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 Baiæ.
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 Baiæ, 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 Cæsarian, 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 Nausicaä 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 Æschylus 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 Cnæus Nævius, 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 Æson 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]
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 naïveté, 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 Cæsar; 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 Baiæ, 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 Præneste, 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 Baiæ,—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. Cæsar 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 Piræus."
This then was the end of all those glittering day-dreams! Cæsar'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?
Cornelia was almost angry with Artemisia for being thus oblivious to and shielded from calamity. So hot in fact did her indignation become against the innocent girl, that Cornelia herself began to smile at her own passion. And there was one thought very comforting to her pride.
"Artemisia is only an uneducated slave, or little better than a slave; if she were in my station she would be just as unhappy. I am wretched just in proportion to the greatness of my rank;" then she added to herself, "Hei! but how wretched then the gods must be!" And then again she smiled at admitting for an instant that there were any gods at all; had not her philosophy taught her much better?
So at last Cornelia turned over the pillows for the last time, and finally slept, in heavy, dreamless slumber.
Cornelia did not know at what watch of the night she awoke; awoke, not suddenly, but slowly, as consciousness stole over her that something was happening. It was a dark, cloudy night, yet a strange red light was glinting faintly through the windows and making very dim panels on the rugs of the floor. There was a bare gleam of fire from the charcoal in the portable metal stove that stood in a remote corner of the room to dispel the chill of night. Artemisia was stirring in her sleep, and saying something—probably in a one-sided dream-dialogue. Cornelia opened her eyes, shut them again; peeped forth a second time, and sat up in bed. There was a confused din without, many voices speaking at once, all quite unintelligible, though now and then she caught a few syllables of Greek. The din grew louder and louder. At the same time, as if directly connected with the babel, the strange light flamed up more brightly—as if from many advancing torches. Cornelia shook the sleep from her eyes, and flung back the coverlets. What was it? She had not yet reached the stage of feeling any terror.
Suddenly, drowning all lesser noise, came the blows of a heavy timber beating on the main door of the villa.
Crash! and with the stroke, a torrent of wild shouts, oaths, and imprecations burst forth from many score throats.
Crash! The slaves sleeping near the front door began to howl and shout. The great Molossian hound that stood watch was barking and snapping. The Gallic maid sprang from her pallet by Cornelia's door, and gave a shrill, piercing scream. Artemisia was sitting up on her bed, rubbing her eyes, blinking at the strange light, and about to begin to cry. Cornelia ran over the floor to her.
"A! A! what is going to happen!" whimpered the girl.
"I do not know, philotata"[164] said Cornelia in Greek, putting her hand on Artemisia's cheek; "but don't cry, and I'll soon find out."
Crash! and at this the door could be heard to fall inward. Then, with yells of triumph and passion, there was a great sweep of feet over the threshold, and the clang of weapons and armour. Cornelia found herself beginning to tremble. As she stepped across the room, she passed before her largest mirror, whereon the outside light was shining directly. She saw herself for an instant; her hair streaming down her back, her only dress her loose white tunic, her arms bare, and nothing on her throat except a string of yellow amber beads. "And my feet are bare," she added to herself, diverted from her panic by her womanly embarrassment. She advanced toward the door, but had not long to wait. Down below the invaders had burst loose in wild pillage, then up into the sleeping room came flying a man—Phaon, his teeth chattering, his face ghastly with fright.
"Domina! domina!" and he knelt and seized Cornelia's robe. "Save, A! save! We are undone! Pirates! They will kill us all! Mu! mu! don't let them murder me!"
A moment longer and Cornelia, in her rising contempt, would have spurned him with her foot. There were more feet on the stairway. Glaring torches were tossing over gold inlaid armour. A man of unusual height and physique strode at the head of the oncomers, clutching and dragging by the wrist a quivering slave-boy.
"Your mistress, boy! where is she? Point quickly, if you would not die!" cried the invader, whom we shall at once recognize as Demetrius.
Cornelia advanced to the doorway, and stood in her maidenly dignity, confronting the pirates, who fell back a step, as though before an apparition.
"I am the Lady Cornelia, mistress of the villa," she said slowly, speaking in tones of high command. "On what errand do you come thus unseasonably, and with violence?"
Whereat, out from the little group of armed men sprang one clad in costly, jewel-set armour, like the rest, but shorter than the others, and with fair hair flowing down from his helmet on to his shoulders.
"Domina, do you not know me? Do not be afraid."
"Agias!" cried Cornelia, in turn giving back a step.
"Assuredly," quoth the young Hellene, nothing dismayed; "and with your leave, this great man is Demetrius, my cousin, whose trade, perchance, is a little irregular, but who has come hither not so much to plunder as to save you from the clutches of his arch-enemy's son, Lucius Ahenobarbus."
Cornelia staggered, and caught the curtain in the doorway to keep from falling.
"Has Master Drusus sent him to me?" she asked, very pale around the lips.
"Master Drusus is at Corfinium. No one knows what will be the issue of the war, for Pompeius is making off. It is I who counselled my cousin to come to Baiæ."
"Then what will you do with me? How may I dare to trust you? Deliver myself into the hands of pirates! Ah! Agias, I did not think that you would turn to such a trade!"
The youth flushed visibly, even under the ruddy torchlight.
"Oh, lady," he cried, "have I not always been true to you? I am no pirate, and you will not blame my cousin, when you have heard his story. But do not fear us. Come down to the ship—Fabia is there, waiting for you."
"Fabia!" and again Cornelia was startled. Then, fixing her deep gaze full on Agias, "I believe you speak the truth. If not you—whom? Take—take me!"
And she fell forward in a swoon, and Demetrius caught her in his powerful arms.
"This is the affianced wife of Quintus Drusus?" he cried to Agias.
"None other."
"She is worthy of Sextus's son. A right brave lady!" cried the pirate. "But this is no place for her, poor thing. Here, Eurybiades," and he addressed a lieutenant,—an athletic, handsome Hellene like himself,—"carry the lady down to the landing, put her on the trireme, and give her to Madam Fabia. Mind you lift her gently."
"Never fear," replied the other, picking up his burden carefully. "Who would not delight to bear Aphrodite to the arms of Artemis!"
And so for a while sight, sound, and feeling were at an end for Cornelia, but for Agias the adventures of the evening were but just begun. The pirates had broken loose in the villa, and Demetrius made not the slightest effort to restrain them. On into the deserted bedroom, ahead of the others, for reasons of his own, rushed Agias. As he came in, some one cried out his name, and a second vision in white confronted him.
"Ai! ai! Agias, I knew you would come!" and then and there, with the sword-blades glinting, and the armed men all around, Artemisia tossed her plump arms around his neck.
"The nymph, attendant on Aphrodite!" cried Demetrius, laughing. And then, when Artemisia saw the strange throng and the torches, and heard the din over the villa, she hung down her head in mingled fear and mortification. But Agias whispered something in her ear, that made her lift her face, laughing, and then he in turn caught her up in his arms to hasten down to the landing—for the scene was becoming one of little profit for a maid. Groans and entreaties checked him. Two powerful Phoenician seamen were dragging forward Phaon, half clothed, trembling at every joint. "Mercy! Mercy! Oh! Master Agias, oh! Your excellency, clarissime,[165] despotes![166]" whined the wretched man, now in Latin, now in Greek, "ask them to spare me; don't let them murder me in cold blood!"
"Ai!" cried Demetrius. "What fool have we here? Do you know him, Agias?"
"He is the freedman of Lucius Ahenobarbus. I can vouch for his character, after its way."
"Ō-op!"[167] thundered the chief, "drag him down to the boats! I'll speak with him later!"
And Agias carried his precious burden down to the landing-place, while the seamen followed with their captive.
Once Artemisia safe on her way to the trireme, which was a little off shore, Agias ran back to the villa; the pirates were ransacking it thoroughly. Everything that could be of the slightest value was ruthlessly seized upon, everything else recklessly destroyed. The pirates had not confined their attack to the Lentulan residence alone. Rushing down upon the no less elaborate neighbouring villas, they forced in the gates, overcame what slight opposition the trembling slaves might make, and gave full sway to their passion for plunder and rapine. The noble ladies and fine gentlemen who had dared the political situation and lingered late in the season to enjoy the pleasures of Baiæ, now found themselves roughly dragged away into captivity to enrich the freebooters by their ransoms. From pillage the pirates turned to arson, Demetrius in fact making no effort to control his men. First a fragile wooden summer-house caught the blaze of a torch and flared up; then a villa itself, and another and another. The flames shot higher and higher, great glowing, wavering pyramids of heat, roaring and crackling, flinging a red circle of glowing light in toward the mainland by Cumæ, and shimmering out over the bay toward Prochyta. Overhead was the inky dome of the heavens, and below fire; fire, and men with passions unreined.
Demetrius stood on the terrace of the burning villa of the Lentuli, barely himself out of range of the raging heat. As Agias came near to him, the gilded Medusa head emblazoned on his breastplate glared out; the loose scarlet mantle he wore under his armour was red as if dipped in hot blood; he seemed the personification of Ares, the destroyer, the waster of cities. The pirate was gazing fixedly on the blazing wreck and ruin. His firm lips were set with an expression grave and hard. He took no part in the annihilating frenzy of his men.
"This is terrible destruction!" cried Agias in his ear, for the roar of the flames was deafening, he himself beginning to turn sick at the sight of the ruin.
"It is frightful," replied Demetrius, gloomily; "why did the gods ever drive me to this? My men are but children to exult as they do; as boys love to tear the thatch from the roof of a useless hovel, in sheer wantonness. I cannot restrain them."
At this instant a seaman rushed up in breathless haste.
"Eleleu! Captain, the soldiers are on us. There must have been a cohort in Cumæ."
Whereat the voice of Demetrius rang above the shouts of the plunderers and the crash and roar of the conflagration, like a trumpet:—
"Arms, men! Gather the spoil and back to the ships! Back for your lives!"
Already the cohort of Pompeian troops, that had not yet evacuated Cumæ, was coming up on the double-quick, easily guided by the burning buildings which made the vicinity bright as day. The pirates ran like cats out of the blazing villas, bounded over terraces and walls, and gathered near the landing-place by the Lentulan villa. The soldiers were already on them. For a moment it seemed as though the cohort was about to drive the whole swarm of the marauders over the sea-wall, and make them pay dear for their night's diversion. But the masterly energy of Demetrius turned the scale. With barely a score of men behind him, he charged the nearest century so impetuously that it broke like water before him; and when sheer numbers had swept his little group back, the other pirates had rallied on the very brink of tie sea-wall, and returned to the charge.
Never was battle waged more desperately. The pirates knew that to be driven back meant to fall over a high embankment into water so shallow as to give little safety in a dive; capture implied crucifixion. Their only hope was to hold their own while their boats took them off to the ships in small detachments. The conflagration made the narrow battle-field as bright as day. The soldiers were brave, and for new recruits moderately disciplined. The pirates could hardly bear up under the crushing discharge of darts, and the steady onset of the maniples. Up and down the contest raged, swaying to and fro like the waves of the sea. Again and again the pirates were driven so near to the brink of the seawall that one or two would fall, dashed to instant death on the submerged rocks below. Demetrius was everywhere at once, as it were, precisely when he was most needed, always exposing himself, always aggressive. Even while he himself fought for dear life, Agias admired as never before the intelligently ordered puissance of his cousin.
The boats to and from the landing were pulled with frantic energy. The ships had run in as close as possible, but they could not use their balistæ,[168] for fear of striking down friend as well as foe. As relays of pirates were carried away, the position of the remainder became the more desperate with their lessening numbers. The boats came back for the last relay. Demetrius drew the remnant of his men together, and charged so furiously that the whole cohort gave way, leaving the ground strewn with its own slain. The pirates rushed madly aboard the boats, they sunk them to the gunwales; other fugitives clung to the oars. At perilous risk of upsetting they thrust off, just as the rallied soldiers ran down to the landing-place. Demetrius and Agias were the only ones standing on the embankment. They had been the last to retire, and therefore the boats had filled without them.
A great cry went up from the pirates.
"Save the captain!" and some boats began to back water, loaded as they were; but Demetrius motioned them back with his hand.
"Can you swim, boy!" he shouted to Agias, while both tore off their body-armour. Their shields had already dropped. Agias shook his head doubtfully.
"My arm is hurt," he muttered.
"No matter!" and Demetrius seized his cousin under one armpit, and stepped down from the little landing-platform into the water just below. A single powerful stroke sent the two out of reach of the swing of the sword of the nearest soldier. The front files of the cohort had pressed down on to the landing in a dense mass, loath to let go its prey.
"Let fly, men!" cried Demetrius, as he swam, and javelins spat into the water about him.
It was a cruel thing to do. The three pirate vessels, two large triremes and the yacht, discharged all their enginery. Heavy stones crashed down upon the soldiers, crushing several men together. Huge arrows tore through shield and armour, impaling more than one body. It was impossible to miss working havoc in so close a throng. The troops, impotent to make effective reply, turned in panic and fled toward the upper terraces to get beyond the decimating artillery. The pirates raised a great shout of triumph that shook the smoke-veiled skies. A fresh boat, pulling out from one of the vessels, rescued the captain and Agias; and soon the two cousins were safe on board the trireme Demetrius used as his flagship.
The pirates swarmed on the decks and rigging and cheered the escape of their commander. On shore the burning buildings were still sending up their pillars of flame. The water and sky far out to sea were red, and beyond, blackness. Again the pirates shouted, then at the order of their commander the cables creaked, the anchors rose, hundreds of long oars flashed in the lurid glare, and the three vessels slipped over the dark waves.
Demetrius remained on the poop of his ship; Agias was below in the cabin, bending over Artemisia, who was already smiling in her sleep.
III
When Cornelia awoke, it was with Fabia bending over her at the bedside. The portholes of the cabin were open; the warm, fresh southern wind was pouring in its balmy sweetness. Cornelia pressed her hands to her eyes, then looked forth. The cabin ceiling was low, but studded with rare ornamental bronze work; the furniture glittered with gilding and the smooth sheen of polished ivory; the tapestry of the curtains and on the walls was of the choicest scarlet wool, and Coan silk, semi-transparent and striped with gold. Gold plating shone on the section of the mast enclosed within the cabin. An odour of the rarest Arabian frankincense was wafted from the pastils burning on a curiously wrought tripod of Corinthian brass. The upholsteries and rugs were more splendid than any that Cornelia had seen gracing the palace of Roman patrician.
Thus it came to pass that Fabia repeated over and over again to Cornelia the tale of recent happenings, until the latter's sorely perturbed brain might comprehend. And then, when Cornelia understood it all: how that she was not to go to Greece with Phaon; how that she was under the protection of a man who owed his life to Sextus Drusus, and hated the Ahenobarbi with a perfect hatred; how that Demetrius had sworn to carry her to Alexandria, where, safe out of the way of war and commotion, she might await the hour when Drusus should be free to come for her—when, we repeat, she understood all this, and how it came to pass that the Vestal herself was on the vessel,—then Cornelia strained Fabia to her breast, and laid her head on the elder woman's shoulder, and cried and cried for very relief of soul. Then she arose and let the maids Demetrius had sent to serve her—dark-skinned Hindoos, whose words were few, but whose fingers quick and dexterous —dress her from the very complete wardrobe that the sea prince had placed at her disposal.
Never before had the sunlight shone so fair; never before had the sniff of the sea-breeze been so sweet. The galleys were still in the bay, close by Prochyta, scarce a mile and a half from the nearest mainland. The pirates were landing to procure water from the desolate, unsettled isle. The bay was dancing and sparkling with ten million golden ripples; the sun had risen high enough above the green hills of the coast-land to spread a broad pathway of shimmering fire across the waters. Not a cloud flecked the light-bathed azure. Up from the forward part of the ships sounded the notes of tinkling cithera and the low-breathing double flutes[169] in softest Lydian mood. In and out of the cabin passed bronzed-faced Ethiopian mutes with silver cups of the precious Mareotic white wine of Egypt for the lady, and plates of African pomegranates, Armenian apricots, and strange sweetmeats flavoured with a marvellous powder, an Oriental product worth its weight in gold as a medicine, which later generations were to designate under the name of sugar.
And so Cornelia was refreshed and dressed; and when the maids held the mirror before her and she saw that the gold trinkets were shining in her hair, and the jewels which Demetrius had sent her were sparkling brightly at her throat, and realized that she was very fair to see,—then she laughed, the first real, unforced laugh for many a weary day, whereupon she laughed again and again, and grew the more pleased with her own face when she beheld a smile upon it. Then Fabia kissed her, and told her that no woman was ever more beautiful; and the dark Indian maids drew back, saying nothing, but admiring with their eyes. So Cornelia went up upon the deck, where Demetrius came to meet her. If she had been a Semiramis rewarding a deserving general, she could not have been more queenly. For she thanked him and his lieutenants with a warm gratitude which made every rough seaman feel himself more than repaid, and yet throughout it all bore herself as though the mere privilege on their part of rescuing her ought to be sufficient reward and honour. Then Demetrius knelt down before all his men, and kissed the hem of her robe, and swore that he would devote himself and all that was his to her service, until she and Quintus Drusus should meet, with no foe to come between; so swore all the pirates after their captain, and thus it was Cornelia entered into her life on the ship of the freebooters.
Other work, however, was before Demetrius that day, than casting glances of dutiful admiration at the stately lady that had deigned to accept his hospitality. Out from the various other cabins, less luxurious assuredly than the one in which Cornelia had awakened, the pirates led their several captives to stand before the chief. Demetrius, indeed, had accomplished what he euphemistically described as "a fair night's work." Half a dozen once very fashionable and now very disordered and dejected noble ladies and about as many more sadly bedraggled fine gentlemen were haled before his tribunal for judgment. The pirate prince stood on the raised roof of a cabin, a step higher than the rest of the poop. He was again in his splendid armour, his naked sword was in his hand, at his side was stationed Eurybiades and half a score more stalwart seamen, all swinging their bare cutlasses. Demetrius nevertheless conducted his interrogations with perhaps superfluous demonstrations of courtesy, and a general distribution of polite "domini" "dominæ," "clarissimi," and "illustres." He spoke in perfectly good Latin, with only the slightest foreign accent; and Cornelia, who—unregenerate pagan that she was—was taking thorough delight in the dilemma of persons whom she knew had made her the butt of their scandalous gibes, could only admire the skilful manner in which he brought home to the several captives the necessity of finding a very large sum of money at their bankers' in a very short time, or enduring an indefinite captivity. After more or less of surly threats and resistance on the part of the men, and screaming on the part of the women, the prisoners one and all capitulated, and put their names to the papyri they were commanded to sign; and away went a boat dancing over the waves to Puteoli to cash the money orders, after which the captives would be set ashore at Baiæ.
Last of the wretches brought before Demetrius came Phaon. The freedman had been roughly handled; across his brow a great welt had risen where a pirate had struck him with a rope's end. His arms were pinioned behind his back. He was perfectly pale, and his eyes wandered from one person to another as if vainly seeking some intercessor.
"Euge! Kyrios[170]" cried the pirate chief, "you indeed seem to enjoy our hospitality but ill."
Phaon fell on his knees.
"I am a poor man," he began to whimper. "I have no means of paying a ransom. My patron is not here to protect or rescue me. I have nothing to plunder. Mu! mu! set me free, most noble pirate! Oh! most excellent prince, what have I done, that you should bear a grudge against me?"
"Get up, fellow," snapped Demetrius; "I'm not one of those crocodile-headed Egyptian gods that they grovel before in the Nile country. My cousin Agias here says he knows you. Now answer—are you a Greek?"
"I am an Athenian born."
"Don't you think I can smell your Doric accent by that broad alpha? You are a Sicilian, I'll be bound!"
Phaon made a motion of sorrowful assent.
"Phui!" continued Demetrius, "tell me, Agias, is this the creature that tried to murder Quintus Drusus?"
Agias nodded.
"A fit minister for such a man as I imagine the son of Lucius Domitius to be. Eurybiades, take off that fellow's bands; he is not worth one stroke of the sword."
"The captain will not spare the knave!" remonstrated the sanguinary lieutenant.
"What I have said, I have said," retorted the other; then, when Phaon's arms hung free, "See, on the strength of our fellowship in our both being Greeks, I have set you at large!"
Phaon again sank to his knees to proffer thanks.
"Hold!" cried Demetrius, with a menacing gesture. "Don't waste your gratitude. Greek you pretend to be, more the shame! Such as you it is that have brought Hellas under the heel of the oppressor; such as you have made the word of a Hellene almost valueless in the Roman courts, so that juries have to be warned to consider us all liars; such as you have dragged down into the pit many an honest man; ay, myself too!"
Phaon left off his thanks and began again to supplicate.
"Stop whining, hound!" roared Demetrius; "haven't I said you are free? Free, but on one condition!"
"Anything, anything, my lord," professed the freedman, "money, service—"
"On this condition," and a broad, wicked smile over-spread the face of the pirate, "that you quit this ship instantly!"
"Gladly, gladly, merciful sir!" commenced Phaon again; "where is the boat?"
"Wretch!" shouted the other, "what did I say about a boat? Depart—depart into the sea! Swim ashore, if the load on your legs be not too heavy. Seize him and see that he sinks,"—this last to Eurybiades and the seamen.
Phaon's terror choked his utterance; he turned livid with mortal fright. He pleaded for life; life on the terms most degrading, most painful, most joyless—life, life and that only. He cried out to Cornelia to save him, he confessed his villanies, and vowed repentance a score of times all in one breath. But Cornelia lived in an age when the wisest and best—whatever the philosophers might theorize—thought it no shame to reward evil for evil, not less than good for good. When Demetrius asked her, "Shall I spare this man, lady?" she replied: "As he has made my life bitter for many days, why should I spare him a brief moment's pain? Death ends all woe!"
There was a dull splash over the side, a circle spreading out in the water, wider and wider, until it could be seen no more among the waves.
"There were heavy stones to his feet, Captain," reported Eurybiades, "and the cords will hold."
"It is well," answered Demetrius, very grave....
Later in the day the boat returned from Puteoli, and with it sundry small round-bellied bags, which the pirate prince duly stowed away in his strong chest. The ransomed captives were put on board a small unarmed yacht that had come out to receive them. Demetrius himself handed the ladies over the side, and salaamed to them as the craft shot off from the flagship. Then the pirates again weighed anchor, the great purple[171] square sail of each of the ships was cast to the piping breeze, the triple tiers of silver-plated oars[171] began to rise and fall in unison to the soft notes of the piper. The land grew fainter and more faint, and the three ships sprang away, speeding over the broad breast of the sea.
That night Cornelia and Fabia held each other in their arms for a long time. They were leaving Rome, leaving Italy, their closest friend at hand was only the quondam slave-boy Agias, yet Cornelia, at least, was happy—almost as happy as the girl Artemisia; and when she lay down to sleep, it was to enjoy the first sound slumber, unhaunted by dread of trouble, for nigh unto half a year.
CHAPTER XX
CLEOPATRA
I
A "clear singing zephyr" out of the west sped the ships on their way. Down they fared along the coast, past the isle of Capreæ, then, leaving the Campanian main behind, cut the blue billows of the Tyrrhenian Sea; all that day and night, and more sail and oar swept them on. They flew past the beaches of Magna Græcia, then, betwixt Scylla and Charybdis, and Sicilia and its smoke-beclouded cone of Ætna faded out of view, and the long, dark swells of the Ionian Sea caught them. No feeble merchantman, hugging coasts and headlands, was Demetrius. He pushed his three barques boldly forward toward the watery sky-line; the rising and setting sun by day and the slowly circling stars by night were all-sufficient pilots; and so the ships flew onward, and, late though the season was, no tempest racked them, no swollen billow tossed them.
Cornelia sat for hours on the poop, beneath a crimson awning, watching the foam scudding out from under the swift-moving keel, and feeling the soft, balmy Notos, the kind wind of the south, now and then puff against her face, when the west wind veered away, and so brought up a whiff of the spices and tropic bloom of the great southern continent, over the parching deserts and the treacherous quicksands of the Syrtes and the broad "unharvested sea."
Cornelia had seen the cone of Ætna sinking away in the west, and then she looked westward no more. For eastward and ever eastward fared the ships, and on beyond them on pinions of mind flew Cornelia. To Africa, to the Orient! And she dreamed of the half-fabulous kingdoms of Assyria and Babylonia; of the splendours of Memphis and Nineveh and Susa and Ecbatana; of Eastern kings and Eastern gold, and Eastern pomp and circumstance of war; of Ninus, and Cyrus the Great, and Alexander; of Cheops and Sesostris and Amasis; of the hanging gardens; of the treasures of Sardanapalus; of the labyrinth of Lake Moeris; of a thousand and one things rare and wonderful. Half was she persuaded that in the East the heart might not ache nor the soul grow cold with pain. And all life was fair to Cornelia. She was sure of meeting Drusus soon or late now, if so be the gods—she could not help using the expression despite her atheism—spared him in war. She could wait; she could be very patient. She was still very young. And when she counted her remaining years to threescore, they seemed an eternity. The pall which had rested on her life since her uncle and her lover parted after their stormy interview was lifted; she could smile, could laugh, could breathe in the fresh air, and cry, "How good it all is!"
Demetrius held his men under control with an iron hand. If ever the pirate ship was filled with sights and sounds unseemly for a lady's eyes and ears, there were none of them now. Cornelia was a princess, abjectly waited on by her subjects. Demetrius's attention outran all her least desires. He wearied her with presents of jewellery and costly dresses, though, as he quietly remarked to Agias, the gifts meant no more of sacrifice to him than an obol to a rich spendthrift. He filled her ears with music all day long; he entertained her with inimitable narrations of his own adventurous voyages and battles. And only dimly could Cornelia realize that the gems she wore in her hair, her silken dress, nay, almost everything she touched, had come from earlier owners with scant process of law.
Demetrius was no common rover. He had been a young man of rare culture before misfortune struck him. He knew his Homer and his Plato as well as how to swing a sword. "Yet," as he remarked with half jest, half sigh, "all his philosophy did not make him one whit more an honest man."
And in his crew of Greeks, Orientals, and Spaniards were many more whom calamity, not innate wickedness, so Cornelia discovered, had driven to a life of violence and rapine.
Demetrius, too, gave no little heed to Artemisia. That pretty creature had been basking in the sunshine of Agias's presence ever since coming on shipboard. It was tacitly understood that Cornelia would care for the welfare and education of Pratinas's runaway, until she reached a maturity at which Agias could assert his claims. The young Hellene himself had been not a little anxious lest his cousin cast obstacles in the way of an alliance with a masterless slavegirl; for of late Demetrius had been boasting to his kinsman that their family, before business misfortunes, had been wealthy and honourable among the merchant princes of Alexandria. But the worthy pirate had not an objection to make; on the contrary, he would sit for hours staring at Artemisia, and when Agias demanded if he was about to turn rival, shook his head and replied, rather brusquely:—
"I was only thinking that Daphne might be about her age, and look perhaps like her."
"Then you do not think your little daughter is dead?" asked Agias, sympathetic, yet personally relieved.
"I know nothing, nothing," replied his cousin, a look of ineffable pain passing over his fine features; "she was a mere infant when I was arrested. When I broke loose, I had to flee for my life. When I could set searchers after her, she had vanished. Poor motherless thing; I imagine she is the slave of some gay lady at Antioch or Ephesus or Rome now."
"And you do not know who stole her?" asked Agias.
"Don't tear open old wounds," was the retort. "I know nothing. I think—but it matters little what I think. There was that sly-eyed, smooth-tongued Greek, like that Phaon who met his deserts, who was no stranger to Domitius's blackmailings. I feel that he did it. Never mind his name. If ever I get the snake into my power—" and Demetrius's fingers tightened around the thick, hard cable he was clutching, and crushed the solid hemp into soft, loose strands; then he broke out again, "Never mention this another time, Agias, or I shall go mad, and plunge down, down into the waves, to go to sleep and forget it all!"
Agias was faithful to the injunction; but he observed that Demetrius showed Artemisia the same attention as Cornelia, albeit mingled with a little gracious and unoffending familiarity.
II
After a voyage in which one pleasant day succeeded another, Cornelia awoke one morning to hear the creak of blocks and tackle as the sailors were lowering sail. The full banks of oars were plashing in the waves, and on deck many feet were rushing to and fro, while officers shouted their orders. Coming out of her cabin, the young lady saw that the end of her seafaring was close at hand. Even to one fresh from the azure atmosphere of the Campanian Bay, the sky was marvellously clear. The water was of a soft green tint, that shaded off here and there into dark cerulean. The wind was blowing in cool puffs out of the north. A long, slow swell made the stately triremes rock gracefully. Before them, in clear view, rose the tall tower of the Pharos,—the lighthouse of Alexandria,—and beyond it, on the low-lying mainland, rose in splendid relief against the cloudless sky the glittering piles and fanes of the city of the Ptolemies. It was a magnificent picture,—a "picture" because the colours everywhere were as bright as though laid on freshly by a painter's brush. The stonework of the buildings, painted to gaudy hues, brought out all the details of column, cornice, and pediment. Here Demetrius pointed out the Royal Palace, here the Theatre; here, farther inland, the Museum, where was the great University; in the distance the whole looked like a painting in miniature. Only there was more movement in this picture: a splendid yacht, with the gold and ivory glittering on its prow and poop, was shooting out from the royal dockyards in front of the palace; a ponderous corn-ship was spreading her dirty sails to try to beat out against the adverse breeze, and venture on a voyage to Rome, at a season when the Italian traffic was usually suspended. The harbour and quays were one forest of masts. Boats and small craft were gliding everywhere. Behind the pirate's triremes several large merchantmen were bearing into the harbour under a full press of sail.
"And this, your ladyship," said Demetrius, smiling, "is Egypt. Does the first sight please you?"
"Does it not!" exclaimed Cornelia, drinking in the matchless spectacle. "But you, kind sir, do you not run personal peril by putting into this haven for my sake?"
Demetrius laughed.
"It speaks ill for the law-abiding qualities of my countrymen, lady," said he, "that I have nothing now to fear. I have too many great friends both in the court and in the city to fear arrest or annoyance. Here I may not stay long, for if it were to be noised in Rome that a pirate were harboured habitually at Alexandria, a demand for my arrest would come to the king quickly enough, and he must needs comply. But for a few days, especially while all Rome is in chaos, I am safe; and, come what may, I would be first warned if any one intended to lay hands on me."
Indeed, Demetrius's boast as to his own importance in Alexandria was soon verified. The customs officials were all obsequiousness when they went through the form of levying on the cargo of the ship. The master of the port was soon in Demetrius's own cabin over a crater of excellent wine, and no sooner had the vessels touched the quay than their crews were fraternizing with the hosts of stevedores and flower-girls who swarmed to meet the new arrivals.
A few days later Cornelia and Fabia found themselves received as members of the household of no less a person than Cleomenes, a distant kinsman of Demetrius and Agias, and himself one of the great merchant princes of the Egyptian capital. The Roman ladies found a certain amount of shyness to overcome on their own part and on that of their hosts. Cleomenes himself was a widower, and his ample house was presided over by two dark-skinned, dark-eyed daughters, Berenice and Monime—girls who blended with the handsome Greek features of their father the soft, sensuous charm of his dead Egyptian wife. Bashful indeed had been these maidens in contact with the strangers who came bearing with them the haughty pride of all-conquering Rome. But after a day or two, when Cornelia had cast off the hauteur begotten of diffidence, and Fabia had opened the depths of her pure womanly character, the barriers were thrown down rapidly enough; and Cornelia and Fabia gained, not merely an access to a new world of life and ideas, but two friends that they could regard almost as sisters.
It was a new thing for these Roman ladies to meet a foreigner on terms approaching equality. A non-Roman had been for them a servant, an intelligent underling, nothing more; even Agias and Demetrius they had regarded as friends, very close and agreeable, but whom it was a distinct condescension not to treat with ostentatious superiority. But to sustain this feeling long with Berenice and Monime was impossible. The young Egyptians were every whit as cultured, as intelligent, as themselves, every whit as accustomed to deference from others, and implicitly assumed the right to demand it. The result was that Cornelia found herself thinking less and less about being a Roman, and more and more regarded her gracious hosts as persons in every way equal to herself.
And less and less of a Roman, Cornelia, the Hellene-hater, became. Greek was the only tongue now that sounded in her ear, unless she talked privately with Fabia or was beguiled into trying to learn a little Egyptian—a language Berenice and Monime spoke fluently. The clothes she wore were no longer stola and palla, but chiton and himation. The whole atmosphere about her was foreign, down to the cries on the streets. And Italy was very far away, and the last memories thereof none the most pleasant.
It chanced that one morning Cleomenes, Monime, and Cornelia were driving down the great central street, under the shadow of seemingly endless colonnades.
"A! dearest one," cried Monime, "why must you think of leaving our lovely Alexandria, of going back to cold, cheerless Rome? What good thing does Rome send out but stern men and sharp iron?"
Cornelia shook her head and made answer—
"You Alexandrians are not one nation, but all the world; therefore you think all who are less cosmopolitan poor. See, I count in the crowds not only the dark Egyptians and fair Greeks, but a Persian in his splendid long kaftan, and a very venerable Jew, and a wiry little Arab, and Syrians, and negroes, and, I think, a Hindoo."
"And yourself, my lady, a Roman," concluded Cleomenes. "Truly all the earth has met in our city."
They whirled down the splendid highway that ran straight as an arrow the whole length of the city, lined on either side by a forest of the infinite number of columns of the great stretches of porticos. Handsomely dressed cavalrymen of the palace guard were dashing to and fro over the clean, hard pavement; elegant carriages containing the noble and wealthy were whirling in every direction. At each glance, the eye lit on some pleasing bit of sculpture, some delicate curve of architecture. Statues were everywhere, everywhere colour, everywhere crowds of gayly dressed citizens and foreigners. Cornelia contrasted the symmetrical streets, all broad, swept, and at right angles—the triumph of the wise architectural planning of Dinocrates—with the dirty, unsightly, and crooked lanes of the City of the Seven Hills, and told herself, as she had told herself often in recent days, that Romans had much yet to learn.
They drove on past the Amphitheatre toward the Egyptian quarter of the Rhacotis; and here, at the intersection of the Great Street with the other broad way leading from the "Gate of the Moon" on the harbour to the "Gate of the Sun" on Lake Mareotis, a moving hedge of outriders, cavalrymen, and foot-guards met them.
"The queen coming from the Serapeum," said Cleomenes, drawing rein.
Cornelia saw half-naked Numidian footmen thrusting back the crowd that bustled in the Omphalos—the great square where the two highroads met. Behind them pushed a squadron of light cavalry in silvered armour and splendid purple and scarlet uniforms. Then, in the midst of all, moved a chariot drawn by four horses white as snow, the harness resplendent with gold and jewels; at either side ran fan-bearers, waving great masses of bright ostrich plumes; a gaudy parasol swept over the carriage itself. There were three occupants, whereof two stood: an Egyptian, gaunt and of great height, clad in plain white linen, who was driving, and a handsome, gaudily dressed Greek youth, who was holding the parasol. Cornelia could just catch the profile of a young woman seated between them. The face was not quite regular, but marvellously intelligent and sensitive; the skin not pale, yet far from dark, and perfectly healthy and clear; the eyes restive and piercing. The queen was dressed plainly in Greek fashion; her himation was white, her only ornament a great diamond that was blazing like a star on her breast. Upon the coils of her heavy, dark hair sat a golden circlet faced in front with the likeness of the head of the venomous uræus snake—the emblem of Egyptian royalty. This was all Cornelia could observe in the brief time the queen was in view. Some of the people—Egyptians mostly—cried out to her in their own tongue:—
"Hail to the ever glorious Daughter of Ra!"
But the queen paid them little heed. Once her restless eyes lit on the carriage of Cleomenes, and she made a slight inclination of the head in return to that gentleman's salute, for Cleomenes had standing at court as one of the "friends of the king."[172]
The cortège rolled away toward the palace.
"This Cleopatra is a rather remarkable woman," observed Cornelia, for the sake of saying something.
"Indeed, that is true," replied Cleomenes, as he turned to drive homeward. "She is worthy to have lived in the days of the first Ptolemies, of Ptolemæus Soter and Philadelphus and Euergetes. She is still very young, only twenty, and yet five years ago she was so fascinating that when Antonius, of whom I have heard you speak, came here with Gabinius's expeditions he quite lost his heart to her. She has a marvellous talent for statecraft and intrigue and diplomacy. You know that, nominally at least, she has to share her crown with young Ptolemæus, her younger brother. He is a worthless rascal, but his tutor, the eunuch Pothinus, really wields him. Pothinus, as the custom is, was brought up with him as his playmate, and now Pothinus wants to drive out the queen, and rule Egypt through his power over the king. His ambition is notorious, but the queen has not been able to lay hands on him for treason."
Cleopatra and her fortunes and perils played a slight part in Cornelia's mind, however, that day. To know Alexandria in its sunlight and shadows was indeed to know a miniature world. First of all to notice, besides the heterogeneous nature of the crowds on the streets, was the fact that every person, high as well as low, was engaged in some trade. Very far was the typical Alexandrian from the quiet "leisure" which the average Greek or Latin believed requisite for a refined life—a life in which slaves did all the necessary work, and amassed an income for the master to expend in polite recreations. In Rome, for a free citizen to have been a handicraftsman would have been a disgrace; he could be farmer, banker, soldier,—nothing more. In Alexandria the glass-workers, paper-makers, and linen weavers were those who were proudest and most jealous of their title of "Men of Macedonia."[173] Money, Cornelia soon discovered, was even a greater god here than in Rome. Cleomenes himself was not ashamed to spend a large part of the day inspecting his factories, and did not hesitate to declare that during a period when he and his family had been in great distress, following the failure of the banking house of Agias's father, he had toiled with his own hands to win bread for his daughters.
The conception that any honest labour, except a certain genteel agriculture, might not make a man the less of a gentleman, or a woman the less of a lady, was as new to Cornelia as the idea that some non-Romans could claim equality with herself. Neither proposition did she accept consciously. The prejudice wore quietly away. But other things about the city she gathered quickly enough from the caustic explanations of Cleomenes.
"Here in Alexandria," he asserted on one occasion, "we are always ripe for a riot. Never a chariot race without stone-throwing and throat-cutting after it. An unpopular official is torn in pieces by a mob. If you chance to kill a cat, the Egyptians are after you for your life. The Greeks hate the Jews, and are always ready to plunder their quarter; the Egyptians are on bad terms with both. We talk about being free citizens of the capital of the Ptolemies, and pretend to go to the Gymnasium for discussion, and claim a right to consult with the king; but our precious Senate, and all our tribes and wards, are only fictions. We are as much slaves as the poor creatures down in the royal quarries; only we demand the right to riot and give nicknames. We called the last Ptolemæus, Auletes "the Piper," because in that way we have punished him in all history for the way he oppressed us. Euge! Have we not a wonderful city!"
It was on the very next day that Cleopatra was recalled to Cornelia's mind in a quite marked fashion. It was rather early, and she was upon the roof-garden, on the third story of the house, where there was a commanding view of the city. Berenice was busy reading from a papyrus the Egyptian legend of the "Adventures of Sinuhit," translating into Greek as she read.
Cleomenes broke in upon the reading. His face wore a mysterious smile.
"I have a rather strange piece of news for you, my lady," he said. "A chamberlain of the court has just been here, and brings a royal command."
"I am not accustomed to being commanded," interrupted Cornelia, all her Roman haughtiness rising.
"I do not think you will be found disobedient. The queen, it seems, noticed you in my carriage yesterday, and at once divined, with that wonderfully quick wit of hers, that you must be a Roman lady of rank. She immediately made inquiries, and now sends her chamberlain to ask you and the Lady Fabia, as well as myself, to dine with her at the palace to-night. You may be sure nothing will be lacking to do you honour."
Cornelia meekly acquiesced in this royal mandate. Fabia, however, could not stir from the house. The shock to her finely strung nature when she was taken from Rome had, indeed, produced a physical reaction. She was not seriously ill, but could endure no excitement. So it was with only Cleomenes for an escort that Cornelia mounted into one of the splendid royal chariots sent from the palace about dusk, and drove away surrounded by a cloud of guardsmen sent to do honour to the guests of the queen.
Cornelia herself felt highly strung and slightly nervous. She wished, for the first time since she reached Alexandria, that she could go dressed in the native costume of a Roman lady, She was going to enjoy the hospitality of a princess who was the successor of thirty odd dynasties of Pharaohs; who was worshipped herself as a goddess by millions of Egyptians; who was hailed as "Daughter of the Sun," and with fifty other fulsome titles; a princess, furthermore, who was supposed to dispose of the lives of her subjects as seemed right in her own eyes, without law of man or god to hinder. Cornelia was not afraid, nay rather, anticipatory; only she had never before been so thoroughly conscious that she was Roman down to her finger-tips—Roman, and hence could look upon the faces of princes unabashed.
The people saw the royal chariot, and some shouted salutations to the guests whom the queen delighted to honour. The company swept up under the magnificent archway leading to the palace; above them rose tall Ionic columns of red granite of Syene, building rising above building, labyrinths of pillars, myriads of statues. Torches were blazing from every direction. The palace grounds were as bright as day. The light breeze was sweeping through rare Indian ferns and tropical palms. The air was heavy with the breath of innumerable roses. Huge fountains were tossing up showers of spray, which fell tinkling onto broad basins wherein the cups of the blue and white lotus were floating. It was indeed as if one had been led on to enchanted ground.
Cornelia and her friend dismounted from their chariot, and were led through an endless colonnade, past a second, lower gateway, and then into a hall, not very high or large, but admirable in its proportions, with a whole gallery of choice mythological paintings on its walls. Small heed did Cornelia give to them. For at the end of the hall rose a low dais, whereon sat, in a gilded chair, the same person who had been pointed out to Cornelia the day before as the mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt.
The light was too dim to discover in the distance anything new in the face of the queen. She wore a loose, long gown of some light blue silken stuff; and her belt, shoes, neck, breast, and ears were all glittering with gems. At the foot of the dais was a group of half a dozen showily dressed chamberlains and courtiers, who made a slight motion of greeting when the two guests darkened the doorway. One of these functionaries advanced to Cornelia.
"Your ladyship," he began, in a smooth, colourless voice, "I have the honour to be the Royal Introducing Chamberlain. In approaching the queen, do as I shall direct. First, before advancing to the dais bow slightly; then at the foot of the dais it is proper—"
"Sir," interrupted Cornelia, drawing herself up to her full height, "I am not accustomed to your prostrations and genuflections, and of them my countrymen make sorry work; pray excuse me." And without waiting for reply or expostulation she advanced straight toward the dais. The hall was small, the steps from the door to the queen's chair few; but never did Cornelia fare on more tedious journey. She knew that a half-horrified titter was passing through the group of courtiers She knew that Cleopatra herself had stirred in her seat, as if to rise. But one word sounded in Cornelia's ears, and that word was "Rome." Were not Roman citizens nobles among nobles, and Roman senators peers of kings! And she, daughter of the Cornelii and Claudii, whose ancestors had broken the might of Antiochus the Great and Mithridates—should she not look in the face the heiress of the Lagidæ? Had not one hundred years before Popilius, the Roman commissioner, come unarmed into the presence of Antiochus Epiphanes, while he was advancing to the gates of defenceless Alexandria, drawn a circle in the dust about the king, and bidden him answer, before he stepped over, whether he would court destruction or obey the mandate of the Republic and leave Egypt in peace? And had not the great king obeyed—humbly? Why, then, should not a Roman patrician maiden look down on a mere monarch, who was a pawn in the hands of her kinsfolk and countrymen?
To repeat these things is long. The mind moves faster than the sunlight. Cornelia came to the dais, and there gave the slightest inclination of her head—the greeting of a mistress to slaves—to the group of courtiers. She advanced straight toward the royal chair and stretched forth her hand.
"I am your debtor, O queen, for a kindness that I may not soon, I fear, repay—unless you come to Rome."
She spoke as a superior addressing an inferior who had rendered some slight service. The queen rose from her seat and took the proffered hand without the least hesitation.
"And I will ask for none other reward than that you do honour to my entertainment."
The voice was wonderfully soft, modulated, and ringing; like an instrument of many strings. Every syllable blended into the next in perfect harmony; to hear a few words was like listening unto music.
Cornelia knew later, when she was older and had thought more, that the queen had instantly caught the defiant mood of her guest, and thereupon left nothing unspared to conciliate it. At that moment, however, she attempted no such analysis of motive. She was conscious of only one thing: the luminous personality of Cleopatra. The queen was all that Cornelia had noticed her to be when they met at the Great Square; but she was more than a beautiful woman. In fact, in mere bodily perfection Monime or Berenice might well have stood beside her. The glance of the queen went through and through her guests like arrows of softly burning light. It was impossible to withdraw one's eyes from her; impossible to shake off the spell of an enjoyable magnetism. If she moved her long, shapely fingers, it was speech; if she raised her hand, eloquence. As shade after shade of varying emotion seemed to pass across Cleopatra's face, it was as if one saw the workings of a masterful spirit as in a mirror; and now could cry, "This is one of the Graces," and now "This is one of the Fates," as half-girlish candour and sweetness was followed by a lightning flash from the eyes, disclosing the deep, far-recessed subtleties of the soul within. Cornelia had entered the hall haughty, defiant; a word and a look—she was the most obedient vassal.
Cornelia had seen many a splendid banquet and dinner party in Rome. Even Oriental kings had not a great deal to teach the "masters of the toga" in ostentatious luxury. Perhaps the queen had realized this. The present occasion called, indeed for very little formality, for, besides Cornelia, Cleomenes was the only guest; and when that gentleman inquired politely if his Majesty, the King Ptolemæus, was to honour them with his presence, Cleopatra replied, with an eloquent raising of the eyebrows:—
"The king will be to-night, as he always is, with his tutor—Pothinus."
There was indescribable scorn in the last word.
The doors of the reception hall had been flung back on noiseless pivots by unseen hands. The banqueting room disclosed within was not so much a room as a garden. Flowers, flowers were everywhere, roses, violets, narcissuses, and a score of others breathing forth a heavy fragrance. Overhead, the goldstudded ceiling was converted into a vast arbour of blending flowery tints. The room was large, very large for only three banqueters; on the walls, from out between the potted tropical plants, shone marvellous marble reliefs, one hundred in all; and in betwixt them were matchless paintings. Framing, after a fashion, the pictures, were equally perfect embroideries, portraying in silk and fine linen the stories of Thebes, the kingly house of Argos, and many another myth of fame. The pillars of the room represented palm trees and Bacchic thyrsi; skins of wild beasts were fastened high up to the walls; and everywhere was the sheen of silver and gold, the splendour of scarlet and purple tapestries.
"The decorations of this room," said the queen, as her two guests entered, "are nearly all preserved from the great banqueting pavilion of Ptolemæus Philadelphus, which he erected for the grand festival that ushered in his reign."
Cornelia drew back as her foot crossed the threshold. Her sandals trod on the fair white cup of a blooming lily. The queen laughed as merrily as a little girl at her confusion.
"In Rome, I doubt not," she said, smiling, "there are not flowers enough at this time of year to have them for a carpet. But this is Alexandria. Flowers are never out of bloom."
So Cornelia advanced, but perhaps it grieved her more to tread on the innocent flowers, than any small thing had since she left Baiæ.
And then the banquet, if such it may be termed when there are but three to enjoy it, began. Cleopatra knew well that she could not overwhelm her Roman guest with show of plate and gems, nor did she try. But Cornelia forgot about such things long before they rose. For the queen displayed to her a myriad dainty perfections and refinements that never had endeared themselves to the grosser Italian gourmands. Cleomenes had whispered to his companion, before they reached the palace, "Plato tells of four sorts of flattery; but I can promise you a thousand sorts from Cleopatra if she but cares to win your friendship." And surely the queen did thus desire. For Cornelia was surfeited with strange dishes, and rare sherbets, flowers, and music; surfeited with everything save the words that fell from the lips of Cleopatra.
The more the queen spoke, the more complete became the vassalage of her guest. Cornelia discovered that this woman, who was but little older than she, could speak fluently seven languages, and carried about with her an exceedingly accurate knowledge, not merely of the administration of Egypt, but of the politics of Rome, and the details of the great contest racking the Republic. When Cleopatra asked questions concerning Roman affairs, Cornelia was fain to confess ignorance and be put to shame. And as the evening advanced, Cornelia found herself talking with more and more confidence to this woman that she had never addressed until an hour before. Cleopatra of course knew, as all Alexandria knew, that Cornelia and Fabia were Roman ladies of the highest rank, who had been forced to take refuge abroad until the political crisis was over. But now Cornelia told the queen the true reasons that had led her to be willing to submit to Demetrius's friendly kidnapping; and when, in a burst of frankness,—which in a saner moment Cornelia would have deemed unwise,—she told of her betrothal to Drusus and willingness to wait long for him, if they might only come together in the end, the queen seemed unable to speak with her usual bright vivacity. Presently she said:—
"So you love this young man as none other? You are willing to be all your life his handmaid, his slave?"
"I love him, assuredly," said Cornelia, with a little heat. "And so far as being all my life his slave, I've given that never so much as a thought. Where love is, there slavery cannot be."