Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “I wonder whether I was mad that I protected Sextus!” exclaimed Marcia.

  “He has served us well. If I had let them catch and crucify him as

  Maternus, we would have had no one to keep us informed of all these

  cross-conspiracies. But are you sure he favors Pertinax?”

  “Quite sure. He even risked an interview with Flavia Titiana, to implore her influence with her husband. Sextus would be all for striking now, this instant; he has assured himself that the world is tired of Commodus, and that no faction is strong enough to stand in the way of Pertinax; but he knows how difficult it will be to persuade Pertinax to assert himself. Pertinax will not hear of murdering Caesar; he says: ‘Let us see what happens — if the Fates intend me to be Caesar, let the Fates show how!’”

  “Aye, that is Pertinax!” said Marcia. “Why is it that the honest men are all such delayers! As for me, I will save my Commodus if he will let me. If not, the praetorian guard shall put Pertinax on the throne before any other faction has a chance to move. Otherwise we all die — all of us! Severus — Pescennius Niger — Clodius Albinus — any of the others would include us in a general proscription. Pertinax is friendly. He protects his friends. He is the safest man in all ways. Let Pertinax be acclaimed by all the praetorian guard and the senate would accept him eagerly enough. They would feel sure of his mildness. Pertinax would do no wholesale murdering to wipe out opposition; he would try to pacify opponents by the institution of reforms and decent government.”

  “You must beware you are not forestalled,” Narcissus warned her. “Sextus tells me there is more than one man ready to slay Commodus at the first chance. Severus, Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus keep themselves informed as to what is going on; their messengers are in constant movement. If Commodus should lift a hand against either of those three, that would be the signal for civil war. All three would march on Rome.”

  “Caesar is much more likely to learn of the plotting through his own informers, and to try to terrify the generals by killing their supporters here in Rome,” said Marcia. “What does Sextus intend? To kill Caesar himself?”

  Narcissus nodded.

  “Well, when Sextus thinks that time has come, you kill him! Let that be your task. We must save the life of Commodus as long as possible. When nothing further can be done, we must involve Pertinax so that he won’t dare to back out. It was he, you know, who persuaded me to save Maternus the highwayman’s life; it was he who told me Maternus is really Sextus, son of Maximus. His knowledge of that secret gives me a certain hold on Pertinax! Caesar would have his head off at a word from me. But the best way with Pertinax is to stroke the honest side of him — the charcoal-burner side of him — the peasant side, if that can be done without making him too diffident. He is perfectly capable of offering the throne to some one else at the last minute!”

  A step sounded on the other side of the curtain. “Caesar!” Narcissus whispered. As excuse for being seen in conversation with her he began to show her a charm against all kinds of treachery that he had bought from an Egyptian. She snatched it from him.

  “Caesar!” she exclaimed, bounding toward Commodus and standing in his way. Not even she dared lay a hand on him when he was in that volcanic mood. “As you love me, will you wear this?”

  “For love of you, what have I not done?” he retorted, smiling at her.

  “What now?”

  She advanced another half-step, but no nearer. There was laughter on his lips, but in his eye cold cruelty.

  “My Caesar, wear it! It protects against conspiracy.”

  He showed her a new sword that he had girded on along with the short tunic of a gladiator.

  “Against the bellyache, use Galen’s pills; but this is the right medicine against conspiracy!” he answered. Then he took the little golden charm into his left hand, tossing it on his palm and looked at her, still smiling.

  “Where did you get this bauble?”

  “Not I. One of those magicians who frequent that Forum sold it to

  Narcissus.”

  “Bah!” He flung it through the window. “Who is the magician? Name him! I will have him thrown into the carceres. We’ll see whether the charms he sells so cheap are any good! Or is he a Christian?” he asked, sneering.

  “The Christians, you know, don’t approve of charms,” Marcia answered.

  “By Jupiter, there’s not much that they do approve of!” he retorted. “I begin to weary of your Christians. I begin to think Nero was right, and my father, too! There was a wisdom in treating Christians as vermin! It might not be a bad thing, Marcia, to warn your Christians to procure themselves a charm or two against my weariness of their perpetual efforts to govern me! The Christians, I suppose, have been telling you to keep me out of the arena? Hence this living statuary in the corridor, and all this talk about the dignity of Rome! Tscharr-rrh! There’s more dignity about one gladiator’s death than in all Rome outside the arena! Woman, you forget you are only a woman. I remember that! I am a god! I have the blood of Caesar in my veins. And like the unseen gods, I take my pleasure watching men and women die! I loose my javelins like thunderbolts — like Jupiter himself! Like Hercules—”

  He paused. He noticed Marcia was laughing. Only she, in all the Roman empire, dared to mock him when he boasted. Not even she knew why he let her do it. He began to smile again, the frightful frown that rode over his eyes dispersing, leaving his forehead as smooth as marble.

  “If I should marry you and make you empress,” he said, “how long do you think I should last after that? You are clever enough to rule the fools who squawk and jabber in the senate and the Forum. You are beautiful enough to start another siege of Troy! But remember: You are Caesar’s concubine, not empress! Just remember that, will you! When I find a woman lovelier than you, and wiser, I will give you and your Christians a taste of Nero’s policy. Now — do you love me?”

  “If I did not, could I stand before you and receive these insults?” she retorted, trusting to the inspiration of the moment; for she had no method with him.

  “I would willingly die,” she said, “if you would give the love you have bestowed on me to Rome instead, and use your godlike energy in ruling wisely, rather than in killing men and winning chariot races. One Marcia does not matter much. One Commodus can—”

  “Can love his Marcia!” he interrupted, with a high-pitched laugh. He seized her, nearly crushing out her breath. “A Caius and a Caia we have been! By Jupiter, if not for you and Paulus I would have left Rome long ago to march in Alexander’s wake! I would have carved me a new empire that did not stink so of politicians!”

  He strode into the anteroom where all the gladiators waited and Narcissus had to follow him — well named enough, for he was lithe and muscular and beautiful, but, nonetheless, though taller, not to be compared with Commodus — even as the women, chosen for their good looks and intelligence, who hastened to reappear the moment the emperor’s back was turned, were nothing like so beautiful as Marcia.

  In all the known world there were no two finer specimens of human shapeliness than the tyrant who ruled and the woman whose wits and daring had so long preserved him from his enemies.

  “Come to the arena,” he called back to her. “Come and see how Hercules throws javelins from a chariot at full pelt!”

  But Marcia did not answer, and he forgot her almost before he reached

  the entrance of the private tunnel through which he passed to the arena.

  She had more accurately aimed and nicely balanced work to do than even

  Commodus could do with javelins against a living target.

  VII. MARCIA

  In everything but title and security of tenure Marcia was empress of the world, and she had what empresses most often lack — the common touch. She had been born in slavery. She had ascended step by step to fortune, by her own wits, learning by experience. Each layer of society was known to her — its virtues, prejudices, limitations and peculiar tricks of thought. Bei
ng almost incredibly beautiful, she had learned very early in life that the desired (not always the desirable) is powerful to sway men; the possessed begins to lose its sway; the habit of possession easily succumbs to boredom, and then power ceases. Even Commodus, accordingly, had never owned her in the sense that men own slaves; she had reserved to herself self-mastery, which called for cunning, courage and a certain ruthlessness, albeit tempered by a reckless generosity.

  She saw life skeptically, undeceived by the fawning flattery that Rome served up to her, enjoying it as a cat likes being stroked. They said of her that she slept with one eye open.

  Livius had complained in the Thermae to Pertinax that the wine of influence was going to Marcia’s head, but he merely expressed the opinion of one man, who would have liked to feel himself superior to her and to use her for his own ends. She was not deceived by Livius, or by anybody else. She knew that Livius was keeping watch on her, and how he did it, having shrewdly guessed that a present of eight matched litter- bearers was too extravagant not to mask ulterior designs. She watched him much more artfully than he watched her. Her secret knowledge that he knew her secret was more dangerous to him than anything that he had found out could be dangerous to her.

  The eight matched litter-bearers waited with the gilded litter near a flight of marble steps that descended from the door of Marcia’s apartments in the palace to a sunlit garden with a fountain in the midst. There was a crowd of servants and four Syrian eunuchs, sleek offensive menials in yellow robes; two lictors besides, with fasces and the Roman civic uniform — a scandalous abuse of ancient ceremony — ready to conduct a progress through the city. But they all yawned. Marcia and her usual companion did not come; there was delay — and gossip, naturally.

  A yawning eunuch rearranged the bowknot of his girdle.

  “What does she want with Livius? He usually gets sent for when somebody needs punishing. Who do you suppose has fallen foul of her?”

  “Himself! He sent her messenger back with word he was engaged on palace business. I heard her tell the slave to go again and not return without him! Bacchus! But it wouldn’t worry me if Livius should lose his head! For an aristocrat he has more than his share of undignified curiosity — forever poking his sharp nose into other people’s business. Marcia may have found him out. Let’s hope!”

  At the foot of the marble stairway, in the hall below Marcia’s apartment, Livius stood remonstrating, growing nervous. Marcia, dressed in the dignified robes of a Roman matron, that concealed even her ankles and suggested the demure, self-conscious rectitude of olden times, kept touching his breast with her ivory fan, he flinching from the touch, subduing irritation.

  “If the question is, what I want with you, Livius, the answer is, that I invite you. Order your litter brought.”

  “But Marcia, I am subprefect. I am responsible to—”

  “Did you hear?”

  “But if you will tell where we are going, I might feel justified in neglecting the palace business. I assure you I have important work to do.”

  “There are plenty who can attend to it,” said Marcia. “The most important thing in your life, Livius, is my good-will. You are delaying me.”

  Livius glared at Caia Poppeia, the lady-in-waiting, who was smiling, standing a little behind Marcia. He hoped she would take the hint and withdraw out of earshot, but she had had instructions, and came half a step closer.

  “Will you let me go back to my office and—”

  “No!” answered Marcia.

  He yielded with a nervous gesture, that implored her not to make an indiscretion. A subprefect, in the nature of his calling, had too many enemies to relish repetition in the palace precincts of a threat from Marcia, however baseless it might be. And besides, it might be something serious that almost had escaped her lips. Untrue or true, it would be known all over the palace in an hour; within the day all Rome would know of it. There were two slaves by the front door, two more on the last step of the stairs.

  “I will come, of course,” he said. “I am delighted. I am honored. I am fortunate!”

  She nodded. She sent one of her own slaves to order his private litter brought, while Livius attempted to look comfortable, cudgeling his brains to know what mischief she had found out. It was nothing unusual that his litter should follow hers through the streets of Rome; in fact, it was an honor coveted by all officials of the palace, that fell to his share rather frequently because of his distinguished air of a latter-day man of the world and his intimate knowledge of everybody’s business and ancestry. He was often ordered to go with her at a moment’s notice. But this was the first time she had refused to say where they were going, or why, and there was a hint of malice in her smile that made his blood run cold. He was a connoisseur of malice.

  Marcia leaned on his arm as she went down the steps to her litter. She permitted him to help her in. But then, while her companion was following through the silken curtains, she leaned out at the farther side and whispered to the nearest eunuch. Livius, climbing into his own gilt vehicle and lifted shoulder-high by eight Numidians, became aware that Marcia’s eunuchs had been told to keep an eye on him; two yellow- robed, insufferably impudent inquisitors strode in among his own attendants.

  An escort of twenty praetorian guards and a decurion was waiting at the gate to take its place between the lictors and Marcia’s litter, but that did not in any way increase Livius’ sense of security. The praetorian guard regarded Marcia as the source of its illegal privileges. It looked to her far more than to the emperor for favors, buying them with lawless loyalty to her. She ruined discipline by her support of every plea for increased perquisites. No outraged citizen had any hope of redress so long as Marcia’s ear could be reached (although Commodus got the blame for it). It was the key to Marcia’s system of insurance against unforeseen contingencies. The only regularly drilled and armed troops in the city were as loyal to her, secretly and openly, as Livius himself was to the principle of cynical self-help.

  He began to feel thoroughly frightened, as he told himself that the escort and their decurion would swear to any statement Marcia might make. If she had learned that he was in the habit of receiving secret information from her slave, there were a thousand ways she might take to avenge herself; a very simple way would be to charge him with improper overtures and have him killed by the praetorians — a way that might particularly interest her, since it would presumably increase her reputation for constancy to Commodus.

  The eunuchs watched him. The lictors and praetorians cleared the way, so there were no convenient halts that could enable him to slip unnoticed through the crowd. His own attendants seemed to have divined that there was something ominous about the journey, and he was not the kind of man whose servants are devotedly attached to him. He knew it. He noticed sullenness already in the answers his servant gave him through the litter curtains, when he asked whether the man knew their destination.

  “None knows. All I know is, we must follow Marcia.”

  The slave’s voice was almost patronizing. Livius made up his mind, if he should live the day out, to sell the rascal to some farmer who would teach him with a whip what service meant. But he said nothing. He preferred to spring surprises, only hoping he himself might not be overwhelmed in one.

  By the time they reached Cornificia’s house he was in such a state of nervousness, and so blanched, that he had to summon his servant into the litter to rub cosmetic on his cheeks. He took one of Galen’s famous strychnine pills before he could prevent his limbs from trembling. Even so, when he rolled out of the litter and advanced with his courtliest bow to escort Marcia into the house, she recognized his fear and mocked him:

  “You are bilious? Or has some handsomer Adonis won your Venus from you?

  Is it jealousy?”

  He pretended that the litter-bearers needed whipping for having shaken him. It made him more than ever ill at ease that she should mock him before all the slaves who grouped themselves in Cornificia’s forecourt. Hers
was one of those houses set back from the street, combining an air of seclusion with such elegance as could not possibly escape the notice of the passer-by. The forecourt was adorned with statuary and the gate left wide, affording a glimpse of sunlit greenery and marble that entirely changed the aspect of the narrow street. There were never less than twenty tradesmen at the gate, imploring opportunity to show their wares, which were in baskets and boxes, with slaves squatting beside them. All Rome would know within the hour that Marcia had called on Cornificia, and that Livius, the subprefect, had been mocked by Marcia in public.

  A small crowd gathered to watch the picturesque ceremony of reception — Cornificia’s house steward marshaling his staff, the brightly colored costumes blending in the sunlight with the hues of flowers and the rich, soft sheen of marble in the shadow of tall cypresses. The praetorians had to form a cordon in front of the gate, and the street became choked by the impeded traffic. Rome loved pageantry; it filled its eyes before its belly, which was nine-tenths of the secret of the Caesar’s power.

  Within the house, however, there was almost a stoical calm — a sensation of cloistered chastity produced by the restraint of ornament and the subdued light on gloriously painted frescoes representing evening benediction at a temple altar, a gathering of the Muses, sacrifice before a shrine of Aesculapius and Jason’s voyage to Colchis for the Golden Fleece. The inner court, where Cornificia received her guests, was like a sanctuary dedicated to the decencies, its one extravagance the almost ostentatious restfulness, accentuated by the cooing of white pigeons and the drip and splash of water in the fountain in the midst.