A Struggle For Rome Volume I Part 12

CHAPTER XI.

In order to gain and support this influence, it can easily be understood that Cethegus was forced to be more at court, and oftener absent from Rome, than was advantageous for his interests in that city.

He therefore endeavoured to bring persons into close connection with the Queen, who would, in part, take his place, warmly defend his interests, and keep him _au fait_ of all that pa.s.sed in the court of Ravenna.

Many Gothic n.o.bles had left the court in anger, and it was necessary to replace their wives in their office near the Queen; and Cethegus determined to use this opportunity to bring Rusticiana, the daughter of Symmachus and wife of Boethius, once more to court. It was no easy task. For the family of Boethius, who had been executed as a traitor, had been banished the capital. Before anything could be done, the feeling which the Queen entertained towards this family must be completely altered. Cethegus, however, soon succeeded in appealing to the compa.s.sion and magnanimity of Amalaswintha, who possessed a n.o.ble heart. At the same time she had never really believed in the unproved guilt of the two n.o.ble Romans, one of whom, the husband of Rusticiana, she had honoured as an extremely learned man, and, in some points, as her teacher. Cethegus proved to her that by showing favour to this family, either as an act of grace or of justice, she would touch the hearts of all her Roman subjects, and he thus easily persuaded her to pardon the deeply degraded family.

It was much more difficult to persuade the proud and pa.s.sionate widow of the murdered man to accept this favour, for her whole soul was filled with bitterness against the royal house, and thirst for revenge.

Cethegus even feared that when she was in the presence of the "tyrants," her ungovernable hatred might betray itself. In spite of the great influence he had over her, she had repeatedly rejected this plan.

Matters had come to this pa.s.s, when, one day, Rusticiana made a discovery which shortly led to the fulfilment of the Prefect's wish.

Rusticiana had a daughter of scarcely sixteen years of age, named Camilla. She was a lovely girl, with a face of the true Roman type, with n.o.bly-formed features and chiselled lips. Intense feeling beamed from her dark eyes; her figure, slender almost to delicacy, was elegant and light as that of a gazelle, and all her movements were agile and graceful. She had loved her unhappy father with all the energy of filial devotion. The stroke that had laid his beloved head low had entered deeply into her own young life; and inconsolable and sacred grief, mixed with pa.s.sionate admiration for his heroism, filled all her youthful thoughts. A welcome guest at court before her father's death, she had fled with her mother after the catastrophe over the Alps to Gaul, where they had found an asylum with an old friend, while Anicius and Severinus, Camilla's brothers, who had been also condemned, but who were afterwards reprieved and sent into banishment, hastened at once to the court at Byzantium, where they tried to move heaven and earth against the barbarians.

When the first heat of persecution had abated, the two women had returned to Italy, and led a retired life in the house of one of their faithful freedmen at Perusia, whence, as we have seen, Rusticiana had easily found means to join the conspiracy in Rome.

It was in June, that season of the year when the Roman aristocracy--then as at this day--fled the sultry air of the towns, and sought a refuge in their cool villas on the Sabine mountains, or at the sea-coast. The two n.o.ble women, used to every luxury, felt extremely ill at ease in the hot and narrow streets of Perusia, and thought with regret of their beautiful villas in Florence and Neapolis, which, together with all the rest of their fortune, had been confiscated by the Gothic Government.

One day, their faithful servant, Corbulo, came to Rusticiana with a strangely embarra.s.sed expression of countenance, and explained to her "how, having long since noticed how much the 'Patrona' suffered under his unworthy roof, and had to endure much annoyance from his handiwork--he being a mason--he had bought a small, a very small, estate, with a still smaller house, in the mountains near Tifernum.

However, she must not compare it with the villa near Florentia; but still there ran a little brook near it, which never dried up, even under the dog-star; oaks and cornel-trees gave broad and pleasant shade; ivy grew luxuriantly over a ruined Temple of Faunus; and in the garden he had planted roses, lilies, and violets, such as Donna Camilla loved; and so he hoped that they would mount their mules or litter, and go to their villa like other n.o.ble dames."

The ladies, much touched by their old servant's fidelity, gratefully accepted his kindness, and Camilla, who rejoiced like a child in the antic.i.p.ation of a little change, was more cheerful and animated than she had ever been since her father's death.

Impatiently she urged their departure, and hurried off beforehand the very same day, with Corbulo and his daughter, Daphnidion, leaving her mother to follow as soon as possible with the slaves and baggage.

The sun was already sinking behind the hills of Tifernum when Corbulo, leading Camilla's mule by the bridle, reached an open place in the wood, from whence they first caught sight of the little estate. He had long pleased himself with the thought of the young girl's surprise when he should show her the prettily situated villa.

But he suddenly stood still, struck with surprise; he held his hand before his eyes, fancying that the evening sun dazzled him; he looked around to see if he were really in the right place; but there was no doubt about it! There stood, on the ridge where wood and meadow met, the grey border-stone, in the form of the old frontier-G.o.d Terminus, with his pointed head. It was the right place, but the little house was nowhere to be seen; where it should have been, was a thick group of pines and plantains; and besides this, the whole place was changed; green hedges and flowerbeds stood where once cabbages and turnips grew; and where sandpits and the high-road had, till now, marked the limits of his modest property, rose an elegant pavilion.

"The Mother of G.o.d and all the superior G.o.ds save me!" Cried the mason; "some magic must be at work!"

His daughter hastily handed him the amulet that she carried at her girdle; but she was no wiser than he, for it was the first time that she had visited the new property; and so there was nothing left but to drive the mules forward as fast as possible. Father and daughter, leaping from stone to stone, accompanied the trotting mules to the bottom of the declivity with cries of encouragement.

As they approached, Corbulo certainly discovered the house that he had bought behind the group of trees, but so changed, renewed, and beautified, that he scarcely recognised it.

His astonishment at the transformation of the whole place tended to increase his superst.i.tious fears. His mouth opened wide, he let the reins fall, stood stock-still, and he was beginning another wonderful speech, intermixed with heathen and Christian interjections, when Camilla, equally astounded, called out:

"But that is the garden where we once lived, the Viridarium of Honorius at Ravenna! The same trees, the same flower-beds, and, by the lake, the little Temple of Venus, just as it once stood on the sea-sh.o.r.e at Ravenna! Oh, how beautiful! What a faithful memory! Corbulo, how did you manage it?" and tears of grateful emotion filled her eyes.

"The devil and all the Lemures take me, if I had anything to do with it! But there comes Cappadox with his club foot; he at least is not bewitched. Speak, then, Cyclops, what has happened here?"

Cappadox, a gigantic, broad-shouldered slave, came limping along with an uncouth smile, and after many questions, told a puzzling tale.

About three weeks ago, a few days after he had been sent to the estate to manage it for his master, who had gone to the marble quarries of Luna, there came from Tifernum a n.o.ble Roman with a troop of slaves and workmen and heavily-packed wagons. He inquired if this was the estate bought by the sculptor Corbulo of Perusia for the widow of Boethius.

Upon being answered in the affirmative, he had introduced himself as the Hortula.n.u.s Princeps, that is, the superior intendant of the gardens at Ravenna. An old friend of Boethius--who wished not to tell his name, for fear of the Gothic tyrants--desired to care for his family in secret, and had given orders that their summer residence should be improved and embellished with all possible art. He (Cappadox) was by no means to spoil the intended surprise, and, half-kindly, half by force, they had kept him fast in the villa. Then the intendant had immediately made his plan, and set his men to work. Many neighbouring fields were bought at a high price; and there began such a pulling-down and building-up, such a planting and digging, hammering and knocking, such a cleaning and painting, that it had made him both blind and deaf. When he ventured to meddle or ask questions the workmen laughed in his face.

"And," concluded Cappadox, "it went on in this way till the day before yesterday. Then they had finished, and went away. At first I was afraid, and trembled when I saw all these splendid things growing out of the earth. I thought, if Master Corbulo has to pay for all this, then mercy on my poor back! and I wanted to come and tell you. But they would not let me go; and besides, I knew you were not at home. And when I saw what a ridiculous amount of money the intendant had with him, and how he threw the gold pieces about, as children throw pebbles, I got easier by degrees, and let things go on as they would. Now, master, I know well that you can set me in the stocks, and have me whipped with the vine-branch or even with the scorpion; for you are the master, and Cappadox the servant. But, master, it would scarcely be just! By all the saints and all the G.o.ds! For you set me over a few cabbage-fields, and see! they have become an Emperor's garden under my care!"

Camilla had long since dismounted and disappeared, when the servant ended his account.

Her heart beating with joy, she hurried through the garden, the bowers, the house; she flew as if on wings; the active Daphnidion could scarcely follow her. Repeated cries of astonishment and pleasure escaped her lips. Whenever she turned the corner of a path, or round a group of trees, a new picture of the garden at Ravenna met her delighted eyes.

But when she entered the house, and in it found a small room painted, furnished, and decorated exactly like the room in the Imperial Palace, in which she had played away the last days of her childhood, and dreamed the first dreams of her maidenhood; the same pictures upon the hempen tapestry; the same vases and delicate citrean-wood[2] boxes; and, upon the same small tortoise-sh.e.l.l table, her pretty little harp with its swan's wings; overpowered by so many remembrances, and still more by the feeling of grat.i.tude for such tender friendship, she sank sobbing on the soft cushions of the lectus.

Scarcely could Daphnidion calm her.

"There are still n.o.ble hearts in the world; there are still friends of the house of Boethius!" and she breathed a prayer of deep thankfulness to Heaven.

When her mother arrived the next day, she was scarcely less moved by the strange surprise. She wrote at once to Cethegus in Rome, and asked: "In which of her husband's friends she should seek this secret benefactor?" Within her heart she hoped that it might turn out to be himself.

But the Prefect shook his head over her letter and wrote back: "He knew no one of whom this delicate mode of proceeding reminded him. She should carefully watch for every trace that might lead to the solving of the riddle."

It was not long ere it was solved. Camilla was never tired of traversing the garden, and continually discovering resemblances to its well-known original.

She often extended her rambles beyond the park into the neighbouring wood. She was generally accompanied by the merry Daphnidion, whose similar youth and faithful affection soon won her confidence.

Daphnidion had repeatedly remarked to her that they must be followed by a wood-sprite, for it often snapped in the branches and rustled in the gra.s.s near them, and yet there nowhere was a man or an animal to be seen.

But Camilla laughed at her superst.i.tion, and often persuaded her to venture out again, far away under the green shadows of the elms and plantains.

One hot day, as the two girls penetrated deeper and deeper into the greenwood they discovered a clear-running spring, that issued copiously from a dark porphyry rock. But it had no decided channel, and the thirsty maidens with difficulty collected the single silvery drops.

"What a pity!" cried Camilla, "the delicious water! You should have seen the fountain of the Tritons in the Pinetum[3] at Ravenna. How prettily the water rushed from the inflated cheeks of the bronze sea-G.o.d, into the wide sh.e.l.l of brown marble! What a pity!" And they pa.s.sed on.

Some days after they both came again to the same place. Daphnidion, who was walking in front, suddenly stood still with a loud scream, and silently pointed at the spring.

The woodland streamlet had been enclosed. From a bronze Triton's head the water fell, in a bright stream, into a delicate sh.e.l.l of brown marble. Daphnidion, now firmly believing in some magic, turned to fly without further ado; her hands pressed over her eyes, so as not to see the wood-sprite, which was considered to be extremely dangerous, she fled towards the house, calling loudly to her mistress to follow her.

But a thought flashed through Camilla's mind. The spy who had lately followed them was certainly in the vicinity, revelling in their astonishment.

She looked carefully about her. The blossoms of a 'wild rose-bush fell from its shaking boughs to the earth. She quickly stepped towards the thicket, and lo! a young hunter, with spear and game-bag, advanced towards her from out the bushes.

"I am discovered," he said, in a low, shy voice. He looked very handsome in his embarra.s.sment.

But, with a cry of fear, Camilla started back.

"Athalaric!" she stammered, "the King!"

A whole sea of thoughts and feelings rushed through her brain and heart, and, half fainting, she sank upon, the gra.s.sy bank beside the spring.

The young King, alarmed and delighted, stood for a few moments speechless before the tender figure lying at his feet. Thirstily his burning eye dwelt upon the beautiful features and n.o.ble form. A vivid flush shot like lightning over his pale face.

"Oh, she--she is my death!" he breathed, pressing both hands to his beating heart. "To die now--to die with her!"

Camilla moved her arm, which movement brought him to his senses; he kneeled down beside her, and wetted her temples with the cool water of the spring. She opened her eyes.

"Barbarian! murderer!" she cried shrilly, thrust his hand away, sprang up, and fled like a frightened doe.

Athalaric made no attempt to follow her.