Plautia found that the room formed one of a suite. After the unwonted experience of a husbandman’s kennel, the space and luxurious arrangements of these apartments could not fail to draw from her a sigh of satisfaction, in spite of her position.
The state of her mind was indeed unenviable.
After the horror and misery of the night in her wretched quarters, the brief moments of slumber, which fell, finally, on [pg 286]her exhausted senses, had not sufficed to relieve her fevered mind. They had seemed, instead, to have only sunk her faculties into the first leaden state of suspension,—to have lulled the wakefulness of her tortured brain, and plunged it into the horrors of a narcotic sleep, amid whose heavy vapours, her struggling reflections became the distorted phantasms of an oppressive dream.
Even yet her mind had not recovered sufficient elasticity to entirely throw off this soporific load. Stupor still seemed to clog her senses and maintain her in a condition of waking sleep. The scenes of the past night still floated through her brain and mingled with what was actually occurring, as if on common ground of unsubstantiality. The pale, soft crescent of the moon hung phantom-like in her distempered mind, just as it had struck upon her gaze over the Pretorian’s shoulder; save that now its bulk swam magnified, and its paleness shone intensified to ghastliness. Then the play of his warm breath on her forehead, and one or two of his gestures, which lived, as if fire-impressed in her brain—all the sharper, in relief to the dark, blurred, frenzied moments of sudden agony and despair which had followed, like a gulf of blackness. After this her mental awakening in the pitchy darkness and crash of the sudden storm, the misery of the night, the phantoms of her short drowsiness, the coming of Caesar’s messenger, the cold gray of sea and sky, the palace—it was all like the unbroken course of a shadow-play.
She moved through the rooms, and, in the furthest, found the marble basin of a bath with all appliances. With more animation, she turned instantly, and bade the flock of young slaves prepare it for her immediate use. To have been obliged to forego, for a considerable period, this luxury so necessary to a Roman, had been not the lightest privation she had incurred in her headstrong expedition.
The crystal water, foaming and flooding out of the brazen dolphin’s mouth into the polished basin, was so welcome a sight as to rouse her not a little. Whilst preparing to enjoy it, one of the slaves answered a summons at the outer door, and brought back a message, saying, that Caesar would pay her a visit in an hour.
Infinitely revived and invigorated, Plautia returned from [pg 287]the bath to eat and drink. She had recovered also so much of her ancient humour, as to visit with a sharp word and a frown, a slight clumsiness on the part of the trembling girl who served her on bended knee. The lady’s face had lost some of its customary richness of colour, whilst dark rings showed under her eyes, as evidences of the night’s passionate tumult; but to one of her physical robustness and wanton health, it required an enormous and continuous strain to make any material inroads on her outward appearance. The slaves apportioned to her, who had dwelt in secret on the splendid form and beauty of their new mistress, wondering what princess she might be, and whence she had come, now marked the imperious flash of her eyes with inward quaking.
Plautia dismissed them, and awaited the coming of her Imperial visitor. The thoughtful knitting of her brows and lips were beginning to relax under the drowsiness which crept over her, when the pale, blotched face, and tall, stooping form of Tiberius glided slowly into her presence.
He stopped in the middle of the room, and his brilliant eyes fixed themselves upon her with a scrutiny which she seemed to feel in every part of her frame. Not a sign, however, glimmered in their depths, or stirred the gravity of his countenance, to show that her appearance in any way moved him.
She rose from the couch and gave a slight obeisance of her head, which he returned. He was familiar enough to her by sight; but now, on close personal contact, there was something which struck her uncomfortably. Whether it was the piercing ruthlessness of his gaze she knew not. She began to think uneasily, that she had been wise if she had listened to the advice she had scouted more than once already. Her keen feminine perceptions flashed out upon him. It was the odour of the tiger of which she had been so heedless; and yet, withal, an old, stooping, emaciated, unsightly man. Her thoughts, from some curious fancy, momentarily left her own concerns, and conjured up alongside Caesar the form of his handsome, ambitious, dashing Prefect. The comparison left its mark on her mind. Returning to herself, her indignation and her courage, she awaited to hear him speak.