of his countenance, to show that her appearance in any way moved him.

She rose from the couch and gave a slight obeisance of her head, which he returned. He was familiar enough to her by sight; but now, on close personal contact, there was something which struck her uncomfortably. Whether it was the piercing ruthlessness of his gaze she knew not. She began to think uneasily, that she had been wise if she had listened to the advice she had scouted more than once already. Her keen feminine perceptions flashed out upon him. It was the odour of the tiger of which she had been so heedless; and yet, withal, an old, stooping, emaciated, unsightly man. Her thoughts, from some curious fancy, momentarily left her own concerns, and conjured up alongside Caesar the form of his handsome, ambitious, dashing Prefect. The comparison left its mark on her mind. Returning to herself, her indignation and her courage, she awaited to hear him speak.

‘Plautia, I bid you welcome to my house,’ he said, in his slow way. ‘Not until last night did I know you had favoured the island with your beautiful presence. I have hastened, therefore, to give you a more fitting reception than the hovel of a husbandman can afford. It was unkind thus to steal upon my island home with the intention of leaving it again as silently.’

‘I have no claim upon your hospitality, Caesar,’ replied Plautia; ‘I came hither on a trifling concern of my own, and sought to disturb no one. The poor house in which I lodged was freely chosen, and willingly endured for the short time of my stay. To-day was to have seen my departure, and indeed will do so. I am grieved that you should have learnt of my presence, and so caused you kindly trouble on my account. If my intrusion into Capreae is wrong and impertinent, I crave your gracious pardon and indulgence. Indeed, no disrespect was intended.’

‘Dismiss all that from your mind,’ said Tiberius; ‘the only fact which gives me pain is, that you should have sought to deprive us of the delight of your fair presence; I repeat, it was unkind.’

‘It is not for me to thrust myself upon a stranger’s hospitality – much less upon Caesar’s.’

‘Hospitality despised is the grievance, Plautia.’

The old Emperor’s manner was highly-bred, perfectly graceful, and polished, and a smile gently parted his lips. Nevertheless, in spite of the delicate, deprecating speech which fell so softly, slowly, but fluently from his honied tongue, every word seemed but the tinkling of artifice. Had she dared to retort as she felt, she would have said that hospitality enforced was as grievous a burden as hospitality despised.

With this idea firmly in possession of her mind, she recognised her jailer before her, and felt the grim hardness of the captor’s hand toying with her through the soft sheathing of ceremony and politeness. Nevertheless it was not her nature to feel fear, and she never quailed.

‘That is all past,’ continued the Emperor; ‘youth and loveliness are right and might in themselves. In their presence it is possible for no ruffle of the mind to remain unsmoothed. Now that you have graciously honoured my house, all is well, and – ’

‘Pardon, Caesar! I was brought hither, favour or no favour,’ interrupted Plautia majestically.

‘But now since you have honoured me,’ continued he, with the same unruffled smile, ‘my spirit is at rest. Be pleased to use my house and all it contains, as if it were your own. Your will shall be law within the limits of Capreae. Small as this island is, it contains some beauties, which we shall be eager to show, and which have been deemed worthy of notice. It may be you have never visited them before.’

‘Once as a child, I think,’ replied Plautia, with a rigid aspect. ‘Your proffered kindness is beyond words of mine to acknowledge, but I regret that my engagements will not allow to take advantage of it. I must return home without further delay – it is imperative.’

Tiberius shook his head and forefinger at her playfully.

‘I could not allow you to carry out a determination which you would regret to your dying day. The island would grow black with scowls were I to suffer the fair Plautia to quit it in such haste. Besides which, the furious wind and sea renders it impossible. Hark, how the storm roars!’

‘I will risk the sea and the wind – I fear them not!’

‘Possibly; but it is otherwise with those whose business it would be to transport you to the opposite shore. Nor would I consent for one moment to the hazard – and though a feeble old man, I am obeyed somewhat.’

‘No one shall run any hazard for me, if it come to that. I will pay any fisherman the cost of his boat twice over, and go myself.’

Tiberius suffered an expression of admiration to gleam on his face as the deep colour flushed in her cheeks, and the mettle sparkled in her eyes.

‘Permit me, fair Plautia!’ said he, stepping forward and raising her hand to his lips; ‘what have I lost in not knowing you before? What so delightful to aging eyes as the spectacle of youth and beauty and high spirit? Doubly grateful to me the assurance, that the spirit of my people will hardily live and flourish. ’Tis such women as you who have nourished the masters of the world, and with such as you left behind me, I may die in the comforting knowledge that dominion will not leave them. But to cross those miles of stormy water alone! Ah, it is wonderful courage – it conquers me! But it cannot be – it is madness! Were I to allow it I would esteem myself your murderer. No, no, you must live, and be the mother of heroes!’

‘It is imperative that I return home immediately, and I entreat that you will not seek to detain me,’ said Plautia, with fierce rage eating her heart.

‘It remains a marvel to us how you came to land here without the fact being duly reported,’ said Tiberius, as if he were stone deaf; ‘it was a feat quite in accordance with your spirit, to be able to cheat the vigilance on which we pride ourselves. Can it be possible that you alighted in our midst as the soft goddess herself would do?’

‘Had it been so, I would have retired in the same manner ere this,’ she replied, with scarcely veiled scorn.

The Emperor laughed silently.

‘Thank heaven,’ he said, ‘which leaves you dependent on mortal means of locomotion like the rest of us, and so preserves your presence to us. I, myself, prefer warm flesh and blood to these airy immortals whom we never know, save in the fables of the poets. I leave you, therefore, for the present, lady, with the satisfaction that you cannot depart through the air. I am the richer in your acquaintance, which must be extended. Now that I have the assurance of my own eyes of your comfort, I will intrude no longer at present.’

‘For that receive my thanks, Caesar,’ she cried, advancing, as he retired; ‘but circumstances make it impossible for me to remain – at all hazards I must quit the island.’

‘To-day it is quite impossible,’ returned Tiberius, gliding nearer the door; ‘to-morrow, I am satisfied, your mind will be changed. Till then, farewell, fair Plautia!’

As the last word left his lips he contrived to retreat, and summarily close the conference by shutting the door upon it, yet so dexterously as to leave no impression of unseemly haste. Plautia sprang after him, but her devoted slave seized her skirts and besought her to be prudent.

‘Fool!’ cried her mistress in a fury, flashing out at the same time a superb oath and a blow. Her retainer started back in affright, and Plautia rushed out into the peristyle. Not a sight or a sound of a living being were distinguishable. She flew along what seemed to be the Emperor’s most likely line of retreat, and boldly called upon him in loud tones. But nothing answered save the short echo of her own voice: the place seemed deserted. Passage ran out of passage in bewildering intricacy. Again she stopped and called, and again the echoes sank around her into dead silence, as she stood with her senses strained to their utmost. Was the palace really inhabited? If so, what part? She pressed on again, keeping to what she assumed was the main corridor. Suddenly her course was stopped by a door. In the dim light she sought in vain for a handle or latch, or anything which might cause the door to yield. Nothing but a smooth hard surface met her touch, wherever it strayed: there was not even a keyhole. Wasting no time, therefore, she instantly turned back. On either hand she had passed the entrances of room after room. She darted in and out, exploring them with wonderful energy. She was fully roused, but more with passion than sense of danger. Her explorations, however, availed her nothing. Some of the apartments were furnished, and more were just as the workmen’s hands had left them. All alike were uninhabited. Forming another resolution, she relinquished this task, in order to make her way back to her own apartments. The time to be consumed in this, however, was a matter dependent on chance, since her movements had become merely at random. With nothing to guide her she hastened along, doubling on her track now and again when she considered herself to be wrong, or when her flying steps led her into a cul-de-sac. At last she struck the right path, and finally ran out into the peristyle of her own rooms, very much relieved in mind and temper, and scant of breath. She found she had made a circuit of the maze. Nearly opposite, her slave was standing by the open door, where she had been left in the agonies of doubt and fear.

‘’Tis nothing but a maze of empty passages and rooms,’ exclaimed her mistress, bursting on her savagely. ‘Where the people dwell, I know not – nor where the old dotard has disappeared to. I had caught him if you had not held me, fool. Come, let us see if we cannot find the outer door through which we entered, and so let us begone; it was nigh at hand somewhere.’

Plautia had no recollection of the way, but her companion had been more attentive. They went almost straight to the narrow outer door which they required. To their joy it opened to their touch, and they passed outside. Before them was a long stretch of ornamental garden of irregular shape, but rectangular in the main. It was picturesquely laid out with artificial mounds, grottoes, and groves, in the miniature semblance of a sylvan wilderness, and the whole was encircled by a wall. In this outside domain, as within-doors, no living being was visible.

The storm still roared and blustered. The winding irregular parapet of the wall was the horizon, and above it the gray watery masses of clouds drove across the sky. Even, sheltered as they were, the trees and shrubs of the tiny thickets and groves bent low to the blast.

It had, of course, been previously necessary to pass through a portion of this garden to enable them to reach the door of the palace. They proceeded at once to search for the entrance, and found it amid the winding depths of a grove and ornamental rockery-work. It profited them nothing, however, for the door was as fast and firm as the wall in which it was embedded. They hurried on, looking for an opening, or a weak spot in the ring of masonry, for it was too lofty to afford any hope of surmountal. To hide it from view had taxed the utmost ingenuity of arrangement; but the efforts of the gardeners had met with considerable success.

When the two females had swiftly threaded a succession of miniature alleys, glades, groves, and rocky glens, to the furthest end of the garden, and were skirting along the opposite side, on their return journey, their eyes were suddenly gladdened by observing the forbidding wall slope abruptly down, and continue at a considerably lower level. Moreover, here and there the earth was heaped up in grassy mounds, within three or four feet of the top. Up one of these Plautia sprang with a cry of joy. Reaching the summit, she stood aghast, for, as she peered over the parapet, nothing stood between her and the gray foam-streaked water, more than a thousand feet below. Leaning over, she looked down the smooth wall, cunningly faced with the verge of the sheer cliffs, right down into the waters, roaring and dashing into spouts of foam against the rocks far away at the bottom. Nothing but a sea-bird could ever set a foot there.