Читать книгу Domitia - Baring-Gould Sabine, Baring-Gould Sabine - Страница 4

A quarter of an hour had elapsed since Corbulo entered the peristyle of the villa, when the young man Lamia came out.

He was still pale as death, and his muscles twitched with strong emotion.

He glanced about him in quest of Longa Duilia, but that lady had retired precipitately to the gynaikonitis, or Lady’s hall, where she had summoned to her a bevy of female slaves and had accumulated about her an apothecary’s shop of restoratives.

Domitia was still in the garden, playing with the kid, and Lamia at once went to her, not speedily, but with repugnance.

She immediately desisted from her play, and smiled at his approach. They were old acquaintances, and had seen much of each other in Syria.

Corbulo had not been proconsul, but legate in the East, and had made Antioch his headquarters. He had been engaged against the Parthians and Armenians for eight years, but the war had been intermittent, and between the campaigns he had returned to Antioch, to the society of his wife and little daughter.

The former, a dashing, vain and ambitious woman, had made a salon there which was frequented by the best society of the province. Corbulo, a quiet, thoughtful and modest man, shrunk from the stir and emptiness of such life, and had found rest and enjoyment in the company of his daughter.

Lamia had served as his secretary and aide-de-camp. He was a youth of much promise, and of singular integrity of mind and purity of morals in a society that was self-seeking, voluptuous, and corrupt.

He belonged to the Ælian gens or clan, but he had been adopted by a Lamia, a member of a family in the same clan, that claimed descent from Lamius, a son of Poseidon, or Neptune, by one of those fictions so dear to the Roman noble houses, and which caused the fabrication of mythical origins, just as the ambition of certain honorable families in England led to the falsification of the Roll of Battle Abbey.

Pliny tells a horrible story of the first Lamia of importance, known to authentic history. He had been an adherent of Cæsar and a friend of Cicero. He was supposed to be dead in the year in which he had been elected prætor, and was placed on the funeral pyre, when consciousness returned, but too late for him to be saved. The flames rose and enveloped him, and he died shrieking and struggling to escape from the bandages that bound him to the bier on which he lay.

Lucius Lamia had been kindly treated by Corbulo, and the young man’s heart had gone out to the venerated general, to whom he looked up as a model of all the old Roman virtues, as well as a man of commanding military genius. The simplicity of the old soldier’s manner and the freshness of his mind had acted as a healthful and bracing breeze upon the youth’s moral character.

And now he took the young girl by the hand, and walked with her up and down the pleached avenues for some moments without speaking.

His breast heaved. His head swam. His hand that held hers worked convulsively.

All at once Domitia stood still.

She had looked up wondering at his manner, into his eyes, and had seen that they were full.

“What ails you, Lucius?”

“Come, sit by me on the margin of the basin,” said he. “By the Gods! I conjure thee to summon all thy fortitude. I have news to communicate, and they of the saddest – ”

“What! are we not to return to Rome? O Lamia, I was a child when I left it, but I love our house at Gabii, and the lake there, and the garden.”

“It is worse than that, Domitia.” He seated himself on the margin of a basin, and nervously, not knowing what he did, drew his finger in the water, describing letters, and chasing the darting fish.

“Domitia, you belong to an ancient race. You are a Roman, and have the blood of the Gods in your veins. So nerve thy heroic soul to hear the worst.”

And still he thrust after the frightened fish with his finger, and she looked down, and saw them dart like shadows in the pool, and her own frightened thoughts darted as nimbly and as blindly about in her head.

“Why, how now, Lamia? Thou art descended by adoption from the Earth-shakes, and tremblest as a girl! See – a tear fell into the basin. Oh, Lucius! My very kid rears in surprise.”

“Do not mock. Prepare for the worst. Think what would be the sorest ill that could befall thee.”

Domitia withdrew her eyes from the fish and the water surface rippled by his finger, and looked now with real terror in his face.

“My father?”

Then Lamia raised his dripping finger and pointed to the house.

She looked, and saw that the gardener had torn down boughs of cypress, and therewith was decorating the doorway.

At the same moment rose a long-drawn, desolate wail, rising, falling, ebbing, flowing – a sea of sound infinitely sad, heart-thrilling, blood-congealing.

For one awful moment, one of those moments that seems an eternity, Domitia remained motionless.

She could hear articulate words, voices now.

“Come back! O Cnæus! Come, thou mighty warrior! Come, thou pillar of thy race! Come back, thou shadow! Return, O fleeted soul! See, see! thy tabernacle is still warm. Return, O soul! return!”

She knew it – the conclamatio; that cry uttered about the dead in the hopes of bringing back the spirit that has fled.

Then, before Lamia could stop her, Domitia started from the margin of the pool, startling the fish again and sending them flying as rays from where she had been seated, and ran to the house.

The gardener, with the timidity of a slave, did not venture to forbid passage.

A soldier who was withdrawing extended his arm to bar the doorway. Quick as thought she dived below this barrier, and next moment with a cry that cut through the wail of the mourners, she cast herself on the body of her father, that lay extended on the mosaic floor, with a blood-stained sword at his side, and a dark rill running from his breast over the enamelled pavement.

Next moment Lamia entered.

Around the hall were mourners, slaves of the house, as also some of those of Longa Duilia, raising their arms and lowering them, uttering their cries of lamentation and invocations to the departed soul, some rending their garments, others making believe to tear their hair and scratch their faces.

In the midst lay the dead general, and his child clung to him, kissed him, chafed his hands, endeavored to stanch his wound, and addressed him with endearments.

But all was in vain. The spirit was beyond recall, and were it to return would again be expelled. Corbulo was dead.

The poor child clasped him, convulsed with tears; her copious chestnut hair had become unbound, and was strewed about her, and even dipped in her father’s blood. She was as though frantic with despair; her gestures, her cry very different from the formal expressions and utterances of the servile mourners.

But Lamia at length touched her, and said —

“Come away, Domitia. You cannot prevent Fate.”

Suddenly she reared herself on her knees, and put back the burnished rain of hair that shrouded her face, and said in harsh tones: —

“Who slew him?”

“He fell on his own sword.”

“Why! He was happy?”

Before an answer was given, she reeled and fell unconscious across her father’s body.

Then Lamia stooped, gathered her up tenderly, pitifully, in his arms, and bore her forth into the garden to the fountain, where he could bathe her face, and where the cool air might revive her.

Why was Corbulo dead? and why had he died by his own hand?

The Emperor Nero was, as Duilia had told her husband, at this very time in Greece, and further, hard by at Corinth, where he was engaged in superintending the cutting of a canal, that was to remove the difficulty of a passage from the Saronic to the Corinthian Gulf.

Nero had come to Greece attended by his Augustal band of five thousand youths with flowing locks, and gold bangles on their wrists, divided into three companies, whose duty it was to applaud the imperial mountebank, and rouse or lead enthusiasm, the Hummers by buzzing approval, the Clappers by beating their hands together, and the Clashers by kicking pots about so as to produce a contagious uproar.

Nero was possessed with the delusion that he had a fine voice, and that he was an incomparable actor. Yet his range was so small, that when striving to sink to a bass note, his voice became a gurgle, and when he attempted to soar to a high note, he raised himself on his toes, became purple in face, and emitted a screech like a peacock.

Not satisfied with the obsequious applause of the Roman and Neapolitan citizens who crowded the theatre to hear the imperial buffoon twitter, he resolved to contest for prizes in the games of Greece.

A fleet attended him, crowded with actors, singers, dancers, heaped up with theatrical properties, masks, costumes, wigs, and fiddles.

He would show the Greeks that he could drive a chariot, sing and strut the stage now in male and then in female costume, and adapt his voice to the sex he personated, now grumbling in masculine tones, then squeaking in falsetto, and incomparable in each.

But with the cunning of a madman, he took with him, as his court, the wealthiest nobles of Rome, whom he had marked out for death, either because he coveted their fortunes or suspected their loyalty.

Wherever he went, into whatsoever city he entered, his artistic eye noted the finest statues and paintings, and he carried them off, from temple as from marketplace, to decorate Rome or enrich his Golden House, the palace he had erected for himself.

Tortured by envy of every one who made himself conspicuous; hating, fearing such as were in all men’s mouths, through their achievements, or notable for virtue, his suspicion had for some time rested on Domitius Corbulo, who had won laurels first in Germany and afterwards in Syria.

He had summoned him to Rome, with the promise of preferments, his purpose being to withdraw him from the army that adored him, and to destroy him.

No sooner did the tidings reach the tyrant at Corinth, that the veteran hero was arrived at Cenchræa, than he sent him a message to commit suicide. A gracious condescension that, for the property of the man who was executed was forfeit and his wife and children reduced to beggary, whereas the will of the testator who destroyed himself was allowed to remain in force.

Lamia washed the stains from the hands and locks of the girl, and bathed her face with water till she came round.

Then, when he saw that she had recovered full consciousness, he asked to be allowed to hasten for assistance. She bowed her head, as she could not speak, and he entered the women’s portion of the villa to summon some of the female slaves. These were, however, in no condition to answer his call and be of use. Duilia had monopolized the attentions of almost all such as had not been commissioned to raise the funeral wail. Some, indeed, there were, scattered in all directions, running against each other, doing nothing save add to the general confusion, but precisely these were useless for Lamia’s purpose.

Unwilling to leave the child longer alone, Lucius returned to the garden, and saw Domitia seated on the breastwork of the fountain.

Ten years seemed to have passed over her head, so altered was she.

She was not now weeping. The rigidity of the fainting fit seemed not to have left her face, nor relaxed the stony appearance it had assumed. Her eyes were lustreless, and her lips without color.

The young man was startled at her look.

“Domitia!” said he.

She raised her eyes to him, and said in reply,

“Lucius!” Then letting them fall, she added in hard, colorless tones, “There is one thing I desire of thee. By some means or other, I care not what, bring me into the presence of the monster. I know how my father has come by his death – as have so many others, the best and the noblest. I have but one ambition on earth, I see but a single duty before me – to drive if it be but a silver bodkin into his heart.”

“Domitia!”

“Lucius, the last words my father used to me were to bid me look to the stars and to sail by them. I look and I see one only star. I feel but one only duty on earth – to revenge his death.”

“My friend!” said Lamia, in a low tone. “Be careful of thy words. If overheard, they might cause your blood to be mingled with his.”

“I care not.”

“But to me it matters sovereignly.”

“Why? Dost thou care for me?”

“Above all in the world.”

“Then revenge me.”

“Domitia, my grief is little less than thine. If you would revenge the loss, so would I. But what can be done? He, the coward, is carefully guarded. None are suffered to approach him who have not first been searched, and even then are not allowed within arm’s length. Nothing can be done, save invoke the Gods.”

“The Gods!” laughed the girl hoarsely. “The Gods! They set up the base, the foul, and crown him with roses, and trample the noble and good into the earth. The Gods! see you now! They set a star in heaven, they grave a duty in my heart, and the star is unattainable, and the duty, they make impossible of achievement. Bah! There is no star. There are no duties on earth, and no Gods in heaven.”