Valeria, the Martyr of the Catacombs Part 14

What the Christians are, I neither know nor care. What the Empress is, I know--the n.o.blest soul that breathes in Rome. Who wags his tongue against her shall be given to the crows and kites. _Dixi Fiat_--I have spoken--so let it be," and his terrible frown, as he stalked from the room, showed that he meant what he said.

The three conspirators, for a moment, stared at each other in consternation. Then the wily Fausta faltered out, "Said I not, he would defy both G.o.ds and men? We must do by stealth what we cannot do by force. Juba must ply her most secret and most deadly arts. I have certain subtle spells myself; and if mortal hate can give them power, I will make her beauty waste away like a fading flower, and her strength wane like a dying lamp."

"'Tis a dangerous game," replied Naso. "Be wary how you play it. As for me, armed with this edict, I will strike at mine ancient foe, for whom I long have nursed a bitter spite. Curse him! I am tired of hearing him called Adauctus the Just. He held me to such a strict account that I had to make a full return of all the fines and mulcts paid in, without taking the toll which is my right." And he departed to gratify his double pa.s.sion of revenge and greed.

It may seem strange that such a truculent monster as Galerius, of whom, in his later days, his Christian subjects were wont to say that "he never supped without human blood--_Nec unquam sine cruore humano cnabat,_"[35]--should be so under the spell of his Christian wife. But the statement is corroborated by the records of history, and by the philosophy of the human mind. There is a power in moral goodness that can awe the rudest natures, a winsome spell that can subdue the hardest hearts. It was the story of Una and the Lion, of Beauty and the Beast over again; and one of the severest trials for a Christian wife in those days of the struggle between Christianity and Paganism for the mastery of the world, was that of being allied to a pagan husband. Tertullian, in the third century, thus describes the difficulties which a Christian woman married to an idolater must encounter in her religious life:

"At the time for worship the husband will appoint the use of the bath; when a fast is to be observed he will invite company to a feast When she would bestow alms, both safe and cellar are closed against her. What heathen will suffer his wife to attend the nightly meetings of the Church, the slandered Supper of the Lord, to visit the sick even in the poorest hovels, to kiss the martyrs' chains in prison, to rise in the night for prayer, to show hospitality to stranger brethren?"[36]

In time of persecution, or in the case of persons of such exalted rank as that of Valeria, the difficulty of adorning a Christian life, amid their pagan surroundings, was all the greater. Yet not a word of scandal has been breathed upon the character of the wife of the arch persecutor of the Christians; and even the sneering pen of Gibbon has only words of commendation for the Christian Empress who herself under subsequent persecution, remained steadfast even unto death.

The beauty and dignity of Christian wedlock in an age of persecution and strife are n.o.bly expressed by Tertullian in the following pa.s.sage, addressed to his own wife: "How can I paint the happiness," he exclaims, "of a marriage which the Church ratines, the Sacrament confirms, the benediction seals, angels announce, and our heavenly Father declares valid! What a union of two believers--one hope, one vow, one discipline, one worship! They are brother and sister, two fellow-servants, one spirit and one flesh. They pray together, fast together, exhort and support one another. They go together to the house of G.o.d, and to the table of the Lord. They share each other's trials, persecutions, and joys. Neither avoids, nor hides anything from the other. They delight to visit the sick, succour the needy, and daily to lay their offerings before the altar without scruple, and without constraint. They do not need to keep the sign of the cross hidden, nor to express secretly their Christian joy, nor to receive by stealth the eucharist. They join in psalms and hymns, and strive who best can praise G.o.d. Christ rejoices at the sight, and sends His peace upon them. Where two are in His name He also is; and where He is, there evil cannot come."

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FOOTNOTES:

[35] Lactantius, _De Mortibus Persecutorum._

[36] Tertull, _Ad Uzorem_, ii. 8.

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CHAPTER XXI.

A CRIME PREVENTED.

The deadly malice of Fausta, Furca, and Naso towards the Empress Valeria, foiled in its attempt to invoke upon her the penalties of the edict against the Christians, sought, by secret means, to procure her death. Juba, the black slave, was heavily bribed to prepare some of her most subtle poisons and procure their administration. But here a difficulty presented itself, and it is a striking ill.u.s.tration of the corruption of the Empire and of the daily peril in which the inhabitants of the Imperial palace dwelt--a state of peril which finds its modern a.n.a.logue only in the continual menace under which the Czar of all the Russias lives, with a sword of Damocles suspended by a single hair above his head. Such was the atmosphere of suspicion which pervaded the whole palace, such the dread of a.s.sa.s.sination or of poisoning, that trusty guards and officers swarmed in the ante-chambers and prevented access to the members of the Imperial family except under the most rigid precautions of safety; and a special officer was appointed, whose duty, as his t.i.tle of _Praegustalor_ implies, was to taste every kind of food or drink provided for the Imperial table. Regard for his personal safety was, of course, a guarantee that the utmost precautions were observed in preparing the daily food of the Imperial household. Juba in vain attempted to bribe some of the kitchen scullions and cooks to mix with the savoury viands designed for the use of Valeria, who generally lunched in her private apartments, a potent poison. They accepted, indeed, her bribes, but prudently declined to carry out their part of the agreement, well knowing that she dare not venture to criminate herself by an open rupture with them.

At length she resolved on attempting a more subtle but less certain mode of administering a deadly drug. While in the service of a priest of Isis in Egypt, she had extorted or cajoled from an Abyssinian slave in his service certain dark secrets, learned it was said by the Queen of Sheba from Solomon, and handed down from age to age as the esoteric lore of the realm. One of these was the preparation of a volatile poison so subtle and powerful that its mere inhalation was of deadly potency. As a means of conveying this to her victim, and at the same time of disguising the pungent aromatic odour, a basket of flowers which she had plentifully sprinkled with the deadly poison was sent to the Empress. To make a.s.surance doubly sure, she concealed among the flowers one of those beautiful but deadly asps, such as that from the bite of which the dusky Queen of Egypt, the wanton Cleopatra, died. This, for purposes connected with her nefarious arts, she had procured as what evil thing could not be procured?--from the dealers in deadly drugs, philtres, and potions in the crowded Ghetto of Rome.

To ensure the conveyance of the deadly gift to the hands of Valeria herself, Juba invented the fiction that they were a thankoffering from the young Greek, Isidorus, to his Imperial patroness for favours received. With her characteristic cunning Juba had possessed herself of the secret of his services rendered to the Empress, and of the interest felt in him by her august mistress.

Valeria was in her _boudoir_ with her favourite and now inseparable Callirhoe, as her tire woman, dressing her hair, when the fatal missive arrived. As Callirhoe received the basket from the hands of Juba, the eyes of the slave gleamed with the deadly hate of a basilisk, and she muttered as she turned away--

"May the curse of Isis rest on them both. My fine lady has driven black Juba from the tiring room of the Empress. May she now share her fate,"

and, like a sable Atropos, she glided from the chamber with stealthy and cat-like tread.

"Oh! what fresh and fragrant flowers," exclaimed the Empress Valeria, as she bent over them, "see how the dew is yet fresh upon their petals."

Here she raised the basket so as more fully to inhale their fragrance.

At that moment the concealed and deadly asp whose dark green and glossy skin had prevented its detection among the acanthus and lily leaves, seized, with his envenomed fang, the damask cheek of the fair Valeria, and for a moment clung firmly there.

"G.o.d, save her!" exclaimed Callirhoe, who in a moment recognized the cruel aspic, of which, as a child, she had been often warned in her native Antioch, and with an eager gesture she flung the venomous reptile to the ground and crushed its head beneath her sandal's heel. On the quick instinct of the moment and without stopping to think of the consequences to herself, she threw her arms about her Imperial mistress'

neck, and pressing her lips to her cheek, sucked the venom from the yet bleeding wound.

The cry of the Empress as the little serpent stung her cheek brought a swarm of attendants and slaves into the room, among them black Juba and the officer of the guard who was responsible for the Empress' safety.

Valeria had fainted and lay pale as ashes on her couch, a crimson stream flowing from her cheek.

"Dear heart!" exclaimed Juba, with an ostentatious exhibition of well-feigned grief, "let her inhale this fragrant elixir. It is a potent restorative in such deadly faints," and she attempted to complete her desperate crime by thrusting the poisonous perfume under Valeria's nostrils.

"Who was last in the presence before this strange accident--if it be an accident--occurred?" demanded the officer.

"I and Juba, were the only ones," faltered Callirhoe, when a deathly pallor pa.s.sed over her face, and with a convulsive shudder she fell writhing on the ground.

"You are under arrest," said the officer to. Juba, and then to a soldier of the guard, "Go, seize and seal up her effects--everything she has; and you," turning to another, "send at once the court physician."

The attendants meanwhile were fanning and sprinkling with water the seemingly inanimate forms of the Empress and Callirhoe. When the physician came and felt the fluttering pulse and noted the dilated eyes of his patients, he p.r.o.nounced it a case of acrid poisoning and promptly ordered antidotes. The Empress, in a few days rallied and seemed little the worse beyond a strange pallor which overspread her features and an abnormal coldness, almost as of death, which pervaded her frame. From these she never fully recovered, but throughout her life was known in popular speech as "The White Lady."

Upon Callirhoe the effects of the poison were still more serious. By her prompt action in sucking the aspic virus from the envenomed wound, she had saved the life of her beloved mistress, but at the peril of her own.

The venom coursed through her veins, kindling the fires of fever in her blood. Her dilated eyes shone with unusual brilliance; her speech was rapid; her manner urgent; and her emotions and expressions were characterized by a strange and unwonted intenseness. The physician in answer to the eager questioning of Valeria, gravely shook his head, and said that the case was one that baffled his skill--that cure there was none for the aspic's poison if absorbed into the system, although as it had not in this case been communicated directly to the blood, possibly the youth and vigour of the patient might overcome the toxic effect of the contagium--so he learnedly discoursed.

"My dear child, you have given your life for mine," exclaimed the Empress, throwing her arms around her late enfranchised slave, and bedewing her cheek with her tears.

"G.o.d grant it be so," said Callirhoe, with kindling eye. "I would gladly die to save you from a sorrow or a pain. I owe you more than life. I owe you liberty and a life more precious than my own."

"All that love and skill can do, dear heart, shall be done," said the Empress caressingly, "to preserve you to your new-found liberty, and to your sire."

"As G.o.d wills, dearest lady," answered Callirhoe, kissing her mistress'

hand. "In His great love I live or die content. I bless Him every hour that He has permitted me to show in some weak way, the love I bear my best and dearest earthly friend."

And with such fond converse pa.s.sed the hours of Valeria's convalescence, and of Callirhoe's deepening decline.

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CHAPTER XXII

THE STORM BURSTS.

The crafty Juba, when she found herself arrested in _flagrante delicto_--in the very act of her attempted crime--determined to use, if possible, the fiction she had employed with reference to Isidorus, as a means of escape from the very serious dilemma in which she was placed.

It will be remembered that she had stated, in order to procure the acceptance of her fatal gift, that it was a thank-offering from the young Greek who had rendered such service to the Empress and Callirhoe.

Happy if Valeria had remembered and practised the ancient adage, "_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes._" But suspicion was foreign to her generous nature, and even if the wise saw had occurred to her, she would have lightly laughed away its cynical suggestion.

When the treacherous slave was examined as to her share in the attempted crime, she stoutly adhered to her fict.i.tious story, and protested that she knew nothing of the contents of the basket, but that she had received it from Isidorus, and had been well paid for conveying it to the Empress without suspicion of any sinister design.

The Greek, when charged with the crime of attempting to procure, by poison, the death of the Empress Valeria, manifested the greatest astonishment. Summoned before the Quaestor of the Palace, an officer of co-ordinate jurisdiction with the Prefect of the city, he stoutly protested his innocence. But all his protestations were regarded by that official, as only the very perfection of art--the well-feigned evasions of a mendacious Greek. And certainly appearances were very much against him. The Prefect Naso, now that he had extorted from him all the information he had to give, abandoned him as a worn-out tool and divulged to the Quaestor the d.a.m.ning fact that the Greek by a formal doc.u.ment had accused the Empress of treason against the State, and of conspiracy with the Christians--for so he represented the confessions which, by his diabolical arts, he had wrung from his unhappy victim.

Confronted by this evidence Isidorus was dumb. He saw the trap into which he had been snared, and that by no efforts of his own could he extricate himself. He saw, too, the ruin he had brought upon his friends, for Naso had procured the immediate arrest of Adauctus, Aurelius, and Demetrius, the father of Callirhoe, and other Christians connected with the Imperial household. Callirhoe herself was also placed under arrest, upon the monstrous accusation of conspiracy with Isidorus and Juba to procure the death of the Empress Valeria. One would have thought that her self-devotion and almost sacrifice of her life to save that of her mistress would have been a sufficient vindication from such a charge. But the unreasoning terror of the Emperors and the unreasoning hatred of all who bore the Christian name, fostered as these were by the machinations and evil suggestions of the Quaestor of the Palace, the Prefect of the city, the arch priest of Cybele, and the cruel, crafty Fausta, thirsty for the blood of her victim, rendered possible the acceptance of any charge, however improbable. "Any stick will do to beat a dog," and any accusation, however absurd, was considered available against the Christians.

Even Galerius who, left to himself, would, soldier-like, have braved any personal danger, completely lost his judgment at the peril menacing the Empress. The tortures of slaves and servants by the perverted tribunals, miscalled of justice, fomented by the cruel, crafty priests, and the eager greed of Prefect and Quaestor, caused an outburst of persecution against all who bore the Christian name. The estates of Adauctus, and Aurelius were expropriated by the persecutors, and as a consequence their late possessors were pre-judged to death. Valeria who would fain have interposed her protection, had suffered such a physical shock as to be incapable of exercising any authority or influence she might possess. And the Empress Prisca, less courageous in spirit, less beautiful in person, and less potent in influence, was completely cowed by the domineering violence of the Emperor Diocletian, who was quite beside himself at the conspiracy against the G.o.ds, and against the Imperial Household which he persuaded himself had been discovered.