The Falling Star/Chapter 7

N EVERYTHING but title and security of tenure Marcia was empress of the world, and she had what empresses most often lack—the common touch. She had been born in slavery. She had ascended step by step to fortune, by her own wits, learning by experience. Each layer of society was known to her—its virtues, prejudices, limitations and peculiar tricks of thought. Being almost incredibly beautiful, she had learned very early in life that the desired (not always the desirable) is powerful to sway men; the possessed begins to lose its sway; the habit of possession easily succumbs to boredom, and then power ceases. Even Commodus, accordingly, had never owned her in the sense that men own slaves; she had reserved to herself self-mastery, which called for cunning, courage and a certain ruthlessness, albeit tempered by a reckless generosity.

She saw life sceptically, undeceived by the fawning flattery that Rome served up to her, enjoying it as a cat likes being stroked. They said of her that she slept with one eye open.

Livius had complained in the Thermæ to Pertinax that the wine of influence was going to Marcia’s head, but he merely expressed the opinion of one man, who would have liked to feel himself superior to her and to use her for his own ends. She was not deceived by Livius or by anybody else. She knew that Livius was keeping watch on her, and how he did it, having shrewdly guessed that a present of eight matched fitter-bearers was too extravagant not to mask ulterior designs. She watched him much more artfully than he watched her. Her secret knowledge that he knew her secret was more dangerous to him than anything that he had found out could be dangerous to her.

HE eight matched litter-bearers waited with the gilded litter near a flight of marble steps that descended from the door of Marcia’s apartments in the palace to a sunlit garden with a fountain in the midst. There was a crowd of servants and four Syrian eunuchs, sleek offensive menials in yellow robes; two lictors besides, with fasces and the Roman civic uniform—a scandalous abuse of ancient ceremony—ready to conduct a progress through the city. But they all yawned. Marcia and her usual companion did not come; there was delay—and gossip, naturally.

A yawning eunuch rearranged the bow-knot of his girdle.

“What does she want with Livius? He usually gets sent for when somebody needs punishing. Who do you suppose has fallen foul of her?”

“Himself! He sent her messenger back with word he was engaged on palace business. I heard her tell the slave to go again and not return without him! Bacchus! But it wouldn’t worry me if Livius should lose his head! For an aristocrat he has more than his share of undignified curiosity—forever poking his sharp nose into other people’s business. Marcia may have found him out. Lets hope!”

At the foot of the marble stairway, in the hall below Marcia’s apartment, Livius stood remonstrating, growing nervous. Marcia, dressed in the dignified robes of a Roman matron, that concealed even her ankles and suggested the demure, self-conscious rectitude of olden times, kept touching his breast with her ivory fan, he flinching from the touch, subduing irritation.

“If the question is, what I want with you, Livius, the answer is, that I invite you. Order your litter brought.”

“But Marcia, I am subprefect. I am responsible to—”

“Did you hear?”

“But if you will tell where we are going, I might feel justified in neglecting the palace business. I assure you I have important work to do.”

“There are plenty who can attend to it,” said Marcia. “The most important thing in your life, Livius, is my good-will. You are delaying me.”

Livius glared at Caia Poppeia, the lady-in-waiting, who was smiling, standing a little behind Marcia. He hoped she would take the hint and withdraw out of earshot, but she had had instructions, and came half a step closer.

“Will you let me go back to my office and—”

“No!” answered Marcia.

He yielded with a nervous gesture, that implored her not to make an indiscretion. A subprefect, in the nature of his calling, had too many enemies to relish repetition in the palace precincts of a threat from Marcia, however baseless it might be. And besides, it might be something serious that almost had escaped her lips. Untrue or true, it would be known all over the palace in an hour; within the day all Rome would know of it. There were two slaves by the front door, two more on the last step of the stairs.

“I will come, of course,” he said. “I am delighted. I am honored. I am fortunate!”

She nodded. She sent one of her own slaves to order his private litter brought, while Livius attempted to look comfortable, cudgeling his brains to know what mischief she had found out. It was nothing unusual that his litter should follow hers through the streets of Rome; in fact, it was an honor coveted by all officials of the palace, that fell to his share rather frequently because of his distinguished air of a latter-day man of the world and his intimate knowledge of everybody’s business and ancestry. He was often ordered to go with her at a moment’s notice. But this was the first time she had refused to say where they were going, or why, and there was a hint of malice in her smile that made his blood run cold. He was a connoisseur of malice.

Marcia leaned on his arm as she went down the steps to her litter. She permitted him to help her in. But then, while her companion was following through the silken curtains, she leaned out at the farther side and whispered to the nearest eunuch. Livius, climbing into his own gilt vehicle and lifted shoulder-high by eight Numidians, became aware that Marcia’s eunuchs had been told to keep an eye on him; two yellow-robed, insufferably impudent inquisitors strode in among his own attendants.

An escort of twenty prætorian guards and a decurion was waiting at the gate to take its place between the lictors and Marcia’s litter, but that did not in any way increase Livius’ sense of security. The prætorian guard regarded Marcia as the source of its illegal privileges. It looked to her far more than to the emperor for favors, buying them with lawless loyalty to her. She ruined discipline by her support of every plea for increased perquisites. No outraged citizen had any hope of redress so long as Marcia’s ear could be reached (although Commodus got the blame for it). It was the key to Marcia’s system of insurance against unforeseen contingencies. The only regularly drilled and armed troops in the city were as loyal to her, secretly and openly, as Livius himself was to the principle of cynical self-help.

He began to feel thoroughly frightened, as he told himself that the escort and their decurion would swear to any statement Marcia might make. If she had learned that he was in the habit of receiving secret information from her slave, there were a thousand ways she might take to avenge herself; a very simple way would be to charge him with improper overtures and have him killed by the prætorians—a way that might particularly interest her, since it would presumably increase her reputation for constancy to Commodus.

The eunuchs watched him. The lictors and prætorians cleared the way, so there were no convenient halts that could enable him to slip unnoticed through the crowd. His own attendants seemed to have divined that there was something ominous about the journey, and he was not the kind of man whose servants are devotedly attached to him. He knew it. He noticed sullenness already in the answers his servant gave him through the litter curtains, when he asked whether the man knew their destination.

“None knows. All I know is, we must follow Marcia.”

The slave’s voice was almost patronizing. Livius made up his mind, if he should live the day out, to sell the rascal to some farmer who would teach him with a whip what service meant. But he said nothing. He preferred to spring surprizes, only hoping he himself might not be overwhelmed in one.

By the time they reached Cornificia’s house he was in such a state of nervousness, and so blanched, that he had to summon his servant into the litter to rub cosmetic on his cheeks. He took one of Galen’s famous strychnine pills before he could prevent his limbs from trembling. Even so, when he rolled out of the litter and advanced with his courtliest bow to escort Marcia into the house, she recognized his fear and mocked him:

“You are bilious? Or has some handsomer Adonis won your Venus from you? Is it jealousy?”

He pretended that the litter-bearers needed whipping for having shaken him. It made him more than ever ill at ease that she should mock him before all the slaves who grouped themselves in Cornificia’s forecourt. Hers was one of those houses set back from the street, combining an air of seclusion with such elegance as could not possibly escape the notice of the passer-by. The forecourt was adorned with statuary and the gate left wide, affording a glimpse of sunlit greenery and marble that entirely changed the aspect of the narrow street. There were never less than twenty tradesmen at the gate, imploring opportunity to show their wares, which were in baskets and boxes, with slaves squatting beside them. All Rome would know within the hour that Marcia had called on Cornificia, and that Livius, the subprefect, had been mocked by Marcia in public.

A small crowd gathered to watch the picturesque ceremony of reception—Cornificia’s house steward marshaling his staff, the brightly colored costumes blending in the sunlight with the hues of flowers and the rich, soft sheen of marble in the shadow of tall cypresses. The prætorians had to form a cordon in front of the gate, and the street became choked by the impeded traffic. Rome loved pageantry; it filled its eyes before its belly, which was nine-tenths of the secret of the Cæsar’s power.

Within the house, however, there was almost a stoical calm—a sensation of cloistered chastity produced by the restraint of ornament and the subdued light on gloriously painted frescoes representing evening benediction at a temple altar, a gathering of the Muses, sacrifice before a shrine of Æsculapius and Jason’s voyage to Colchis for the Golden Fleece. The inner court, where Cornificia received her guests, was like a sanctuary dedicated to the decencies, its one extravagance the almost ostentatious restfulness, accentuated by the cooing of white pigeons and the drip and splash of water in the fountain in the midst.

The dignity of drama was the essence of all Roman ceremony. The formalities of greeting were observed as elegantly, and with far more evident sincerity, in Cornificia’s house than in Cæsar’s palace. Cornificia, dressed in white and wearing very little jewelry, received her guests more like an old-time patrician matron than a notorious modern concubine. Her notoriety, in fact, was due to Flavia Titiana, rather than to any indiscretions of her own. To justify her infidelities, which were a byword, Pertinax’ lawful wife went to ingenious lengths to blacken Cornificia’s reputation, regaling all society with her invented tales about the lewd attractions Cornificia staged to keep Pertinax held in her toils.

That Cornificia did exercise a sway over the governor of Rome was undeniable. He worshiped her and made no secret of it. But she held him by a method diametrically contrary to that which rumor, stirred by Flavia Titiana, indicated; Cornificia’s house was a place where he could lay aside the feverish activities of public life and revel in the intellectual and philosophical amusements that he genuinely loved.

But Livius loathed her. Among other things, he suspected her of being in league with Marcia to protect the Christians. To him she represented the idealism that his cynicism bitterly rejected. The mere fact of her unshakable fidelity to Pertinax was an offense in his eyes; she presented what he considered an impudent pose of morality, more impudent because it was sustained. He might have liked her well enough if she had been a hypocrite, complaisant to him self.

She understood him perfectly—better, in fact, than she understood Marcia, whose visits usually led to intricate entanglements for Pertinax. When she had sent the slaves away and they four lay at ease on couches in the shade of three exotic potted palms, she turned her back toward Livius, suspecting he would bring his motives to the surface if she gave him time; whereas Marcia would hide hers and employ a dozen artifices to make them undiscoverable.

OU have not brought Livius because you think he loves me!” she said, laughing. “Nor have you come, my Marcia, for nothing, since you might have sent for me and saved yourself trouble. I anticipate intrigue! What plot have you discovered now? Is Pertinax its victim? You can always interest me if you talk of Pertinax.”

“We will talk of Livius,” said Marcia.

Leaning on his elbows, Livius glared at Caia Poppeia, Marcia’s companion. He coughed, to draw attention to her, but Marcia refused to take the hint.

“Livius has information for us,” she remarked.

Livius rose from the couch and came and stood before her, knitting his fingers together behind his back, compelling himself to smile. His pallor made the hastily applied cosmetics look ridiculous.

“Marcia,” he said, “you make it obvious that you suspect me of some indiscretion.”

“Never!” she retorted, mocking. “You indiscreet? Who would believe it? Give us an example of discretion; you are Paris in the presence of three goddesses. Select your destiny!”

He smiled, attempted to regain his normal air of tolerant importance—glanced about him—saw the sunlight making iridescent pools of fire within a crystal ball set on the fountain’s edge—took up the ball and brought it to her, holding it in both hands.

“What choice is there than that which Paris made?” he asked, kneeling on one knee, laughing. “Venus rules men’s hearts. She must prevail. So into your most lovely hands I give my destiny.”

“You mean, you leave it there!” said Marcia. “Could you ever afford to ignore me and intrigue behind my back?”

“I am the least intriguing person of your acquaintance, Marcia,” he answered, rising because the hard mosaic pavement hurt his knee, and the position made him feel undignified. But more than dignity he loved discretion; he wished there were eyes in the back of his head, to see whether slaves were watching from the curtained windows opening on the inner court. “It is my policy,” he went on, “to know much and say little; to observe much, and do nothing! I am much too lazy for intrigue, which is hard work, judging by what I have seen of those who indulge in it.”

“Is that why you sacrificed a white bull recently?” asked Marcia.

Livius glanced at Cornificia, but her patrician face gave no hint. Caia Poppeia’s was less under control, for she was younger and had nothing to conceal; she was inquisitively enjoying the entertainment and evidently did not know what was coming. Livius wondered why Marcia trusted her.

“I sacrificed a white bull to Jupiter Capitolinus, as is customary, to confirm a sacred oath,” he answered.

“Very well, suppose you break the oath!” said Marcia.

He managed to look scandalized—then chuckled foolishly, remembering what Pertinax had said about the value of an oath; but his own dignity obliged him to protest.

“I am not one of your Christians,” he answered, stiffening himself. “I am old-fashioned enough to hold that an oath made at the altar of our Roman Jupiter is sacred and inviolable.”

“When you took your oath of office you swore to be in all things true to Cæsar,” Marcia retorted. “Do you prefer to tell Cæsar how true you have been to that oath? Which oath holds—the first one or the second?”

“l could ask to be released from the second one,” said Livius. “If you will give me time—”

Marcia’s laugh interrupted him. It was soft, melodious, like wavelets on a calm sea, hinting unseen reefs.

“Time,” she said, “is all that death needs! Death does not wait on oaths; it comes to us. I wish to know just how far I can trust you, Livius.”

Nine Roman nobles out of ten in Livius’ position would have recognized at once the deadliness of the alternatives she offered and, preserving something of the shreds of pride, would have accepted suicide as preferable. Livius had no such stamina. He seized the other horn of the dilemma.

“I perceive Pertinax has betrayed me,” he sneered, looking sharply at Cornificia; but she was watching Marcia and did not seem conscious of his glance. “If Pertinax has broken his oath, mine no longer binds me. This is the fact then: I discovered how he helped Sextus, son of Maximus, to avoid execution by a ruse, making believe to be killed. Pertinax was also privy to the execution of an unknown thief in place of Norbanus, a friend of Sextus, also implicated in conspiracy. Pertinax has been secretly negotiating with Sextus ever since. Sextus now calls himself Maternus and is notorious as a highwayman.”

“What else do you know about Maternus?” Marcia inquired. There was a trace at last of sharpness in her voice. A hint conveyed itself that she could summon the prætorians if he did not answer swiftly.

“He plots against Cæsar.”

“You know too little or too much!” said Marcia. “What else?”

He closed his lips tight. “I know nothing else.”

“Have you had any dealings with Sextus?”

“Never.”

He was shifting now from one foot to the other, hardly noticeably, but enough to make Marcia smile.

“Shall we hear what Sextus has to say to that?” asked Cornificia, so confidently that there was no doubt Marcia had given her the signal.

Marcia moved her melting, lazy, laughing eyes and Cornificia clapped her hands. A slave came.

“Bring the astrologer.”

EXTUS must have been listening, he appeared so instantly. He stood with folded arms confronting them, his weathered face in sunlight. Pigment was not needed to produce the healthy bronze hue of his skin; his curly hair, bound by a fillet, was unruly from the outdoor life he had been leading; the strong sinews of his arms and legs belied the ease of his pretended calling and the starry cloak he wore was laughable in its failure to disguise the man of action. He saluted the three women with a gesture of the raised right hand that no man unaccustomed to the use of arms could imitate, then turning slightly toward Livius, acknowledged his nod with a humorous grin.

“So we meet again, Bultius Livius.”

“Again?” asked Marcia.

“Why yes, I met him in the house of Pertinax. It is three days since we spoke together. Three, or is it four, Livius? I have been busy. I forget.”

“Can Livius have lied?” asked Marcia. She seemed to be enjoying the entertainment.

Livius threw caution to the winds.

“Is this a tribunal?” he demanded. “If so, of what am I accused?” He tried to speak indignantly, but something caught in his throat. The cough became a sob and in a moment he was half-hysterical. “By Hercules, what judges! What a witness! Is he a two-headed witness who shall swear my life away? I understand you, Marcia!”

“You?” she laughed. “You understand me?”

He recovered something of his self-possession, a wave of virility returning.

High living and the feverish excitement of the palace regime had ruined his nerves but there were traces still of his original astuteness. He resumed his air of dignity.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I have been overworked of late. I must see Galen about this jumpiness. When I said I understand you I meant, I realize that you are joking. Naturally you would not receive a highwayman in Cornificia’s house, and at the same time accuse me of treason! Pray excuse my outburst—set it to the score of ill-health. I will see Galen.”

“You shall see him now!” laughed Marcia, and Cornificia clapped her hands.

Less suddenly than Sextus had appeared, because his age was beginning to tell on him, Galen entered the court through a door behind the palm-trees and stood smiling, making his old-world, slow salute to Marcia. His bright eyes moved alertly amid wrinkles. He looked something like the statues of the elder Cato, only with a kindlier humor and less obstinacy at the corners of the mouth. Two slaves brought out a couch for him and vanished when he had taken his ease on it after fussing a little because the sun was in his eyes.

“My trade is to oppose death diplomatically,” he remarked. “I am a poor diplomatist. I only gain a little here and there. Death wins inevitably. Nevertheless, they only summon me for consultation when they hope to gain a year or two for some body. Marcia, unless you let Bultius Livius use that couch he will swoon. I warn you. The man’s heart is weak. He has more brain than heart,” he added. “How is our astrologer?”

He greeted Sextus with a wrinkled grin and beckoned him to share his couch. Sextus sat down and began chafing the old doctor’s legs. Marcia took her time about letting Livius be seated.

“You heard Galen?” she asked. “We are here to cheat death diplomatically.”

“Whose death?” Livius demanded.

“Rome’s!” said Marcia, her eyes intently on his face. “If Rome should split in three parts it would fall asunder. None but Commodus can save us from a civil war. We are here to learn what Bultius Livius can do to preserve the life of Commodus.”

Livius’ face, grotesque already with its hastily smeared carmine, assumed new bewilderment.

“I have seen men tortured who were less ready to betray themselves,” said Galen. “Give him wine—strong wine, that is my advice.”

But Marcia preferred her victim thoroughly subjected.

“Fill your eyes with sunlight, Livius. Breathe deep! You look and breathe your last, unless you satisfy me! This astrologer, who is not Sextus—mark that! I have said he is not Sextus. Galen certified to Sextus’ death and there were twenty other witnesses. Nor is he Maternus the highwayman. Maternus was crucified. That other Maternus, who is rumored to live in the Aventine Hills, is an imaginary person—a mere name used by runaways who take to. robbery. This astrologer, I say, reports that you know all the secrets of the factions that are separately plotting to destroy our Commodus.”

Livius did not answer, although she paused to give him time.

“You said you understood me, Livius. But it is I who understand you—utterly! To you any price is satisfactory if your own skin and perquisites are safe. You are as crafty a spy as any rat in the palace cellars. You have kept yourself informed in order to get the pickings when you see at last which side to take. Careful, very clever of you, Livius! But have you ever seen an eagle rob a fish-hawk of its catch?”

“Why waste time?” Cornificia asked impatiently. “He forced himself on Pertinax, who should have had him murdered, only Pertinax is too indifferent to his own—”

“Too philosophical!” corrected Galen.

Then Caia Poppeia spoke up, in a young, hard voice that had none of Marcia’s honeyed charm. No doubt of her was possible; she could be cruel for the sake of cruelty and loyal for the sake of pride. Her beauty was a mere means to an end—the end intrigue, for the impassionate excitement of it. She was straight-lipped, with a smile that flickered, and a hard light in her blue eyes.

“It was I who learned you spy on Marcia. I know, too, that you keep a spy in Britain, one in Gaul, another in Severus’ camp. I read the last nine letters they sent you. I showed them to Marcia.”

“I kept one,” Marcia added. “It came yesterday. It compromises you beyond—”

“I yield!” said Livius, his knees beginning to look weak.

“To whom? To me?” asked Sextus, standing up abruptly and confronting him with folded arms. “Who stole the list I sent to Pertinax, of names of the important men who are intriguing for Severus, and for Pescennius Niger, and for Clodius Albinus?”

“Who knows?” Livius shrugged his shoulders.

“None knew of that list but you!” said Sextus. “You heard me speak of it to Pertinax. You heard me promise I would send it to him. None but you and he and I knew who the messenger would be. Where is the messenger?”

“In the sewers probably!” said Marcia. “The list is more important.”

“If it isn’t in the sewers, too,” said Livius, snatching at a straw. “By Hercules, I know nothing of a list.”

“Then you shall drown with Sextus’ slave in the Cloaca Maxima,” said Marcia. “Not that I need the list. I know what names are written on it. But if it should have fallen into Cæsar’s hands—”

She shuddered, acting horror perfectly, and Livius, like a drowning man who thinks he sees the shore, struck out and sank!

“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 Cæsar’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. “Poppeia, 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.”