7
Claudia, striving to be courteously casual, walked with the Prefect to the doorway where two Praetorian Guardsmen awaited him. As they went out she closed the pivoted double doors behind them, but after a moment she cautiously drew one back and peered through the narrow slit.
The Prefect’s bearers and the guards who had remained outside were standing stiffly at attention, the bearers at the sedan-chair handles; one of the guards stepped forward quickly to open the door. Sejanus paused an instant and spoke to the man; then he stepped into the chair and, as the guard closed the door, pulled together the shielding curtains. The guard raised his hand, and the bearers moved off smartly.
Claudia saw, however, that the bodyguard did not march off with the Prefect’s procession; instead, he peered about furtively, cast a hurried glance toward her doorway, and then merged into the traffic pushing along the narrow, cobbled way. Momentarily she lost him but in the next instant discovered him idling in front of a shop diagonally across from her entrance. But not for long did he study the wares of the merchant; she saw that he had faced about and was staring intently at her own doorway.
“I thought so,” she observed to Tullia, who had retreated into the shadowed narrow corridor as Sejanus was leaving. “The Prefect left one of his bodyguards to watch the house. He either wishes to know where I’ll be going or who will be coming here, perhaps both. I don’t know what he is scheming, Tullia”—the maid had come forward and secured the doors—“but whatever it is, I don’t like it. Longinus may endanger himself by coming. We must warn him. But how, Tullia? He is likely to be arriving any moment; he must have been delayed at Castra Praetoria, or he would have been here already.”
Quickly she told the maid the startling news the Prefect had brought.
“Anyone who leaves this house through these doors, Mistress, then is sure to be followed. But I could go out through the servant’s entrance on some contrived mission and perhaps be able to warn him.”
“Good, Tullia. You can be taking something to Senator Piso’s house and carry a message to Longinus. Talk with him if he is there and tell him what has happened, but say that I’ll arrange to meet him later, perhaps at the house of Herodias.”
“Or maybe, Mistress, at the shop of Stephanos.”
“Yes. Maybe the goldsmith’s would be better. But if the Prefect’s men should follow and ask you questions, Tullia, what will you say?”