"You threaten me, but I am no such fool as you imagine! I know all about you! I perceive you have crossed your Rubicon. Well—"
"Summon the decurion and two men!" Marcia interrupted, glancing at Cornificia. But she made a gesture with her hand that Cornificia interpreted to mean "do nothing of the kind!"
Livius did not see the gesture. Rage, shame, terror overwhelmed him and he blurted out the information Marcia was seeking—hurled it at her in the form of silly, useless threats:
"You wanton! You can kill me but my journal is in safe hands! Harm me— cause me to be missing from the palace for a few hours, and they may light your funeral fires! My journal, with the names of the conspirators, and all the details of your daily intriguing, goes straight into Caesar's hands!"
The climax he expected failed. There was no excitement. Nobody seemed astonished. Marcia settled herself more comfortably on the couch and Galen began whispering to Sextus. The two other women looked amused. Reaction sweeping over him, his senses reeled and Livius stepped backward, staggering to the fountain, where he sat down.
"Bona dea! But the man took time to tell his secret!" Marcia exclaimed. "Popeia, you had better take my litter to the palace and bring that minx Cornelia. I suspected it was she but wasn't sure of it. Don't give her an inkling of what you know. Go with her to her apartment and watch her dress; then make an excuse to keep her waiting in your room while you go back and search hers. Have help if you need it; take two of my eunuchs, but watch that they don't read the journal. Look under her mattress. Look everywhere. If you can't find the journal, bring Cornelia without it. I will soon make her tell us where it is."
VIII. NARCISSUS
"A gladiator's life is not so bad if he behaves himself, and while it lasts," Narcissus said.
He was sitting beside Sextus, son of Maximus, in the ergastulum beneath the training school of Bruttius Marius, which was well known to be the emperor's establishment, although maintained in the name of a citizen. There was a stone seat at the end where sunlight poured through a barred window high up in the wall. To right and left facing a central corridor were cells with doors of latticed iron. Each cell had its own barred window, hardly a foot square, set high out of reach and the light, piercing the latticed doors, made criss-cross patterns on the white wall of the corridor. Narcissus got up, glanced into each cell and sat down again beside Sextus.
"The trouble is, they don't," he went on. "If you let them out, they drink and get into poor condition; and if you keep them in, they kill themselves unless they're watched. These men are reserved for Paulus, and they know they haven't a chance against him."