CHAPTER XXV
THE SPEAKING OF EUTYCHUS
The imperial ruin drooped in the gilded lectica, now comatose, now animate. Under the purple robe the long, old, wasted limbs vibrated and the gems, quivering on the gnarled fingers, scintillated incessantly. Now that the rich winds from the gardens of Tusculum breathed on him, he cursed and groped for his mantle; again, when the inimitable sun of the Alban Hills smiled on him, his face purpled with suffusions of heat. Now that his wrinkled blue lids drooped half-way, Euodus, who walked by his side, told himself that he looked on death; but when the sunken eyes unclosed, he had to say that the will therein was immortal.
It was a great, withered, tall, old frame, diseased and fallen into decay. Life seldom of its own accord clings with tenacity to so ancient and utter a ruin. Mind stood in the way of the soul's egress and penned it into its dilapidated shell. It was a habit Cæsar's mind had of blocking people, things and himself. A creature of contradicting impulses, affectionate, sensitive, soldierly, immeasurably capable, with harsh standards of uprightness for others, stoic, enduring, ruggedly simple for the time, he was on the other hand one of the bloodiest and most unnatural monsters that ever disgraced the throne of the Cæsars. Moody, taciturn, perverse, superstitious, unspeakably sensual and cruel, yet withal an admirer of honor, the inalienable friend of the inalienable servant, he was a Roman emperor in every phase of his many-sided nature. It is not recorded that any ever loved Tiberius; neither is it recorded that any ever failed to respect him.
He was finishing his twenty-fifth year as Emperor of the World, but of late, Macro's capacities as prætorian prefect had been enlarged to those of vice-regent, and Cæsar returned from Capri, his retreat from the trying climate of Rome, only on occasions.
Beside him walked eight prætorian guards, picked, not for appearance but for age and integrity. There walked Gallus who had followed Augustus, thirty years before; Attius Paulus, who had one hundred and thirty-nine wounds on his huge hulk; Severus Vespasian, who had been a soldier forty years and had twice refused to be retired; Plautius Asper who had been surnamed Leonidas, because he and a handful had held a German defile in the face of a whole barbarian army—and lived to refuse to be knighted. If Cæsar spoke to one, the answer came in monosyllables and with a touch of the helmet. Flattery never passed their lips, but if one lent his arm to the tall old emperor it was done with a rude tenderness that even the most polished courtier could not have improved. And Tiberius, being blunt and impatient of pretenses, walled himself away from the rest of his following with this bulwark of dependable ruggedness.
After his lectica came another, borne by four Georgian youths. Within lounged the latest of Tiberius' favorite ladies, Euodus' daughter, the Lady Junia.
They had passed the corner of Cicero's villa when a litter approached from an intersecting avenue and was set down.
A woman stepped out. White her hair, her dress the ancient palla and stola of white and purple, her jewels, amethysts. The rheumy emperor saw her imperfectly.
"Stop!" he ordered his bearers.
The woman approached and made obeisance.
"Humph! Antonia," he muttered in some disappointment. But he drew his old frame together and inclined his head respectfully.
"Greeting, sister," he said. "The gods attend thee."
"Thou art good, Augustus. Welcome to Tusculum once more," she replied. She took the hand he extended and raised it to her lips. The old man gazed at her with a wavering eye.
"Come closer. Art so gray?" he asked.
"White, Cæsar."
He took the hand from hers and put back the vitta that covered her hair. There were the sorrows of seventy years, in its absolute whiteness, and the Roman duskiness of skin was brought out very strongly in contrast. But her eyes were still full and bright, even tender, her thin lips lacking nothing of the color of her youth. Age had not laid its withering touch on her stature or even on the fullness of her frame, but the hand, Time's infallible tally, was the worn-out hand of seventy years.
She was the noblest woman of her age, univira,—the widow of one husband, dead in her youth, the mother of statesmen, generals and emperors, a scholar and at one time a diplomat,—in all things, the ancient spirit of the First Republic, solitary, rugged, irreproachable in the vicious age of the Cæsars.
"Eh! White, wholly white," he assented, running his fingers through her locks with a movement that was almost tender. "And I am thine elder. Yet," he drew himself up and defiance hardened his face, "I am not a dead man, Antonia!"
"Nay, who says it, Cæsar? And it is not age that hath blanched me. I was gray at forty—much more gray than thou art now."
"No, no! Not age! Truly a woman's protest. But then, perchance not. Thy husband's death undid thee. How thou didst love him! Save for thine example I should say that Eros himself is dead!"
After a little he muttered to himself:
"Alas! What a name to conjure death! My son Drusus, thy spouse Drusus, and thy son Drusus, the Germanicus. Dead! All! and in their youth. The very name hath a sinister look."
The old man shook his unsteady head and knuckled his sunken cheek. The widow's saddened face wore also some surprise.
"Canst thou speak of thy son Drusus, now?" she asked. "Not in these many years have I heard thee name him."
"No!" he answered shortly. "I speak of dreams; new dreams, which I mean to have the soothsayers interpret."
"Tell me of them, Augustus," she urged.
"There is one, and it comes nightly. It is a Shade from Thanatos, which approacheth. I put the ægis into its dead hands, crown its death-dewed brow, do obeisance before a pale ghost that melts again into the Shades—and after it passes all Rome, and the Empire of the Cæsars."
The widow's eyes showed unutterable sadness, which was unrelieved by tears. The unanointed Cæsars that had passed into the Shades had gathered unto their number no nobler one than the gallant young Germanicus, and the last remnant of the ancient glory of Rome had passed with him. But she put off the encroaching lapse into retrospection.
"One of the departed cometh to ask that his offspring be thine heir," she suggested.
The old emperor nodded eagerly. "It may be, it may be," he assented. "I have been pondering long upon the matter."
A silence fell and the two gazed absently across the shimmering vision of Rome, below them, three leagues to the west. About them were spread the villas of the rich in retreat, the very essence of repose, the birdsong and the murmur of laurels in the breeze; in the distance was the apotheosis of power, but their thoughts overreached the things seen and questioned after things unknown. In their philosophy, life was all. After it was Shadow, an inevitable obliteration in which the just and the unjust were immersed eternally. But no youth, looking forward to the long, eventful days to come, experienced the grave wonder that these expended on the time after things were expected to end. The awe of the unexplored Hereafter—what a waste of universal, earth-old, intuitive awe, if there be no Hereafter!
Tiberius muttered, as if to himself:
"There is another—yet another dream. I cast dice with Three; three grisly hags, and I lose, though the tesseræ were cogged. But let be, let be; the soothsayers shall read me that one!"
He sat up.
"Came you of a purpose to speak with me, Antonia?" he asked.
"I did," she said, "but it seems that the time is not propitious."
"Any hour is propitious for thee, Antonia."
"Thou art a kind man, Cæsar. I came to speak of Agrippa."
"Agrippa!" the emperor exclaimed, a sudden transformation showing in his voice and manner.
The woman in the litter behind stepped out, but paused without advancing. She made no attempt to conceal her attention to the talk between the widow and the emperor.
Antonia studied the face of the old man; it was significant, when, after his lapse into the softened mood of retrospection, he should return to his old manner. She felt her way.
"Agrippa ceases not to be interesting. Thou and I remember him as the faithfulest friend thy son Drusus had; to this day of all who knew Drusus it is only Agrippa who still hath tears for his name."
The emperor's wrinkled mouth was set, his face absolutely without telling expression.
"He hath had years of want and humiliation," she continued. "He hath walked under clouds and suffered from ill report, until he is soulsick of it. Now, the favor of his emperor and the peace of good repute restored to him, are things that he would not willingly let go from him again. The inventions of an enemy have risen against him in Rome; even hath the ill-favored sire of the story been discovered, and Agrippa, conscious of his integrity toward thee, is restive. He wants to be examined; his innocence proven and thy good will toward him firmly established."
"Well, well!" Tiberius said.
"I shall await your happier mood," she said, gathering her robes about her.
"Any mood is happy enough for the Jew," was the retort.
Antonia unmistakably eyed the old man.
"Say on, good Antonia," he urged uncomfortably. "I have not forsworn justice."
"Agrippa asks nothing more. His charioteer robbed him, and when he was captured and in danger of punishment, he claimed that he had information against Agrippa which concerns thy welfare. It is simply a device to put off punishment. He hath appealed to thee and thou hast not yet heard him. The Herod is eager that the matter be settled and begs that the slave be heard at once."
"Eh! what a fanfare of probity!" the emperor mumbled. "Leave it to a Jew to flourish his righteousness. If he is innocent, he can wait; if he is guilty, we shall overtake him soon enough. I owe him a sentence of uncertainty for his slights to my grandson, the little Tiberius."
"And thou hast but this moment said that thou hadst not forsworn justice!" Antonia exclaimed.
"Jupiter, but thou art provoking!" he fumed. "Hither, Euodus!"
Junia made a slight movement as if she meant to step between her father and the emperor, but was suddenly reminded of her part. She stopped again.
"How my sentimental heart cries out against my obligation to Flaccus!" she said to herself. "Here must I stand idly by, while this new Penelope to a dead Ulysses works the Herod's ruin!"
Euodus bowed beside Cæsar.
"Bring me the Jew's slave that hath a charge for me to hear. Bring him hither, and haste!"
The old man turned to Antonia.
"Go tell thy valiant Herod that he shall have justice. Justice! Say that. It may not please him so much to have that message."
The gilded lectica moved on. The widow went back to her litter and was borne away. Junia remounted her chair and followed the emperor.
"O lady," she said, looking after Antonia's litter, "it may be very superior to live aloof from the world, and ignorant of its intrigues, but it is fatal for thy friends, I observe."
At the brink of a precipitous descent into the valley west of Tusculum, Euodus returned with Eutychus, whom Piso, at Agrippa's defiant instigation, had been forced to send to Tusculum to be available in event of Cæsar's summons.
Junia looked at Eutychus, livid with fear in the presence of the unspeakable might of the emperor, and held debate with herself. She had not agreed that Agrippa should be other than alienated from his wife. She was human enough not to wish the death of any man to whom she was indifferent, and for a moment she seemed about to alight from her chair. Even Flaccus' power over her for the time seemed to lose its effect, for a picture of Marsyas' suffering was a more distinct image. But one of the causes of Marsyas' concern, nay, the chief cause—the protection of Lydia to be achieved by the Herod's success—occurred to her in an evil moment. She turned her face away from the colloquy between Cæsar and the charioteer and studied the summer-green Alban Hills that shouldered the sky behind her.
Eutychus collapsed to his knees at sight of the emperor.
"Speak, slave," Euodus ordered.
"O Cæsar," the charioteer panted when his voice would obey him, "once I drove the Herod and Caligula, the Roman prince, to the Hippodrome in this place and they talked of the succession. And Herod said that he wished that thou wast dead and Caligula emperor in thy stead."
The emperor's eyes glittered.
"What else?" Euodus demanded.
"Somewhat about the young Prince Tiberius which I did not hear," Eutychus trembled.
"And what said Caligula to that?"
"That the Herod had his own making and not Caligula's to achieve!"
"A Roman's answer," Junia said to herself.
"Is there nothing more?" the questioner insisted.
"Nothing, lord!"
Euodus bowed to the emperor and waited.
"Give him ten stripes and turn him loose," Tiberius said. Two of the prætorians led Eutychus away.
"Eheu!" Junia sighed. "I could have stared the knave between the eyes and made him discredit himself in a breath! Ai! Owl-faced Lydia! thou art a destroyed peril, but at what a price!"
The bearers stood patiently under the glow of the morning sun, waiting their royal burden's humor to go on. But Tiberius shrank into the relaxation of thought. He had outlived every plot to assassinate him; he held in his hands consummate might; he was surely approaching the Shades; but the example of his infallible fortune, the fear of his merciless hand and the fact that he would not stand long in the way of ambitions, had not quieted the fatal tongue which bespoke him evil! He was sick of blood and torture, tale-bearing and intrigue, because he was surfeited with it all. But here, now, was this precarious Herod, barely escaping disaster which had pursued him for twenty years, wishing brutally and incautiously that he might die! Tiberius was at a loss to know what to do with the man. The thought wearied him. He wished now that he had ordered a hundred stripes for Eutychus instead of ten. What an officious creature Antonia had become!
Euodus folded his arms and waited; the patricians, approaching in chairs of their own, alighted, bowed, passed out of the path and went around, remounted their chairs and disappeared. The birds in the trees about, hushed by the talk below them, twittered and flew again. Euodus, casting a sidelong glance at the emperor, nodded at the nearest bearer.
"To the palace," he said.
The slaves turned back up the slanting street and the motion of the lectica aroused Tiberius.
"Whither?" he demanded irritably.
"To the palace, Cæsar," Euodus answered.
"Did I command thee? To the Hippodrome, slaves!"
The bearers turned once more and began the ticklish descent of the paved roadway to the valley below, where the Circus of Tusculum was built.
The huge elliptical structure stood out in the plain, alone and solid except for the low, heavy arch of the vomitoria which broke the round of masonry. The trees about it were dwarfed in contrast, the columns shrunken, the viæ, approaching it from all directions straight as arrows fly, curbed and paved with stone, were as mere taut ribbons. But in the great slope of the Campagna, under the immense and sparkling blue of the Italian sky, it was only a detail in rock.
Rome had long since outgrown her walls and ceased to contemplate them except as landmarks and conventionalities, useless but as significant as Cæsar's paludamentum. Inns and mile-stones along the viæ proved them once to have been things distinctly suburban, but the city crying for room had passed the walls and built its own characteristics—temples, tombs, villas, circuses, fora and arches as far as Tusculum along the roads.
Lovelier beyond comparison than Rome's loveliest spots, it was small wonder that to fill their Augustan lungs with the freshness of the Campagna, the idle were borne out of the contained airs of the city, which were of such seasonal peculiarities that temples in propitiation of Mephitis and the goddess Febris had been erected.
So daily groups of patricians collected at the Hippodrome of Tusculum, with laughter and badinage, the flashing of jewels and the glittering of cars, the flutter of lustrous silks and the tossing of feathers, to spend the bright hours of the day watching the races that proceeded in the arena below.
The races had not begun, the crowds had not assembled. The gilded lectica was borne through the tunnel-like entrance up the stairs, not to the amphitheater but to the arena. Slaves with blanketed horses and clusters of betting patricians were here and there over the sanded ellipse within. The bustle of preparation slackened at the approach of the august visitor.
The eyes of the emperor opened and closed dully. Nothing was here to interest a man worn out with seventy years of change and excitement. Nothing new could have aroused him, for his attention rebelled against the call.
Presently, during one of the intervals that his eyes were open, he saw, within touch of his hand, Agrippa and Caligula side by side, talking to a gladiator. The emperor scowled and looked away. The bearers plodded on, rounded the upper end of the ellipse and, passing down the side, neared the mouth of the cunicula.
Agrippa and Caligula had moved from their position and were there, with a notary taking down the terms of a wager.
Apart from them stood a small but important man, frowning over a waxen tablet which a slave had cringingly handed him.
Tiberius looked at him, then at Agrippa. His brows lowered more, this time with irritation. It seemed that action had been formulated by circumstance and that the emperor was not to avoid a tiresome prosecution.
He put out his hand as the bearers bore him by and it touched the Roman on the shoulder. The man turned on his heel, but seeing who was near bowed profoundly. If he meant to speak to the emperor he was not given opportunity.
"Bind that man, Macro," Cæsar said, nodding at Agrippa.
The lectica moved on. As it passed up the opposite side Macro crossed to it and, puzzled and disturbed, bowed again.
"Cæsar's pardon, but whom am I to bind?" he questioned.
"That man," Tiberius replied irritably, pointing to the Herod.
"Agrippa!" the astonished prefect exclaimed.
"I have said."
The lectica went on, up and around the curve of the ellipse, and back again to the cunicula. The few within the walls of the Hippodrome had gathered there in an interested and excited group. In the center stood Agrippa with manacles on his wrists and ankles. The charm and sparkle in his atmosphere were gone; even as Tiberius looked, he saw the cold, evil, vengeful countenance of the Asmonean Slave, the Terror of the Orient, Herod the Great, appear, like a face putting off a mask, behind the graceful features of his grandson. Tiberius was grimly satisfied; he felt the first interest in the arrest; he was always by choice a preferrer of noble game.
On either side of the prisoner stood a Roman soldier; aloof and passive was Macro, but the earth had apparently opened and swallowed Caligula.
As the lectica approached, the crowd gave way and his captors permitted Agrippa to come nearer the emperor.
"At Cæsar's command, I am arrested," he said evenly. "Will Cæsar grant me the prisoner's privilege and tell me why?"
"Thy charioteer hath spoken, Agrippa," was the response. "The slave swears that on such and such a day he drove thee and Caligula to this place. Instead of horses you talked of kings, instead of bets, the succession. And thou madest moan that I was not dead so that Caligula could reign in my place!"
The jaws of many round about relaxed in horror. Agrippa's muscles made an involuntary start, but his face retained its calm. But the emperor caught the start.
"Forgot that unctuous bit of tittle-tattle when thou didst make Antonia bearer of thy boasts, eh?" he piped.
"My words have been distorted," Agrippa spoke, though he seemed to hate himself for offering a defense.
"Ah-r-r! Wilt thou snivel and deny?" Tiberius snarled.
The prince's manacled hands clenched and a glimmer of hate showed in his eyes. Cæsar nodded; that was better.
The prince's manacled hands clenched
"Agrippa, the king-maker!" he went on, "late mendicant from Judea; heir presumptive to the ax! Eh? Take him away! Macro, come thou to the palace to-night, and I'll deliver sentence!"
The gilded lectica moved on.
Twenty minutes later, Marsyas, white to the lips, his eyes enlarged and dangerous, sprang from a clump of myrtle by the roadside, after the litter had passed up toward Tusculum and, thrusting a hand into Junia's chair, seized her arm.
"See that Tiberius forgets his audience with Macro to-night," he said to her. "See that he yearns after Capri, and returns to-morrow—or thou bringest upon me the pain of killing."
Terrified for the first time in her life, Junia shrank under the crushing grip.
"Him or me!" she told herself. "I promise!" she whispered to Marsyas. "But acquit me of blame. What could I do?"
"I have shown thee, now!" he said intensely, and was gone.