II
Drusus ran to Cornelia and caught her in his arms; and she—neither fainted nor turned pale, but gave a little laugh, and cried softly:—
"I always knew you were coming!"
What more followed Agias did not know; his little affair with Artemisia had taught him that his Hellenic inquisitiveness sometimes would do more harm than good.
Very different from the good-humoured, careless, half-boyish student youth who had driven down the Præneste road two years before, was the soldierly figure that Cornelia pressed to her heart. The campaigning life had left its mark upon Drusus. Half of a little finger the stroke of a Spanish sword had cleft away at Ilerda; across his forehead was the broad scar left by the fight at Pharsalus, from a blow that he had never felt in the heat of the battle. During the forced marchings and voyages no razor had touched his cheeks, and he was thickly bearded. But what cared Cornelia? Had not her ideal, her idol, gone forth into the great world and stood its storm and stress, and fought in its battles, and won due glory? Was he not alive, and safe, and in health of mind and body after ten thousand had fallen around him? Were not the clouds sped away, the lightnings ceased? And she? She was happy.
So Drusus told her of all that had befallen him since the day he escaped out of Lucius Ahenobarbus's hands at Baiæ. And Cornelia told of her imprisonment at the villa, and how Demetrius had saved her, and how it came to pass that she was here at the Egyptian court. In turn Drusus related how Cæsar had pursued Pompeius into Asia, and then, hearing that the Magnus had fled to Egypt, placed two legions on shipboard and sailed straight for Alexandria.
"And when he landed," continued the young officer, "the magistrates of the city came to Cæsar, and gave him first Pompeius's seal-ring of a lion holding a sword in his paw, and then another black-faced and black-hearted Egyptian, without noticing the distress the Imperator was in, came up and uncovered something he had wrapped in a mantle. I was beside the general when the bundle was unwrapped. I am sickened when I speak of it. It was the head of Pompeius Magnus. The fools thought to give Cæsar a great delight."
"And what did the Imperator do or say?" asked Cornelia.
"He shrank back from the horror as though the Egyptian had been a murderer, as indeed all of his race are. Cæsar said nothing. Yet all saw how great was his grief and anger. Soon or late he will requite the men who slew thus foully the husband of his daughter Julia."
"You must take me away from them," said Cornelia, shuddering; "I am afraid every hour."
"And I, till you are safe among our troops at Alexandria," replied Drusus. "I doubt if they would have let me see you, but for Agias. He met us on the road from Alexandria and told me about you. I had received a special despatch from Cæsar to bear with all haste to the king. So across the Delta I started, hardly waiting for the troops to disembark, for there was need for speed. Agias I took back with me, and my first demand when I came here was to see the king and deliver my letter, which was easily done an hour ago; and my next to see you. Whereat that nasty sheep Pothinus declared that you had been sent some days before up the river on a trip to the Memphis palace to see the pyramids. But Agias was close at hand, and I gave the eunuch the lie without difficulty. The rascal blandly said, 'that he had not seen you of late; had only spoken by hearsay about you, and he might have been misinformed;' and so—What do I look like?"
"You look like Quintus Livius Drusus, the Roman soldier," said Cornelia, "and I would not have you otherwise than what you are."
"Eho!" replied Drusus, passing his hand over her hair. "Do you want me to tell you something?"
"What is it?" said Cornelia, pressing closer.
"I can never write a cosmology. I shall never be able to evolve a new system of ethics. I cannot improve on Plato's ideal state. I know I am a very ignorant man, with only a few ideas worth uttering, with a hand that is very heavy, with a mind that works to little purpose save when it deals with politics and war. In short"—and Drusus's voice grew really pathetic—"all my learning carries me no farther than did the wisdom of Socrates, 'I know that I know nothing;' and I have no time to spend in advancing beyond that stage."
"But Socrates," said Cornelia, laughing, "was the wisest man in Greece, and for that very reason."
"Well," said Drusus, ignoring the compliment, as a certain type of men will when the mood is on them, "what do you wish me to make of myself?"
"I wish you to make nothing different," was her reply, "for you are precisely what I have always wanted you to be. When you have read as much as I have," this with an air of utter weariness, "you will realize the futility of philosophic study."
"Eho!" remarked Drusus again. "So you would have me feel that I am turning my back on nothing very great, after all?"
"And so I mean."
"Seriously?"
"I am serious, Quintus." And indeed Cornelia was. "I can read Aristotle and Plato, and Zeno and Cleanthes, and Pyrrho, and a score of others. I can spin out of my own brain a hundred theories of the universe as good as theirs, but my heart will not be the happier, if things outside make me sad. I am sick of the learning that is no learning, that answers our questions by other questions that are more riddling."
"Ah, scoffer at the wise," laughed Drusus, "what do you wish, then?" He spoke in Greek.
"Speak in Latin, in Latin, Quintus," was her retort. "I am weary of this fine, sweet language that tinkles so delicately, every word of which hides a hundred meanings, every sentence attuned like the notes for a harp. Let us have our own language, blunt and to the point; the language, not of men who wonder what they ought to do, but who do. We are Romans, not Greeks. We have to rule the world, not growl as to how Jupiter made it. When you came back from Athens I said, 'I love Quintus Drusus, but I would love him more if he were less a Hellene.' And, now I see you wholly Roman, I love you wholly. And for myself, I wish neither to be a Sappho, nor an Aspasia, nor a Semiramis, but Cornelia the Roman matron, who obeys her husband, Quintus Drusus, who cares for his house, and whom, in turn, her household fears and obeys."
"O tempora! O mores!" cried the young soldier, in delight. "When had ever a woman such ambition in these degenerate days? Eu! Then I will burn my books, if you can get no profit out of them."
"I do not think books are bad," said Cornelia, still soberly, "but I know that they can never make me happy."
"What can?" demanded her tormenter.
"You!"
So the hours of the afternoon ran on, and the lovers gave them little heed. But they were not too selfish to refuse to Fabia's sharing in their joy; and Drusus knew that he was dear no less, though differently, in the eyes of his aunt than of his betrothed. And there were duties to perform that not even the long-deferred delights of the afternoon could postpone. Chief of these were the arrangements for the immediate departure of the Roman ladies for Alexandria. Agias, who was called into the council, was invaluable in information and suggestion. He said that Pothinus had acted at Pratinas's advice, when he took Fabia and Cornelia to the palace. The eunuch had expected to use them half as hostages, half as captives to be put to ransom. If Cæsar had delayed a few days, Pothinus would not have lied when he made excuse that the ladies had been sent up the river. But now Agias believed that the regent was afraid, having overreached himself, and it was best to make a prompt demand for conveyance to Alexandria. This, indeed, proved advantageous policy. The eunuch made difficulties and suggested obstacles, but Drusus made his native Italian haughtiness stand him in good stead. It would largely depend, he said insinuatingly, on the way in which his demand was complied with, what sort of a report he made to Cæsar touching the execution of Lucius Lentulus and Ahenobarbus. During his interview with Pothinus, the Roman came face to face with Pratinas. No words were exchanged, but Drusus noticed that the elegant Hellene flushed, and then turned pale, when he fastened upon him a gaze steady and half menacing. Pothinus ended by yielding everything—the use of the royal chariots and horses, the use of the Nile boats needed for swift transit across the Delta, and orders on the local garrisons and governors to provide entertainment and assistance.
As a result Cornelia speedily found herself again journeying, not this time in a slow barge following the main branches of the Nile, but by more rapid, if less luxurious, conveyance, now by land, now by water, hurrying westward. They passed through Sethroë and Tanis, Mendes and Sebennytus, Xaïs and Saïs, where were the tomb of Osiris and the great Egyptian university in this the capital of the mighty Pharaohs who had wrested the nation from the clutches of Assyria. Then they fared up the Nile to the old Milesian trading factory of Naucratis,—now dropping into decline beside the thriving Alexandria,—and then by boat they pressed on to the capital itself. Never more delightful journey for Cornelia or for Drusus; they saw the strange land through one another's eyes; they expressed their own thoughts through one another's lips; they were happy together, as if children at play; and Fabia was their never exacting, ever beneficent, guardian goddess.
Drusus and Cornelia were neither of them the same young persons who had met in the gardens of the villa of the Lentuli two short years before. They saw life with a soberer gaze; they had both the wisdom that experience teaches. Yet for the time not a cloud was drifting across their sky. Their passions and hates had been too fierce, too pagan, to feel the death of even Cornelia's uncle very keenly. Lucius Ahenobarbus was dead—they had no more thought for him than for a dead viper. Lucius Domitius was dead. Gabinius and Dumnorix were dead. Pompeius, the tool of guiltier men than himself, was dead. Pratinas alone of all those who had crossed their path remained; but the wily Greek was a mere creature of self-interest—what had he to gain by pressing his animosity, if he had any, against them? Cæsar was triumphant. His enemies were barely lifting their heads in Africa. Doubtless there was stern work awaiting the Imperator there, but what of it? Was he not invincible? Was he not about to commence a new order of things in the world, to tear down the old and decaying, to raise up a steadfast fabric? Therefore the little party took its pleasure, and enjoyed every ancient temple of the Amenhoteps, Thothmeses, and Ramesides that they hurriedly visited; won the favour of the wrinkled old priests by their plentiful votives of bright philippi; heard a hundred time-honoured tales that they knew not whether to believe or laugh at; speculated among themselves as to the sources of the Nile, the cause of the vocal Memnon, and fifty more darkened wonders, and resolved to solve every mystery during a second and more prolonged visit.
So they came to Alexandria, but on the way called at the Nile villa where was Artemisia, and, to the great satisfaction of that young lady and of Agias, carried her along with them to the house of Cleomenes, where that affable host and Berenice and Monime received them with open arms.
Their pleasure at this reunion, however, began to abate when they realized the disturbed state of the city.
"I can't say I like the situation," admitted Cleomenes, as soon as he had been introduced to Drusus, and the first greetings were over; "you know when Cæsar landed he took his consular insignia with him, and the mob made this mean that he was intending to overthrow the government and make Egypt a Roman province. If you had not left for Pelusium so hastily, you would have been present at a very serious riot, that was with great difficulty put down. The soldiers of the royal garrison are in an ugly mood, and so are the people. I suspect the king, or rather Pothinus, is doing nothing to quiet them. There have been slight riots for several days past, and a good many Roman soldiers who have straggled away from the palace into the lower quarters of the city have been murdered."
"I am glad," replied Drusus, "that I can leave Cornelia and my aunt under your protection, for my duty may keep me continuously with the Imperator."
The young officer at once hastened to the palace and reported for service. Cæsar questioned him as to the situation at Pelusium, and Drusus described the unpromising attitude of Pothinus, and also mentioned how he had found Cornelia and his aunt.
The general, engrossed as he was with his business of state and threatening war, put all his duties aside and at once went to the house of Cleomenes. It was the first time Cornelia had ever met the man whose career had exerted such an influence upon her own life. She had at first known of him only through the filthy, slanderous verses of such oligarchs as Catullus and Calvus; then through her lover she had come to look upon Cæsar as an incarnation as it were of omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence—the man for whom everything was worth sacrificing, from whom every noble thing was to be expected.
She met the conquerer of Ariovistus, Vercingetorix, and Pompeius like the frank-hearted, patrician maiden that she was, without shyness, without servility.
"My father died in your army," she said on meeting; "my affianced husband has taught me to admire you, as he himself does. Let us be friends!"
And Cæsar bowed as became the polished gentleman, who had been the centre of the most brilliant salons of Rome, and took the hand she offered, and replied:—
"Ah! Lady Cornelia, we have been friends long, though never we met before! But I am doubly the friend of whosoever is the friend of Quintus Livius Drusus."
Whereupon Cornelia was more completely the vassal of the Imperator than ever, and words flew fast between them. In short, just as in the case with Cleopatra, she opened her heart before she knew that she had said anything, and told of all her life, with its shadows and brightness; and Cæsar listened and sympathized as might a father; and Drusus perfectly realized, if Cornelia could not—how many-sided was the man who could thus turn from weighing the fate of empires to entering unfeignedly into a sharing of the hopes and fears of a very young, and still quite unsophisticated, woman.
When the Imperator departed Drusus accompanied him to the palace. Neither of the two, general nor subaltern, spoke for a long while; at last Cæsar remarked:—
"Do you know what is uppermost in my mind, after meeting women like Fabia or Cornelia?"
Drusus shook his head.
"I believe that there are gods, who bring such creatures into the world. They are not chance accretions of atoms." And then Cæsar added, half dreamily: "You ought to be a very happy man. I was once—it was many years ago. Her name was Cornelia also."
Serious and more serious, grew the situation at Alexandria. King Ptolemæus and Pothinus came to the city from Pelusium. Cæsar had announced that he intended to examine the title of the young monarch to the undivided crown, and make him show cause why he had expelled Cleopatra. This the will of Ptolemæus Auletes had enjoined the Roman government to do; for in it he had commissioned his allies to see that his oldest children shared the inheritance equally.
But Pothinus came to Alexandria, and trouble came with him. He threw every possible obstacle in Cæsar's way when the latter tried to collect a heavy loan due the Romans by the late king. The etesian winds made it impossible to bring up reënforcements, and Cæsar's force was very small. Pothinus grew more insolent each day. For the first time, Drusus observed that his general was nervous, and suspicious lest he be assassinated. Finally the Imperator determined to force a crisis. To leave Egypt without humbling Pothinus meant a great lowering of prestige. He sent off a private message to Palestine that Cleopatra should come to Alexandria.
Cleopatra came, not in royal procession, for she knew too well the finesse of the regent's underlings; but entered the harbour in disguise in a small boat; and Apollodorus, her Sicilian confidant, carried her into Cæsar's presence wrapped in a bale of bedding which he had slung across his back.
The queen's suit was won. Cleopatra and the Imperator met, and the two strong personalities recognized each other's affinity instantly. Her coming was as a thunder-clap to Pothinus and his puppet Ptolemæus. They could only cringe and acquiesce when Cæsar ordered them to be reconciled with the queen, and seal her restoration by a splendid court banquet.
The palace servants made ready for the feast. The rich and noble of Alexandria were invited. The stores of gold and silver vessels treasured in the vaults of the Lagidæ were brought forth. The arches and columns of the palace were festooned with flowers. The best pipers and harpers of the great city were summoned to delight with their music. Precious wine of Tanis was ready to flow like water.
Drusus saw the preparations with a glad heart. Cornelia would be present in all her radiancy; and who there would be more radiant than she?
CHAPTER XXIV
BATTLING FOR LIFE
And then it was,—with the chariots bearing the guests almost driving in at the gates of the palace,—that Cerrinius, Cæsar's barber, came before his master with an alarming tale. The worthy man declared that he had lighted on nothing less than a plot to murder the Romans, one and all, by admitting Achillas's soldiery to the palace enclosure, while all the banqueters were helpless with drugged wine. Pratinas, who had been supposed to be at Pelusium, Cerrinius had caught in retired conference with Pothinus, planning the arrangement of the feast. Achillas's mercenary army was advancing by stealthy marches to enter the city in the course of the evening. The mob had been aroused by agitators, until it was in a mood to rise en masse against the Romans, and join in destroying them. Such, in short, was the barber's story.
There was no time to delay. Cæsar was a stranger in a strange and probably hostile land, and to fail to take warning were suicide. He sent for Pothinus, and demanded the whereabouts of Achillas's army. The regent stammered that it was at Pelusium. Cæsar followed up the charge by inquiring about Pratinas. Pothinus swore that he was at Pelusium also. But Cæsar cut his network of lies short, by commanding that a malefactor should be forced to swallow a beaker of the wine prepared for the banquet. In a few moments the man was in a helpless stupor.
The case was proved and Cæsar became all action. A squad of legionaries haled Pothinus away to an execution not long delayed. Other legionaries disarmed and replaced the detachment of the royal guard that controlled the palace gates and walls. And barely had these steps been taken, when a courier thundered into the palace, hardly escaped through the raging mob that was gaining control of the city. Achillas, he reported, had wantonly murdered Dioscorides and Serapion, whom Cæsar had sent as envoys to Pelusium, and was marching on the city with his whole army of Italian renegades, Syrian banditti, convicts, and runaway slaves, twenty thousand strong.
There was nothing to do but to prepare to weather the storm in the palace enclosure, which, with its high walls, was practically a fortress in itself. There were only four thousand Romans, and yet there was a long circuit of defences to man. But Drusus never saw his general putting forth greater energy. That night, instead of feasting, the soldiers laboured, piling up the ramparts by the light of torches. The city was surging and thundering without the palace gates. Cæsar had placed the king under guard, but Arsinoë—his younger sister—had slipped out of the palace to join herself to the advancing host of Achillas, and speedily that general would be at hand. Cæsar as usual was everywhere, with new schemes for the defences, new enthusiasm for his officers, new inspiration for his men. No one slept nor cared to sleep inside the palace walls. They toiled for dear life, for with morning, at most, Achillas would be upon them; and by morning, if Pothinus's plans had not failed, they would have been drugged and helpless to a man, none able to draw sword from scabbard. It was a new experience to one and all, for these Romans to stand on the defensive. For once Cæsar had made a false step—he ought to have taken on his voyage more men. He stood with his handful, with the sea on one side of him and a great city and a nation in arms against him on the other. The struggle was not to be for empire, but for life. But the Romans were too busy that night to realize anything save the need of untiring exertion. If they had counted the odds against them, four thousand against a nation, they might well have despaired, though their chieftain were Cæsar.
Two years earlier Drusus, as he hurried to and fro transmitting orders for his general, might have been fain to draw aside and muse on the strangeness of the night scene. The sky was clear, as almost always in a land where a thunder-storm is often as rare as an eclipse; the stars twinkled out of heavens of soft blackness; the crescent of a new moon hung like a silvered bow out over the harbour, and made a thin pathway of lustre across the moving, shimmering waters. Dimly the sky-line was visible; by the Pharos and its mole loomed the vague tracery of masts. On the west and the south lay the white and dark masses of the city, now and then brought into clearer relief as the moonbeams swept across some stately pile, and touched on its Corinthian columns and nobly wrought pediments. But Drusus was a soldier; and the best of poets doubtless work poorly when their lives are hanging in the balance. Over the flower-strewn walks, under the festooned colonnades, ran the busy legionaries, bestirring themselves as never before; while Diomedes, and Hector, and Patroclus, and fifty other heroic worthies waged perpetual battle on their marble heights above the soldiers' heads. On occasion Drusus was called to one of the upper terraces and pinnacles of the palace buildings, and then he could catch a glimpse of the whole sweep of the mighty city. Over to the southeast, where was the Jewish quarter, the sky was beginning to redden. The mob had begun to vent its passions on the innocent Israelites, and the incendiary was at his work. A deep, low, growling hum, as of ten thousand angry voices, drifted upon the night air. The beast called the Alexandrian rabble was loose, and it was a terrible animal.
It was midnight. Drusus had toiled since noon. He had hardly tasted food or drink since morning, but there were three feet more of brick, stone, and rubbish to be added still to this and that rampart before it would be secure, and a whole wing of the overgrown palace must be pulled down to furnish the material. He had climbed out upon the roof to aid in tearing up the tiles and to encourage the men by his example, when some one plucked him from behind on the cloak—it was Cæsar.
"You are not needed here," said the general, in a voice that seemed a bit strained to keep calm. "Read this—take all the men you want."
And the Imperator himself held up the torch, while Drusus took the tablet thrust into his hands and read the hastily scribbled lines:—
"Cleomenes to Drusus. The ladies are in danger. I will resist the mob as long as I can. Send help."
Drusus threw down the tablet; forgot to so much as salute his commander. He had laid off his armour during the work on the ramparts; he ran for it, put it on with feverish haste. A moment more and he was running among the soldiers, calling this and that legionary by name. The troops all knew him, and would have followed him to the death. When he asked for thirty volunteers for dangerous service, none demanded of him the occasion; he simply selected his men as fast as he might. He secured four chariots and placed in them the fastest horses in the royal stables and trusted men for drivers. He mounted the rest of his thirty on other steeds, and the preparations were over. The gate was thrown open; Decimus Mamercus, who was his subaltern, led out the little company. Drusus rode out last, in one of the chariots. The troops on the walls cheered them as they departed.
In the immediate neighbourhood of the palace there prevailed an ominous silence. Earlier in the night a few cohorts had charged out and scattered the street rabble; and the mob had kept at a distance. There was no light save that of the moon and the distant glow of the burning buildings. Drusus felt his breath coming thick and fast, the drops of sweat were hanging on his forehead, something within was driving his heart into his throat. "If—" he never went further; unless he brought Cornelia and Fabia back to the palace unscathed, he knew the Alexandrian rabble would howl over his unconscious body.
"Ride!" he commanded, as if the rush of the chariots and horses would drown the fears that nearly drove him frantic. "Ride!"
The drivers lashed the teams, the horsemen pricked with the spur. Drusus caught the reins from his chariot companion, and swung the lash himself over the four steeds. Faster and faster they flew down the splendidly paved and built highways. Temples and majestic public buildings rose in sombre grandeur above their heads; above them winged "Victories" seemed springing up into dark void, their sculptured symmetries just visible in the moonlight. On and on, swift and more swift—persons began shouting from the buildings which they passed, now a few voices, now many, now a hundred. A volley of stones was dashed down from the safe recesses of the pillars at the head of the long flight of steps leading up to a temple. Presently an arrow whirred over Drusus's head and smote on the masonry across the street. There were lights ahead—scores of torches waving—a small building was on fire; the glare grew redder and brighter every instant; and a din, a din lifted by ten thousand men when their brute instincts are enkindled, grew and grew. Drusus dashed the cold sweat from his brow, his hand was trembling. He had a quiver and bow in the chariot,—a powerful Parthian bow, and the arrows were abundant. Mamercus had taught him to be a good archer, as a boy. Could he turn his old skill to account? Not unless his hand became more steady.
Women screamed out at him and his band from the house roofs; a tile struck one of the chariot horses and made it plunge wildly; Drusus flung his strength into the reins, and curbed in the raging beast; he tossed the lines back to his driver and tore the bow from its casings. His car had rushed on ahead of Decimus Mamercus and the rest; two furlongs more would bring him to the house of Cleomenes on one of the squares of the city. The chariot swung around a street corner for the final stretch, the way was broad, the buildings on either side (the residences of the Alexandrian gentry) high; but the whole street from wall to wall was a seething mass of human forms. The fire was spreading; the brightening flames shone down on the tossing, howling multitude—excited Egyptians from the quarter of Rhacotis, frenzied Asiatics in their turbans, mad sailors from the Eunostian port and the Pharos island. At the head of the street the flames were pressing in upon a stately mansion around which the raging mob was packed thickly. On the roof of the threatened house figures could be seen in the lurid light, running to and fro, flinging down bricks and stones, and trying to beat back the fire. It was the house of Cleomenes. Insensibly the veteran who had been driving reined in the horses, who themselves drew back, loath to plunge into the living barriers ahead. But Drusus was past fear or prudence; with his own hands he sent the lash stinging over all the four, and the team, that had won more than a single trophy in the games, shot forward. The chariot struck the multitude and went, not through it, but over it. The on-rush was too rapid, too unexpected, for resistance. To right and left, as the water gives way before the bows of an on-rushing ship, the crowd surged back, the instinct of panic reigning in every breast. Thick and fast, as quickly as he might set shaft to string, flew Drusus's arrows—not a shaft that failed a mark, as it cut into the living masses. The chariot reeled again and again, as this wheel or that passed over something animate and struggling. The horses caught the fire of conflict; they raced, they ran—and the others sped after them. The mob left off howling: it screamed with a single voice of mortal dread. And before Drusus or any one else realized, the deed was done, the long lane was cleared, and the drivers were drawing rein before the house of Cleomenes.
The heavily barred carriage-way was thrown open, the valiant merchant and his faithful employees and slaves greeted their rescuers as the little cavalcade drove in. There was not a moment to lose. Cleomenes and his household might indeed have long made good the house against the mere attacks of the mob; but the rioters had set the torch to some adjacent buildings, and all efforts to beat back the flames were proving futile. There was no time to condole with the merchant over the loss of his house. The mob had surged again into the streets and was pressing back, this time more or less prepared to resist the Romans. The colonnades and the house roofs were swarming, the din was indescribable, and the crackling and roar of the advancing flames grew ever louder.
The only alternative was a return to the palace. Cleomenes's employees and slaves were to scatter into the crowd, where they would easily escape notice; he himself, with his daughters, Artemisia, and the Roman ladies, must go in the chariots to the palace. Cornelia came down from her chamber, her face more flushed with excitement than alarm. Troubles enough she had had, but never before personal danger; and she could not easily grasp the peril.
"Are you afraid, carissima," said Drusus, lifting her into his chariot, "to ride back with me to the palace, through that wolf pack?"
"With you?" she said, admiring the ease with which he sprang about in full armour; "I would laugh at Medusa or the Hydra of Lerna with you beside me."
Cleomenes had been again upon the housetop to watch the progress of the fire. He came down, and Drusus instantly saw that there was dismay written on his face. The merchant, who was himself armed with sword and target, drew the officer aside and whispered:—
"Pray, Roman, to all your native gods! I can see a lochos[184] of regular troops filing into the square before the house. Achillas is entering the city with his men. We shall have to fight our way through his thousands."
Drusus uttered a deep and silent curse on himself for the mad bravado that led him to leave the palace with but thirty men; why had he not waited to assemble more? He could ride over the mob; to master Achillas's disciplined forces was otherwise.
A freedman came running down from the roof, crying out that it was already on fire. It was a time for action, not thought, yet even at the moment Drusus's schoolboy Polybius was running through his mind—the description of the great riot when Agathocles, the wicked regent of Ptolemæus Philopator, and his sister Agathocleia, and his mother Oenanthe, had been seized by the multitude and torn in pieces, bit by bit, while yet they lived. Cornelia seemed to have caught some new cause for fear; she was trembling and shivering when Drusus took her in his arms and swung her into the chariot. He lifted in Fabia likewise, but the Vestal only bowed her head in calm silence. She had overheard Cleomenes's tidings, but, by stress of all the force of her strong nature, remained composed. Decimus Mamercus took Artemisia, frightened and crying, into his own chariot. Monime, Berenice, and their father were to go in the other cars. The fire was gaining on the roof, smoke was pouring down into the court-yard, and now and then a gleam came from a firebrand. The horses were growing restive and frightened.
"Throw open the gate!" commanded Drusus; his anxieties and despair were driving him almost to frenzy, but the gods, if gods there were, knew that it was not for himself that he was fearful. His voice sounded hollow in his throat; he would have given a talent of gold for a draught of water. One of his men flung back the gateway, and in at the entrance came the glare of great bonfires lighted in the streets, of hundreds of tossing torches. The yelling of the multitude was louder than ever. There it was, packed thick on all sides: in its midst Drusus could see bright lines of tossing steel—the armour of Achillas's soldiery! As the portal opened, a mighty howl of triumph burst from the people; the fire had driven forth to the mob its prey. Cornelia heard the howl—the voice of a wild and raging beast—and trembled more.
"Cornelia," said Drusus, lowering his head so as to make himself heard, "do not look above the framework of the chariot. Cling to it tightly, for we may have to pass over obstacles. Above all, do not spring out, however much we may be swayed and shaken."
"I will not, Quintus," and that was all she could be heard to say in the din.
And so the little cavalcade drove forth. Cornelia cowered in the chariot and saw nothing and heard everything, which was the same as nothing. Was she frightened? She did not know. The peril was awful. Of course she realized that; but how could calamity come to pass, when it was Drusus whose powerful form towered above her, when it was Drusus whose voice rang like a trumpet out into the press swaying around?
It was very dark crouching in the body of the chariot. She could just see the face of Fabia opposite, very white, but, she knew, very calm. She reached out and caught the Vestal's hand, and discovered that her own was trembling, while the other's was perfectly steady. But the contest, the fighting all about! Now the horses were dashing forward, making the chariot spring as though it were a thing of life; now reined in sharply, and the heavily loaded car swayed this way and that, almost to overturning. The uproar above her head passed the telling by words; but there was one shout, now in Greek, now in Egyptian, that drowned all others: "Death to the Romans! tear them in pieces!" Missiles smote against the chariot; an arrow went cutting into the wood, driving its keen point home, and Cornelia experienced a thrill of pain in her shoulder. She felt for the smart, found the mere tip of the point only had penetrated the wood; but her fingers were wet when she took them away. Drusus was shooting; his bow-string snapped and snapped. Once a soldier in armour sprang behind the chariot when it came to a stop, and his javelin was poised to discharge; but an arrow tore through his throat, and he went down to the pavement with a crash. The car rocked more and more; once the wheels slipped without revolving, as though sliding over some smooth liquid—not water. Cornelia felt powers of discriminating sensation becoming fainter and fainter; a great force seemed pressing out from within her; the clamour and shocks were maddening. She felt driven to raise her head, to look out into the raging chaos, though the first glance were death. Peering back out of the body of the chariot now and then, she saw a little. The Romans were charging this way and that, forcing their passage down the street, barred no longer by a mere mob, but by Achillas's infantrymen, who were hastening into action. The chariot horses were wounded, some seriously; she was sure of that. They could not be driven through the spearmen, and the little handful of cavalry was trying to break through the enemy and make space for a rush. It was thirty against thousands; yet even in the mortal peril, which Cornelia realized now if she had never before, she had a strange sort of pride. Her countrymen were showing these Orientals how one Roman could slay his tens, could put in terror his hundreds. Drusus was giving orders with the same mechanical exactitude of the drill, albeit his voice was high-pitched and strained—not entirely, perhaps, because of the need of calling above the din.
"Form in line by fours!"
Cornelia raised her head above the chariot frame. The Romans had worked their way down into a square formed by the intersection of streets. Behind them and on every building were swarming the people; right across the eastern avenue, where their escape lay, stood the bristling files of one of Achillas's companies. Stones and roof-tiles were being tossed in a perfect hail from the houses, and now and then an arrow or a dart. The four chariots—one had only three horses left—were standing in the little plaza, and the troopers were forming before them. The arrows of the chariot warriors made the mob behind keep a respectful distance. It was the triumph of discipline over man's animal sense of fear. Even the mob felt this, when it saw the little squadron fall into line with as much precision as on the parade ground. A tile smote one soldier upon the head, and he tumbled from his horse like a stone. His comrades never paused in their evolution. Then, for the first time, Cornelia screamed with horror and fright. Drusus, who was setting a new arrow to his bow, looked down upon her; he had never seemed so handsome before, with the fierce light of the battle in his eyes, with his whole form swelling with the exertions of conflict.
"Down, Cornelia!" commanded the officer; and Cornelia did so implicitly—to disobey him at that moment was inconceivable.
"At them, men!"
And then came a new bound from the horses, and then a mighty crash and clash of bodies, blades, and shields, the snort of dying beasts, the splintering of spear-shafts, the groans and cries of men in battle for their lives. The car rose on one wheel higher and higher; Cornelia was thrown against Fabia, and the two women clung to each other, too terrified and crushed to scream; then on a sudden it righted, and as it did so the soldier who had acted as charioteer reeled, his face bathed in blood, the death-rattle in his throat. Back he fell, pierced in face and breast, and tumbled from the car; and, as if answering to this lightening of their burden, the hoofs of the hard-pressed horses bit on the pavement, and the team bounded onward.
"Io triumphe!" It was Drusus who called; and in answer to his shout came the deep Cæsarian battle-cry from hundreds of throats, "Venus Victrix!"
The chariot was advancing, but less rapidly. Cornelia rose and looked forth again, not this time to be rebuked. Down the moon-lighted street were moving several infantry cohorts from the palace; the avenue was clear, the mob and hostile soldiery had melted away like a mist; a mounted officer came flying down the street ahead of the legionaries.
"The ladies are safe, Imperator!" Drusus was reporting with military exactitude. "I have lost twelve men."
Cæsar galloped along beside the chariot. He had his horse under absolute control, and he extended his hand, first to Fabia, then to Cornelia.
"Fortune has been kind to us," said he, smiling.
"Vesta has protected us," said Fabia, bowing her head.
Cæsar cast a single inquiring, keen glance at the Vestal.
"Your excellency doubts the omnipotence of the goddess," continued she, looking him steadily in the face.
"That a power has protected you," was his answer, "I am the last to deny."
But the Imperator and Drusus were exchanging glances; that a woman of the intelligence of Fabia could believe in the regular, personal intervention of the Deity in human affairs was to them, not an absurdity, but a mystery unfathomable.
And so, safe-guarded by the troops, they rode back to the palace, where the preparations for defence were ready, and all were awaiting the onset of Achillas. The weary men on the walls cheered as the carriages with their precious burdens rolled in at the gate; and cheered again for Drusus and his eighteen who had taught the Alexandrian rabble how Roman steel could bite. But Drusus himself was sad when he thought of the twelve good men that he had left behind—who need not have been sacrificed but for his headlong rashness.
And how had the mob come to attack the house of Cleomenes? It was a long story, but in a few words probably this. Pratinas had come and demanded of Cleomenes that he surrender the ladies (doubtless because they would be useful hostages) to go with him to Achillas. Cleomenes had refused, the more especially as Cornelia adjured him not to deliver them over to the clutches of such a creature; and Pratinas went away full of anger and threatenings. How he came to be in Alexandria, and had returned so soon from Achillas's forces, if he had indeed gone to Achillas, was neither clear nor important. But that he had excited the mob to assail Cleomenes's mansion needed no great proof. Cleomenes himself had seen his artful fellow-countryman surveying the riot from a housetop, though doubtless he had kept at a prudent distance during the fighting.
So ended that exciting day, or rather that night. It was Cleopatra who with her own hands laid the bandages on Cornelia's wounded shoulder, but the hurt was not serious; only, as Drusus laughingly assured her, it was an honourable scar, as became the descendant of so many fighting Claudii and Cornelii.
"Ah! delectissime," replied she, "it isn't the hurt that gives me pain; it is that I was frightened—frightened when you were acting like one of the Heroes!"
"Mehercle!" laughed Drusus, before he left her to snatch a few hours of well-earned rest and see to the dressing of his own bruises, "I would not blame a veteran for being panic-struck in that mêlée, if he didn't have a chance to swing a weapon and so keep his heart from standing still."