Kitabı oku: «Neæra. A Tale of Ancient Rome», sayfa 15

‘The monster!’ exclaimed Masthlion, raising his head and shuddering with horror; ‘and but a youth too?’

‘Only a youth,’ replied Cestus, ‘but with a serpent’s head. As I said, we had grown to be very confidential on account of some commissions I had quietly done for him, and he gradually began to sound me with a view to getting my help in his operations. He found me willing, and we soon came to terms. I was to kill the child, and he was to give me a very handsome sum. Where he raised it I don’t know, but that did not matter. It required no small amount of patience and skill to get the child away without notice, and weeks passed ere I was able to do it to my satisfaction. There was no use in doing the thing desperately so as to leave the least suspicion. A favourable time came at last, and I managed to take the child away without attracting the least attention; but I could never make up my mind to kill it, so I left it in secret and safe hands for a few weeks, and then begged leave of absence to make a visit. That visit was to you, and it was to bring the child here, where I never thought to see or hear of her again. I told a tale to my young master – how I drowned the child out of sight in a marsh, and he was satisfied; and remains so, as far as she is concerned, to this day. So far all was well. There was not the slightest suspicion attaching to us. Balbus went nearly out of his mind, and money, without end, was spent in searching after the lost brat. My young master was foremost in the hunt, of course, and I have heard the old man bless him many a time. Not a little of the wasted money went, as I know, into his purse at last; for it grew to be a common practice for cunning rogues to say they had found the whereabouts of the child, and then demand a price. It was freely given, and of course ended in nothing but disappointment. After some time my young master got this business transferred entirely into his own hands, and all such discoveries were left to him to deal with. I have reason to believe he invented a good many of them himself, and always took the best part of the money into his own fingers. And so he waited until the old man should die; and has waited until now, because he has not the pluck to finish the business promptly, and get the old man out of the way as well as the child. Had he had as much courage as cunning, he might have been rolling in the wealth of Balbus these ten years; but he cannot screw up his pluck, so he dallies on, and hopes for old Saturn and his scythe to help him – the fool! His prudent farming of the funds spent in searching for the lost one has considerably improved his stock of money; but the matter of late years has almost died out. Balbus went to dwell on his country estates, and took me with him. About six months ago I received a letter from my young master, begging me to repair to Rome to see him. I readily got leave and went to his house. He gave me a commission to execute, which he professed to be very secret. Whilst on my way one night late, in a lonely part of the city, whither I had gone on his account, I was beset by a gang of ruffians, and left for dead. There was life, however, left in me when they had done, and, as luck would have it, I was picked up and taken charge of. I since have discovered that the whole was only a cunning plot to remove me and my knowledge out of the world. I have been all this time recovering, and here I am. Balbus is a saddened old man, but hale. My young master walks about, relieved in the thought that he has cleverly got rid of me, who knew enough to utterly confound him. He shall be disagreeably surprised. You, kinsman, will befriend me, as well as my sister Tibia. These few traps will confirm the matter. The girl will get her own again, and I shall be revenged on a paltry, white-livered knave as ever stepped the earth.’

Cestus ceased, and a long pause ensued.

‘Is all this truth, kinsman?’ said Masthlion at length.

‘That you shall presently know beyond all doubt,’ replied the Suburan.

‘It seems all so strange to think that my Neæra should prove to be nobly born.’

‘The grandchild of a senator, no less!’

‘Ah me!’ sighed the potter dejectedly; ‘then are we parted indeed.’

‘That question of difference, between the Centurion and her, will trouble you no longer, kinsman,’ said Cestus.

‘Nothing will trouble me now concerning her, except that I shall never see her more; she has passed beyond my care, alas!’ said Masthlion, with deep emotion.

‘Take a draught of wine, kinsman,’ observed Cestus; ‘it is a wonderful balm for scratched feelings.’

Masthlion, with a sad smile, filled up his cup – ‘I drink to the child’s happy restoration and her future welfare;’ and he added, after a pause, ‘May she be tended as lovingly and tenderly as she has been under this humble roof.’

‘I will drink to that with pleasure,’ cried the other; ‘restored she shall be, without doubt, but, for the rest, I cannot say.’

They both drank and set down their cups, and Cestus remarked that it was time he was in bed.

‘Enough for to-night; it has given you something to ponder over, and we can have some more to say presently. But, until the time is ripe to act, potter, you must keep all this secret. Not a word to the child, or to your wife, until fit time.’

‘I will not,’ answered Masthlion.

‘Swear it, kinsman, for we may have to wait long yet.’

‘I never broke my word,’ said Masthlion proudly.

‘Enough; then I will trust to you,’ said Cestus. ‘Roll up those traps and keep them safe; and, on your life, breathe not a word to a living soul. Good-night!’

Cestus departed to his pallet bed upstairs, but Masthlion remained sitting before the fire for a long time in deep reflection. The small hours arrived, and his wife awoke to find her husband still missing from her side. She stole downstairs to find him musing and sighing, deeply and heavily, from time to time. The fire had smouldered down to a few red embers, and the room was chilly; but the heartsore man did not know. His wondering wife’s hand on his shoulder roused him, and he followed quietly to bed, but not to sleep. Tibia saw instinctively that something was wrong, and she, just as swiftly, ascribed that something to her brother; but, failing to gain anything satisfactory by her inquiries, she wisely allowed the matter to slumber the while.

CHAPTER X

Dusk had already fallen on island and sea, when Martialis returned to his quarters at the villa Jovis. He had departed in brilliant spirits, and with the brightest anticipations; but the latter had not been realised, and his mood had suffered. The untimely and unexpected advent of the Suburan had been by no means welcome; added to which, the failure of his purpose to exact a settled arrangement for his union with Neæra had further irritated and annoyed him. The parting caress of the laughing, lovely girl had hardly relieved his chafing spirit, and the journey home was performed at a prodigious speed both by land and sea. The violent exertion allayed the sting of his feelings, but his mood was far from smooth when he saw and lifted the ill-fated missive of Plautia from the table, where the slave Lygdus had finally left it.

His first exclamation, as he read its brief lines, was contemptuous and irritable, and he threw the paper impatiently back on to the table. In another moment curiosity had its turn, and he lifted it again for a further examination. The handwriting furnished him with no clue to the writer, and he was equally at a loss to imagine who could have occasion for summoning him in such a mysterious manner. He remained in doubt whether he should give the anonymous epistle any further attention or not; but his little chamber seemed oppressive to him, and his ruffled thoughts inclined towards any occupation which might relieve and turn their current.

He scarcely thought it necessary to arm himself; but, being in utter ignorance of what kind of entertainment he was invited to, a moment’s reflection told him he had best be on the safe side. He, therefore, put on a light, flexible cuirass under his tunic, and took a sword, of the usual short, straight Roman pattern, under his cloak. Thus prepared he once more took the way down to the south landing, glad to be quit of his dark, cheerless rooms.

The white rock, which Plautia had specified, was one she had particularly noticed on her way from the boat. It was of chalky formation, and was embedded in the side of a craggy eminence, around which the rough path wound on its way down to the narrow little beach below. This eminence, which was an irregular spur of a hill, was very rough, and thickly covered with trees and underwood of all kinds, thus affording an excellent shelter, which, in accordance with our story, had already been taken advantage of. On the other side of the footway was only a narrow strip of green turf, fringing a precipitous descent to the sea below.

Night had now quite fallen, and the young moon shed a hazy light from its narrow crescent. The Centurion paced leisurely onward, keeping instinctively on the outer edge of the path, and from under the shadow of the rocks and brushwood which walled in the land side. He was well muffled up in his large cloak, and, whilst his hand kept a ready grasp of his sword beneath, his eyes maintained the keenest scrutiny of every object and shadow as he paced along. Not a sound nor a movement, except the light fall of his own feet on the short mossy turf, broke the perfect repose of the spot, and he had now arrived opposite the mass of white chalk or limestone in question. Concluding that this was the appointed place, he stopped and waited, whilst he cast a curious glance around. He looked and listened in vain for a few moments; there was the faint murmur of the sea below, and the fitful breath of the night breeze ever and anon, and that was all. ‘Um!’ he muttered doubtfully.

As he spoke, something moved out of the black shadow of a thicket, and stood partly athwart the ghostly white face of the chalk rock. He perceived, by the flow of drapery on the form, that it was a woman, and surprise and wonder took more possession of him than ever. He remained motionless for a space, and finding that the strange figure did not move, he stepped forward two or three steps; upon which the mysterious shape drew back into the dark shadow of the thicket whence it had appeared.

‘This is the white rock,’ said the Pretorian; ‘who wants me?’

As his voice fell quietly on the calm air the female figure came forth and confronted him.

‘Martialis!’ said the voice of Plautia, with a faint tremor in its rich tones.

He started and scanned her keenly. ‘That is my name,’ he replied ‘Was it you who bade me come? I seem to know your voice. What can you want with me, and who may you be?’

‘Accept the grateful thanks of Plautia for your kind and ready obedience to her wish.’

‘Plautia – you – here! And yet I was sure of the voice!’ he muttered.

She put back the hood of her cloak, and turned her face to him full in the light. He surveyed, indeed, to his intense astonishment, the beautiful face of the adventurous damsel; and, although the feeble rays of the thin moon overlaid with their own wan paleness the tell-tale tints of her rich flooding cheeks, they rather, on the other hand, lit up the liquid brilliance of her dark eyes. Her white hand stole from the folds of her cloak, and rested gently on his arm. Young, high-spirited, warm and impressionable, the look and soft touch of this lovely woman thrilled him through in despite of himself; but his lips closed a trifle closer, and his form stretched aloft almost imperceptibly.

‘Yes, ’tis I, Plautia!’ she murmured, with her haughty head drooping downward, and her hand falling from his arm at the same time.

‘I am wonderstruck!’ he said in a colder tone; ‘in the name of heaven, Plautia, how came you to be in such a spot as this – such a place as this island?’

‘No matter how, Centurion; I am here – that is enough.’

‘But yet it is incomprehensible – have you been here long?’

‘No.’

‘Did you come alone?’

‘I have said it is enough that I am here, Centurion; you will not oblige me to ask you not to be so uncourteous as to question further?’

‘I am, to a certain extent, responsible for the careful guard of this island retreat of Caesar,’ he replied rather grimly, ‘and the unexpected presence of a stranger on its Argus-eyed shores renders me naturally curious. Scarce the flight of a bird to or from these rocks passes unnoticed – much less the arrival or departure of an individual without authority.’

‘How know you that I am here without authority?’

‘Because were it otherwise, it is more than likely that I should have become acquainted with the fact; and because no honourable woman would openly seek the polluted air of this island. You cannot have known this – or you have been misled, most likely. If it be so, quit the spot without delay, for it is fraught with danger to such as you. Did you send for me to help you? It must be so.’

‘No. I know all you tell me. I am here in secret.’

‘If you are sure of that, it mocks our watch and ward. But rest content that you cannot hope to remain long without discovery, in whatever nook you have found; at least you will tell me one thing – whether you have been decoyed here, or whether you came of your own free will.’

‘Of my own free will.’

‘It is extraordinary – some matter of huge importance must have impelled you.’

‘Of the most vital importance – to me.’

‘Why then have you summoned me, a comparative stranger to you and your affairs?’

‘Do you begrudge me the time and trouble?’

‘Thus far surely not.’

‘Have no fear that I will interfere with your duty.’

‘Good! Then I am at your disposal.’

The breast of the lady heaved and fluttered unwontedly; her native characteristics of haughty self-possession had given way to an unusual tremor and discomposure; and this in the presence of a Centurion only – a simple soldier. She whom the crowd of the highest and mightiest in Rome had dangled around, without causing her cheek to change its hue or her heart to throb a whit the faster. Then, as if a sudden shame for her weakness flashed across her mind, she drew up her ample form, and braced her quivering limbs, at the same time raising her countenance to his with an effort at her accustomed imperious nonchalance. But it proved an empty piece of bravado which she was unable to sustain. The young man, despite his expectant curiosity, remained motionless, cold, and unsympathetic, and she shrank again before him, with trembling joints and down-dropped head, like a leaping wave from the hard stern face of a rock.

The uncertain light was friendly to these signs of perturbation, and shrouded them so far from his observation, as to merely impress his mind with the idea that they were nothing save the symptoms of a little hesitation. A slight noise among the rocks of the hillside struck their ears, and they both turned to listen.

‘What was that?’ she whispered.

But all was as quiet as the grave; it might have been nothing but an animal displacing a stone as it prowled in search of prey, and thus Martialis replied.

‘Come more into the shade,’ she said hurriedly, laying her hand once more upon his arm; ‘some chance passer-by may see us here.’

He followed her a few paces into the shadow of the brushwood which lined the path, and, at the same time, carelessly threw his cloak from his right shoulder, so as to leave his right arm free and unhampered. It was a significant action to the initiated, and seemed to say, that his explanation of the probable cause of the slight noise in the bushes was not exactly in accordance with his inmost conviction.

The quick eye and wit of Plautia perceived it, and she said reproachfully, ‘Are you afraid, Centurion? You are armed!’

She had, in passing her hand over the folds of his cloak, felt the hilt of the sword which he held in his grasp underneath.

‘I have a weapon with me, truly,’ he answered; ‘but as to being afraid, I think I may say I am nothing more than cautious, as we soldiers are trained to be. You must surely admit, Plautia, that I am neither blamable nor foolish in preparing myself somewhat; for, when a man receives a request to meet an unknown person, in a mysterious manner, after dark, in an unfrequented spot, he is only acting prudently when he does as I have done. It might have been a throat-cutting assignation for all that I could tell. There are even some persons who would not, probably, have cared to attend at all.’

‘But you know now who has brought you – do you think that I would lead you premeditatedly into harm?’

‘No! I know of no earthly reason why you should do such a thing. I have certainly never done anything to merit your wrath or revenge, and such a thing could never enter your mind.’

‘There is not a soul here but you and I, and it was to be thus that I asked your presence. The toil – the danger is on my side, believe me, Centurion.’

Whether it was the shade in which they stood gave her increased confidence it would be hard to say, but her low rich tones grew steadier and more fervent, and both her white hands sought and clasped themselves upon his brown sinewy fingers.

‘Yes, Centurion, the toil and the danger,’ she repeated, speaking rapidly and fervently; ‘you saw me land last night, and in what company.’

‘Last night!’ said Martialis, starting. ‘What – was it you who came with that – ?’

‘No other – I and my slave dared and endured even the contact of the wretch, and thus obtained a landing, in secret, on this haunt of Caesar.’

Martialis withdrew his hand from her enclosing fingers, and placed it in his bosom with a haughty gesture. She reared herself up at this eloquent movement with a flash of her imperious fierceness.

‘What! Do you think that I came as one of the train of that vile slave of Tiberius? I, Plautia! – do you think it? Speak, Martialis!’

‘It would be the easier and more probable thing to believe that Plautia had embarked in ignorance of her fellow-voyagers,’ returned the Centurion calmly.

‘Yet why did you draw from me?’ she said fawningly; ‘it was even as you say. It was an expedient arranged by another for landing on the island, and I simply followed my instructions, knowing nothing further. It has achieved my purpose – here I am!’

‘You are in the tiger’s lair, and the man who conducted you hither is a creature of Caesar, and a vile reptile who fattens on his patronage.’

‘He dare not break his trust, knowing who gave him his charge.’

‘I can guess who that same person is; nevertheless it does not abate my opinion one jot. I dare swear your secrecy will be hardly worth the name in a few hours – perhaps even now. There is no trust to be put in such a wretch. Lose no time in putting the straits between you and the island, let me commend you. Whatever business has brought you hither, despatch it at once – this night should see you away if possible.’

‘I have no fear.’

‘Because you are ignorant of the danger you stand in. To such as you, of all people in the world, the pestilential air of this island is fraught with dire peril.’

‘I care not, for I am with you.’

‘Your position admits of little jesting, believe me,’ said Martialis, in a voice which exhibited an amount of stern impatience; ‘you are wasting precious moments – I am here at your request: let me know in what I am to serve you, and I will at once answer whether I can be of help. Were the hand of Caesar to drop upon us now you would find your safeguard in as sorry a plight as yourself. That you know right well, Plautia, and you delivered the raillery with effective gravity. I neither ask nor desire to know the cause of your extraordinary presence in this spot, but my apprehension certainly is that you wish me to assist you to leave.’

‘Your apprehension is wrong,’ replied the Roman beauty, in low, nervous tones, barely to be heard; ‘I came hither impelled by a feeling against which it was impossible to strive. It urged me through the hideous fatigue and disgust of the voyage hither, and it upholds me, undismayed, at the presence of danger. You impress upon me that I am beset with dire peril. It may be so – I can well believe it; but I am careless of it. Fear I never knew, and in this hour of all it can find less room than ever in my heart.’

Her head sank down, and her murmured words seemed to struggle with her hurried breathing, begot by a state of extreme tremor.

The Centurion knitted his brows, and, for a few moments, he remained in silent embarrassment. The deep shade of the thicket was friendly to his companion, and shrouded the outward symptoms of her feelings from his glance, but what his ears drank in was sufficient to make his mind uneasy and suspicious. He had really been under the impression that his companion’s presence in the island was probably due to some affair of intrigue, and, indeed, if her explanation had not seemed to so fully confirm the protection or connivance of Sejanus, he would at once have arrived at that conclusion, from the well-known fact of her intimacy with him. In expectation, therefore, of some political plan or plot in which she required him to join, he had been anxious to bring the interview to an end, being utterly averse to entangle himself in anything of the kind, or even to run the chance of being discovered in her company. But now he was as little disposed to force the matter to a conclusion, as before he had been anxious, and, in uncomfortable doubt, he began, very naturally, to chafe for having allowed himself to be so carelessly led into such a position. Had he only been prudent enough to consider, he might have at once concluded that nothing but mischief lay planted between the lines of an anonymous letter.

But the lady vouchsafed no other speech, and, anxious to appear quite unconscious of any particular purport in her words, he hastened to break the silence, in an assumed manner of artlessness and lightness, which is often used, alike to stave off an unpleasant subject and to play with one as delightful.

‘Fear, I am well assured, is a weakness unaccustomed to your breast,’ he said, ‘and, if I gather rightly from your words, you confess to be in subjection, no less than the rest of your sex, to the passion which they say rules feminine nature. Nevertheless I wish, on this occasion, for your own sake, fear had tempered curiosity a little.’

‘Curiosity!’ she returned with passionate scorn; then her voice sank to its former nervous intonation. ‘And yet I said false, Martialis, when I boasted of my fearlessness. I thought I was proof, – thus far without it, and now, lo, it has found me out.’

‘No! no!’ she continued rapidly, as he uttered some halting commonplace, ‘not business of Prefect, nor of Caesar, nor yet whim, nor curiosity, but only my heart and thee, Martialis, – Lucius! Have you not seen? Do you not see?’

‘Plautia – ’

‘It might have been months ere Rome could see you again. The city seemed void. I loathed it. My house seemed turned to a dungeon. My occupations palled upon me. I was weary, and everything was distasteful. I was no longer mistress of myself, and where my mind dwelt, thither I was fated to follow. What could stay me? Not toil and fatigue, nor yet the risk of the lynx-eyed warders of this rocky hermitage of Caesar. Where the will is there is the way, and what were a thousand times the obstacles in the way of mine? I am near thee, Martialis – I have accomplished my purpose. I have come and I confess to thee the reason, and I a woman. To you the world would apportion the voice, and to me the silence; but I own no law, no guide, but you and the promptings of my own heart. I have broken the cold forms and rules which bind a woman’s unsought secret within her breast, even at the risk of her life. I make no excuse – I crave no pardon. Wherefore should I hide the truth? Could my lips alter it, or you blame it? You cannot chide me. Am I less a woman now than before? I have bared my heart to thee, Martialis, but it is still a woman’s, and it has never bent to any sway but yours.’

Could the young soldier’s senses have been more subtly stirred had he been a mariner of old, rousing himself in his idly-floating boat to listen to the fatal, sweet ditties of a siren song stealing into his ears through the tranquil, yellow mist of evening?

He felt his hand imprisoned tightly within the warm grasp of her soft, white palms. Her breath played upon his cheek, and the gloom of their leafy shelter could not hide the shadowy, star-like lustre of her eyes close upturned to his. His ears drank in the rich, thrilling tones of her voice, quivering, like her glorious form, with excess of passion. The delicate perfumes of her attire welled around him, and invaded his faculties like the very essences of her overpowering loveliness. The touch, the eloquent motions, the soft abandon of this creature of superb womanhood: the strange, bewitching phenomenon of her haughty imperiousness sinking into the overwhelming flood of passionate love and tender submission beglamoured his mind. His senses seemed overcharged. As one might seek relief from a choking sensation, he reared his head backwards, with a deep, noiseless breath, and swept his eyes athwart his shoulder round the sea and star-lit heavens. Extraordinary and dream-like as his whole experience of that night was, it was no illusion, such as he began to think it might be. There was the horned moon, bright and tranquil in the dark sky; and there was the track of its silvery radiance dancing on the softly-rippling waters below. The night-air, too, palpably rustled the leaves around his head, and a soft, velvety touch at that moment quivered through him. It was the delicate pressure of her ripe, warm lips on his hand. It awoke the Pretorian to himself and brushed away the brief mist of sensuous sweetness which had enthralled him. To have remained wholly indifferent to such a passionate revelation of the loveliest lips – to have rested unmoved by the soft contact and surrender of the richest wealth of female beauty Rome could show, would have been to renounce all in common with human nature, even on the part of one bred with the phlegmatic coldness and self-possession of a northern clime. But Plautia had cast herself before one born to the same native characteristics of ardent and impulsive blood as herself, though not perhaps in an equal degree of intensity. With his pulses yet tingling he recalled, by a flash of thought, all the evident signs of pleasure and satisfaction with which she had hitherto greeted his presence when chance had thrown them together for a brief period. Her relaxed haughtiness, her glances and smiles were now, it seemed, only too well fraught with real meaning. Her excuses and pretexts for companionship, and a hundred little arts, which had never caused him more thought than an amused gratification, down to the latest evidence of all, in the gift she had sent to the camp, were now supplemented and concluded with a startling explanation. In common with the rest of Rome he had admired her magnificent beauty of face and form, and, by a most natural process of a man in love, he had as often criticised her by the standard of the maiden enthroned in his heart of hearts. He ever found the contrast, morally and physically, to be wellnigh complete. As before, but now with tenfold more vividness, his mind spanned the intervening distance and dwelt upon the fair girl he had left but a short time before. It acted like the sudden transition from the oppressive glow of a tropic dream steeped in narcotic odours, to the waking freshness and cool relief of a breezy dawn. Neæra’s image, ever ready to his invocation, rose before him in its changeless purity and sweetness, its noble dignity and calmness, and purged his spirit of the grosser intoxication which burdened it.

While yet his mind was agitated by such fleeting emotions and reflections, it was vaguely burdened with pain and dread, on account of the vehement nature of the self-willed woman before him. He was simple and chivalrous; and as he thought how she, who could command so much, had dared everything to follow him to this spot for the sake of an unfortunate attachment, his heart ached with pain and pity – all the more as she was doomed to disappointment. The only return she could accept he was unable to make, and the fact of his entire innocence brought him no comfort.

Such was the main current of his thoughts in the short pause which followed on the passionate words of Plautia. In his simple, soldier way, he would rather have been summoned to face a legion single-handed than be under the necessity of administering the coup-de-grace to the dearest hopes and wishes of a woman. Her posture was at the moment half-reclining against his breast.

‘You are cruelly silent,’ she murmured in his ear. ‘Shame! Would you have me say more?’

‘You have done me great honour – great and unexpected,’ he answered, stammering with embarrassment; ‘but I was not prepared to meet such a surprise. If I am confused there is an excuse for it. I thought – and yet, no – I do not know. That I should have held such place in your regard is almost beyond my belief, and I should be little surprised to discover that Plautia is beguiling a tedious evening with a frolic. If so, I shall laugh with as much zest as herself.’

‘O brave frolic for a shallow wit!’ she cried vehemently; ‘and how am I to go about to convince thee, if thou hast not already been convinced? Do I merit no worthier words than those, Martialis?’

‘I made no assertion,’ said the Centurion. ‘If I am answerable for my utterances just for the time, I probably meant no more than to point out more effectively my feelings of astonishment and incredulity as to what has befallen me this night.’

‘But that has passed,’ she said, in a low voice, and inclining herself again closely to him. ‘Though surprised, Lucius, why unbelieving? Can it be so beyond belief? Had you been hideous, deformed, and as vile in mind as person, – a base negro, or Numidian slave, it had been then time to wonder! But thank the gods for being what you are – then why do you so undervalue yourself? Have women the eyes of bats and hearts impenetrable as granite? Have I not said enough? Would you have me plead? No – you cannot!’