Domitia

CHAPTER XVII.
THE SATURNALIA OF 69

Eboracus brushed aside some urchins and girls blocking the door, looking in with eager, twinkling eyes at the strange lady and at the set out of dolls on the table.

There passed whispers and nudges from one to another – but all ceased as the British slave put together his hands as a swimmer and plunged through them.

“Get away you sprats and gudgeons,” said he, good-humoredly.

Then entering, he said to Domitia:

“Lady, your mother has reached home in safety. I chanced to run across Amphibolus, sent out in quest of you, and the good-for-naught had turned sulky, because it is the Saturnalia, when, said he, the mistress should do the slave’s bidding. ‘That can be,’ said he, ‘but at one time in the year, and should not be forgotten.’ And the lanes are clear of rabble. If Paris here will walk on one side of you and I on the other, it will be well. That rascal Amphibolus I bade wait, but not he, said he, ‘Io Saturne!’ ”

“I will attend with joy,” announced the actor.

Domitia rose to leave, she tendered thanks to Glyceria and took two steps towards the entrance, halted, turned back, and taking the thin hand of the sick woman in hers, somewhat shyly said:

“I may come again and see you?”

Before Glyceria could reply, so great was her surprise, Domitia was gone.

The streets were nearly empty, they were mere lanes between huge blocks of windowless buildings, towering into the sky, but from the forum could be heard a hubbub of voices, cries, the clash of arms, and anon a cheer.

Presently – “Stand aside!” said Paris, and there swept down the lane a number of young fellows masked and tricked out in ribbons and scraps of tawdry finery.

“I am the king!” shouted one, “Præfect of the guard, arrest those people. Ha! a woman. She shall be my captive and grace my triumph.”

Eboracus administered a blow with his fist, planted between the eyes of the youth in pasteboard armor who came towards his young mistress. The blow sent him flying backwards against the king and upset him on the pavement.

A roar of laughter from his mates, and one shouted,

“Hey Tarquinius! thou must e’en fare like the rest, Nero, Galba, Otho – and hem! we know not who else – but down thou art with the others.”

“Let us go on,” said Paris, and without further attempt at molestation from the revellers they pursued their way.

On reaching the palace inhabited by Longa Duilia, a fresh difficulty arose. Eboracus knocked, but there was no porter at the door to answer. He knocked again and continued to rattle against the panels, till at length the bolt was withdrawn, and Euphrosyne with timid face, and holding a lamp appeared in the entrance.

“Why have you kept us so long waiting?” asked the Briton.

“Eboracus, I could not help myself. It is the Saturnalia, and the slaves will do no menial work. They are carousing in the triclinium and, though they heard the rap well enough, none would rise and respond. Then, for very shame I came, for I thought it might be my dear mistress.”

As Domitia crossed the atrium, she heard song and laughter and the click of goblets issue from the dining-room. She hurried by and entered her mother’s chamber.

Longa Duilia was in a condition of resentment and irritation.

“You have arrived at last!” said the lady. “I’ll have that British slave’s hide well basted when the Seven Days are over, for disregarding me and considering your safety alone. Body of Bacchus! This time of the Saturnalia is insufferable. Not a servant will do a stroke of work, nor execute a single order. They are all, forsooth, lords and ladies for seven days, and we must wait on them. Well! if it were not an old custom, I’d get up a procession of all the matrons of Rome to entreat the Senate to abolish the usage.”

“Oh, mother dear, how did you escape?”

“My child! it was as bad as that bit of storm we had getting out of the Gulf of Corinth, tossed about in my palanquin I hardly knew whether I were thinking with my head or with my toes. But after a while they got me through. Never, never again will I go gadding after the Gods to their Lectisternia. As the Gods love me! this is a topsy-turvy time indeed. At the Saturnalia no strife is permissible, not a lawsuit, all quarrels are supposed to cease, not even a malefactor may be executed, and there are those precious Immortals with their glass eyes, and extended hands snuffing up the fumes of their dinner, and they allow fighting to go on before them, under their immortal noses, and never interfere! But I don’t wonder. There was Summanus, God of the night thunders – and will you believe it, his own head was struck off by the heavenly bolt. Ye Gods! if ye cannot mind your own heads ye are not to be trusted with ours.”

The lady was in a condition of towering indignation. She was affronted – she, highborn, with a drop of Julian blood in her, somewhere, – she had been tossed about among the heads and over the shoulders of a dirty, garlic-smelling asafœtida chewing rabble – had been exposed to danger from the swords of the Vigiles on one side, of the Palatine guard on the other. And when finally, she reached home ruffled in garments, her hair in disorder, and her heart beating fast, she found the house in disorder, the slaves in possession keeping high holiday, and disregarding her shrilly uttered, imperiously expressed orders.

“I shall go to bed,” said the lady, “I’d lie in bed all these horrible seven days, but that I know no one will bring me my meals. Never mind – when the Saturnalia are over, I shall remember which were insolent and disobliging, and they shall get whippings.”

But in the house, on the morrow the condition of affairs was not quite so bad. The servants were alive to the fact that they had liberty for seven days only, and that their mistress had a faculty of remembering and punishing disobedience; not indeed during the holiday period, nor ostensibly because of faults then committed, but by administering double chastisement for light offences committed later.

Some of the slaves, moreover, made no attempt to use their liberty so as to cause inconvenience to their mistress.

But if some sort of order was established within the palace, none reigned without. There civil war raged, at the same time that the citizens observed the festival, and so long as they kept out of the way of the soldiery, it did not much concern them whether the city force or the palace garrison prevailed. Primus, at the head of the Illyrian legions was rapidly advancing on Rome. News had arrived that Spain and Gaul had declared for Vespasian. Britain had renounced allegiance to Vitellius, only Africa still remained faithful.

Next tidings arrived that the army of Vitellius that was at Narnia had surrendered. Thereupon the gross, aged Emperor dressed in black, surrounded by his servants, and carrying his son, still a child, came howling and sobbing from the Palatine through the Forum, to surrender the insignia of Empire into the hands of the Consul, in the Temple of Concord. But the Consul refused to receive them, and then the German guard, having wind of his intention, became clamorous, and cried out for the head of Flavius Sabinus. Vitellius, unable to resign, and incapable of reigning, wandered from one residence to another, asking advice of all his friends as to what he ought to do, but taking none.

Meanwhile the fighting in the streets of Rome had recommenced. Titus Flavius Sabinus, for security escaped into the Capitol, and took with him his sons and daughter, and his nephew Domitian. There he was formally besieged by the Imperial guard; and Sabinus, doubting his ability to hold out long, sent off a despatch to Primus to bid him hasten to his assistance.

“Madam!” exclaimed Eboracus rushing in, “I pray you come on the roof of the house.”

“What is the matter? Ye Gods! surely Rome is not on fire again!”

“Madam! The household guard are assaulting the Capitol and have indeed set fire to the houses below, I doubt if the Præfect can hold out till Primus arrives.”

Duilia ascended to the flat top of the house. The palace of the family was in the Carinæ, on the slope of the Esquiline hill, hard by the gardens of Nero’s Golden House. Being on high ground it commanded the Forum and the Capitol, and looked over the tops of the vulgar insulæ in the dip of the Suburra.

It was the evening of the second day. Heavy clouds had lowered throughout the hours of daylight and the evening had prematurely closed. There had been desultory fighting all day, but as the night approached a determined set was made by the German guard to capture the Capitol, and the citadel of Rome that adjoined it, connected by only a small neck of hill. They knew that Primus was close at hand, and they were determined not to be caught between a foe before and another behind.

The Capitol is a rocky height rising precipitately above the Forum, and enormous substructures had strengthened it and formed a platform on which rose the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus that stood to Rome almost in the relation that the Temple did to Jerusalem, as the centre of its religious and civil institutions.

It was almost the paladium of the city, the fate of Rome was held to be bound up with its preservation.

And now Domitia and her mother looked on in the gathering darkness at the temple looming out as of gold against the purple black clouds behind, lit with the glare of the flames of the houses below that had been fired by the soldiery.

The roar of conflict came up in waves of sound.

“Really,” said Duilia, “Revolutions are only tolerable when seen from a house-top; that is, to cultivated minds – the common rabble like them.”

Shrill above the roar came the scream of a whistle, that a boy was blowing as he went down the street.

Suddenly the clamor boiled up into a mighty spout or geyser of noise, and the reason became manifest in another moment. The whole sky was lit by a sheet of flame of golden yellow. The conflagration had caught an oil merchant’s stores that were planted against the substructures supporting the temple. Columns, shoots of dazzling light rushed up against the rocks and the walls, recoiled, swept against them again, overleaped them and curled like tongues around the temple.

Instantly every sound ceased. The soldiers sheathed their swords. The citizens held their breath. Nothing for a few minutes was audible, save the mutter of the fire.

“My lady,” said Euphrosyne, coming to the roof, and addressing Longa Duilia, “A priest of Jupiter is below, and desires to speak with you.”

CHAPTER XVIII.
A REFUGEE

“A priest of Jupiter here!” exclaimed Duilia. “When his temple is on fire! Bid him be off – but stay. Who let him in?”

“Lady, the Chaldæan introduced him.”

“He had no right to do so. Let him entertain him. I desire to see the end. Run. The roof is on fire – the eagles will be down – or melt away.”

“Lady! the Magian commissioned me to assure you that he bears an important communication.”

“Say I am engaged.”

A minute later, the Chaldæan himself arrived on the housetop and addressed the mistress.

“I cannot attend to your abracadabra,” said she, in reply to his request to be heard. “Look there. The Capitol is in flames, the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus blazes. I know what he wants – he has come begging. They all beg. I have no money. I am interested in the fire, the Revolution, and all that sort of thing.”

“Lady Longa,” said Elymas, “There are moments that are turning points in every life. A great chance offers. Take it, or put it away forever.”

“You worry me past endurance. What is it? Look! the flames are licking Jupiter in his chariot.”

“If you will step aside I will speak. Not here.”

Duilia with an impatient toss of her head and shrug of her shoulders, gathered up her garment with one hand, stepped to a distant part of the roof, and said, sulkily —

“Well, what is this about?”

“You know that the Præfect of Rome who supped at your house the other day is besieged in the Capitol.”

“Well – this is no news.”

“And that for security, lest they should be put to death by Vitellius or the soldiery, he took his children and his nephew there with him.”

“So I have been told. That does not concern me. Why did he not take also his fat wife? she would have fed the flames.”

“My lady – the Capitol cannot hold out another half hour, and then all within will be butchered.”

“Can I help that? They all do it. This sort of thing happens in revolutions invariably. I cannot alter the course of the world.”

“But, madam, the son of Vespasian, Flavius Domitianus has escaped through the Tabularium, by a little door into the Forum.”

“He might have escaped by turning a somersault over the walls for aught I care.”

“His life is in extreme jeopardy. If discovered he will be assassinated, most assuredly.”

“Well, that is the way these things go.”

“I have brought him hither – disguised as a priest.”

“What!”

The lady became rigid, eyes, mouth and nostrils.

“What!”

“He escaped disguised as a priest of Jupiter. As such, with veiled head he has passed unmolested, even through the ranks of the soldiery and people, inclined to tear him to pieces, for they are all on the side of the reigning prince.”

“Domitian here! What a fool you are, Elymas. I’ll have you tossed off the roof, in punishment. By Hercules! you compromise me. If it be suspected that he is here, I shall have the house ransacked, and all my valuables plundered, and the Gods alone know what may become of me.”

“That is true, lady, and you must run the risk.”

“I will not,” said Duilia, stamping angrily on the concrete of the roof. “Is it not enough to have the house turned upside down with this detestable Saturnalia! Age of Gold indeed! Age of tomfoolery and upside-downedness. If my poor dear man had but done what he ought, there would have been none of these commotions, and I – well – I – I would have put down the Saturnalia.”

“Madam, this is all beside the mark. Domitian, the son of Flavius Vespasian, whom the world has saluted Emperor, and sworn to, is under your roof as a suppliant.”

“How unfortunate!”

“How fortunate!”

“I cannot see that.”

“Then, madam, the clouds of night must have got into your brain. Do you not see that you are running a very slight risk. None suspect that he is in concealment here, as I smuggled him into the house.”

“There are my slaves.”

“They regard him as a priest escaping from the fire and the siege,” said the soothsayer. He continued – “Before morning the Illyrian legions will have arrived in Rome. Do you suppose the German bodyguard can stand against them? What other troops has Vitellius to fall back on? None – he is deserted. His cause is fatally smitten. By to-morrow evening he will be dead, cast down the Gemonian stair. Vespasian will be proclaimed in the Forum. Your risk will be at an end, and you will have obtained the lasting gratitude of the Imperial father, who will do anything you desire, to show his thankfulness to you for having saved the life of his son.”

“There is something in that,” said Duilia.

“And suppose now that Domitian is here, that you bid your slaves eject him, and he falls into the hands of Vitellius, how will you be regarded by the Flavian family? Do you not suppose that you will be the first to suffer the resentment of the Augustus?”

“There is a good deal in that,” said Duilia, to which the Magus said, —

“I have no fear of betrayal from any in the house save Senecio, that owl-like philosopher. He is not like the slaves, he may suspect, and trip me up.”

“My good Elymas,” interrupted Duilia, “do not concern yourself about him. He is not a man to chew nutshells when he can munch kernels.”

“Domitian is in my apartment, will you see him, lady?”

“By all means. I have a notion. Go, fetch Domitia, bring her down there to me.”

Then Longa descended to that portion of the mansion where were situated the rooms given up to the soothsayer; they were on one side of a small court, and the philosopher occupied chambers on the other side. Across the water tank in the midst many an altercation had taken place.

Senecio was not there now. He was probably out taking a philosophic view of the internecine strife, and moralizing over the burning of the Capitol.

With a benignant smile and a tear in her eye, Duilia almost ran to Domitian, her two hands extended. She had just looked round the court to make sure she was unobserved and that there was no one within earshot.

“I am so grateful to the Gods,” she said, with a tremor in her voice, “that they should allow me the honor and happiness of offering you an asylum. Blood is thicker than water. Though I perish for my advocacy of your dear father – I cannot help it. Cousins must be cousinly. It is with us a family peculiarity – we hang together like a swarm of bees.”

The young man cautiously removed his white veil or head-covering, and exposed his face, that was somewhat pale. He had a shy modest appearance, a delicate complexion that flushed and paled at the changes of emotion in his heart. His eyes were a watery gray, large, but he screwed the eyelids together, as though near-sighted. He was fairly well built, but had spindle legs, no calves, and his toes as if cut short.

In manner he was awkward, without ease in his address; owing to the low associates with whom he had consorted, having been kept short of money, and to his lack of acquaintance with the courtesies of the cultured classes.

“I thank you. My life is in danger. I came hither, as my uncle supped here the other day, and I knew something about kinship. I had nowhere else whither to go. I would have been hunted out and murdered had I gone to my uncle – my mother’s brother. They would have sought me there first of all.”

“You shall stay here till all danger is past. I should esteem myself the vilest of women were I to refuse you my protection at such a time as this. Senecio, my philosopher, is out, gadding about – of course. You shall occupy his room, and I shall give strict orders that he be not admitted. I will not have philosophers careering in and out of my house, at all hours, as pleases them. This is not a rabbit warren, as the Gods love me! But here comes my daughter to unite with me in assurance of welcome and protection.”

Domitia had entered, in obedience to the command transmitted by the sorcerer.

There was but one oil lamp on a table in the chamber, and consequently at first she did not discern who was there addressed by her mother. But Duilia stepped aside and allowed the light to flash over the face of Domitian.

The moment the girl saw it, she started back and put her hands to her bosom.

“My dear child,” said Longa Duilia, “you will thank the Lares and Penates, that our cousin has taken refuge with us. The Capitol is in flames, the Imperial guards are storming the walls, there is, I fear, no hope for our dear good friend Flavius Sabinus. Poor man, how he enjoyed himself at supper here the other day! We may hope for the best, but not expect impossibilities. Revolutions and all these sorts of things have their natural exits, the sword, the Tullianum and the Gemonian steps – horrible, but inevitable. Domitian has fled to us, disguised as a priest of Jupiter. O my dear, what a nice thing it is that there is so much religion left among the common people that they respected his cloth. Well, here he is, and we must do what we can for him.”

“Cast him out,” said Domitia hoarsely.

“What, my love?”

“Cast him out – the beast, the crowned beast, the new Nero. The fifth that was and the eighth that will be.”

Duilia raised her eyebrows.

“My dear, I don’t in the least understand enigmas. I was never clever at them, though my parts are not generally accounted bad.”

“Mother, I pray you, I beseech you as you desire my happiness, do not harbor him under your roof. Cast him forth. What ho! Slaves!”

Domitian started and caught the girl by the shoulders.

“You would betray me?”

“I would have you thrust forth into the street.”

“To be murdered – torn to pieces by the blood-thirsty mob?”

“It is to save myself.”

“Thyself! I do thee no harm.”

“Do not attend to her. It is childish, maidenly timidity,” said Duilia, frowning at Domitia and shaking her finger at her. “She knows that, to screen you, we run great risks ourselves. We may be denounced – we may. – As the Gods love me! There is no saying what we may be called on to suffer. But I say, perish all the family rather than offend against hospitality.”

“Mother,” said Domitia. Her face was white as ashes. “Send him forth. If he were not a coward, a mean coward, he would not come here, to the house of two women, and shelter himself behind their skirts. Titus Flavius Domitianus, dost thou call thyself a man?”

He looked furtively at the girl, and muttered something that was unintelligible.

“If thou art a man, go forth, run us not into danger. If thou tarry here – I esteem thee as the basest of men.”

“I praise the Gods!” said Longa Duilia, in towering wrath, “she does not command in this house. That do I; and when I say welcome, there you stay, and she shall not gainsay me.”

“Mother – to welcome him, is to exile, to destroy me.”

“This is rank folly.”

“Mother, eject him!”

“I will not. I prithee, Domitian, when your dear father is proclaimed in Rome, – forget this girl’s folly, and remember only that I sheltered thee.”

“I will remember. I am not one to forget.”

“There is no escape,” sighed Domitia. “Whom the Gods will destroy – they pursue remorselessly. Well, be it so. – Stay then, coward! I am undone.”