[Illustration: “ROME IS BOILING OVER, AND WILL SCALD MANY FINGERS.”
_Page 89._]
DOMITIA
BY
S. BARING-GOULD
Author of “The Broom-Squire,” “Bladys,” “Mehalah,” “Court Royal,” Etc.
_Illustrated by_
IZORA C. CHANDLER
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
_Copyright, 1898_,
BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
PRESSWORK BY
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
CONTENTS
Book I
I. The Port of Cenchræa
II. An Ill-Omen
III. Corbulo
IV. There Is No Star
V. The Ship of the Dead
VI. I Do Not Know
VII. The Face of the Dead
VIII. The Sword of the Dead
IX. Sheathed
X. Ubi Felicitas?
XI. The Veils of Ishtar
XII. The Fall of the Veils
XIII. To Rome!
XIV. A Little Supper
XV. The Lectisternium
XVI. In the House of the Actor
XVII. The Saturnalia of 69
XVIII. A Refugee
XIX. The End of Vitellius
XX. Changed Tactics
XXI. The Virgin’s Wreath
XXII. Quoniam Tu Caius, Ego Caia!
XXIII. The End of the Day
XXIV. Albanum
XXV. By a Razor
XXVI. Intermezzo
Book II
I. An Appeal
II. The Fish
III. In the ‘Insula’
IV. Another Appeal
V. Atrium Vestæ
VI. For the People
VII. ‘The Blues Have It!’
VIII. The Lower Stool
IX. Glyceria
X. The Accursed Field
XI. Again: The Sword of Corbulo
XII. The Tablets
XIII. The Hour of Twelve
XIV. In the Tullianum
XV. Drawing to the Light
XVI. An Ecstasy
XVII. Hail, Gladsome Light!
Footnotes
Transcriber’s Note
DOMITIA.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I.
THE PORT OF CENCHRÆA.
Flashes as of lightning shot from each side of a galley as she was being
rowed into port. She was a bireme, that is to say, had two tiers of oars;
and as simultaneously the double sets were lifted, held for a moment
suspended, wet with brine, feathered, and again dipped, every single blade
gleamed, reflecting the declining western sun, and together formed a flash
from each side of the vessel of a sheaf of rays.
The bireme was approaching the entrance to the harbor of Cenchræa.
The one white sail was filled with what little wind breathed, and it shone
against a sapphire sea like a moon.
Now, at a signal the oars ceased to plunge. The sail was furled, and the
galley was carried into the harbor between the temple that stood on the
northern horn of the mole, and the great brazen statue of Poseidon that
occupied a rock in the midst of the entrance, driven forward by the
impulse already given her by the muscles of the rowers and the east wind
in the sail.
This Cenchræan harbor into which she swept was one of the busiest in the
world. Through it as through a tidal sluice rushed the current of trade
from the East to the West, and from the Occident to the Orient. It was
planted on a bay of the Saronic Gulf, and on the Isthmus of Corinth, at
the foot of that lovely range of mountains thrown up by the hand of God to
wall off the Peloponnesus as the shrine of intellectual culture and the
sanctuary of Liberty.
And a furrow—like an artificial dyke—ran between this range and Hellas
proper, a furrow nearly wholly invaded by the sea, but still leaving a
strip of land, the Corinthian isthmus, to form a barrier between the
Eastern and the Western worlds.
On the platform at the head of a flight of marble steps before a temple of
Poseidon, in her open litter, lounged a lady, with the bloom of youth gone
from her face, but artificially restored.
She was handsome, with finely moulded features and a delicate white hand,
the fingers studded with rings, and a beautiful arm which was exposed
whenever any one drew near whose admiration was worth the acquisition. Its
charm was enhanced by armlets of gold adorned with cameos.
Her arched brows, dark in color, possibly owed their perfection of turn
and their depth of color to dye and the skill of the artist who decorated
her every day, but not so the violet-blue of her large eyes, although
these also were enhanced in effect by the tinting of the lashes, and a
touch of paint applied to their roots.
The lady, whose name was Longa Duilia, was attended by female slaves, who
stood behind the litter, and by a freedman, Plancus, who was at her side
with a set smile on his waxen face, and who bowed towards the lady every
moment to hear her remarks, uttered in a languid tone, and without her
troubling to turn her head to address him.
“He will soon be here,” said the lady; “the bireme is in the port. I can
see the ruffle before her bows as she cuts the water.”
“Like the wave in my lady’s hair,” sighed Plancus.
“Abominable!” exclaimed Duilia, “when the ripple in my hair is natural and
abiding, and that in the water is made and disappears.”
“Because, Mistress, the wavelets look up, see, and fall back in despair.”
“That is better,” said the lady.
“And the swelling sail, like your divine bosom, has fallen, as when——”
“Ugh! I should hope the texture of my skin was not like coarse sail-cloth;
get behind me, Plancus. Here, Lucilla, how am I looking? I would have my
lord see me to the best advantage.”
“Madam,” said the female slave, advancing, “the envious sun is about to
hide his head in the west. He cannot endure, after having feasted on your
beauty, to surrender it to a mortal.”
“Is not one eyebrow a trifle higher than the other?” asked Duilia, looking
at herself in a hand mirror of polished metal.
“It is indeed so, lady, but has not the Paphian Goddess in the statue of
Phidias the same characteristic? Defect it is not, but a token of
divinity.”
“Ah,” said Duilia, “it is hereditary. The Julian race descends from Venus
Genetrix, and I have the blood of the immortal ancestress in me.”
“Much diluted,” muttered Plancus into the breast of his tunic; he was out
of humor at the failure of his little simile of the sail.
“By the way,” said the lady; “the stay in this place Cenchræa is
positively intolerable. No society, only a set of merchants—rich and all
that sort of thing—but nobodies. The villa we occupy is undignified and
uncomfortable. The noise of the port, the caterwauling of sailors, and the
smell of pitch are most distasteful to me. My lord will hardly tarry
here?”
“My lord,” said the freedman, pushing forward, “he who subdued the
Parthians, and chained the Armenians, to whom all Syria bowed, arrives to
cast himself at your ladyship’s feet, and be led by you as a captive in
your triumphal entry into the capital of the world.”
“You think so, Plancus.” She shook her head, “He is an obstinate
man—pig-headed—I—I mean resolute in his own line.”
“Madam, I know you to be irresistible.”
“Well, I desire to leave this odious place. I have yawned here through
three entire months.”
“And during these months, the temple of Aphrodite has been deserted, and
the approaches grass-grown.”
“How would my Lady like to remove to Corinth?” said Lucilla. “The vessel
will be taken to Diolcus, and there placed on rollers, to be drawn across
the isthmus.”
“Oh! Corinth will be noisier than this place, and more vulgar, because
more pretentious. Only money-lending Jews there. Besides, I have taken an
aversion to the place since the death of my physician. As the Gods love
me, I not see the good of a medical attendant who is so ignorant as to
allow himself to die, and that at such an inconvenient moment as the
present. By the Great Goddess! what impostors there be. To think that for
years I committed the care of my precious health to his bungling hands!
Plancus, have you secured another? I suffer frightfully at sea.”
“A sure token of your divine origin,” said the steward. “The Foam-born
(Venus) rose out of and left the waves because the motion of them
disagreed with her.”
“There is a good deal in that,” observed Longa Duilia. “Plancus, have you
secured another? I positively cannot across Adria without one to hold my
head and supply anti—anti—what do you call them?”
“Madam,” said the freedman, rubbing his hands together, “I have devoted my
energies to your service. I have gone about with a lantern seeking an
honest physician. I may not have been as successful as I desired, but I
have done my utmost.”
“I prithee—have done with this rodomontade and to the point. Have you
secured one? As the Gods love me! it is not only one’s insides that get
upset at sea, but one’s outside also becomes so tousled and tumbled—that
the repairs—but never mind about them. Have you engaged a man?”
“Yes, my Lady, I have lighted on one Luke, a physician of Troas; he is
desirous of proceeding to Rome, and is willing to undertake the charge of
your health, in return for being conveyed to the capital of the world at
your charges.”
“I make you responsible for his suitability,” said Longa Duilia.
“Body of Bacchus!” she exclaimed suddenly, after a pause, “Where is the
child?”
“Where is the lady Domitia Longina?” asked Plancus, as he looked about
him.
“The lady Domitia, where is she?” asked Lucilla.
“The lady Domitia?”—passed from one to another.
“Where is she? What has become of her? As the Gods love me—you are a pack
of fools. The more of you there are, so much the more of folly. You have
let her gallop off among the odious sailors, and she will come back rank
with pitch. Lucilla, Favonia, Syra, where is she?”
Duilia sat upright on her seat, and her eyes roamed searchingly in every
direction.
“I never met with such a child anywhere, it is the Corbulo blood in her,
not mine. The Gods forbid! O Morals!”
“Madam,” said a slave-girl coming up. “I saw her with Eboracus.”
“Well, and where is Eboracus. They are always together. He spoils the
child, and she pays him too much consideration. Where are they?”
The slaves, male and female, looked perplexedly in every direction.
“Perhaps,” said Plancus, “she has gone to the altar of Poseidon to offer
there thanks for the return of her father.”
“Poseidon, nonsense! That is not her way. She has been in a fever ever
since the vessel has been sighted, her cheeks flaming and in a fidget as
if covered with flying ants. Find the girl. If any harm shall have come to
her through your neglect, I will have you all flayed—and hang the cost!”
She plucked a bodkin from her dress, and ran it into the shoulder of the
slave-woman, Favonia, who stood near her, and made her cry out with pain.
“You are a parcel of idle, empty-headed fools,” exclaimed the alarmed and
irritated mother, “I will have the child found, and that instantly. You
girls, you have been gaping, watching the sailors, and have not had an eye
on your young mistress, and no concern for my feelings. There is no more
putting anything into your heads than of filling the sieves of the
Danaides.”
“Madam,” said Plancus, for once without a smile on his unctuous face, “you
may rest satisfied that no harm has befallen the young lady. So long as
Eboracus is with her, she is safe. That Briton worships her. He would
suffer himself to be torn limb from limb rather than allow the least ill
to come to her.”
“Well, well,” said the lady impatiently, “we expect all that sort of thing
of our slaves.”
“Madam, but do we always get it?”
“We! The Gods save me! How you talk. _We!_ We, indeed. Pray what are you
to expect anything?”
“The other day, lady,” hastily continued the steward eager to allay the
ebullition he had provoked. “The other day, Eboracus nigh on killed a man
who looked with an insolent leer at his young mistress. He is like a
faithful Molossus.”
“I do not ask what he is like,” retorted the still ruffled lady, “I ask
where she is.”
Then one of the porters of the palanquin came forward respectfully and
said to the steward:—“If it may please you, sir, will you graciously
report to my Lady that I observed the young mistress draw Eboracus aside,
and whisper to him, as though urging somewhat, and he seemed to demur, but
he finally appeared to yield to her persuasions, and they strolled
together along the mole.”
Longa Duilia overheard this. It was not the etiquette for an underling to
address his master or mistress directly unless spoken to.
She said sharply:—“Why did not the fellow mention this before? Give him
thirty lashes. Where did they go, did he say?”
“Along the mole.”
“Which mole?”
“Madam, Carpentarius is afraid of extending his communication lest he
increase the number of his lashes.”
“Well, well!” exclaimed the mistress, “We may remit the lashes—let him
answer.”
“Carpentarius,” said the steward, “Her ladyship, out of the superabundance
of her compassion, will let you off the thirty lashes, if you say where be
Eboracus and the young lady, your mistress Domitia Longina.”
“Sir,” answered the porter, “that I cannot answer positively; but—unless
my eyes deceive me, I see a small boat on the water, within it a rower and
a young girl.”
“By the Immortal Brothers! he is right,” exclaimed Plancus. “See, lady,
yonder is a cockle boat, that has been unmoored from the mole, and there
be in it a rower, burly, broadbacked, who is certainly the Briton, and in
the bow is as it were a silver dove—and that can be none other than your
daughter.”
“As the Gods love me,” gasped Duilia, throwing herself back in the litter;
“what indelicacy! It is even so, the child is besotted. She dotes on her
father, whom she has not seen since we left Antioch. And she has actually
gone to meet him. O Venus Kalypyge! What are we coming to, when children
act in this independent, indecent manner. O Times! O Morals!”