CHAPTER XIII
"Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?"--ST. JOHN I. 46.
Dea Flavia was standing beside a tall stool, on the top of which--on alevel with her hands--was a shapeless mass of clay. Her fingers buriedthemselves in the soft substance or ran along the surface, as theexigencies of her task demanded.
Now and then she paused in her work, drew back a step or two from thestool, and with head bent on one side surveyed her work with an anxiousfrown.
Some few paces from her, at the further end of the room, a young girlsat on an elevated platform, with shoulders bare and head straight andrigid, the model for the proposed statue. Dea Flavia, in a simplegarment of soft white stuff falling straight from her shoulders, lookedpeculiarly young and girlish at this moment, when she was free from allthe pomp and paraphernalia of attendants that usually surrounded herwherever she went.
The room in which she indulged her artistic fancy was large and bare,with stuccoed walls on which she herself had thrown quaint and fantasticpictures of goddesses and of beasts, and groups of charioteers andgladiators, drawn with a skilful hand. The room derived its light solelyfrom above, where, through a wide opening in the ceiling, came a peep ofcloud-covered sky. There was little or no furniture about, and the floorof iridescent mosaic was innocent of carpet. Only in the cornersagainst the wall stood tall pots of earthenware filled with flowers,with a profusion of late summer lilies and roses and with great branchesof leaves on which the coming autumn had already planted its first kissthat turns green to gold.
"Hold thy head up, girl, a little higher," said Dea Flavia impatiently;"thou sittest there like a hideous misshapen bunch of nothing-at-all.Dost think I've paid a high price for thee that thou shouldst go tosleep all day upon that trestle?"
And the girl, roused from semi-somnolence, would pull herself togetherwith a little jerk, would straighten her shoulders and lift her chin,whilst a quickly smothered sigh of weariness would escape her lips.
The air was heavy both within and without, with the presage of a comingstorm. It had been terribly hot the last few days. The weather-wise--forthere were many such at this time in Rome--had prophesied that Jupiterwould send his thunders roaring before very long, and the feeling ofthunder in the air caused the model to feel very sleepy, and on theforehead of Dea Flavia beads of perspiration would appear at the rootsof tiny fair curls.
She was working with a will but with strange, fretful movements, likeone whose mind seems absent from the present task. Short sighs ofimpatience escaped her parted lips at intervals and a frown appeared anddisappeared fitfully between her brows.
"Chin up, girl ... shoulders straight!" came in curt admonitions once ortwice to the drowsy model.
Whereupon from the furthest corner of the room Licinia would emerge, rodin hand, to emphasise the necessity of keeping awake when a belovedmistress so desired it.
"Let her be, Licinia," said Dea Flavia with angry impatience when forthe fifth time now the model fell in a huddled heap, with nose almosttouching her knees, and heavy lids falling over sleepy eyes. "It's nouse ... there is something in the air to-day. I cannot work.... Phew!...methinks I feel the approach of thunder."
She threw down her modelling tools with a fretful gesture and thennervily began to destroy her morning's work, patting the clay aimlesslyhere and there until once more it became a shapeless mass.
"That lazy baggage hath spoilt thy pleasure," said Licinia gruffly; "butI'll teach her----"
"No, no, good Licinia!" interposed the young girl with a weary smile."Teach her nothing to-day.... The air is too heavy for serious lessons.Send her away and bring me water for my hands."
Then as Licinia--muttering various dark threats--drove the frightenedgirl before her, Dea Flavia breathed a sigh of relief. Her hands werecovered with clay, so she stood quite still waiting for the reappearanceof Licinia with the water; and all the while the frown on her face grewdarker and the look of trouble in her eyes more pronounced.
Soon the old woman returned with a basin full of water in her hands anda white cloth over her arm. With her wonted loving care she washed Dea'shands between her own and dried them on the towel. Dea allowed her toperform this kindly office for her, standing quite still and gazingabsently out into vacancy.
"What can I do now for thee, my precious?" asked Licinia anxiously.
"Nothing, Licinia, nothing," replied Dea with a sigh. "Just leave me inpeace.... I have a desire for solitude and silence."
It was the old woman's turn to sigh now, for she did not like thisunwonted mood of her beloved. Dea Flavia, when in the privacy of her ownhouse, was always gay and cheerful as a bird, prattling of all sorts ofthings, telling amusing anecdotes to her old nurse and playinglight-heartedly with her young slaves, whenever she was not occupiedwith her artistic work. This frown upon the smooth, white brow was veryunusual, and the fretful, impatient gestures were as unwonted as wasthat dreamy, absent gaze which spoke of anxious, troubled thoughts.
Dea Flavia herself could not understand her own mood. She could not haveconfided in the faithful old woman, even had she been so minded, fortruly she would not have known what to confide.
Her thoughts worried her. They were so insistent, dwelling obstinatelyon one moment which had flitted by yesterday--the moment when she stoodfacing the praefect of Rome, and looking into his deep, dark eyes, whichthen and there had reminded her of a stormy sea suddenly lulled to rest.It seemed as if nothing now or ever hereafter would chase from her mindthe memory of his look and of his rugged voice, softened to infinitegentleness as he said: "I told thee that He died upon the Cross."
She could hear that voice now, even as at this moment from afar amuffled sound of thunder went echoing over the hills, and, strive as shemight, wherever she looked her eyes were haunted by the vision which hehad conjured up of a man with arms outstretched upon a cross, whosemight was yet greater than that of Rome.
At the time she had been greatly angered. The praefect had spokentraitorous words, and she had hated him--she hated him still--for thatallegiance which he seemed to have given to another. Then, with a quick,elusive trick, memory showed her the massive shoulders bent humbly ather feet, tying the strings of her shoe--a simple homage due to thedaughter of Caesar--and the sharp pang of wrath once more shot throughher heart with the remembrance that he had not deigned to press his lipsagainst her foot.
The man's face and figure haunted her for it was the face and the figureof one whom she had learnt to hate. Yes! She hated him for his treasonto Caesar, for his allegiance to that rebel from Galilee; she hated everyword which he had spoken in that arrogant, masterful way of his, when hesmiled upon her threats and calmly spoke of immortality. She hated thevoice which perpetually rang in her ear, the voice with which he spokeof his own soul being in the keeping of God--of One Whose Empire ismightier than that of Rome.
Yet vaguely still--for she was but a girl--the woman in her was stirred;the power and desire which exists in every woman's soul to conquer thatwhich seems furthest from her reach. She hated the man, and yet withinher inmost heart there had sprung the desire to curb and possess his; todisturb the perfect serenity that dwelt in his deep-set eyes, to kindlein them a passion which would make of that proud spirit a mere slave toher will.
There was in her just now nothing but the pagan desire to rule, and tobreak a heart if need be, if she could not otherwise subdue it.
Memory had fanned her wrath. She saw him now as she had seen himyesterday, arrogantly thwarting her will, his bitter tongue lashing herwith irony; and now, as yesterday, the blush of humiliation burned hercheeks, and her pride and dignity rose up in passionate revolt againstthe one man who had ever defied her and who had proudly proclaimed hisallegiance to a man who was not the Caesar.
That allegiance belonged to Caesar and to his might alone; beyond thatthere was the House of Caesar, and failing that, nothing but rebellioustreachery. And the troubled look grew deeper in Dea Flavia's face, andnow she buried her hot cheeks in her hands
, for the humiliation whichshe had endured yesterday from one man seemed to shame her even now.
"I'll break thy will," she murmured, whilst angry tears rose, burning,to her eyes. "I'll shame thy manhood and never rest until I see theecrawling--an abject slave--at the feet of Caesar, who shall kick thee inthe face. Caesar and the House of Caesar brook no rivalry in the heart ofa Roman patrician."
Her hands dropped from before her face. She threw back her head, andlooked straight before her into the darkest corner of the room.
"Jesus of Nazareth, he called thee!" she said slowly and as if speakingto an invisible presence. "And he said at thy call he would give up theworld, and suffer death and torture and shame for thee!... Then so beit! And I do defy thee, O man of Galilee! even I, Dea Flavia Augusta, ofthe imperial House of Caesar! For that man whom I hate and despise, forthat man who has defied and shamed me, for that man whose heart andallegiance thou hast filched from Caesar, for him will I do thee battle... and that heart will I conquer; and it shall be Caesar's andmine--mine--for I will break it and crush it first and then wrest itfrom thee!"
And even as she spoke, from far away over the hills and beyond theCampania the thunder rolled dully in response.