Domitia

“If you sleep you die.”

“I want to die – only to sleep. I am dead weary.”

“Make her move along,” said the sorcerer in a low tone, and the slaves who held her up drew her forward. She scarce moved her feet.

“Oh, you are cruel. I want to sleep. An hour! half an hour. For one moment longer!” she pleaded.

Still the bearers drew her forward, they did not lift her so that she need not move her feet. She was constrained to step forward.

“I pray you! I will give you gold. You shall have all my jewels. Lay me down. Let go your hold, and I will lie where I am, and sleep.”

“Draw her further. – Hark! here come horses. Aside! behind that tomb!”

The party stole from off the road and secreted itself behind one of the mausoleums that line the sides of the Appian Way.

“Shake her – lest she doze off in your arms,” said Elymas, and the slaves obeyed.

Then Domitia began to sob. “Have pity! only for a little while, I am so tired. The day has been so long and so wearying.”

“They are passed – mere travellers,” said the sorcerer. “Into the road again. Force her to walk.”

Then she called, “Lamia – my Lucius! come to me, drive these men away. They will not let me sleep,” and she struggled to free herself, and unable to do so by a spasmodic effort, began to sob, and sobbed herself into a half doze.

“She is sleeping. Run with her,” called the Magus.

In vain did she weep, entreat, threaten, naught availed, she was forced to advance; now to take a few steps, to rest on her feet, to walk in actuality. The very anger she felt at not being allowed to cast herself down, fold her hands under her head, and drop off into unconsciousness, tended to rouse her.

After about half an hour, her entreaties to be allowed to rest became less frequent, and alternated with inquiries as to where she was, whither she was going, why she was forced to walk, and that at night. Then she ceased altogether to complain of drowsiness, and finding she met with no response to her inquiries as to her destination, she became silent; she was now conscious, but her brain was clouded, perplexed. She could remember nothing that would account for her present position. Whether she were in a dream, laboring under nightmare, she could not tell, and purposely she struck her foot against one of the paving blocks of lava, and by the pain assured herself that she was actually awake.

But where was she?

She looked up. The sky was besprent with stars, a sky limpid, tender, vaporless and vast, out of which the stars throbbed with iridescent light in all the changeful flicker of topaz, emerald and ruby. And the air was full of flying stars, in tens of thousands, they settled on rushes by the roadside in chains of fire, they flashed across the eyes, they settled down on the dress; and out of the cool grass shone the steady lustre of innumerable glow-worms.

The milky way, like an illumined veil, crossed the vault, vaporous, transparent with stars shining through it.

From the black monuments on each side hooted the owls, bats swept by, diving out of night to brush by the passers along the road and plunge back into night, like old forgotten fancies of the dreaming mind, that recur and vanish again, in waking hours. Out of the grass the crickets shrilled, and frogs called with flutelike tones at intervals, whilst others maintained an incessant chatter.

Where was she? What were these great fantastic edifices on each side of the road? They were no houses, for out of none glimmered a light. No occupants stood in the doors, or sang and piped on the threshold. These were no taverns, for no host invited to rest within, and praised his fare. The road was forsaken, still as death, and these mansions were the dwellings of the dead. She knew this now – that she was on one of the roads that led from the gates of Rome, lined with tombs. How she had got there she knew not. Least of all did she know for what reason she was being dragged along it. She had thus trudged for a considerable time; she had ceased to speak. She was occupied with her thoughts. Weary she was, but in too great anguish of mind to be aware how weary she was, till tripping on a stone she fell.

Then a voice said: —

“She is full awake now. There is naught to fear. Let her again mount the litter.”

“Elymas!” exclaimed the girl, “I know you, I know your voice. What means this? Whither am I being taken?”

“Madam,” said the sorcerer in reply, after a pause, “your own eyes shall answer the question better than my lips, to-morrow.”

CHAPTER XXIV.

ALBANUM

Sleep-drunk, with clouded brain, eyes that saw as in a dream, feet that moved involuntarily, Domitia descended from the litter and tottered in at a doorway when informed that she had reached her destination.

Where that was she did not care, whose house this was mattered nothing to her in her then condition of weariness.

Female slaves bearing lights received her and directed her steps to a chamber where they would have divested her of her garments and put her to bed, had she not refused their assistance, thrown herself on the couch and in a moment fallen fast asleep.

The slaves looked at each other, whispered, and resolved not to torment by rousing her; they accordingly drew the heavy curtains of the doorway and left her to her slumbers.

But weary though Domitia was, her sleep was not dreamless, the song of a thousand nightingales that made the night musical reached her ears and penetrated the doorways of her troubled brain and wove fantasies; the ever-present sense of fear, not dissipated by slumber, weighed on her and gave sombre color to her dreams; the motion of the palanquin had communicated itself in her fancy, to the bed, and that tossed and swayed under her. Her weary feet seemed stung and burnt as though they had been held too close to the fire. Now she saw Lamia’s face, and then it was withdrawn; now her mother seemed to be calling to her from an ever-increasing distance.

Yet troubled though her sleep was, it afforded her brain some rest, and she woke in the morning at a later hour than usual, when by the strip of warm light below the curtains she was made aware that the sun had risen.

She started from sleep, passed her hand across her face, pressed her brows, stepped to the doorway, pushed the curtains aside and looked out into a little atrium, in which plashed a fountain, and where stood boxes of myrtles in full flower, steeping the atmosphere with fragrance.

At once two female servants came to her, bowed low and desired permission to assist in dressing her.

With some hesitation she consented.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“By the lake of Alba,” answered a dark-faced servant with hard lustrous eyes, and in a foreign dialect.

“In whose house?”

The slaves looked at each other, and made no reply.

Again she put the question.

“Lady, we are forbidden to say,” answered one of the slaves.

“At Alba?” muttered Domitia.

Then, as the woman divested her of her tunic, something fell from her bosom on the mosaic floor. The maid stooped, picked it up and handed it to Domitia, who turned it in her palm and looked at it, at first without comprehension. Then she recollected what this was – the amulet given her by Glyceria. It was a red cornelian fish pierced at one end and a fine gold ring inserted in the hole, so that the stone might be suspended.

Domitia was not in a condition of mind to pay attention to the ornament, but she bade one of the servants thread a piece of silk through the ring that she might wear the amulet about her neck, and then she allowed herself to be conducted to the bath.

With suspicious eyes the girl observed everything. She was obviously in a country villa belonging to some Roman noble, and that villa beside the Alban Lake.

The Ælii Lamiæ had no country-house at this place, of that she was aware. She had heard some of the friends of her mother speak of the beauties of the Alban Lake, and then her mother had lamented that the family estate lay by the Gabian puddle. But she could not recall that any one of them had a villa there.

When she left the bath she walked out of the doorway through the vestibule and stood on the terrace.

Below was the sombre lake, almost circular, with the rolling woods of oak and beech flowing down the slopes to the very water’s edge, here and there the green covering interrupted by precipitous crags of tuffa. Yonder was the great ridge on which gleamed white the Temple of Jupiter Latiaris, the central shrine of the Latin races, the great pilgrimage place to which the country people turned in every distress.

She had not previously seen the Alban Lake, although Gabii had been her residence for some months, and that was seated on a low spur of the mountains, in the crater of one of which slept this tranquil and lovely sheet of water. But she knew enough about it by hearsay to be sure that she was not misinformed by the slaves as to where she now was. She certainly was beside that lake, near which once stretched Alba Longa, the cradle of the Roman race – a race of shepherds driven from its first seat by volcanic fires, to settle beside the Tiber on the Palatine Hill.

That road along which she had been conveyed during the night was the great Appian Way. It could have been none other, and that led, as she was aware, along the spurs of the Alban mountains.