"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.