“How, my child?”
“He was thrown from the roof of the Praetorian barracks. The next day my parents were arrested. At that very hour I was seated with my lover in the peristyle of our new little home. When I returned to my father’s house with Gyges, two soldiers were waiting to conduct me to prison. Perchance my parents are now dead,” she said sadly. “Perchance Gyges, too, is dead.” And she wept bitter tears as she thought of the possibilities of their fate.
“Weep not, my child,” said Agrippina, resting her hand caressingly upon Psyche’s head.
“The last words I had from my brother,” Psyche continued, when she grew calm enough to speak, “were those he had written upon a piece of cloth which he had sewed to the under side of his tunic. By chance only I read them. Gannon’s body had been carried away. His tunic lay in a heap on the floor. I took it up and kissed it and I saw the writing. This was the message he had written: ‘Have done wrong; read a letter from L to S about Lygdus.’ Methought the L must stand for Livilla and the S for Sejanus.”
“Who is Lygdus, my child?”
“Gyges told me that he was a eunuch and a most cunning scoundrel.”
“My son Nero has mentioned a eunuch as being employed by Livilla in her household. I forget the name. When did this happen?”
“Four days before the games of Nero, thy son.”
“The day before Drusus died so suddenly?” inquired Agrippina.
“Is the heir of the emperor, then, dead?” asked Psyche, in surprise.