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Veranilda

by George Gissing · English · Gutenberg #4306 · 665,894 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Veranilda

Author: George Gissing


        
Release date: August 1, 2003 [eBook #4306]
                Most recently updated: December 27, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4306

Credits: Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VERANILDA ***




Produced by Charles Aldarondo.  HTML version by Al Haines.








Veranilda


By

George Gissing




CONTENTS

       I  THE VANQUISHED ROMAN
      II  BASIL'S VISION
     III  THE DEACON LEANDER
      IV  TO CUMAE
       V  BASIL AND VERANILDA
      VI  THE EMPEROR'S COMMAND
     VII  HERESY
    VIII  THE SNARE
      IX  CHORSOMAN
       X  THE ANICIANS
      XI  SEEKING
     XII  HELIODORA
    XIII  THE SOUL OF ROME
     XIV  SILVIA'S DREAM
      XV  YOUNG ROME
     XVI  WHISPERS
    XVII  LEANDER THE POLITIC
   XVIII  PELAGIUS
     XIX  THE PRISONER OF PRAENESTE
      XX  THE ISLAND IN THE LIRIS
     XXI  THE BETRAYER BETRAYED
    XXII  DOOM
   XXIII  THE RED HAND
    XXIV  THE MOUNT OF THE MONK
     XXV  THE ABBOT'S TOWER
    XXVI  VIVAS IN DEO
   XXVII  THE KING OF THE GOTHS
  XXVIII  AT HADRIAN'S VILLA
    XXIX  ROME BELEAGUERED
     XXX  * * * *




CHAPTER I

THE VANQUISHED ROMAN


Seven years long had the armies of Justinian warred against the Goths
in Italy. Victor from Rhegium to Ravenna, the great commander
Belisarius had returned to the East, Carrying captive a Gothic king.
The cities of the conquered land were garrisoned by barbarians of many
tongues, who bore the name of Roman soldiers; the Italian people,
brought low by slaughter, dearth, and plague, crouched under the
rapacious tyranny of governors from Byzantium.

Though children born when King Theodoric still reigned had yet scarce
grown to manhood, that golden age seemed already a legend of the past.
Athalaric, Amalasuntha, Theodahad, last of the Amal blood, had held the
throne in brief succession and were gone; warriors chosen at will by
the Gothic host, mere kings of the battlefield, had risen and perished;
reduced to a wandering tribe, the nation which alone of her invaders
had given peace and hope to Italy, which alone had reverenced and
upheld the laws, polity, culture of Rome, would soon, it was thought,
be utterly destroyed, or vanish in flight beyond the Alps. Yet war did
not come to an end. In the plain of the great river there was once more
a chieftain whom the Goths had raised upon their shields, a king, men
said, glorious in youth and strength, and able, even yet, to worst the
Emperor's generals. His fame increased. Ere long he was known to be
moving southward, to have crossed the Apennines, to have won a battle
in Etruria. The name of this young hero was Totila.

In these days the senators of Rome, heirs to a title whose ancient
power and dignity were half-forgotten, abode within the City, under
constraint disguised as honour, the conqueror's hostages. One among
them, of noblest name, Flavius Anicius Maximus, broken in health by the
troubles of the time and by private sorrow, languishing all but unto
death in the heavy air of the Tiber, was permitted to seek relief in a
visit to which he would of his domains in Italy. His birth, his repute,
gave warrant of loyalty to the empire, and his coffers furnished the
price put upon such a favour by Byzantine greed. Maximus chose for
refuge his villa by the Campanian shore, vast, beautiful, half in ruin,
which had been enjoyed by generations of the Anician family; situated
above the little town of Surrentum it caught the cooler breeze, and on
its mountainous promontory lay apart from the tramp of armies. Here, as
summer burned into autumn, the sick man lived in brooding silence,
feeling his strength waste, and holding to the world only by one desire.

The household comprised his unwedded sister Petronilla, a lady in
middle age, his nephew Basil, and another kinsman, Decius, a student
and an invalid; together with a physician, certain freedmen who
rendered services of trust, a eunuch at the Command of Petronilla, and
the usual body of male and female slaves. Some score of glebe-bound
peasants cultivated the large estate for their lord's behoof.
Notwithstanding the distress that had fallen upon the Roman nobility,
many of whom were sunk into indigence, the chief of the Anicii still
controlled large means; and the disposal of these possessions at his
death was matter of interest to many persons--not least to the clergy
of Rome, who found in the dying man's sister a piously tenacious
advocate. Children had been born to Maximus, but the only son who
reached mature years fell a victim to pestilence when Vitiges was
camped about the City. There survived one daughter, Aurelia. Her the
father had not seen for years; her he longed to see and to pardon ere
he died. For Aurelia, widowed of her first husband in early youth, had
used her liberty to love and wed a flaxen-haired barbarian, a lord of
the Goths; and, worse still, had renounced the Catholic faith for the
religion of the Gothic people, that heresy of Arianism condemned and
abhorred by Rome. In Consequence she became an outcast from her kith
and kin. Her husband commanded in the city of Cumae, hard by Neapolis.
When this stronghold fell before the advance of Belisarius, the Goth
escaped, soon after to die in battle; Aurelia, a captive of the
Conquerors, remained at Cumae, and still was living there, though no
longer under restraint. Because of its strength, this ancient city
became the retreat of many ladies who fled from Rome before the
hardships and perils of the siege; from them the proud and unhappy
woman, ever held apart, yet she refused to quit the town when she would
have been permitted to do so. From his terrace above the Surrentine
shore, Maximus gazed across the broad gulf to the hills that concealed
Cumae, yearning for the last of his children. When at length he wrote
her a letter, a letter of sad kindness, inviting rather than beseeching
her to visit him, Aurelia made no reply. Wounded, he sunk again into
silence, until his heart could no longer bear its secret burden, and he
spoke--not to Petronilla, from whose austere orthodoxy little sympathy
was to be expected--but to his nephew Basil, whose generous mettle
willingly lent itself to such a service as was proposed. On his
delicate mission, the young man set forth without delay. To Cumae,
whether by sea or land, was but a short journey: starting at daybreak,
Basil might have given ample time to his embassy, and have been back
again early on the morrow. But the second day passed, and he did not
return. Though harassed by the delay, Maximus tried to deem it of good
omen, and nursed his hope through another sleepless night.

Soon after sunrise, he was carried forth to his place of observation, a
portico in semicircle, the marble honey-toned by time, which afforded
shelter from the eastern rays and commanded a view of vast extent.
Below him lay the little town, built on the cliffs above its
landing-place; the hillsides on either hand were clad with vineyards,
splendid in the purple of autumn, and with olives. Sky and sea shone to
each other in perfect calm; the softly breathing air mingled its
morning freshness with a scent of fallen flower and leaf. A rosy vapour
from Vesuvius floated gently inland; and this the eye of Maximus marked
with contentment, as it signified a favourable wind for a boat crossing
hither from the far side of the bay. For the loveliness of the scene
before him, its noble lines, its jewelled colouring, he had little
care; but the infinite sadness of its suggestion, the decay and the
desolation uttered by all he saw, sank deep into his heart. If his look
turned to the gleaming spot which was the city of Neapolis, there came
into his mind the sack and massacre of a few years ago, when Belisarius
so terribly avenged upon the Neapolitans their stubborn resistance to
his siege. Faithful to the traditions of his house, of his order,
Maximus had welcomed the invasion which promised to restore Italy to
the Empire; now that the restoration was effected, he saw with
bitterness the evils resulting from it, and all but hoped that this new
king of the Goths, this fortune-favoured Totila, might sweep the land
of its Greek oppressors. He looked back upon his own life, on the
placid dignity of his career under the rule of Theodoric, the offices
by which he had risen, until he sat in the chair of the Consul. Yet in
that time, which now seemed so full of peaceful glories, he had never
at heart been loyal to the great king; in his view, as in that of the
nobles generally, Theodoric was but a usurper, who had abused the
mandate intrusted to him by the Emperor Zeno, to deliver Italy from the
barbarians. When his own kinsmen, Boethius and Symmachus, were put to
death on a charge of treachery, Maximus burned with hatred of the Goth.
He regarded with disdain the principles of Cassiodorus, who devoted his
life to the Gothic cause, and who held that only as an independent
kingdom could there be hope for Italy. Having for a moment the ear of
Theodoric's daughter, Amalasuntha, when she ruled for her son, Maximus
urged her to yield her kingdom to the Emperor, and all but saw his
counsel acted upon. After all, was not Cassiodorus right? Were not the
senators who had ceaselessly intrigued with Byzantium in truth traitors
to Rome? It was a bitter thought for the dying man that all his life he
had not only failed in service to his country, but had obstinately
wrought for her ruin.

Attendants placed food beside him. He mingled wine with water and
soothed a feverish thirst. His physician, an elderly man of Oriental
visage, moved respectfully to his side, greeted him as Illustrious,
inquired how his Magnificence had passed the latter part of the night.
Whilst replying, as ever courteously--for in the look and bearing of
Maximus there was that _senatorius decor_ which Pliny noted in a great
Roman of another time--his straining eyes seemed to descry a sail in
the quarter he continually watched. Was it only a fishing boat? Raised
upon the couch, he gazed long and fixedly. Impossible as yet to be sure
whether he saw the expected bark; but the sail seemed to draw nearer,
and he watched.

The voice of a servant, who stood at a respectful distance, announced:
'The gracious Lady'; and there appeared a little procession. Ushered by
her eunuch, and attended by half a dozen maidens, one of whom held over
her a silk sunshade with a handle of gold, the sister of Maximus
approached at a stately pace. She was tall, and of features severely
regular; her dark hair--richer in tone and more abundant than her years
could warrant--rose in elaborate braiding intermingled with golden
threads; her waistless robe was of white silk adorned with narrow
stripes of purple, which descended, two on each side, from the
shoulders to the hem, and about her neck lay a shawl of delicate
tissue. In her hand, which glistened with many gems, she carried a
small volume, richly bound, the Psalter. Courtesies of the gravest
passed between her and Maximus, who, though he could not rise from his
couch, assumed an attitude of graceful deference, and Petronilla seated
herself in a chair which a slave had placed for her. After many
inquiries as to her brother's health, the lady allowed her eyes to
wander for a moment, then spoke with the smile of one who imparts rare
tidings.

'Late last night--too late to trouble you with the news--there came a
post from the reverend deacon Leander. He disembarked yesterday at
Salernum, and, after brief repose, hopes to visit us. Your Amiability
will, I am sure, welcome his coming.'

'Assuredly,' answered Maximus, bending his head, whilst his eyes
watched the distant sail. 'Whence comes he?'

'From Sicily. We shall learn, I dare say, the business which took him
there,' added Petronilla, with a self-satisfied softening of her lips.
'The deacon is wont to talk freely with me of whatever concerns the
interests of our holy Church, even as I think you remember, has now and
then deigned--though I know not how I have deserved such honour--to
ask, I dare not say my counsel, but my humble thoughts on this or that.
I think we may expect him before morning. The day will not be too warm
for travel.'

Maximus wore an anxious look, and spoke after hesitation.

'Will his reverend leisure permit him to pass more than one day with
us?'

'Earnestly I hope so. You, beyond doubt, dear lord, my brother, will
desire long privacy with the holy man. His coming at this time is
plainly of Heaven's direction.'

'Lady sister,' answered Maximus, with the faintest smile on his sad
features, 'I would not willingly rob you of a moment's conference with
the good deacon. My own business with him is soon despatched. I would
fain be assured of burial in the Temple of Probus where sleep our
ancestors.'

'Of that,' replied Petronilla, solemnly and not unkindly, 'doubt not
for a moment. Your body shall lie there, by the blessed Peter's
sanctuary, and your tomb be honoured among those of the greatest of our
blood. But there is another honour that I covet for you, an honour
above all that the world can bestow. In these sad times, Maximus, the
Church has need of strengthening. You have no children--'

A glance from the listener checked her, and, before she could resume,
Maximus interposed in a low voice:

'I have yet a daughter.'

'A daughter?' exclaimed Petronilla, troubled, confused, scarce subduing
indignation.

'It is better I should tell you,' continued her brother, with some
sternness, resulting from the efforts to command himself, 'that Basil
is gone to Cumae to see Aurelia, and, if it may be, to lead her to me.
Perhaps even now'--he pointed to the sea--'they are on the way hither.
Let us not speak of it, Petronilla,' he added in a firmer tone. 'It is
my will; that must suffice. Of you I ask nothing save silence.'

The lady arose. Her countenance expressed angry and bitter feeling, but
there was no danger of her uttering what she thought. Gravely, somewhat
coldly, she spoke good wishes for her brother's ease during the day,
and so retired with her retinue. Alone, Maximus sighed, and looked
again across the waters.

In a few minutes the servant who guarded his privacy was again heard
announcing the lord Decius. The Senator turned his eyes with a look of
good-humoured greeting.

'Abroad so early, good cousin? Did the oil fail you last night and send
you too soon to bed?'

'You have not chanced to remember, dear my lord, what day it is?'
returned Decius, when he had bestowed a kiss on his kinsman's cheek.
'Had I but vigour enough, this morning would have seen me on a
pilgrimage to the tomb.' He put out a hand towards Neapolis. 'I rose at
daybreak to meditate the Fourth Eclogue.'

'The ides of October--true. I take shame to myself for having lost the
memory of Virgil in my own distresses.'

Decius, whose years were scarce thirty, had the aspect and the gait of
an elderly man; his thin hair streaked with grey, his cheeks hollow,
his eyes heavy, he stooped in walking and breathed with difficulty; the
tunic and the light cloak, which were all his attire, manifested an
infinite carelessness in matters of costume, being worn and soiled.
Than he, no Roman was poorer; he owned nothing but his clothing and a
few books. Akin to the greatest, and bearing a name of which he was
inordinately proud--as a schoolboy he had once burst into tears when
reciting with passion the Lay of the Decii--felt content to owe his
sustenance to the delicate and respectful kindness of Maximus, who
sympathised with the great wrong he had suffered early in life. This
was no less than wilful impoverishment by his father, who, seeking to
atone for sins by fanaticism, had sold the little he possessed to found
a pilgrims' hospice at Portus, whither, accompanied by the
twelve-year-old boy, he went to live as monk-servitor In a year or two
the penitent died; Decius, in revolt against the tasks to which he was
subjected, managed to escape, made his way to Rome, and appealed to
Maximus. Nominally he still held the post of secretary to his
benefactor, but for many years he had enjoyed entire leisure, all of it
devoted to study. Several times illness had brought him to the
threshold of death, yet it had never conquered his love of letters, his
enthusiasm for his country's past. Few liked him only one or two
understood him: Decius was content that it should be so.

'Let us speak of it,' he continued, unrolling a manuscript of Virgil
some two hundred years old, a gift to him from Maximus. 'Tell me, dear
lord, your true thought: is it indeed a prophecy of the Divine Birth?
To you'--he smiled his gentle, beautiful smile--'may I not confess that
I have doubted this interpretation? Yet'--he cast his eyes down--'the
doubt is perhaps a prompting of the spirit of evil.'

'I know not, Decius, I know not,' replied the sick man with thoughtful
melancholy. 'My father held it a prophecy his father before him.--But
forgive me, I am expecting anxiously the return of Basil; yonder
sail--is it his? Your eyes see further than mine.'

Decius at once put aside his own reflections, and watched the oncoming
bark. Before long there was an end of doubt. Rising in agitation to his
feet, Maximus gave orders that the litter, which since yesterday
morning had been in readiness, should at once be borne with all speed
down to the landing-place. Sail and oars soon brought the boat so near
that Decius was able to descry certain female figures and that of a
man, doubtless Basil, who stood up and waved his arms shoreward.

'She has come,' broke from Maximus; and, in reply to his kinsman's face
of inquiry, he told of whom it was he spoke.

The landing-place was not visible from here. As soon as the boat
disappeared beneath the buildings of the town, Maximus requested of his
companion a service which asked some courage in the performance: it
was, to wait forthwith upon the Lady Petronilla, to inform her that
Aurelia had just disembarked, to require that three female slaves
should be selected to attend upon the visitor. This mission Decius
discharged, not without trembling; he then walked to the main entrance
of the villa, and stood there, the roll of Virgil still in his hand,
until the sound of a horse's hoofs on the upward road announced the
arrival of the travellers. The horseman, who came some yards in advance
of the slave-borne litter, was Basil. At sight of Decius, he
dismounted, and asked in an undertone: 'You know?' The other replied
with the instructions given by Maximus, that the litter, which was
closed against curious eyes, should be straightway conveyed to the
Senator's presence, Basil himself to hold apart until summoned.

And so it was done. Having deposited their burden between two columns
of the portico, the bearers withdrew. The father's voice uttered the
name of Aurelia, and, putting aside the curtains that had concealed
her, she stood before him. A woman still young, and of bearing which
became her birth; a woman who would have had much grace, much charm,
but for the passion which, turned to vehement self-will, had made her
blood acrid. Her great dark eyes burned with quenchless resentment; her
sunken and pallid face told of the sufferings of a tortured pride.

'Lord Maximus,' were her first words, as she stood holding by the
litter, glancing distrustfully about her, 'you have sworn!'

'Hear me repeat my oath,' answered the father, strengthened by his
emotion to move forward from the couch. 'By the blessed martyr
Pancratius, I swear that no harm shall befall you, no constraint shall
be put upon you, that you shall be free to come and to go as you will.'

It was the oath no perjurer durst make. Aurelia gazed into her father's
face, which was wet with tears. She stepped nearer to him, took his
thin, hot hand, and, as in her childhood, bent to kiss the back of the
wrist. But Maximus folded her to his heart.




CHAPTER II

BASIL'S VISION


Basil and Decius paced together a garden alley, between a row of
quince-trees and a hedge of Christ's-thorn; at one end was a fountain
in a great basin of porphyry, at the other a little temple, very old
and built for the worship of Isis, now an oratory under the invocation
of the Blessed Mary. The two young men made a singular contrast, for
Basil, who was in his twenty-third year, had all the traits of health
and vigour: a straight back, lithe limbs, a face looking level on the
world, a lustrous eye often touched to ardour, a cheek of the purest
carnation, a mouth that told of fine instincts, delicate sensibilities,
love of laughter. No less did his costume differ from the student's
huddled garb; his tunic was finely embroidered in many hues, his silken
cloak had a great buckle of gold on the shoulder; he wore ornate shoes,
and by his waist hung a silver-handled dagger in a sheath of chased
bronze. He stepped lightly, as one who asks but the occasion to run and
leap. In their intimate talk, he threw an arm over his companion's
neck, a movement graceful as it was affectionate; his voice had a note
frank and cordial.

Yet Basil was not quite his familiar self to-day; he talked with less
than his natural gaiety, wore a musing look, fell into silences. Now
that Aurelia had come, there was no motive for reserve on that subject
with Decius, and indeed they conversed of their kinswoman with perfect
openness, pitying rather than condemning her, and wondering what would
result from her presence under one roof with the rigid Petronilla. Not
on Aurelia's account did Basil droop his head now and then, look about
him vacantly, bite his lip, answer a question at hazard, play nervously
with his dagger's hilt. All at once, with an abruptness which moved his
companion's surprise, he made an inquiry, seemingly little relevant to
their topic.

'Heard you ever of a Gothic princess--a lady of the lineage of
Theodoric--still living in Italy?'

'Never,' responded Decius, with a puzzled smile. 'Is there such a one?'

'I am told so--I heard it by chance. Yet I know not who she can be. Did
not the direct line of Theodoric end with Athalaric and his sister
Matasuntha, who is now at the Emperor's court?'

'So I believed,' said Decius, 'though I have thought but little of the
matter.'

'I too, trust me,' let fall Basil, with careful carelessness; no actor
he. 'And the vile Theodahad--what descendants did he leave?'

'He was a scholar,' said the other musingly, 'deep read in Plato.'

'None the less a glutton and a murderer and a coward, who did well to
give his throat to the butcher as he ran away from his enemies.
Children he had, I think--but--'

Basil broke off on a wandering thought. He stood still, knitted his
brows, and sniffed the air. At this moment there appeared in the alley
a serving man, a young and active fellow of very honest visage, who
stood at some yards' distance until Basil observed him.

'What is it, Felix?' inquired his master.

The attendant stepped forward, and made known that the lord Marcian had
even now ridden up to the villa, with two followers, and desired to
wait upon Basil. This news brought a joyful light to the eyes of the
young noble; he hastened to welcome his friend, the dearest he had.
Marcian, a year or two his elder, was less favoured by nature in face
and form: tall and vigorous enough of carriage, he showed more bone and
sinew than flesh; and his face might have been that of a man worn by
much fasting, so deep sunk were the eyes, so jutting the cheek-bones,
and so sharp the chin; its cast, too, was that of a fixed and native
melancholy. But when he smiled, these features became much more
pleasing, and revealed a kindliness of temper such as might win the
love of one who knew him well. His dress was plain, and the dust of
Campanian roads lay somewhat thick upon him.

'By Bacchus!' cried his friend, as they embraced each other, 'fortune
is good to me to-day. Could I have had but one wish granted, it would
have been to see Marcian. I thought you still in Rome. What makes you
travel? Not in these days solely to visit a friend, I warrant. By Peter
and Paul and as many more saints as you can remember, I am glad to hold
your hand! What news do you bring?'

'Little enough,' answered Marcian, with a shrug of the shoulders. The
natural tune of his voice harmonised with his visage, and he spoke as
one who feels a scornful impatience with the affairs of men. 'At Rome,
they wrangle about goats' wool, as is their wont. Anything else? Why,
yes; the freedman Chrysanthus glories in an ex-consulate. It cost him
the trifle of thirty pounds of gold.'

Basil laughed contemptuously, half angrily.

'We must look to our honours,' he exclaimed. 'If Chrysanthus be
ex-consul, can you and I be satisfied with less than
ex-Praetorian-Prefect? What will be the price, think you? Has Bessas
hung out a tariff yet in the Forum?'

'He knows better than to fix a maximum, as long as a wealthy fool
remains in the city--though that won't be much longer, I take it.'

'Why come you hither, dear my lord?' urged Basil, with more seriousness.

Regarding him with a grave eye, his friend replied in an undertone:

'To spy upon you.'

'Ha!--In very truth?'

'You could wish me a more honourable office,' Marcian went on, smiling
sadly. 'Yet, if you think of it, in these days, it is some honour to be
a traitor to both sides. There has been talk of you in Rome. Nay, who
knows how or why! They have nothing to do but talk, and these victories
of the Goth have set up such a Greek cackle as was never heard since
Helen ran away to Troy,--and, talking of Greek, I bear a letter for you
from Heliodora.'

Basil, who had been listening gravely, started at this name and uttered
an idle laugh. From a wallet hanging at his girdle, Marcian drew forth
the missive.

'That may wait,' said Basil, glancing indifferently at the folded and
sealed paper before he hid it away. 'Having said so much, you must tell
me more. Put off that sardonic mask--I know very well what hides
beneath it--and look me in the eye. You have surprised some danger?'

'I heard you spoken of--by one who seldom opens his lips but to ill
purpose. It was not difficult for me to wade through the shallows of
the man's mind, and for my friend's sake to win his base confidence.
Needing a spy, and being himself a born traitor, he readily believed me
at his beck; in truth he had long marked me, so I found, for a cankered
soul who waited but the occasion to advance by infamy. I held the
creature in my hand; I turned him over and over, and he, the while,
thinking me his greedy slave. And so, usurping the place of some other
who would have ambushed you in real enmity, I came hither on his
errand.'

'Marcian,' said the listener, 'I could make a guess at that man's name.'

'Nay, I doubt if you could, and indeed it matters nothing. Enough that
I may do you some little service.'

'For which,' replied Basil, 'I cannot pay you, since all my love is
already yours. And she--Heliodora,' he added, with a careless gesture,
'knows of your mission?'

'Of my mission, no; but of my proposed journey. Though indeed she may
know more than I suppose. Who shall say what reaches the ear of
Heliodora--?'

'You have not heard perhaps that her husband is dead?'

'The Prefect dead?' exclaimed Basil.

'Three weeks ago.--Rather suddenly--after supper. An indigestion, no
doubt.'

Marcian spoke with peculiar dryness, averting his eyes from the
listener. Upon Basil's face came a deep flush; he took out the folded
paper again, and held it at arm's length.

'You mean--? You think--?' he stammered.

'About women I think not at all,' said the other, 'as you well know.
There is talk, talk--what care I?'

Basil tore the letter open. It contained a lock of raven-black hair,
tied with gold thread, and on the paper was written, in Greek, 'I am
free.' Again his cheek flushed; he crushed paper and hair together in
his hand.

'Let us never again speak of her,' he exclaimed, moving away from the
spot. 'Before I left Rome, I told you that I would gladly see her no
more, and you smiled dubiously. Believe me now. I abhor the thought of
her. If she ask you for my reply, repeat those words.'

'Nay, dear my lord, in that I will beg to be excused,' replied Marcian
with his melancholy smile.

They were walking silently, side by side, when the servant Felix again
presented himself before them. Maximus, having heard of the arrival of
Marcian from Rome, requested that he and Basil would grant him a moment
of their leisure. At once the young men turned to obey this summons. On
the way, Basil communicated to his friend in a whisper the event of the
day. A couple of hours having passed since Aurelia's coming, the
Senator had in some degree recovered from his agitation; he lay now in
a room which opened upon the central court of the villa, a room adorned
with rich marbles and with wall-paintings which were fading under the
hand of time. Deathly pale, scarce able to raise his head from the
cushion of the couch, he none the less showed a countenance bright with
joyous emotion. His quivering voice strove to welcome the visitor
cheerily.

'What news from the city, dear lord Marcian? How are all our friends?
Do they begin to forget us?'

'Not so, Illustrious,' answered the young man, with head bent. 'You are
much desired in the Senate, where grave counsel is just now greatly in
demand.'

'The Senate, the Senate,' murmured Maximus, as if reminded of something
he had long forgotten. 'They must needs lack my voice, I fear. What do
men say of the Gothic king?'

Marcian threw a glance at Basil, then towards the curtained portals of
the room; lastly, his eyes turned upon the sick man, whom he regarded
steadily.

'They say much--or little,' fell from his lips.

'I understand you,' replied the Senator, with a friendly movement of
the head. 'Here we may speak freely. Does Totila draw near to Rome?'

'He is still in Tuscany, and rumours come from his army that he will
pass into Samnium. All the strongholds of Umbria are his; all the
conquests of Belisarius from Ariminum to Spoletium.'

'Where are the Roman captains?'

'Each in his city of the far north, holding the plunder he has got, and
looking for the chance of more. In Rome--'

Marcian paused significantly, and the Senator took up his words.

'In Rome rules Bessas.'

'The Thracian,' remarked Basil bitterly.

'And in Ravenna,' added the sick man, 'Alexandros--the coin-clipper.'

The eyes of Basil and of Marcian encountered. Between them came no
shadow of distrust, the smile they exchanged told of loyal affection.

'This Totila,' pursued Marcian, 'seems to be not only a brave and
capable commander, but a shrewd politician. Everywhere he spares the
people; he takes nothing by force; his soldiers buy at market; he
protects the farmer against the taxing Greek. As a result, his army
grows; where he passes, he leaves a good report, and before him goes a
welcome. At this rate he will soon make all Italy his own. And unless
the Patricius returns--'

By this title men were wont to speak of Belisarius. Hearing it, Basil
threw up an arm, his eyes flashing.

'The Patricius!' he exclaimed fervently. 'There is the man who might
have saved us!'

'By the holy Laurentius!' murmured Maximus, looking sadly at his
nephew, 'I have all but come to think as you do.'

'Who that knew him,' cried Basil, 'but must have seen him, in
thought--not King, for only the barbarians have kings--but
Emperor--Emperor of the West, ruling at Rome as in the days gone by!
There lives no man more royal. I have seen him day by day commanding
and taking counsel; I have talked with him in his privacy. In the camp
before Ravenna there was but one voice, one hope, as to what should
follow when the city opened its gates, and the Goths themselves only
surrendered because they thought to be ruled by him. But for the
scruple of his conscience--and should not that have yielded to the
general good?'

'Is breach of faith so light a thing?' fell from Marcian, under his
breath.

'Nay,' answered the other, with drooping head, 'but he did break faith
with _us_. We had his promise; we saw him Emperor--'

'You should have won Antonina,' said Marcian, with a return to his
sarcastic humour. 'She must have mused long and anxiously, weighing the
purple against Theodora's fury. The Patrician's fidelity stood by his
wife's prudence.'

'The one blot upon his noble nature,' uttered Basil, with a sigh. 'His
one weakness. How,' he cried scornfully, 'can the conqueror of half the
world bend before such a woman?'

Fatigued already by the conversation, Maximus had lain back and closed
his eyes. Very soon the two young men received his permission to
withdraw, and, as they left the room, the physician entered. Obedient
to this counsellor the invalid gave several hours to repose, but midway
in the afternoon he again summoned his daughter, with whom he had a
long and agitating conversation. He besought Aurelia to cast off her
heretical religion, putting before her all the perils to which she
exposed herself, by abandonment of the true faith, in this world and
the next. His life was hurrying to its end; hour by hour he felt the
fever wasting what little strength remained to him; and when he was
gone who would protect her against the enmities to which religion and
avarice would expose her? Aurelia's resistance was sullen rather than
resolute; her countenance, her words, suggested that she was thinking
more of what it would cost her pride to become a penitent than of any
obstacle in conscience. At length she declared plainly that never would
she humiliate herself before her aunt Petronilla, who had offered her
no greeting and held scornfully apart. Here, as Maximus too well knew,
lay the great difficulty of the situation; these women hated each
other, and their hate would only be exasperated by Aurelia's
conversion. He spoke of the deacon Leander, now on his way
hither--begged Aurelia to listen to the reverend man, and gave solemn
assurance that, the moment she abjured her errors, he would place her
in a position of wealth and authority far above that of Petronilla. So
utterly did he exhaust himself in entreaty and argument that he fell
into a fainting fit. The physician was called for, and Aurelia, she too
overcome with violent emotions, again retired to the part of the villa
which had been assigned to her.

The Anicii of a bygone time, who took their solace here when marbles
and mosaics, paintings and tapestries, were yet new, would have looked
with consternation on halls so crumbling and bare, chambers so
ill-appointed, as these in which the guests of the Senator Maximus had
their dwelling. Space there was in abundance, but of comfort in the
guest-rooms little enough; and despite her brother's commands,
Petronilla had seen to it that Aurelia was not luxuriously lodged.
Better accommodation awaited the deacon Leander, whose arrival was
announced an hour before sunset by a trotting courier. His journey from
Salernum had so wearied the ecclesiastic that he could but give a hand
to be kissed by his hostess, and straightway retire into privacy; the
repast that was ready for him had to be served beside his couch, and
soon after night had fallen, Leander slumbered peacefully. Meanwhile
Basil and Decius and their friend from Rome had supped together, making
what cheer they might under the circumstances; the Surrentine wine was
a little acrid, falling short of its due age, but it sufficed to
animate the talk. Presently Decius withdrew, to study or to meditate
through some hours of the night, for he slept ill; the others, going
apart to a gallery lighted by the full moon, sat wrapped in thick,
hooded cloaks, to converse awhile before they slept. With their voices
mingled the soft splash of a fountain.

Basil was telling of his journey to Cumae, and of the difficulty he had
had in persuading Aurelia to visit her father.

'Does she live alone there?' inquired Marcian.

There was a pause before the reply, and when Basil spoke his voice fell
to a note of half-hesitating confidence.

'Alone? yes,' he said, 'in the sense that no relative abode with her;
but she had a companion--a lady--very young.' And here he again paused,
as if in some embarrassment.

'A Roman?' was Marcian's next question, carelessly thrown out for he
had little interest in Aurelia, and was half occupied with other
thoughts.

'No,' answered Basil, his voice subdued. 'A Goth; and, she says, of the
royal blood, of the line of Theodoric.'

His friend became attentive. 'A Gothic princess? Whose daughter, then?'
asked Marcian. And Basil, who desired nothing more than to speak on
this subject, little by little threw off his hesitancy, grew rapid and
eager in narration. He told how, on his first introduction to Aurelia's
presence, he had found sitting with her a young girl, whose aspect
proclaimed her of the Gothic race. In a second interview with his
cousin, alone, Aurelia had spoken of this companion, bestowing much
praise upon her, and declaring that they were united by an affection
which nothing could diminish. She was of Amal blood; more than that
Aurelia seemed unwilling to reveal.

'Did you not learn her name?' asked the listener.

'Veranilda.'

Marcian echoed the melodious syllables, but they told him nothing.

'And did you make no inquiry of those with whom you spoke?'

'I conversed as little as might be with strangers, and purposely held
apart from our acquaintances in the town; this was my uncle's express
command.'

'You had no second sight of her?'

'Indeed I had; and talked with her moreover. Marcian, how can I
describe her to you? The words which suffice for common beauty sound
meaningless when I would use them to depict Veranilda. Shall I tell you
that she has hair of the purest gold, eyes brighter than the sky at
noon, lips like the flower of the pomegranate, a cheek so fair, so
soft--nay, you may well laugh at these idle phrases--'

'Not your phrases,' said Marcian, 'but your voice as it utters them
sets me smiling. Talk on. The chaste goddess who beams above us inspire
you with worthy terms!'

'There you speak to the point,' pursued Basil ardently. 'For Veranilda
is chaste as she is beautiful. Blessed saints! how my heart shrank in
abhorrence when I saw that letter this morning; and how fain I would
blot from my memory that baseness of the past! O Marcian, truest of
friends, I slighted your counsel, scoffed at your warnings, but now I
know how wisely and how honestly you spoke.'

'Be that as it may,' said the other. 'But is it possible that, on a
mere glimpse, this Gothic maiden should so have vanquished you?'

'It had been more prudent to hold my peace. But you know me of old.
When I am moved, I must needs unbosom myself; happy that I have one
whom I can trust. Her voice, Marcian! This whisper of the night breeze
in the laurels falls rudely upon the ear after Veranilda's speech.
Never have I heard a tone so soft, so gentle. The first word she spoke
thrilled through me, as never did voice before; and I listened,
listened, hoping she would speak again.'

'Who may she be? Has not the lady Aurelia adorned her origin? Golden
hair and blue eyes are no rarity among daughters of the Goths.'

'Had you seen her!' exclaimed Basil, and grew rapturous again. Whilst
he exhausted language in the effort to prove how remote was Veranilda
from any shape of loveliness easily presented by memory or imagination,
Marcian pondered.

'I can think of but one likelihood,' was his quiet remark, when his
friend had become silent. 'King Theodahad had a daughter, who married
the Gothic captain, Ebrimut.'

'The traitor,' murmured Basil uneasily.

'Or friend of the Romans, as you will. He delivered Rhegium to
Belisarius, and enjoys his reward at Byzantium. What if he left a child
behind him?'

Basil repulsed the suggestion vehemently.

'Not that! I had half thought of it myself; but no. Aurelia said of the
house of Theodoric.'

'Why so would be a daughter of Ebrimut, through her mother--who was the
daughter of Theodahad, who was the son of Amalafrida, who was the
sister of Theodoric himself.'

'She could not have meant that,' protested Basil. 'Child of a mercenary
traitor, who opened Italy to his people's foe! Not that! Had you seen
her, you would not believe it.'

'Oh, my good Basil,' laughed the other, 'do you think I should see her
with your eyes? But perhaps we conjecture idly quite missing the mark.
What does it matter? You have no intention, I hope, of returning to
Cumae?'

Basil opened his lips to reply, but thought better of it, and said
nothing. Then his friend turned to speak of the ecclesiastical visitor
who had that evening arrived, and, the subject not proving very
fruitful, each presently betook himself to his night's repose.




CHAPTER III

THE DEACON LEANDER


The deacon Leander was some forty years of age, stoutish, a trifle
asthmatic, with a long visage expressive of much shrewdness, and bushy
eyebrows, which lent themselves at will to a look of genial
condescension, of pious austerity, or of stern command. His dark hair
and reddish beard were carefully trimmed; so were the nails of his
shapely, delicate hands. His voice, now subject to huskiness, had until
a few years ago been remarkably powerful and melodious; no deacon in
Rome was wont to excite more admiration by his chanting of the Gradual;
but that glory had passed away, and at the present time Leander's
spiritual activity was less prominent than his services as a most
capable steward of the patrimony of St. Peter. He travelled much, had
an extensive correspondence, and was probably rather respected than
reverenced by most lay folk with whom he came in contact.

But in the eyes of the lady Petronilla, Leander was an ideal churchman.
No one treated her judgment with so much respect; no one confided to
her curious ear so many confidential matters, ranging from the secret
scandals of aristocratic Rome to high debates of ecclesiastical
polity--or what Petronilla regarded as such. Their closer acquaintance
began with the lady's presentation of certain columns of tawny Numidian
marble, from a ruined temple she had inherited, to the deacon's
basilica, St. Laurentius; and many were the donations which Leander had
since accepted from her on behalf of the Church. In return, he had once
or twice rejoiced her with the gift of a precious relic, such as came
into the hands of few below royal rank; thus had Petronilla obtained
the filings of the chain of St. Peter, which, enclosed in a golden key,
hung upon her bosom. Some day, as the deacon well knew, this pious
virgin would beg him to relieve her of all her earthly possessions, and
enter into some holy retreat; but she awaited the death of her brother,
by whose will she would doubtless benefit more or less substantially.

If in view of the illness of Maximus, Petronilla had regarded the
deacon's visit as providential, the event of yesterday moved her to a
more agitated thankfulness for the conference she was about to enjoy.
After a night made sleepless by dread and wrath, she rose at daybreak
and passed in a fever of impatience the time which elapsed before her
reverend guest issued from his chamber. This being the fourth day of
the week, Petronilla held rigid fast until the hour of nones; and of
course no refreshment was offered to the churchman, who, with that
smiling placidity, that graceful self-possession, which ever
distinguished him in such society, at length entered the inner hall,
and suavely, almost tenderly, greeted his noble hostess. Brimming over
as she was with anxiety and indignation, Petronilla allowed nothing of
this to appear in her reception of the revered friend. To his inquiries
touching the health of the Senator, she replied with significant
gravity that Maximus had suffered during the night, and was this
morning, by the physician's report, much weaker; she added not a word
on the momentous subject presently to be broached. Then Leander, after
viewing with many compliments a piece of rich embroidery which occupied
the lady's leisure, and or its completion would of course be put at his
disposal, took a seat, set the tips of his fingers together, and began
to chat pleasantly of his journey. Many were the pious offerings which
had fallen to him upon his way: that of the Sicilian lady who gave her
little all to be used to maintain the lamps in the basilica of the
Chief Apostle; that of the merchant encountered on shipboard, who gave
ten pounds of gold to purchase the freedom of slaves; that of the
wealthy curial in Lucania, healed of disease by miracle on the feast of
St. Cyprian, who bestowed upon the church in gratitude many acres of
olive-bearing land, and promised an annual shipload of prime hogs to
feed St. Peter's poor. By smooth transition he passed to higher themes:
with absent eyes turned to the laurel-planted court on to which the
hall opened, he spoke as if scarcely aware of a listener, of troubles
at Rome occasioned by imprudences, indiscretions--what should he
say--of the Holy Father. As Petronilla bent forward, all tremulous
curiosity, he lowered his voice, grew frankly confidential. The Pope
had been summoned to Byzantium, to discuss certain points of doctrine
with the Emperor; his departure was delayed, but no doubt in his
weakness he would obey. Verily, the lack of courage--not to use severer
terms--so painfully evident in Pope Vigilius, was a grave menace to the
Church--the Catholic Church, which, rightly claiming to rule
Christendom, should hold no terms with the arrogance of Justinian.
Could it be wondered that the Holy Father was disliked--not to say
hated--by the people of Rome? By his ill management the papal granaries
had of late been so ill stored that the poor had suffered famine, the
Greeks having put an end to that gratuitous distribution of food to
which the Roman populace had from of old been accustomed. On this
account, chiefly, had Leander journeyed to Sicily, to look after the
supplies of corn, and seek out those who were to blame for the recent
negligence. His bushy eyebrows gave a hint of their sterner
possibilities as he spoke of the measures he had taken, the reproofs
and threats he had distributed.

'May I live,' breathed Petronilla, with modest emphasis, 'to see a
great, a noble, a puissant Pontiff in the Apostolic Chair!'

Whereat the deacon smiled, well understanding whither the lady looked
for her ideal Pope. She went on to speak of the part Vigilius had
played in the deposition and miserable death of his predecessor
Silverius, and that, as was too well known, at the bidding of haughty,
unscrupulous women, the Empress Theodora and her friend Antonina, wife
of Belisarius. Verily, the time had come for a great reform at the
Lateran; the time had come, and perhaps the divine instrument was not
far to seek. Whereupon Petronilla murmured ardently, and the deacon
again smiled.

There was a pause. Having permitted Leander to muse a little, his
hostess turned the conversation to the troublous topic of her thoughts;
and began by saying how her brother would esteem the privilege of
counsel and solace from one so qualified to impart them. But alas she
must make known a distressful occurrence, whereby the office of a
spiritual adviser by the bedside of Maximus must needs be complicated
and made painful; and therewith Petronilla related the events of
yesterday. As he listened, the deacon knitted his brows, but in thought
rather than in affliction; and when the speaker was silent, he still
mused awhile.

'Gracious madam,' he began at length solemnly, 'you of course hold no
intercourse with this lady?'

'None! I have shrunk ever from the sight of her.'

'Such abhorrence of error witnesses to the purity and the illumination
of your soul: I could have expected nothing less from Petronilla. You
know not whether the misguided woman shows any disposition to return to
the true faith?'

'I fear not,' replied Petronilla, looking rather as if the fear were a
hope. 'Her nature is stubborn: she has the pride of the fallen angels.'

'And her father, I am afraid, has no longer the strength to treat her
sin with due severity?'

'Earthly affection has subdued him,' replied the lady, shaking her
head. 'Who knows,' she added, 'how far his weakness may lead my poor
brother?'

She glanced about the hall, and Leander perfectly understood what was
in her mind.

'Be not over anxious,' he replied soothingly. 'Leave this in my hands.
Should it be necessary, I can dispose of some days before pursuing my
journey. Take comfort, noble and pious lady! The truth will prevail.'

The deacon's first step was to obtain a private interview with the
physician. He then made known his desire to wait upon Maximus, and with
no great delay was admitted. Tactfully, sagaciously, he drew the
sufferer to confide in him, to see in him, not so much a spiritual
admonisher as a counsellor and a support in worldly difficulties.
Leander was already well aware that the Senator had small religious
zeal, but belonged to the class of men, numerous at this time, who,
whilst professing the Christian and the orthodox faith, were in truth
philosophers rather than devotees, and regarded dogmatic questions with
a calm not easily distinguished from indifference. Maximus had scarcely
spoken of his daughter, when the deacon understood it was Aurelia's
temporal, much more than her eternal, interests which disturbed the
peace of the dying man. Under Roman law, bequests to a heretic were
null and void; though this enactment had for the most part been set
aside in Italy under Gothic rule, it might be that the Imperial code
would henceforth prevail. Maximus desired to bestow upon his daughter a
great part of his possessions. Petronilla, having sufficient means of
her own, might well be content with a moderate bequest; Basil, the
relative next of kin, had a worthy claim upon his uncle's generous
treatment, and Decius, who needed but little, must have that little
assured. The father had hoped that his entreaties, together with a
prospect of substantial reward, would prevail against Aurelia's
pride-rooted heresy, but as yet he pleaded and tempted in vain. Could
the deacon help him?

Leander seemed to meditate profoundly. The subject of his thought was
what seemed to him a glaring omission in this testament of Maximus. He
breathed an intimate inquiry: Was the sick man at peace with his own
soul? Had he sought strength and solace from the reverend presbyter of
Surrentum, his spiritual father in this district? Maximus replied that
he had neglected no ordinary means of grace. Whilst speaking, he met
the deacon's eye; its significance was not to be mistaken.

'I should have mentioned,' he said, averting his look, 'that the
presbyter Andreas and his poor will not be forgotten. Moreover, many of
my slaves will receive their freedom.'

Leander murmured approvingly. Again he reflected, and again he ventured
an inquiry: Maximus would desire, no doubt, to rest with his glorious
ancestors in the mortuary chapel known as the Temple of Probus, by St.
Peter's? And seeing the emotion this excited in his listener he went on
to speak at large of the Anician house--first among the great families
of Rome to embrace Christianity, and distinguished, generation after
generation, by their support of the church, which indeed numbered among
its Supreme Pontiffs one of their line, the third Felix. Did not the
illustrious father of Maximus lead the Christian senators in their
attack upon that lingering shame, the heathen Lupercalia, since so
happily supplanted by the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed
Mary? He, dying--added Leander, with an ecstatic smile--made over to
the Apostolic See an estate in Sicily which yielded every year two rich
harvests to the widows, the orphans, the sick, and the destitute of
Rome.

'Deacon,' broke from the hot lips of Maximus, who struggled to raise
himself, 'if I do the like, will you swear to me to use your influence,
your power, for the protection of my daughter?'

It was the voice of nature in its struggle with the universal doom;
reason had little part in the hope with which those fading eyes fixed
themselves upon the countenance of the self-possessed churchman.

'Heaven forbid,' was Leander's reply, 'that I should bind myself in
such terms to perform an office of friendship, which under any
circumstances would be my anxious care.'

'Even,' asked Maximus, 'if she persist in her heresy?'

'Even so, my dear lord, remembering from whom she springs. But,' he
added, in a soothing voice, 'let me put your mind at rest. Trust me,
the lady Aurelia will not long cling to her error. In poverty, in
humiliation, she might be obstinate; but as the possessor of
wealth--restored to her due rank--oh, my gracious lord, be assured that
her conversion will soon follow.'

The same thought had occurred to Maximus. He sighed in profound relief,
and regarded the deacon gratefully.

'In that hope I rest. Give me your promise to befriend her, and ask of
me what you will.'

Save for the hours she passed at her father's side, Aurelia kept a
strict retirement, guarded by the three female slaves whom Petronilla
had reluctantly assigned to her. Of them she required no intimate
service, having her own attendants, an elderly woman, the nurse of her
childhood, who through all changes of fortune had never quitted her,
and a younger, half-Goth, half-Italian, who discharged humbler duties.
She occupied a small dwelling apart from the main structure of the
villa, but connected with it by a portico: this was called the House of
Proba, it having been constructed a hundred years ago for the lady
Faltonia Proba, who wrote verses, and perhaps on that account desired a
special privacy. Though much neglected, the building had beauty of
form, and was full of fine work in mosaic. Here, in a little peristyle,
where shrubs and creepers had come to wild growth, the sore-hearted
lady sat brooding or paced backwards and forwards, her eyes ever on the
ground. When yet a maiden she had several times spent summer at
Surrentum; her memory revived that early day which seemed so long ago;
she lived again with her brothers and sisters, all dead, with her
mother whom griefs had aged so soon. Then came a loveless marriage,
which soon involved her in the public troubles of the time; for her
husband, whose estates lay in Tuscany, was robbed of all by Theodahad,
and having vainly sought redress from the young King Athalaric, decided
to leave Italy for Byzantium, to which end Aurelia sold a property in
Campania, her dower. Before they could set forth upon their journey,
her husband caught the plague and died. In second wedlock she would
have known contentment but for the alienation of her kin and the
scornful hostility of all her class. When widowhood again befell her
she was saved from want by a small treasure of money which remained
hidden in the dwelling at Cumae when the Gothic warrior, her lord,
escaped from Belisarius. As this store diminished, Aurelia had looked
forward with dread, for she hoped nothing from her father. And now that
such fears seemed to be over, her long tortured pride clamoured for
solace. It was not enough to regain her father's love and enjoy an
inheritance; she wished to see her enemies at her feet, and to trample
upon them--her enemies being not only Petronilla and certain other
kinsfolk but all the nobility of Rome, nay, all the orthodox of the
Christian church. Pacing, pacing alone, she brooded vast schemes of
vengeance.

When it was announced to her that the Roman deacon besought an
interview, she at first refused to receive him. Thereupon Leander sent
her a few lines in writing, most ceremoniously worded, in which he
declared that his purposes were those of a disinterested friend, that
no word such as could pain or offend her would pass his lips, and that
he had it in his power to communicate something which would greatly
benefit her. Aurelia reflected disdainfully, but at length consented to
the churchman's approach. Leander's bearing as he entered her presence
was as elaborately courteous as the phrasing of his letter.

'Noble lady,' he began, standing with bowed head, 'let not your eyes
take note of my garb. See in me only a devoted servant of your
illustrious house. His Magnificence, your father, assured of the
sincerity wherewith I place at his command such powers and
opportunities as I owe to heaven's grace, has deigned to confide in me
regarding the disposition of his worldly affairs whereto he is prompted
by languishing health.'

He paused a moment, but Aurelia had no word of reply to this exordium.
Seeing her keep the same haughty posture in her chair, with eyes
scornfully averted as if she scarce listened, Leander proceeded to
disclose his mind in less ornate terms By subtle grades of confidential
speech, beginning with a declaration of the sympathy moved in him by
the parent's love, the daughter's distress, he came with lowering
voice, with insinuating tone, with blandly tolerant countenance, to the
kernel of his discourse; it contained a suggestion which might--he only
said _might_--aid her amid the manifold perplexities of her position.
By this time Aurelia was more attentive; the churchman almost
affectionate in his suavity, grew still more direct; and at length, in
a voice which only reached the ear of the listener, he spoke thus:

'I understand why you stepped aside from the way of truth; I perceive
the obstacles hindering your return. I know the tender impulses which
urge you to soothe your father's last hours, and, no less, the motives,
natural to a woman of your beauty, of your birth, which are at strife
with that tenderness and threaten to overcome it. Could you discover a
means of yielding to your filial affection, and at the same time
safeguarding your noble pride, would you not gladly use it? Such a
means I can point out to you.'

He became silent, watching Aurelia. She, won by the perspicacity which
read her heart, had put aside all arrogance, and wore a look of grave
intentness.

'Let me know it,' she murmured.

'It is this. Return to the true belief, but guard awhile the secret of
your conversion. That it shall not be disclosed until you wish, I can
give you firm assurance--if need be, on solemn oath. You will privately
make known to your father that he has prevailed, thereby you put his
flesh and spirit at rest,--he will die blessing you, and enriching you
to the full extent of his desire. You will then also set your signature
to a paper, which I shall write, making confession of the orthodox
faith, and undertaking to be duly reconciled with the church, by the
imposition of hands, at some convenient season. That is all that will
be asked of you for the present. The lady Petronilla'--he all but
smiled in uttering the name--'shall not even suspect what has happened.'

'Will this villa be mine?' asked the listener after brief reflection.

'This villa shall be yours.'

An exultant gleam shone in Aurelia's eyes.

'Deacon,' she said sternly, 'your promise is not enough. Swear to me
that no one living, save my father and you, shall know.'

From his bosom Leander drew forth a little golden cross.

'This,' he said reverently, 'contains dust of iron from the bars on
which the blessed Laurentius suffered martyrdom.'

'Swear also,' demanded Aurelia, 'by the Holy Pancratius.' In the name
of both saints Leander took his oath of secrecy. Petronilla was of
course aware that the deacon had been admitted to audience by her
niece. When he descended, she awaited him at the end of the portico,
and her look questioned him.

'Stubborn, stubborn!' murmured Leander, shaking his head, and passed on
as though in troubled thought.

Later in the day, when she had seen her father, Aurelia made known to
her cousin Basil, who had requested an interview, that he might come.
His cousin received him smilingly, almost affectionately.

Marcian having this morning taken his leave, called away by some
unexplained business to Neapolis, Basil had been on the point of taking
Decius into his amorous confidence, when this summons rejoiced him.

'Is the letter written?' were Basil's first words.

'It is here. Can you despatch it at once?'

'I will take it myself,' he answered promptly.

Aurelia shook her head.

'You must not. My father's life is fast failing. No one can say which
hour may be his last. If he asked for you, and you were absent--'

'Felix shall go,' said Basil. 'The wind is favourable. He may have to
ride back to-morrow, but we can trust him to make all speed.'

'He took the letter, which was superscribed, 'To the most noble lady
Veranilda.'

'Dear cousin, you have spoken of me?' he asked with a wistful look.

'I have said, good cousin,' Aurelia answered pleasantly, 'that you
wished to be spoken of.'

'Only that?'

'What more should I say? Your Amiability is too hasty. Remember that
you have scarce seen her.'

'Scarce seen Veranilda!' exclaimed Basil. 'Why, it seems to me as
though I had known her for years! Have we not talked together?'

'Once. The first time does not count; you exchanged hardly a dozen
words. When,' added Aurelia, smiling, 'were you so dashed in a maid's
presence?'

'Nay, never! I am not accused of too much modesty; but when I entered
and looked on Veranilda--oh, it was the strangest moment of my life!
Noble cousin,' he added pleadingly, 'honoured Aurelia, do but tell me
what is her parentage?'

'How does that concern your Excellence? I have told you all that it
imports you to know--at all events for the present. Cousin Basil, you
delay the letter; I should wish her to have it before nightfall, for
she thinks anxiously of me.'

'I go. When may I again speak with you?'

'You shall hear when I am at leisure.'

Basil despatched his servant to Cumae not with one letter only, but
with two. Greatly daring, he had himself written to Veranilda; in brief
terms, but every word tremulous with his passion. And for half an hour
he stood watching the sail which wafted his messenger over the gulf,
ruffled to-day by a south-west wind, driver of clouds. Little thought
had he to give to the dying Maximus, but at the ninth hour he turned
his steps to the oratory, once a temple of Isis, and heard the office,
and breathed a prayer for his kindly relative. Which duty discharged,
he prayed more fervently, to whatever saint or deity has ear for such
petitions, that he might be loved by the Gothic maid.

This evening Maximus seemed to suffer less. He lay with closed eyes, a
look of calm on his worn countenance. Beside him sat Decius, reading in
low tones from that treatise on the Consolation of Philosophy, which
Boethius wrote in prison, a hook wherein Maximus sought comfort, this
last year or two more often than in the Evangel, or the Lives of
Saints. Decius himself would have chosen a philosopher of older time,
but in the words of his own kinsman, Maximus found an appeal more
intimate, a closer sympathy, than in ancient teaching. He loved
especially the passages of verse; and when the reader came to those
lines--

  'O felix hominum genus,
  Si vestros animos amor
  Quo coelum regitur, regat,'

he raised his hand, smiling with peculiar sweetness.

'Pause there, O Decius,' he said, in a weak but clear voice; 'let me
muse awhile.' And he murmured the verses to himself.




CHAPTER IV

TO CUMAE


The Bishop of Surrentum, an elderly man and infirm, had for the past
fortnight been unable to leave his house, but day by day he received
news of what passed at the villa of Maximus, and held with the
presbyter, Andreas, many colloquies on that weighty topic, the
senator's testament. As it happened, neither bishop nor presbyter had
much aptitude for worldly affairs; they were honest, simple-minded
clerics, occupied with visions and marvels and the saving details of
dogma; exultant whenever a piece of good fortune befell their church,
but modest in urging a claim at the bedside of the sick. Being the son
of a freedman who had served in the Anician house, the bishop could not
approach Maximus without excessive reverence; before Petronilla he was
even more unduly awed.

On Sunday morning the good prelate lay wakeful at the hour of matins,
and with quavering voice chanted to himself the psalm of the office
from which his weakness held him apart. Presently the door opened, and
in the dim lamp-light appeared the presbyter Andreas, stepping softly.
He made known that an urgent message had just summoned him to the
villa; Maximus was near his end.

'I, too, will come,' exclaimed the bishop, rising in his bed and
ringing loudly a little hand-bell.

'Venerable father! your health--'

'Hasten, hasten, Andreas! I follow.'

In less than an hour he descended from his litter, and, resting on the
arms of two servants, was conducted to the chamber of the dying man.
Andreas had just administered the last rites; whether the fixed eyes
still saw was doubtful. At a murmur of 'the bishop' those by the
doorway reverently drew aside. On one side of the bed were Aurelia and
the deacon; on the other, Petronilla and Basil and Decius. Though
kneeling, the senator's daughter held herself proudly. Though tears
were on her face, she hardly disguised an air of triumph. Nor was the
head of Petronilla bent; her countenance looked hard and cold as
marble. Leander, a model of decorum, stepped with grave greeting
towards the prelate, and whispered a word or two. In the stillness that
followed there quivered a deep breath. Flavius Anicius Maximus had
lived his life.

When the bishop, supported by Leander and Andreas, rose from prayer, he
was led by the obsequious clerics to a hall illumined by several lamps,
where two brasiers gave forth a grateful glow in the chill of the
autumn morning. Round about the walls, in niches, stood busts carved or
cast of the ancestors of him who lay dead. Here, whilst voices of
lamentation sounded from without, Leander made known to the prelate and
the presbyter the terms of the will. Basil was instituted 'heir'; that
is to say, he became the legal representative of the dead man, and was
charged with the distribution of those parts of the estate bequeathed
to others. First of the legatees stood Aurelia. The listeners learnt
with astonishment that the obstinate heretic was treated as though her
father had had no cause of complaint against her; she was now mistress
of the Surrentine estate, as well as of the great house in Rome, and of
other property. A lamentable thing, the deacon admitted suavely; but,
for his part, he was not without hope, and he fixed his eyes with a
peculiar intensity on the troubled bishop.

Petronilla drew near. The will was already known to her in every
detail, and she harboured a keen suspicion of the secret which lay
behind it. Leander, she could not doubt, was behaving to her with
duplicity, and this grieved her to the heart. It was to the bishop that
she now addressed herself.

'Holy father, I am your suppliant. Not even for a day will I remain
under this roof, even if--which is doubtful--I should be suffered to do
so. I put myself under the protection of your Holiness, until such time
as I can set forth on my sad journey to Rome. At Surrentum I must abide
until the corpse of my brother can be conveyed to its final resting
place--as I promised him.'

Much agitated, the prelate made answer that a fitting residence should
be prepared for her before noon, and the presbyter Andreas added that
he would instantly betake himself to the city on that business.
Petronilla thanked him with the loftiest humility. For any lack of
respect, or for common courtesy, to which they might be exposed ere
they quitted the villa, she besought their Sanctities not to hold her
responsible, she herself being now an unwilling intruder at this
hearth, and liable at any moment to insult. Uttering which words in a
resonant voice, she turned her eyes to where, a few yards away, stood
Aurelia, with Basil and Decius behind her.

'Reverend bishop,' spoke a voice not less steady and sonorous than that
of the elder lady, 'should you suffer any discourtesy in my house, it
will come not from me, but from her who suggests its possibility, and
whose mind is bent upon such things. Indeed, she has already scanted
the respect she owes you in uttering these words. As for herself,
remain she here for an hour or for a month, she is in no danger of
insult--unless she deem it an insult to have her base falsehood flung
back at her, and the enmity in her fierce eyes answered with the scorn
it merits.'

Petronilla trembled with wrath.

'Falsehood!' she echoed, on a high, mocking note. 'A charge of
falsehood upon _her_ lips! Your Holiness will ere long, I do not doubt,
be enlightened as to that woman's principles in the matter of truth and
falsehood. Meanwhile, we shall consult our souls' welfare, as well as
our dignity, in holding as little intercourse as may be with one who
has renounced the faith in Christ.'

Aurelia bent her eyes upon the deacon, who met the look with austere
fixedness. There was dead silence for a moment, then she turned to the
young men behind her.

'My noble cousins, I desired your company because I foresaw this
woman's violence, and knew not to what length it might carry her. She
pretends to fear my tongue; for my part, I would not lightly trust
myself within reach of her hands, of which I learnt the weight when I
was a little child. Lord Decius, attend, I beg you, these reverend men
whilst they honour my house and on their way homeward. My cousin Basil,
I must needs ask you to be my guard, until I can command service here.
Follow me, I pray.'

With another piercing glance at Leander she withdrew from the assembly.

It was a morning of wind and cloud; the day broke sadly. When the first
gleam of yellow sunlight flitted over Surrentum towards the cliffs of
Capreae, silence had fallen upon the villa. Wearied by their night of
watching, the inhabitants slept, or at least reposed in privacy. But
this quiet was of short duration. When the customary bell had given
notice of the third hour, Aurelia called together the servants of the
house--only those who belonged to Petronilla failing to answer her
summons--and announced to them her new authority. At the same time the
steward of the estate read out a list of those slaves who, under the
will of Maximus, could claim their emancipation. The gathering having
dispersed, there appeared an attendant of the deacon Leander; his
reverend master would wait upon the lady Aurelia, as soon as her
leisure permitted, for the purpose of taking leave. Forthwith the
deacon was admitted. Alone in the great hall, Aurelia sat beside a
brasier, at which she warmed her hands; she scarcely deigned to glance
at the ecclesiastic.

'You pursue your journey, reverend?' were her first words.

'As far as Neapolis, gracious lady,' came the suave reply. 'There or in
the neighbourhood I shall remain at least ten days. Should you desire
to communicate with me--'

'I think I can save that trouble,' interrupted Aurelia, with quivering
lips. 'All I have to say to your Sanctity, I will say at once. It is,
that you have enlightened me as to the value of solemn oaths on the
lips of the Roman clergy.'

'Your meaning, dear madam?' asked Leander, with a look of bland disdain.

'You have the face to ask it, deacon, after Petronilla's words this
morning?'

'I feared they might mislead you. The lady Petronilla knows nothing of
what has passed between us. She spoke in anger, and hazarded an
accusation--as angry ladies are wont.'

'Of course you say so,' returned Aurelia. 'I will believe you if you
give me back the paper I signed, and trust to my word for the
fulfilment of what I promised.'

Leander smiled, almost as if he had heard some happy intelligence.

'You ask,' he said, 'for a trust you yourself refuse.'

'Then go your way, perjurer!' exclaimed Aurelia, her cheeks aflame with
passion. 'I know henceforth on whom to rely.'

For a moment Leander stood as if reflecting on these last words; then
he bowed, and with placid dignity retired.

Meanwhile Basil and Decius were conversing with Petronilla. Neither of
them had ever stood on terms of more than courteous forbearance with
this authoritative lady; at present they maintained their usual
demeanour, and did not think it needful to apologise for friendly
relations with Aurelia. The only subject on which Petronilla deigned to
hold colloquy with them was that of her brother's burial at Rome.
Should the transport be by land or by sea? This evening the corpse
would be conveyed to the cathedral of Surrentum, where due rites would
be performed early on the morrow; there it would remain in temporary
interment until a coffin of lead could be prepared, and arrangements
completed for the removal. Was the year too advanced, questioned
Petronilla, to allow of the sea voyage? On the other hand, would the
land journey be safe, having regard to the advance of the Gothic army?
Basil pronounced for the sea, and undertook to seek for a vessel. Was
he willing, asked Petronilla, to accompany the body to Rome? This
question gave Basil pause; he reflected uneasily; he hesitated. Yet who
could discharge this duty, if he did not? Suddenly ashamed of his
hesitation, the true reason of which could not be avowed, he declared
that he would make the voyage.

Hereupon entered the deacon, who, the matter being put before him,
approved these arrangements. He himself would doubtless be in Rome
before the arrival of the remains of Maximus, and all the details of
the burial there might be left to him. So Petronilla thanked and
dismissed the young men, on whose retirement she turned eagerly to
Leander.

'Forgive me!' broke from her lips. 'I know how deeply I have offended
your Sanctity. It was my fear that you would go away without a word. My
haste, my vehemence, merited even that punishment.'

'Calm yourself, noble lady,' returned the deacon. 'I was indeed
grieved, but I know your provocation. We may speak on this subject
again; but not here. For the present, I take my leave of you, all being
ready for my departure. As you are quitting this house at once, you
need no counsel as to immediate difficulties; I will only say, in all
things be prudent, be self-controlled; before long, you may see reason
for the discreet silence which I urge upon you.'

'When do you set forth to Rome?' asked Petronilla. 'If it might be my
privilege to journey in your company--?'

'The day is uncertain,' replied Leander; 'but if it be possible for us
to travel together, trust me to beg for the honour. You shall hear of
my projects in a week's time from Neapolis.'

Petronilla fell to her knees, and again besought his forgiveness with
his benediction. The deacon magnanimously granted both, and whilst
bending over the devout lady, whispered one word:

'Patience!'

An hour after mid-day, Petronilla quitted the villa. Her great
travelling chariot, drawn by four mules, wherein she and her most
precious possessions were conveyed, descended at a stately pace the
winding road to Surrentum. Before it rode Basil; behind came a laden
wagon, two light vehicles carrying female slaves, and mounted
men-servants, armed as though for a long and perilous journey. Since
the encounter before sunrise, there had been no meeting between the
hostile ladies. Aurelia signified her scorn by paying no heed to her
aunt's departure.

Alone in her dominion, the inheritress entered the death-chamber, and
there passed an hour upon her knees. Whilst she was thus secluded, a
pealing storm traversed the sky. When Aurelia came forth again, her
face was wan, tearstained. She summoned her nurse, and held much talk
with her as to the significance of thunder whilst a corpse lay in the
house. The good woman, though she durst not utter all her thoughts,
babbled concern, and used the occasion to beseech Aurelia--as she had
often done since the death of her Gothic lord--to be reconciled with
the true church.

'True church!' exclaimed Aurelia, with sudden passion. 'How do you know
which is the true church? Have not emperors, have not bishops and
numberless holy men lived and died in the faith I confess--?'

She checked herself; grew silent, brooded. Meanwhile, the old nurse
talked on, and presently began to relate how a handmaid of Petronilla,
in going with her this morning, professed to know on the surest
evidence that Aurelia, by her father's deathbed, had renounced
Arianism. The sullen countenance of her mistress flashed again into
wrath.

'Did I not forbid you,' cried Aurelia, 'to converse with those women?
And you dare repeat to me their loose-lipped chatter. I am too familiar
with you; go and talk with your kind; go!'

Mutteringly the woman went apart. The mistress, alone, fell into a long
weeping. When she had sobbed herself into quiet once more, she sought a
volume of the Gospels, inserted her forefinger between the pages at
random, and anxiously regarded the passage thus chosen.

'While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the
children of light.'

She brooded, but in the end seemed to find solace.

Basil was absent all day. On his return, just before sunset, Aurelia
met him in the atrium, heard the report of what he had done, and at
length asked whether, on the day after to-morrow, he could go to Cumae.

'To Cumae?' exclaimed Basil. 'Ay, that I can! You are returning
thither?'

'For a day only. I go to seek that which no one but myself can find.'

The listener had no difficulty in understanding this; it meant, of
course, treasure concealed in the house Aurelia had long inhabited.

'We must both go and return by sea,' said Aurelia, 'even though it
cause us delay. I have no mind to pass through Neapolis.'

'Be it so. The sky will be calm when this storm has passed Shall you
return,' said Basil, 'alone?'

'Alone? Do you purpose to forsake me?'

'Think better of my manners, cousin--and more shrewdly of my meaning.'

'You mean fairly, I trust?' she returned, looking him steadily in the
face.

'Nay,' cried the young man vehemently, 'if I have any thought other
than honest, may I perish before I ever again behold her!'

Aurelia's gaze softened.

'It is well,' she said; 'we will speak again to-morrow.'

That night Petronilla kept vigil in the church of Surrentum, Basil and
Decius relieving her an hour before dawn. At the funeral service, which
began soon after sunrise, the greater part of the townsfolk attended.
All were eager to see whether the daughter of Maximus would be present,
for many rumours were rife touching Aurelia, some declaring that she
had returned to the true faith, some that she remained obstinate in
heresy. Her failure to appear did not set the debate at rest. A servant
of Petronilla whispered it about that only by a false pretence of
conversion had Aurelia made sure her inheritance; and at the mere
thought of such wickedness the hearers shuddered, foretelling a dread
retribution. The clergy were mute on the subject, even with the most
favoured of their flock. Meanwhile the piety and austerity of
Petronilla made a safe topic of talk, and a long procession reverently
escorted her to her temporary abode near the bishop's house.

To-day the clouds spent themselves in rain; before nightfall the
heavens began to clear. The island peak of Inarime stood purple against
a crimson sunset. After supper, Aurelia and Basil held conference. The
wind would not be favourable for their voyage; none the less, they
decided to start at the earliest possible hour. Dawn was but just
streaking the sky, when they rode down the dark gorge which led to the
shore, Basil attended by Felix, the lady by one maid. The bark awaited
them, swaying gently against the harbour-side. Aurelia descended to the
little cabin curtained off below a half-deck, and--sails as yet being
useless--four great oars urged the craft on its way.

What little wind there was breathed from the north For an hour they
made but slow progress, but when the first rays of sun gleamed above
the mountains, the breeze shifted westward; sails were presently
hoisted, and the rippling water hissed before the prow. Soon a golden
day shone upon sea and land. Aurelia came forth on to the deck, and sat
gazing towards Neapolis.

'You know that the deacon is yonder,' she said in a low voice to Basil,
this the first mention of Leander that had fallen from her lips in
speaking with him.

'Is he?' returned the other carelessly. 'Yes, I remember.'

But Basil's eyes were turned to the long promontory of Misenum. He was
wondering anxiously how his letter had affected Veranilda, and whether,
when she heard of it, Aurelia would be angered.

'Where is your friend Marcian?' were her next words.

Basil replied that he, too, was sojourning at Neapolis; and, when
Aurelia inquired what business held him there, her cousin answered
truly that he did not know.

'Do you trust him?' asked the lady, after a thoughtful pause.

'Marcian? As I trust myself!'

One of the boatmen coming within earshot, their conversation ceased.

The hour before noon saw them drawing near to land. They left on the
right the little island of Nesis, and drew towards Puteoli. On the left
lay Baiae, all but forsaken, its ancient temples and villas stretching
along the shore from the Lucrine lake to the harbour shadowed by Cape
Misenum; desolate magnificence, marble overgrown with ivy, gardens
where the rose grew wild, and terraces crumbling into the sea. Basil
and Aurelia looked upon these things with an eye made careless by
familiarity; all their lives ruin had lain about them, deserted
sanctuaries of a bygone creed, unpeopled homes of a vanished greatness.

As the boat advanced into the bay, it lost the wind, and rowing again
became needful. Thus they entered the harbour of Puteoli, where the
travellers disembarked.

Hard by the port was a tavern, which, owing to its position midway
between Neapolis and Cumae, still retained something of its character
as a _mansio_ of the posting service; but the vehicles and quadrupeds
of which it boasted were no longer held in strict reserve for state
officials and persons privileged. Gladly the innkeeper put at Basil's
disposal his one covered carriage, a trifle cleaner inside than it was
without, and a couple of saddle horses, declared to be Sicilian, but
advanced in age. Thus, with slight delay, the party pursued their
journey, Basil and his man riding before the carriage. The road ran
coastwise as far as the Julian haven, once thronged with the shipping
of the Roman world, now all but abandoned to a few fishermen; there it
turned inland, skirted the Lucrine water, and presently reached the
shore of Lake Avernus, where was the entrance to the long tunnel
piercing the hill between the lake and Cumae. On an ill-kept way, under
a low vault of rock dripping moisture, the carriage with difficulty
tossed and rumbled through the gloom. Basil impatiently trotted on,
and, as he issued into sunlight, there before him stood the walls of
the ancient city, round about that little hill by the sea which, in an
age remote, had been chosen for their abode by the first Hellenes
tempted to the land of Italy. High above rose the acropolis, a frowning
stronghold. Through Basil's mind passed the thought that ere long Cumae
might again belong to the Goths, and this caused him no uneasiness;
half, perchance, he hoped it.

A guard at the city gate inspected the carriage, and let it pass on. In
a few minutes, guided by Basil, it drew up before a house in a narrow,
climbing street, a small house, brick fronted, with stucco pilasters
painted red at the door, and two windows, closed with wooden shutters,
in the upper storey. On one side of the entrance stood a shop for the
sale of earthenware; on the other, a vintner's with a projecting marble
table, the jars of wine thereon exhibited being attached by chains to
rings in the wall. Odours of cookery, and of worse things, oppressed
the air, and down the street ran a noisome gutter. When Basil's servant
had knocked, a little wicket slipped aside for observation; then, after
a grinding of heavy locks and bars, the double doors were opened, and a
grey-headed slave stepped forward to receive his mistress. Basil had
jumped down from his horse, and would fain have entered, but, by an
arrangement already made, this was forbidden. Saying that she would
expect him at the second hour on the morrow, Aurelia disappeared. Her
cousin after a longing look at the blind and mute house, rode away to
another quarter of the city, near the harbour, where was an inn at
which he had lodged during his previous visit. In a poor and dirty
room, he made shift to dine on such food as could be offered him; then
lay down on the truckle bed, and slept for an hour or two.

A knock at the door awoke him. It was Felix, who brought the news that
Marcian was at Cumae.

'You have seen him?' cried Basil, astonished and eager.

'His servant Sagaris,' Felix replied. 'I met him but now in the forum,
and learnt that his lord lodges at the house of the curial Venustus;
hard by the Temple of Diana.'

'Go thither at once, and beg him, if his leisure serve, to come to me.
I would go myself; but, if he have seen Sagaris, he may be already on
the way here.'

And so it proved, for in a very few minutes Marcian himself entered the
room.

'Your uncle is dead,' were his first words. 'I heard it in Neapolis
yesterday. What brings you here?'

'Nay, best Marcian,' returned the other, with hands on his friend's
shoulders, and peering him in the face, 'let me once again put that
question to _you_.'

'I cannot answer it, yet,' said Marcian gravely. 'Your business is more
easily guessed.'

'But must not be talked of here,' interrupted Basil, glancing at the
door. 'Let us find some more suitable place.'

They descended the dark, foul stairs, and went out together. Before the
house stood the two serving-men, who, as their masters walked away,
followed at a respectful distance. When safe from being overheard,
Basil recounted to his friend the course of events at the Surrentine
villa since Marcian's departure, made known his suspicion that Aurelia
had secretly returned to the Catholic faith. He then told of to day's
journey and its purpose, his hearer wearing a look of grave attention.

'Can it be,' asked Marcian, 'that you think of wedding this Gothic
beauty?'

'Assuredly,' answered Basil, with a laugh, 'I have thought of it.'

'And it looks as though Aurelia favoured your desire.'

'It has indeed something of that appearance.'

'Pray you now, dear lord,' said Marcian, 'be sober awhile. Have you
reflected that, with such a wife, you would not dare return to Rome?'

Basil had not regarded that aspect of the matter, but his friend's
reasoning soon brought him to perceive the danger he would lightly have
incurred. Dangers, not merely those that resulted from the war; could
he suppose, asked Marcian, that Heliodora would meekly endure his
disdain, and that the life of Veranilda would be safe in such a rival's
proximity? Hereat, Basil gnashed his teeth and handled his dagger. Why
return to Rome at all? he cried impatiently. He had no mind to go
through the torments of a long siege such as again threatened. Why
should he not live on in Campania--

'And tend your sheep or your goats?' interrupted Marcian, with his
familiar note of sad irony. 'And pipe _sub tegmine fagi_ to your
blue-eyed Amaryllis? Why not, indeed? But what if; on learning the
death of Maximus, the Thracian who rules yonder see fit to command your
instant return, and to exact from you an account of what you have
inherited? Bessas loses no time--suspecting--perhaps--that his tenure
of a fruitful office may not be long.'

'And if the suspicion be just?' said Basil, gazing hard at his friend.

'Well, if it be?' said the other, returning the look.

'Should we not do well to hold far from Rome, looking to King Totila,
whom men praise, as a deliverer of our land from hateful tyranny?'

Marcian laid a hand on his friend's shoulder.

'O, brave Basil!' he murmured, with a smile. 'O, nobly confident in
those you love! Never did man so merit love in return.--Do as you will.
In a few days I shall again visit you at Surrentum, and perchance bring
news that may give us matter for talk.'

From a portico hard by there approached a beggar, a filthy and hideous
cripple, who, with whining prayer, besought alms. Marcian from his
wallet took a copper coin, and, having glanced at it, drew Basil's
attention.

'Look,' said he, smiling oddly, 'at the image and the superscription.'

It was a coin of Vitiges, showing a helmeted bust of the goddess of the
city, with legend '_Invicta Roma_.'

'_Invicta Roma_,' muttered Basil sadly, with head bent.

Meanwhile, out of earshot of their masters, the two servants conversed
with not less intimacy. At a glance these men were seen to be of
different races. Felix, aged some five and thirty, could boast of free
birth; he was the son of a curial--that is to say, municipal
councillor--of Arpinum, who had been brought to ruin, like so many of
his class in this age, by fiscal burdens, the curiales being
responsible for the taxes payable by their colleagues, as well as for
the dues on any estate in their district which might be abandoned, and,
in brief, for whatsoever deficiencies of local revenue. Gravity and
sincerity appeared in his countenance; he seldom smiled, spoke in a
subdued voice, and often kept his eyes on the ground; but his service
was performed with rare conscientiousness, and he had often given proof
of affection for his master. Sagaris, a Syrian slave, less than thirty
years old, had a comely visage which ever seemed to shine with
contentment, and often twinkled with a sort of roguish mirth. Tall and
of graceful bearing, the man's every movement betrayed personal vanity;
his speech had the note of facile obsequiousness; he talked whenever
occasion offered, and was fond of airing his views on political and
other high matters. Therewithal, he was the most superstitious of
mortals; wore amulets, phylacteries, charms of all sorts, and secretly
prayed to many strange gods. When he had nothing else to do, and could
find a genial companion, his delight was to play by the hour at _micare
digitis_; but, in spite of his master's good opinion, not to Sagaris
would have applied the proverb that you might play that game with him
in the dark.

'Take my word for it,' he whispered to Felix, with his most important
air, 'we shall see strange things ere long. Last night I counted seven
shooting stars.'

'What does that argue?' asked the other soberly.

'More than I care to put into Latin. At Capua, three days ago, a woman
gave birth to a serpent, a winged dragon, which flew away towards Rome.
I talked at Neapolis with a man who saw it.'

'Strange, indeed,' murmured Felix, with raised eyebrows. 'I have often
heard of such portents, but never had the luck to behold one of them.
Yet,' he added gravely, 'I have received a sign. When my father died, I
was far away from him, and at that very hour, as I prayed in the church
of Holy Clement at Rome, I heard a voice that said in my ear, _Vale_!
three times.'

'Oh, I have had signs far more wonderful than that,' exclaimed the
Syrian. 'I was at sea, between Alexandria and Berytus--for you must
know that in my boyhood I passed three years at Berytus, and there
obtained that knowledge of law which you may have remarked in talking
with me--well, I was at sea--'

'Peace!' interposed Felix. 'We are summoned.'

Sagaris sighed, and became the obsequious attendant.




CHAPTER V

BASIL AND VERANILDA


At the appointed hour next morning, when yet no ray of sunshine had
touched the gloomy little street, though a limpid sky shone over it,
Basil stood at Aurelia's door. The grey-headed porter silently admitted
him, and he passed by a narrow corridor into a hall lighted as usual
from above, paved with red tiles, here and there trodden away, the
walls coloured a dusky yellow, and showing an imaginary line of pillars
painted in blue. A tripod table, a couch, and a few chairs were the
only furniture. When the visitor had waited for a few moments a curtain
concealing the entrance to the inner part of the house moved aside, and
Aurelia's voice bade her cousin come forward. He entered a smaller room
opening upon a diminutive court where a few shrubs grew; around the
walls hung old and faded tapestry; the floor was of crude mosaic; the
furniture resembled that of the atrium, with the addition of a brasier.

'I have been anxious for your coming,' were Aurelia's first words. 'Do
you think they will let us depart without hindrance? Yesterday I saw
the owner of this house to transact my business with him. It is
Venustus, a curial, a man who has always been well disposed to me. He
said that he must perforce make known to the governor my intention of
leaving the city, and hoped no obstacle would be put in our way. This
morning, before sunrise, a messenger from the citadel came and put
questions to the porter.'

Basil knitted his brows.

'Venustus? It is with Venustus that Marcian lodges. Yes, Marcian is
here; I know not on what business. It would have been wiser,' he added,
'to have said nothing, to have gone away as before. When shall you be
ready?'

'I am ready now. Why delay? What matter though we reach Surrentum by
night? The moon rises early.'

'What reply was given to the messenger from the citadel?'

'He learned, perforce, that we were preparing for a journey.'

A moment's reflection and Basil decided to risk immediate departure;
delay and uncertainty were at all times hateful to him, and at the
present juncture intolerable. At once he quitted the house (not having
ventured to speak the name of Veranilda), and in an hour's time the
covered carriage from Puteoli, and another vehicle, were in waiting.
The baggage was brought out; then, as Basil stood in the hall, he saw
Aurelia come forward, accompanied by a slight female figure, whose
grace could not be disguised by the long hooded cloak which wrapped it
from head to foot, allowing not a glimpse of face. The young man
trembled, and followed. He saw the ladies step into the carriage, and
was himself about to mount his horse, when a military officer, attended
by three soldiers, stepped towards him, and, without phrase of
courtesy, demanded his name. Pallid, shaken with all manner of
emotions, Basil replied to this and several other inquiries, the result
being that the two vehicles were ordered to be driven to the citadel,
and he to go thither under guard.

At the entrance to the citadel the carriage drew up and remained there
under guard. Basil was led in, and presently stood before the military
governor of Cumae; this was a Hun named Chorsoman, formerly one of
Belisarius's bodyguard. He spoke Latin barbarously; none the less was
his language direct and perspicuous. The Roman lady wished to quit
Cumae, where she had lived for some years; she purposed, moreover, to
take away with her a maiden of Gothic race, who, though not treated as
a captive, had been under observation since she was sent to dwell here
by Belisarius. This could not pass as a matter of small moment.
Plainly, permission to depart must be sought of the authorities, and
such permission, under the circumstances, could only be granted in
return for substantial payment--a payment in proportion to the lady's
rank. It was known that the senator Maximus had died, and report said
that his daughter inherited great wealth. The price of her passport
would be one thousand gold pieces.

Basil knew that Aurelia had not, in the coffer she was taking away, a
quarter of this sum of money. He foresaw endless delay, infinite peril
to his hopes. Schooling a hot tongue to submissive utterance, he asked
that Aurelia might be consulted.

'Speak with her yourself,' said the Hun, 'and bring her answer.'

So Basil went forth, and, under the eyes of the guard, held converse
with his cousin. Aurelia was willing to give all the treasure she
carried with her--money, a few ornaments of gold and silver, two or
three vessels of precious metal--everything for immediate liberty; all
together she thought it might be the equivalent of half the sum
demanded. The rest she would swear to pay. This being reported to
Chorsoman, his hideous, ashen-grey countenance assumed a fierce
expression; he commanded that all the baggage on the vehicles should be
brought and opened before him; this was done. Whilst Basil, boiling
with secret rage, saw his cousin's possessions turned out on to the
floor a thought flashed into his mind.

'I ought to inform your Sublimity,' he said, with all the indifference
he could assume, 'that the lady Aurelia despatched two days ago a
courier to Rome apprising the noble commandant Bessas of her father's
death, and of her intention to arrive in the city as soon as possible,
and to put her means at his disposal for the defence of Rome against
King Totila.'

Chorsoman stared.

'Is not this lady the widow of a Goth and a heretic?'

'The widow of a Goth, yes, but no longer a heretic,' answered Basil
boldly, half believing what he said.

He saw that he had spoken to some purpose. The Hun blinked his little
eyes, gazed greedily at the money, and was about to speak when a
soldier announced that a Roman named Marcian desired immediate
audience, therewith handing to the governor a piece of metal which
looked like a large coin. Chorsoman had no sooner glanced at this than
he bade admit the Roman; but immediately changing his mind, he went out
into another room. On his return, after a quarter of an hour, he
gruffly announced that the travellers were free to depart.

'We humbly thank your Clemency,' said Basil, his heart leaping in joy.
'Does your Greatness permit me to order these trifles to be removed?'

'Except the money,' replied Chorsoman, growling next moment, 'and the
vessels'; then snarling with a savage glance about him, 'and the
jewels.'

Not till the gates of Cumae were behind them, and they had entered the
cavern in the hill, did Basil venture to recount what had happened. He
alighted from his horse, and walking through the gloom beside the
carriage he briefly narrated all in a whisper to Aurelia--all except
his own ingenious device for balking the Hun's cupidity. What means
Marcian had employed for their release he could but vaguely conjecture;
that would be learned a few days hence when his friend came again to
Surrentum. Aurelia's companion in the carriage, still hooded and
cloaked, neither moved nor uttered a word.

At a distance of some twenty yards from the end of the tunnel, Felix,
riding in advance, checked his horse and shouted. There on the ground
lay a dead man, a countryman, who it was easy to see had been stabbed
to death, and perhaps not more than an hour ago. Quarrel or robbery,
who could say? An incident not so uncommon as greatly to perturb the
travellers; they passed on and came to Puteoli. Here the waiting
boatmen were soon found; the party embarked; the vessel oared away in a
dead calm.

The long voyage was tedious to Basil only because Veranilda remained
unseen in the cabin; the thought of bearing her off; as though she were
already his own, was an exultation, a rapture. When he reflected on the
indignities he had suffered in the citadel rage burned his throat, and
Aurelia, all bitterness at the loss of her treasure, found words to
increase this wrath. A Hun! A Scythian savage! A descendant perchance
of the fearful Attila! He to represent the Roman Empire! Fit
instrument, forsooth, of such an Emperor as Justinian, whose boundless
avarice, whose shameful subjection to the base-born Theodora, were
known to every one. To this had Rome fallen; and not one of her sons
who dared to rise against so foul a servitude!

'Have patience, cousin,' Basil whispered, bidding her with a glance
beware of the nearest boatman. 'There are some who will not grieve if
Totila--'

'No more than that? To stand, and look on, and play the courtier to
whichever may triumph!'

Basil muttered with himself. He wished he had been bred a soldier
instead of growing to manhood in an age when the nobles of Rome were
held to inglorious peace, their sole career that of the jurist And
Aurelia, brooding, saw him involved beyond recall in her schemes of
vengeance.

The purple evening fell about them, an afterglow of sunset trembling
upon the violet sea. Above the heights of Capreae a star began to
glimmer; and lo, yonder from behind the mountains rose the great orb of
the moon. They were in the harbour at last, but had to wait on board
until a messenger could go to the village and a conveyance arrive. The
litter came, with a horse for Basil; Felix, together with Aurelia's
grey-headed porter and a female slave--these two the only servants that
had remained in the house at Cumae--followed on foot, and the baggage
was carried up on men's shoulders.

'Decius!' cried Basil, in a passionate undertone, when he encountered
his kinsman in the vestibule. 'Decius! we are here--and one with us
whom you know not. Hush! Stifle your curiosity till to-morrow. Let them
pass.'

So had the day gone by, and not once had he looked upon the face of
Veranilda.

He saw her early on the morrow. Aurelia, though the whole villa was now
at her command, chose still to inhabit the house of Proba; and thither,
when the day was yet young, she summoned Basil. The room in which she
sat was hung with pictured tapestry, representing Christ and the
Apostles; crude work, but such as had pleased Faltonia Proba, whose
pious muse inspired her to utter the Gospel in a Virgilian canto. And
at Aurelia's side, bending over a piece of delicate needlework, sat the
Gothic maiden, clad in white, her flaxen hair, loosely held with silk,
falling behind her shoulders, shadowing her forehead, and half hiding
the little ears. At Basil's entrance she did not look up; at the first
sound of his voice she bent her head yet lower, and only when he
directly addressed her, asking, with all the gentleness his lips could
command, whether the journey had left much fatigue, did she show for a
moment her watchet eyes, answering few words with rare sweetness.

'Be seated, dear my lord,' said his cousin, in the soft, womanly voice
once her habitual utterance. 'There has been so little opportunity of
free conversation, that we have almost, one might say, to make each
other's acquaintance yet. But I hope we may now enjoy a little leisure,
and live as becomes good kinsfolk.'

Basil made such suitable answer as his agitation allowed.

'And the noble Decius,' pursued Aurelia, 'will, I trust, bestow at
times a little of his leisure upon us. Perhaps this afternoon you could
persuade him to forget his books for half an hour? But let us speak, to
begin with, of sad things which must needs occupy us. Is it possible,
yet, to know when the ship will sail for Rome?'

Aurelia meant, of course, the vessel which would convey her father's
corpse, and the words cast gloom upon Basil, who had all but forgotten
the duty that lay before him. He answered that a week at least must
pass before the sailing, and, as he spoke, kept his eyes upon
Veranilda, whose countenance--or so it seemed to him--had become
graver, perhaps a little sad.

'Is it your purpose to stay long in Rome?' was Aurelia's next question,
toned with rather excessive simplicity.

'To stay long?' exclaimed Basil. 'How can you think it? Perchance I
shall not even enter the city. At Portus, I may resign my duty into
other hands, and so straightway return.'

There was a conflict in Aurelia's mind. Reverence for her father
approved the thought of his remains being transported under the
guardianship of Basil; none the less did she dread this journey, and
feel tempted to hinder it. She rose from her chair.

'Let us walk into the sunshine,' she said. 'The morning is chilly.'
And, as she passed out into the court, hand in hand with Veranilda, 'O,
the pleasure of these large spaces, this free air, after the straight
house at Cumae! Do you not breathe more lightly, sweetest? Come into
Proba's garden, and I will show you where I sat with my broidery when I
was no older than you.'

The garden was approached by a vaulted passage. A garden long
reconquered by nature; for the paths were lost in herbage, the seats
were overgrown with creeping plants, and the fountain had crumbled into
ruin. A high wall formerly enclosed it, but, in a shock of earthquake
some years ago, part of this had fallen, leaving a gap which framed a
lovely picture of the inland hills. Basil pulled away the trailing
leafage from a marble hemicycle, and, having spread his cloak upon it,
begged tremorously that Veranilda would rest.

'That wall shall be rebuilt,' said Aurelia, and, as if to inspect the
ruin, wandered away. When she was distant not many paces, Basil bent to
his seated companion, and breathed in a passionate undertone:

'My letter reached your hands, O fairest?'

'I received it--I read it.'

As she spoke, Veranilda's cheeks flushed as if in shame.

'Will you reply, were it but one word?'

Her head drooped lower. Basil seated himself at her side.

'One word, O Veranilda! I worship you--my soul longs for you--say only
that you will be mine, my beloved lady, my wife!'

Her blue eyes glistened with moisture as for an instant they met the
dark glow in his.

'Do you know who I am?' she whispered.

'You are Veranilda! You are beauty and sweetness and divine purity--'

He sought her hand, but at this moment Aurelia turned towards them, and
the maiden, quivering, stood up.

'Perhaps the sun is too powerful,' said Aurelia, with her tenderest
smile. 'My lily has lived so long in the shade.'

They lingered a little on the shadowed side, Aurelia reviving memories
of her early life, then passed again under the vaulted arch. Basil,
whose eyes scarcely moved from Veranilda's face, could not bring
himself to address her in common words, and dreaded that she would soon
vanish. So indeed it befell. With a murmur of apology to her friend,
and a timid movement of indescribable grace in Basil's direction, she
escaped, like a fugitive wild thing, into solitude.

'Why has she gone?' exclaimed the lover, all impatience. 'I must follow
her--I cannot live away from her! Let me find her again.'

His cousin checked him.

'I have to speak to you, Basil. Come where we can be private.'

They entered the room where they had sat before, and Aurelia, taking up
the needlework left by Veranilda, showed it to her companion with
admiration.

'She is wondrous at this art. In a contest with Minerva, would she not
have fared better than Arachne? This mourning garment which I wear is
of her making, and look at the delicate work; it was wrought four years
ago, when I heard of my brother's death--wrought in a few days. She was
then but thirteen. In all that it beseems a woman to know, she is no
less skilled. Yonder lies her cithern; she learnt to touch it, I scarce
know how, out of mere desire to soothe my melancholy, and I
suspect--though she will not avow it--that the music she plays is often
her own. In sickness she has tended me with skill as rare as her
gentleness; her touch on the hot forehead is like that of a flower
plucked before sunrise. Hearing me speak thus of her, what think you, O
Basil, must be my trust in the man to whom I would give her for wife?'

'Can you doubt my love, O Aurelia?' cried the listener, clasping his
hands before him.

'Your love? No. But your prudence, is that as little beyond doubt?'

'I have thought long and well,' said Basil.

Aurelia regarded him steadily.

'You spoke with her in the garden just now. Did she reply?'

'But few words. She asked me if I knew her origin, and blushed as she
spoke.'

'It is her wish that I should tell you; and I will.'

Scarce had Aurelia begun her narrative, when Basil perceived that his
own conjecture, and that of Marcian, had hit the truth. Veranilda was a
great-grandchild of Amalafrida, the sister of King Theodoric, being
born of the daughter of King Theodahad; and her father was that
Ebrimut, whose treachery at the beginning of the great war delivered
Rhegium into the hands of the Greeks. Her mother, Theodenantha, a woman
of noble spirit, scorned the unworthy Goth, and besought the conqueror
to let her remain in Italy, even as a slave, rather than share with
such a husband the honours of the Byzantine court. She won this grace
from Belisarius, and was permitted to keep with her the little maiden,
just growing out of childhood. But shame and grief had broken her
heart; after a few months of imprisonment at Cumae she died. And
Veranilda passed into the care of the daughter of Maximus.

'For I too was a captive,' said Aurelia, 'and of the same religion as
the orphan child. By happy hazard I had become a friend of her mother,
in those days of sorrow; and with careless scorn our conquerors
permitted me to take Veranilda into my house. As the years went by, she
was all but forgotten; there came a new governor--this thievish
Hun--who paid no heed to us. I looked forward to a day when we might
quit Cumae and live in freedom where we would. Then something
unforeseen befell. Half a year ago, just when the air of spring began
to breathe into that dark, chill house, a distant kinsman of ours, who
has long dwelt in Byzantium--do you know Olybrius, the son of Probinus?'

'I have heard his name.'

'He came to me, as if from my father; but I soon discovered that he had
another mission, his main purpose being to seek for Veranilda. By whom
sent, I could not learn; but he told me that Ebrimut was dead, and that
his son, Veranilda's only brother, was winning glory in the war with
the Persians. For many days I lived in fear lest my pearl should be
torn from me. Olybrius it was, no doubt, who bade the Hun keep watch
upon us, and it can only have been by chance that I was allowed to go
forth unmolested when you led me hither the first time. He returned to
Byzantium, and I have heard no more. But a suspicion haunts my mind.
What if Marcian were also watching Veranilda?'

'Marcian!' cried the listener incredulously. 'You do not know him. He
is the staunchest and frankest of friends. He knows of my love; we have
talked from heart to heart.'

'Yet it was at his intercession that the Hun allowed us to go; why, you
cannot guess. What if he have power and motives which threaten
Veranilda's peace?'

Basil exclaimed against this as the baseless fear of a woman. Had there
been a previous command from some high source touching the Gothic
maiden, Chorsoman would never have dared to sell her freedom. As to
Marcian's power, that was derived from the authorities at Rome, and
granted him for other ends; if he used it to release Veranilda, he
acted merely out of love to his friend, as would soon be seen.

'I will hope so,' murmured Aurelia. 'Now you have heard what she
herself desired that I should tell you, for she could not meet your
look until you knew it. Her father's treachery is Veranilda's shame;
she saw her noble mother die for it, and it has made her mourning
keener than a common sorrow. I think she would never have dared to wed
a Goth; all true Goths, she believes in her heart, must despise her. It
is her dread lest you, learning who she is, should find your love
chilled.'

'Call her,' cried Basil, starting to his feet. 'Or let me go to her.
She shall not suffer that fear for another moment. Veranilda!
Veranilda!'

His companion retained and quieted him. He should see Veranilda ere
long. But there was yet something to be spoken of.

'Have you forgotten that she is not of your faith?'

'Do I love her, adore her, the less?' exclaimed Basil. 'Does she shrink
from me on that account?'

'I know,' pursued his cousin, 'what the Apostle of the Gentiles has
said: "For the husband who believes not is sanctified by the wife, and
the wife who believes not is sanctified by the husband." None the less,
Veranilda is under the menace of the Roman law; and you, if it be known
that you have wedded her, will be in peril from all who serve the
Emperor--at least in dark suspicion; and will be slightly esteemed by
all of our house.'

The lover paced about, and all at once, with a wild gesture, uttered
his inmost thought.

'What if I care naught for those of our house? And what if the Emperor
of the East is of as little account to me? My country is not Byzantium,
but Rome.'

Aurelia hushed his voice, but her eyes shone with stern gladness as she
stood before him, and took him by the hand, and spoke what he alone
could hear.

'Then unite yourself in faith with those who would make Rome free. Be
one in religion with the brave Goths--with Veranilda.'

He cast down his eyes and drew a deep breath.

'I scarce know what that religion is, O Aurelia,' came from him
stammeringly. 'I am no theologian; I never cared to puzzle my head
about the mysteries which men much wiser than I declare to pass all
human understanding. Ask Decius if he can defend the faith of
Athanasius against that of the Arians; he will smile, and shake his
head in that droll way he has. I believe,' he added after a brief
hesitancy, 'in Christ and in the Saints. Does not Veranilda also?'

The temptress drew back a little, seated herself; yielded to troublous
thought. It was long since she had joined in the worship of a
congregation, for at Cumae there was no Arian church. Once only since
her captivity had she received spiritual comfort from an Arian priest,
who came to that city in disguise. What her religion truly was she
could not have declared, for the memories of early life were sometimes
as strong in her as rancour against the faith of her enemies. Basil's
simple and honest utterance touched her conscience. She put an end to
the conversation, promising to renew it before long; whilst Basil, for
his part, went away to brood, then to hold converse with Decius.

Through all but the whole of Theodoric's reign, Italy had enjoyed a
large toleration in religion: Catholics, Arians, and even Jews observed
their worship under the protection of the wise king. Only in the last
few years of his life did he commit certain acts of harshness against
his Catholic subjects, due to the wrath that was moved in him by a
general persecution of the Arians proclaimed at Byzantium. His Gothic
successors adhered to Theodoric's better principle, and only after the
subjugation of the land by Belisarius had Arianism in Italy been
formally condemned. Of course it was protected by the warring Goths:
Totila's victories had now once more extended religious tolerance over
a great part of the country; the Arian priesthood re-entered their
churches; and even in Rome the Greek garrison grew careless of the
reviving heresy. Of these things did Decius speak, when the distressed
lover sought his counsel. No one more liberal than Decius; but he bore
a name which he could not forget, and in his eyes the Goth was a
barbarian, the Gothic woman hardly above the level of a slave. That
Basil should take a Gothic wife, even one born of a royal line, seemed
to him an indignity. Withheld by the gentleness of his temper from
saying all he thought, he spoke only of the difficulties which would
result from such a marriage, and when, in reply, Basil disclosed his
mind, though less vehemently than to Aurelia, Decius fell into
meditation. He, too, had often reflected with bitterness on the results
of that restoration of Rome to the Empire which throughout the Gothic
dominion most of the Roman nobles had never ceased to desire; all but
was he persuaded to approve the statesmanship of Cassiodorus.
Nevertheless, he could not, without shrinking, see a kinsman pass over
to the side of Totila.

'I must think,' he murmured. 'I must think.'

He had not yet seen Veranilda. When, in the afternoon, Basil led him
into the ladies' presence, and his eyes fell upon that white-robed
loveliness, censure grew faint in him. Though a Decius, he was a man of
the sixth century after Christ; his mind conceived an ideal of human
excellence which would have been unintelligible to the Decii of old; in
his heart meekness and chastity had more reverence than perhaps he
imagined. He glanced at Basil; he understood. Though the future still
troubled him, opposition to the lover's will must, he knew, be idle.

Several hours before, Basil had scratched on a waxed tablet a few
emphatic lines, which his cousin allowed to be transmitted to
Veranilda. They assured her that what he had learned could only--if
that were possible--increase his love, and entreated her to grant him
were it but a moment's speech after the formal visit, later in the day.
The smile with which she now met him seemed at once gratitude and
promise; she was calmer, and less timid. Though she took little part in
the conversation, her words fell very sweetly after the men's speech
and the self-confident tones of Aurelia; her language was that of an
Italian lady, but in the accent could be marked a slight foreignness,
which to Basil's ear had the charm of rarest music, and even to Decius
sounded not unpleasing. Under the circumstances, talk, confined to
indifferent subjects, could not last very long; as soon as it began to
flag, Decius found an excuse for begging permission to retire. As
though wishing for a word with him in confidence, Aurelia at the same
time passed out of the room into the colonnade. Basil and Veranilda
were left alone.




CHAPTER VI

THE EMPEROR'S COMMAND


His voice made tremulous music, inaudible a few paces away; his breath
was on her cheek; his eyes, as she gazed into them, seemed to envelop
her in their glow.

'My fairest! Let me but touch your hand. Lay it for a moment in mine--a
pledge for ever!'

'You do not fear to love me, O lord of my life?'

The whisper made him faint with joy.

'What has fear to do with love, O thou with heaven in thine eyes! what
room is there for fear in the heart where thy beauty dwells? Speak
again, speak again, my beloved, and bless me above all men that live!'

'Basil! Basil! Utter my name once more. I never knew how sweet it could
sound.'

'Nor I, how soft could be the sound of mine. Forgive me, O Veranilda,
that out of my love pain has come to you. You will not ever be sad
again? You will not think ever again of those bygone sorrows?'

She bent her head low.

'Can you believe in my truth, O Basil? Can _you_ forget?'

'All save the nobleness of her who bore you, sweet and fair one.'

'Let _that_ be ever in your thought,' said Veranilda, with a radiant
look. 'She sees me now; and my hope, your strength and goodness, bring
new joy to her in the life eternal.'

'Say the word I wait for--whisper low--the word of all words.'

'Out of my soul, O Basil, I love you!'

As the sound trembled into silence, his lips touched hers. In the
golden shadow of her hair, the lily face flushed warm; yet she did not
veil her eyes, vouchers of a life's loyalty.

When Aurelia entered the room again, she walked as though absorbed in
thought.

'Decius tells me he must soon go to Rome,' were her words, in drawing
near to the lovers.

Basil had heard of no such purpose. His kinsman, under the will of
Maximus, enjoyed a share in the annual revenue of this Surrentine
estate; moreover, he became the possessor of many books, which lay in
the Anician mansion of Rome, and it was his impatience, thought
Aurelia, to lay hands upon so precious a legacy, which might at any
time be put in danger by the events of the war, that prompted him to
set forth.

'Might he not perform the duty you have undertaken?' she added in a
lower voice, as she met Basil's look.

Veranilda did not speak, but an anxious hope dawned in her face. And
Basil saw it.

'Have you spoken of it, cousin?' he asked.

'The thought has but just come to me.'

'Decius is not in good health. Thus late in the year, to travel by
sea--Yet the weather may be fair, the sea still; and then it would be
easier for him than the journey by land.'

Basil spoke in a halting tone. He could not without a certain shame
think of revoking his promise to Petronilla, a very distinct promise,
in which natural obligation had part. Yet the thought of the journey,
of an absence from Veranilda, not without peril of many kinds, grew
terrible to him. He looked at Veranilda again, and smiled encouragement.

The lady Petronilla had been wont to dine and sup in dignified
publicity, seated on the _sigma_, in the room which had seen so many
festivals, together with her male relatives and any guest who might be
at the villa; in her presence, no man permitted himself the recumbent
attitude, which indeed had been unusual save among the effeminate. But
Aurelia and her companion took their meals apart. This evening, Basil
and Decius supped almost in silence, each busy with his reflections.
They lingered over the wine, their attendants having left them, until
Decius, as if rousing himself from a dream, asked how long it was
likely to be before the ship could sail. Basil answered that the leaden
coffin would be ready within a few days (it was being made at Neapolis,
out of water-pipes which had served a villa in ruins), and after that
there would only be delay through wind and weather.

'Are you greatly bent on going to Rome just now?' was the student's
next inquiry, a twinkle in his eyes as he spoke.

'By Bacchus!' answered the other, handling his goblet. 'If I saw my way
to avoid it!'

'I guessed as much. The suspicion came to me at a certain moment this
morning--a mere grain, which ever since has been growing _tanquam
favus_. I am not wont to consider myself as of much use, but is it not
just possible that, in this case, your humble kinsman might serve you?'

'My good, my excellent, my very dear Decius!' broke from the listener.
'But would it not be with risk to your health?'

'I would beg permission not to weigh anchor in a tempest, that's all.
The sea in its gentler moods I have never feared, and _alcyoneum
medicamen_, you know, in other words the sea-foam, has always been
recommended for freckles.'

He touched his face, which was in deed much freckle-spotted, and Basil,
whose spirits rose each moment, gave a good-natured laugh.

'One thing only,' added Decius seriously. 'Inasmuch as this charge is a
grave one, I would not undertake it without the consent of the ladies
Aurelia and Petronilla. Perchance, in respect for the honoured Maximus,
they would feel reluctant to see me take your place.'

'O modest Decius!' exclaimed the other. 'Which, pray, carries the more
dignity, your name or mine?--not to speak of your learning and my
ignorance. As to Aurelia, I can ease your mind at once. She would not
dream of objecting.'

'Then let us, to-morrow, beg audience of the pious lady at Surrentum,
and request her permission.'

The proposal made Basil uncomfortable; but a visit of respect to
Petronilla was certainly due, and perhaps it would pass without
troublesome incident. He nodded assent.

Early on the morrow they carried out their purpose. To the surprise of
both, Petronilla received them in her modest abode not ungraciously,
though with marked condescension; she gave them to understand that her
days, and much of her nights, passed in religious exercises, the names
of her kinsfolk not being omitted from her prayers; of the good bishop
she spoke almost tenderly, and with a humble pride related that she had
been able to ease a persistent headache from which his Sanctity
suffered. When Basil found an opportunity of reporting what had passed
between him and Decius, the lady's austere smile was for a moment
clouded; it looked as though storm might follow. But the smile
returned, with perhaps a slightly changed significance. Did Basil think
of remaining long at the villa? Ah, he could not say; to be sure, the
times were so uncertain. For her own part, she would start on her
journey as soon as the coffin was on board the ship. Indeed, she saw no
objection to the arrangement her dear nephew proposed; she only trusted
that the learned and amiable Decius, so justly esteemed by all, would
have a care of his health. Did he still take the infusion of marjoram
which she had prescribed for him? A holy man, newly returned from the
East, had deigned to visit her only yesterday, and had given her a
small phial of water from Rebekah's well; it was of priceless virtue,
and one drop of it had last evening restored to health and strength a
child that lay at the point of death.

In the afternoon Basil was again permitted to see Veranilda, though not
alone. To her and to Aurelia he made known that Decius would willingly
undertake the voyage. After lingering for an hour in the vain hope that
Aurelia would withdraw, were it but for a moment, he went away and
scratched ardent words on his tablet. 'I will be in your garden,' he
concluded, 'just at sunrise to-morrow. Try, try to meet me there.'

Scarcely had he despatched a servant with this when Felix announced to
him the arrival of Marcian. On fire with eagerness, Basil sped to greet
his friend.

'Give me to drink,' were the traveller's first words. 'I have ridden
since before dawn, and have a tongue like leather.'

Wine and grapes, with other refreshments, were set forth for him.
Marcian took up an earthenware jug full of spring water, and drank
deeply. His host then urged the wine, but it was refused; and as Basil
knew that one of his friend's peculiarities was a rigorous abstinence
at times from all liquor save the pure element, he said no more.

'I have been at Nuceria,' Marcian continued, throwing himself on a
seat, 'with Venantius. What a man! He was in the saddle yesterday from
sunrise to sunset; drank from sunset to the third hour of the night;
rose before light this morning, gay and brisk, and made me ride with
him, so that I was all but tired out before I started on the road
hither. Venantius declares that he can only talk of serious things on
horseback.'

'My uncle regarded him as a Roman turned barbarian,' said Basil.

'Something of that, but such men have their worth and their place.'

'We will talk about him at another time,' Basil interrupted. 'Remember
how we parted at Cumae and what happened afterwards. We are private
here; you can speak freely. How did you release us from the grip of the
Hun?'

'I told you before, good Basil, that I was here to spy upon you; and be
sure that I did not undertake that office without exacting a proof of
the confidence of our lords at Rome. Something I carry with me which
has power over such dogs as Chorsoman.'

'I saw that, best Marcian. But it did not avail to save my cousin
Aurelia from robbery.'

'Nothing would, where Chorsoman was sure of a week's--nay, of an
hour's--impunity. But did he steal aught belonging to the Gothic
maiden?'

'To Veranilda? She has but a bracelet and a ring, and those she was
wearing. They came from her mother, a woman of noblest heart, who, when
her husband Ebrimut played the traitor, and she was left behind in
Italy, would keep nothing but these two trinkets, which once were worn
by Amalafrida.'

'You know all that now,' observed Marcian quietly.

'The story of the trinkets only since an hour or two ago. That of
Veranilda's parentage I learned from Aurelia, Veranilda refusing to
converse with me until I knew.'

'Since when you have conversed, I take it, freely enough.'

'Good my lord,' replied Basil, with a look of some earnestness, 'let us
not jest on this matter.'

'I am little disposed to do so, O fiery lover!' said Marcian, with a
return of his wonted melancholy. 'For I have that to tell you which
makes the matter grave enough. We were right, you see, in our guess of
Veranilda's origin; I could wish she had been any one else. Patience,
patience! You know that I left you here to go to Neapolis. There I
received letters from Rome, one of them from Bessas himself, and, by
strange hazard, the subject of it was the daughter of Ebrimut.'

Basil made a gesture of repugnance. 'Nay, call her the daughter of
Theodenantha.'

'As you will. In any case the granddaughter of a king, and not likely
to be quite forgotten by the royal family of her own race. Another
king's grandchild, Matasuntha, lives, as you know, at Byzantium, and
enjoys no little esteem at the Emperor's court; it is rumoured, indeed,
that her husband Vitiges, having died somewhere in battle, Matasuntha
is to wed a nephew of Justinian. This lady, I am told, desires to know
the daughter of Ebri--nay, then, of Theodenantha; of whom, it seems, a
report has reached her. A command of the Emperor has come to Bessas
that the maiden Veranilda, resident at Cumae, be sent to Constantinople
with all convenient speed. And upon me, O Basil, lies the charge of
seeking her in her dwelling, and of conveying her safely to Rome, where
she will be guarded until--'

'Will be guarded!' echoed Basil fiercely. 'Nay, by the holy Peter and
Paul, that will she not! You are my friend, Marcian, and I hold you
dear, but if you attempt to obey this order--'

Hand on dagger, and eyes glaring, the young noble had sprung to his
feet. Marcian did not stir; his head was slightly bent, and a sad smile
hovered about his lips.

'O descendant of all the Anicii,' he replied, 'O son of many consuls,
remember the ancestral dignity. Time enough to threaten when you detect
me in an unfriendly act. Did I play the traitor to you at Cumae? With
the Hun this command of Justinian served you in good stead; Veranilda
would not otherwise have escaped so easily. Chorsoman, fat-witted as he
is, willingly believed that Veranilda and Aurelia, and you yourself,
were all in my net--which means the net of Bessas, whom he fears. Do
you also believe it, my good Basil?'

For answer Basil embraced his friend, and kissed him on either cheek.

'I know how this has come about,' he said; and thereupon related the
story of the visit of Olybrius to Aurelia six months ago. It seemed
probable that a report of Veranilda's beauty had reached Matasuntha,
who wished to adorn her retinue with so fair a remnant of the Amal
race. How, he went on to ask, would Marcian excuse himself at Rome for
his failure to perform this office?

'Leave that to my ingenuity,' was the reply. 'Enough for you to dare
defiance of the Emperor's will.'

Basil made a scornful gesture, which his friend noted with the same
melancholy smile.

'You have no misgiving?' said Marcian. 'Think who it is you brave.
Imperator Caesar Flavius Justinianus--Africanus, Gothicus, Germanicus,
Vandalicus, and I know not what else--Pius, Felix, Inclytus, Victor ac
Triumphator, Semper Augustus--'

The other laid a hand upon his shoulder.

'Marcian, no word of this to Aurelia, I charge you!'

'I have no desire to talk about it, be assured. But it is time that we
understood each other. Be plain with me. If you wed Veranilda how do
you purpose to secure your safety? Not, I imagine, by prostrating
yourself before Bessas. Where will you be safe from pursuit?'

Basil reflected, then asked boldly:

'Has not the King Totila welcomed and honourably entertained Romans who
have embraced his cause?'

'Come now,' exclaimed the other, his sad visage lighting up, 'that is
to speak like a man! So, we _do_ understand each other. Be it known
unto you then, O Basil, that at this moment the Gothic king is aware of
your love for Veranilda, and of your purpose to espouse her. You indeed
are a stranger to him, even in name; but not so the Anician house; and
an Anician, be assured, will meet with no cold reception in the camp of
the Goths.'

'You enjoy the confidence of Totila?' asked Basil, wondering, and a
little confused.

'Did I not tell you that I claimed the merit of playing traitor to both
sides?'

Marcian spoke with a note of bitterness, looking his friend fixedly in
the face.

'It is a noble treachery,' said Basil, seizing both his hands. 'I am
with you, heart and soul! Tell me more. Where is the king? Will he
march upon Rome?'

'Neapolis will see him before Rome does. He comes slowly through
Samnium, making sure his conquest on the way. Let me now speak again of
Venantius. He would fain know you.'

'He is one of ours?'

'One of those true Romans who abhor the Eastern tyranny and see in the
Goth a worthy ally. Will you ride with me to-morrow to Nuceria?'

'I cannot,' replied Basil, 'for I dare not leave Veranilda without
protection, after what you have told me.'

'Why, then, Venantius must come hither.'

Whilst the friends were thus conversing a courier rode forth from
Surrentum towards Neapolis. He bore a letter whereof the contents were
these:--


'To the holy and reverend deacon Leander, Petronilla's humble
salutation.

'I am most punctually informed of all that passes at the villa. My
nephew goes not to Rome; his place will be taken by Decius. The reason
is that which I have already suggested to your Sanctity. Marcian has
arrived this afternoon, coming I know not whence, but I shall learn. I
suspect things of the darkest moment. Let your Sanctity pursue the
project with which heaven has inspired you. You shall receive, if
necessary, two missives every day. Humbly I entreat your prayers.'




CHAPTER VII

HERESY


The Roman Empire, by confining privileges and honours to the senatorial
order, created a noble caste, and this caste, as Imperial authority
declined, became a power independent of the state, and a menace to its
existence. In Italy, by the end of the fifth century, the great system
of citizenship, with its principle of infinite devotion to the good of
the commonwealth, was all but forgotten. In matters of justice and of
finance the nobles were beginning to live by their own law, which was
that of the right of the strongest. Having ceased to hold office and
perform public services in the municipia, they became, in fact, rulers
of the towns situated on or near their great estates. Theodoric,
striving to uphold the ancient civility, made strenuous efforts to
combat this aristocratic predominance; yet on some points he was
obliged to yield to the tendency of the times, as when he forbade the
freedmen, serfs, and slaves on any estate to plead against their lord,
and so delivered the mass of the rural inhabitants of Italy to private
jurisdiction. The Gothic war of course hastened the downfall of
political and social order. The manners of the nobles grew violent in
lawlessness; men calling themselves senators, but having in fact
renounced that rank by permanent absence from Rome, and others who
merely belonged to senatorial houses, turned to fortifying their
villas, and to building castles on heights, whilst they gathered about
them a body of retainers, armed for defence or for aggression.

Such a personage was Venantius, son of a senator of the same name, who,
under Theodoric, had attained the dignity of Patrician and what other
titular glories the time afforded. Venantius, the younger, coming into
possession of an estate between Neapolis and Salernum, here took up his
abode after the siege of Rome, and lived as seemed good to him, lord
over the little town of Nuceria, and of a considerable tract of
country, with a villa converted into a stronghold up on the mountain
side. Having suffered wrongs at the hands of the Imperial
conquerors--property of his in Rome had been seized--he heard with
satisfaction of the rise of Totila, and, as soon as the king's progress
southward justified such a step, entered into friendly communication
with the Goth, whom he invited to come with all speed into Campania,
where Salernum, Neapolis, Cumae, would readily fall into his hands.
Marcian, on his double mission of spy in the Greek service and friend
of the Goths, had naturally sought out Venantius; and the description
he gave to Basil of the fortress above Nuceria filled the listener with
enthusiasm.

'I would I could live in the same way,' Basil exclaimed. 'And why not?
My own villa in Picenum might be strengthened with walls and towers. We
have stone enough, and no lack of men to build.'

Yet as he spoke a misgiving betrayed itself on his countenance.
Consciously or not, he had always had before him a life at Rome, the
life which became a Roman, as distinguished from a barbarian. But the
need to seek security for Veranilda again became vivid to his mind. At
Rome, clearly, he could not live with his wife until the Goths had
reconquered the city, which was not likely to happen soon. His means
were represented chiefly by the Arpinum estate, which he had inherited
from his father; in Rome he had nothing but his mansion on the Caelian.
The treasure at his command, a considerable sum, he had brought away in
a strong box, and it was now more than doubled in value by what fell to
him under the will of Maximus--money to be paid out of the great coffer
which the senator had conveyed hither. As they talked, Marcian urged
upon him a close friendship with Venantius, in whose castle he would be
welcomed. Here at Surrentum he could not long rest in safety, for
Chorsoman might at any time have his suspicions awakened by learning
the delay of Veranilda's journey to Rome, and the news of her marriage
could not be prevented from spreading.

So Basil lay through an anxious hour or two before sleep fell upon him
to-night. He resolved to change the habits of his life, to shake off
indolence and the love of ease, to fortify himself with vigorous
exercises, and become ready for warfare. It was all very well for an
invalid, like Decius, to nurse a tranquil existence, unheeding the
temper of the times. A strong and healthy man had no right to lurk away
from the streaming flood of things; it behoved him to take his part in
strife and tumult, to aid in re-establishing a civic state. This
determination firmly grasped, he turned to think of the hoped-for
meeting with Veranilda in the morning, and gentler emotions lulled him
into dreams.

At dawn he bestirred himself. The gallery outside his chamber was
lighted with a hanging lamp, and at a little distance sounded the
footstep of the watchman, who told him that the morning was fair, and,
at his bidding, opened a door which admitted to the open terrace
overlooking the sea. Having stepped forth, Basil stood for a moment
sniffing the cool air with its scent from the vineyards, and looking at
the yellow rift in the eastern sky; then he followed a path which
skirted the villa's outward wall and led towards the dwelling of
Aurelia. Presently he reached the ruined wall of the little garden, and
here a voice challenged him, that of a servant on watch until sunrise.

'It is well,' he replied. 'I will relieve you for this last half hour;
go to your rest.'

But the slave hesitated. He had strictest orders, and feared to disobey
them even at this bidding.

'You are an honest fellow,' said Basil, 'and the lady Aurelia shall
know of your steadfastness. But get you gone; there is no danger whilst
I am here.'

Impatiently he watched the man retire, then stood just within the gap
of the wall, and waited with as much fear as hope. It might be that
Veranilda would not venture forth without speaking to Aurelia, who
might forbid the meeting; or, if she tried to steal out, she might be
detected and hindered; perhaps she would fear to pass under the eyes of
a watchman or other servant who might be in her way. He stamped
nervously, and turned to look for a moment in the outward direction.
This little villa stood on the edge of a declivity falling towards the
sea; a thicket of myrtles grew below. At the distance of half a mile
along the coast, beyond a hollow wooded with ilex, rose a temple, which
time and the hand of man had yet spared; its whiteness glimmered
against a sky whose cloudless dusk was warming with a reflection of the
daybreak. An influence in the scene before him, something he neither
understood nor tried to understand, held him gazing longer than he
supposed, and with a start he heard his name spoken by the beloved
voice. Close to him stood Veranilda. She was cloaked and hooded, so
that he could hardly see her face; but her white hands were held out
for his.

Heart to heart, mouth to mouth, they whispered. To be more private,
Basil drew her without the garden. Veranilda's eyes fixed themselves
upon the spreading glory of the east; and it moved her to utterance.

'When I was a child,' she said, 'at Ravenna, I gazed once at the
sunrise, and behold, in the rays which shot upwards stood an angel, a
great, beautiful angel, with wings of blue, and a garment which shone
like gold, and on his head was a wreath of I know not what flowers. I
ran to tell my mother, but when she came, alas! the angel had vanished.
No one could tell me certainly what the vision meant. Often I have
looked and hoped to see the angel again, but he has never come.'

Basil listened without a doubt, and murmured soft words. Then he asked
whether Aurelia knew of this meeting; but Veranilda shook her head.

'I durst not speak. I so feared to disappoint you. This night I have
hardly slept, lest I should miss the moment. Should I not return very
soon, O Basil?'

'You shall; though your going will make the sky black as when Auster
blows. But it is not for long. A few days--'

He broke off with the little laugh of a triumphing lover.

'A few days?' responded Veranilda, timidly questioning.

'We wait only until that dark ship has sailed for Rome.' 'Does Aurelia
know that you purpose it so soon?' asked Veranilda.

'Why? Has she seemed to you to wish otherwise?'

'She has never spoken of it.--And afterwards? Shall we remain here,
Basil?'

'For no long time. Here I am but a guest. We must dwell where I am lord
and you lady of all about us.'

He told her of his possessions, of the great house in Rome with the
villa at Arpinum. Then he asked her, playfully, but with a serious
purpose in his mind, which of the two she would prefer for an abode.

'I have no choice but yours,' she replied. 'Where it seems good to my
dear lord to dwell, there shall I be at rest.'

'We must be safe against our enemies,' said Basil, with graver
countenance.

'Our enemies?'

'Has not Aurelia talked to you of the war? You know that the Gothic
king is conquering all before him, coming from the north?'

Veranilda looked into her lover's face with a tender anxiety.

'And you fear him, O Basil? It is he that is our enemy?'

'Not so, sweetest. No foe of mine is he who wears the crown of
Theodoric. They whom I fear and abhor are the slaves of Justinian, the
robber captains who rule at Ravenna and in Rome.'

As she heard him, Veranilda trembled with joy. She caught his hand, and
bent over it, and kissed it.

'Had I been the enemy of Totila,' said Basil, 'could you still have
loved me as a wife should love?'

'I had not asked myself,' she answered, 'for it was needless. When I
look on you, I think neither of Roman nor of Goth.'

Basil spoke of his hope that Rome might be restored to the same freedom
it had enjoyed under the great king. Then they would dwell together in
the sacred city. That, too, was Veranilda's desire; for on her ear the
name of Rome fell with a magic sound; all her life she had heard it
spoken reverentially, with awe, yet the city itself she had never seen.
Rome, she knew, was vast; there, it seemed to her, she would live
unobserved, unthought of save by him she loved. Seclusion from all
strangers, from all who, learning her origin, would regard her
slightingly, was what her soul desired.

Day had broken; behind the mountains there was light of the sun. Once
more they held each other heart to heart, and Veranilda hastened
through the garden to regain her chamber. Basil stood for some minutes
lost in a delicious dream; the rising day made his face beautiful, his
eyes gleamed with an unutterable rapture. At length he sighed and awoke
and looked about him. At no great distance, as though just issued from
the ilex wood, moved a man's figure. It approached very slowly, and
Basil watched until he saw that the man was bent as if with age, and
had black garments such as were worn by wandering mendicant monks.
Carelessly he turned, and went his way back to the villa.

An hour later, Aurelia learnt that a 'holy man,' a pilgrim much travel
worn, was begging to be admitted to her. She refused to see him. Still
he urged his entreaty, declaring that he had a precious gift for her
acceptance, and an important message for her ear. At length he was
allowed to enter the atrium, and Aurelia saw before her a man in black
monkish habit, his body bent and tremulous, but evidently not with age,
for his aspect otherwise was that of middle life. What, she asked
briefly and coldly, was his business with her? Thereupon the monk drew
from his bosom a small wrappage of tissues, which when unfolded
disclosed a scrap of something hairy.

'This, noble lady,' said the monk, in a voice reverently subdued, 'is
from the camel-hair garment of Holy John the Baptist. I had it of a
hermit in the Egyptian desert, who not many days after I quitted him
was for his sanctity borne up to heaven by angels, and knew not death.'

Aurelia viewed the relic with emotion.

'Why,' she asked, 'do you offer it to me?'

The monk drew a step nearer and whispered:

'Because I know that you, like him from whom I received it, are of the
true faith.'

Aurelia observed him closely. His robe was ragged and filthy; his bare
feet were thick with the dust of the road; his visage, much begrimed,
wore an expression of habitual suffering, and sighs as of pain
frequently broke from him. The hand by which he supported himself on a
staff trembled as with weakness.

'You are not a presbyter?' she said in an undertone, after a glance at
his untonsured head.

'I am unworthy of the meanest order in the Church. In pilgrimings and
fastings I do penance for a sin of youth. You see how wasted is my
flesh.'

'What, then,' asked Aurelia, 'was the message you said you bore for me?'

'This. Though I myself have no power to perform the sacraments of our
faith, I tend upon one who has. He lies not far from here, like myself
sick and weary, and, because of a vow, may not come within the
precincts of any dwelling. In Macedonia, oppressed by our persecutors,
he was long imprisoned, and so sorely tormented that, in a moment when
the Evil One prevailed over his flesh, he denied the truth. This sin
gave him liberty, but scarce had he come forth when a torment of the
soul, far worse than that of his body, fell upon him. He was delivered
over to the Demon, and, being yet alive, saw about him the fires of
Gehenna. Thus, for a season, did he suffer things unspeakable,
wandering in desert places, ahungered, athirst, faint unto death, yet
not permitted to die. One night of storm, he crept for shelter into the
ruins of a heathen temple. Of a sudden, a dreadful light shone about
him, and he beheld the Demon in the guise of that false god, who fell
upon him and seemed like to slay him. But Sisinnius--so is the holy man
named--strove in prayer and in conjuration, yea, strove hours until the
crowing of the cock, and thus sank into slumber. And while he slept, an
angel of the Most High appeared before him, and spoke words which I
know not. Since then, Sisinnius wanders from land to land, seeking out
the temples of the heathen which have not been purified, and passing
the night in strife with the Powers of Darkness, wherein he is ever
victorious.'

With intent look did Aurelia listen to this narrative. At its close,
she asked eagerly:

'This man of God has sent you to me?'

'Moved by a vision--for in the sleep which follows upon his struggle it
is often granted him to see beyond this world. He bids you resist
temptation, and be of good courage.'

'Know you what this bidding means?' inquired the awed woman, gazing
into the monk's eyes till they fell.

'I know nothing. I am but a follower of the holy Sisinnius--an unworthy
follower.'

'May I not speak with him?'

The monk had a troubled look.

'I have told you, lady, that he must not, by reason of his vow, enter a
human dwelling.'

'But may I not go to him?' she urged. 'May I not seek him in his
solitude, guided by you?'

To this, said the monk, he could give no reply until he had spoken with
Sisinnius. He promised to do so, and to return, though he knew not at
what hour, nor even whether it would be this day. And, after demanding
many assurances that he would come again as speedily as might be,
Aurelia allowed the messenger to depart.

Meanwhile Basil and Marcian have spent an hour in talk, the result of
which was a decision that Marcian should again repair to the stronghold
of Venantius, and persuade him to come over to Surrentum. When his
friend had ridden forth Basil sought conversation with Aurelia, whom he
found in a mood unlike any she had yet shown to him, a mood of dreamy
trouble, some suppressed emotion appearing in her look and in her
speech. He began by telling her of Venantius, but this seemed to
interest her less than he had expected.

'Cousin,' he resumed, 'I have a double thought in desiring that
Venantius should come hither. It is not only that I may talk with him
of the war, and learn his hopes, but that I may secure a safe retreat
for Veranilda when she is my wife, and for you, dear cousin, if you
desire it.'

He spoke as strongly as he could without revealing the secret danger,
of the risks to which they would all be exposed when rumours of his
marriage reached the governor of Cumae, or the Greeks in Neapolis.
Until the Goths reached Campania, a Roman here who fell under suspicion
of favouring them must be prepared either to flee or to defend himself.
Defence of this villa was impossible even against the smallest body of
soldiers, but within the walls, raised and fortified by Venantius, a
long siege might be safely sustained.

'It is true,' said Aurelia at length, as if rousing herself from her
abstraction, 'that we must think of safety. But you are not yet wedded.'

'A few days hence I shall be.'

'Have you forgotten,' she resumed, meeting his resolute smile, 'what
still divides you from Veranilda?'

'You mean the difference of religion. Tell me, did that stand in the
way of your marriage with a Goth?'

She cast down her eyes and was silent.

'Was your marriage,' Basil went on, 'blessed by a Catholic or by an
Arian presbyter?'

'By neither,' replied Aurelia gently.

'Then why may it not be so with me and Veranilda? And so it shall be,
lady cousin,' he added cheerily. 'Our good Decius will be gone; we
await the sailing of the ship; but you and Marcian, and perhaps
Venantius, will be our witnesses.'

For the validity of Christian wedlock no religious rite was necessary:
the sufficient, the one indispensable, condition was mutual consent.
The Church favoured a union which had been sanctified by the oblation
and the blessing, but no ecclesiastical law imposed this ceremony. As
in the days of the old religion, a man wedded his bride by putting the
ring upon her finger and delivering her dowry in a written document,
before chosen witnesses. Aurelia knew that even as this marriage had
satisfied her, so would it suffice to Veranilda, whom a rapturous love
made careless of doctrinal differences: She perceived, moreover, that
Basil was in no mood for religious discussion; there was little hope
that he would consent to postpone his marriage on such an account; yet
to convert Basil to 'heresy' was a fine revenge she would not willingly
forego, her own bias to Arianism being stronger than ever since the
wrong she believed herself to have suffered at the hands of the deacon,
and the insult cast at her by her long-hated aunt. After years of
bitterness, her triumph seemed assured. It was much to have inherited
from her father, to have expelled Petronilla; but the marriage of Basil
with a Goth, his renunciation of Catholicism, and with it the Imperial
cause, were greater things, and together with their attainment she
foredreamt the greatest of all, Totila's complete conquest of Italy.
She saw herself mistress in the Anician palace at Rome, commanding vast
wealth, her enemies mute, powerless, submissive before her. Then, if it
seemed good to her, she would again wed, and her excited imagination
deigned to think of no spouse save him whose alliance would make her
royal.

Providential was the coming of the holy Sisinnius. Beyond doubt he had
the gift of prophecy. From him she would not only receive the
consolations of religion, but might learn what awaited her. Very slowly
passed the hours until the reappearance of the black monk. He came when
day was declining, and joyfully she learnt that Sisinnius permitted her
to visit him; it must be on the morrow at the second hour, the place a
spot in the ilex wood, not far away, whither the monk would guide her.
But she must come alone; were she accompanied, even at a distance, by
any attendant, Sisinnius would refuse to see her. To all the conditions
Aurelia readily consented, and bade the monk meet her at the appointed
hour by the breach in her garden wall.

On the morrow there was no glory of sunrise; clouds hung heavy, and a
sobbing wind shook the dry leaves of the vine. But at the second hour,
after pretence of idling about the garden, Aurelia saw approach the
black, bowed figure, with a gesture bade him go before, and followed.
She was absent not long enough to excite the remark of her household.
In going forth she had been pale with agitation; at her return she had
a fire in her cheeks, a lustre in her eyes, which told of hopes
abundantly fulfilled. At once she sought Veranilda, to whom she had not
yet spoken of the monk's visit. At this juncture the coming even of an
ordinary priest of the Arian faith would have been more than welcome to
them, living as they perforce did without office or sacrament; but
Sisinnius, declared Aurelia, was a veritable man of God, one who had
visions and saw into the future, one whom merely to behold was a sacred
privilege. She had begged his permission to visit him again, with
Veranilda, and he had consented; but a few days must pass before that,
as the holy man was called away she knew not whither. When he summoned
them they must go forth in early morning, to a certain cave near at
hand, where Sisinnius would say mass and administer to them the
communion. Hearing such news, Veranilda gladdened.

'Will the holy man reveal our fate to us?' she asked, with a child's
simplicity.

'To me he has already uttered a prophetic word,' answered Aurelia, 'but
I may not repeat it, no, not even to you. Enough that it has filled my
soul with wonder and joy.'

'May that joy also be mine!' said Veranilda, pressing her hands
together.

This afternoon, when Basil sat with her and Aurelia, she took her
cithern, and in a low voice sang songs she had heard her mother sing,
in the days before shame and sorrow fell upon Theodenantha. There were
old ballads of the Goths, oftener stern than tender, but to the
listeners, ignorant of her tongue, Veranilda's singing made them sweet
as lover's praise. One little song was Greek; it was all she knew of
that language, and the sole inheritance that had come to her from her
Greek-loving grandparent, the King Theodahad.

Auster was blowing; great lurid clouds rolled above the dark green
waters, and at evening rain began to fall. Through the next day, and
the day after that, the sky still lowered; there was thunder of waves
upon the shore; at times a mist swept down from the mountains, which
enveloped all in gloom. To Basil and Veranilda it mattered nothing.
Where they sat together there was sunshine, and before them gleamed an
eternity of cloudless azure.




CHAPTER VIII

THE SNARE


Meanwhile all was made ready for the sailing of the ship. Coffined in
lead, the body of Maximus awaited only a return of fine weather for its
conveyance to the vessel. When at length calm fell upon the sea, and
after a still night of gentle rain the day broke radiantly, all
Surrentum was in movement between church and harbour. Mass having been
said, the bishop himself led the procession down the hollow way and
through the chasm in the cliffs seaward, whilst psalms were chanted and
incense burnt. Carried in her litter, Petronilla followed the bier;
beside her walked Basil and Decius. Only by conscious effort could
these two subdue their visages to a becoming sadness; for Basil thought
of his marriage, Decius of Rome and his library. Nor did Petronilla
wear an aspect of very profound gloom; at moments she forgot herself,
and a singular animation appeared on her proud features; it was as
though some exultancy took hold of her mind.

That Aurelia held apart, that the daughter gave no testimony of
reverence for a father's remains, caused such murmuring in the crowd of
Surrentines: her heresy seemed to be made more notorious, more
abominable, by this neglect. At Surrentum, Arianism had never been
known; no Goth had ever dwelt here; and since Aurelia's arrival public
opinion had had time to gather force against her. It was believed that
she had driven forth with insults the most noble Petronilla, that
exemplar of charity and of a saintly life. Worse still was the rumour,
now generally believed, that the Senator's daughter had obtained her
inheritance by wicked hypocrisy, by a false show of return to the true
faith. Being herself so evil, it was not to be wondered that she
corrupted those who fell under her influence; the young lord Basil, for
instance, who, incredible as it sounded, was said to be on the point of
espousing a Gothic damsel, a mysterious attendant upon Aurelia, of whom
strange stories were rife. Talk of these things made no little
agitation in the town when ceremonies were over and the coffin had been
embarked. The generality threw up their hands, and cried shame, and
asked why the bishop did not take some action in so grave a scandal.
But here and there folk whispered together in a different tone, with
winkings and lips compressed, and nods significant of menace. Patience!
Wait a day or two, and they would see what they would see. Heaven was
not regardless of iniquity.

Scarce had the ship weighed anchor, to be wafted across the bay by a
gentle wind, when Petronilla started on her land journey for Rome. The
great chariot, the baggage, the servants riding, made fresh commotion
in Surrentum; many accompanied the great lady along the winding road
until they were weary and their curiosity satisfied. To this obsequious
escort Petronilla uttered certain words which before evening were
repeated throughout the town. 'Let us forgive our enemies,' she said,
with that air of hers, at once so grand and so devout--'let us forgive
our enemies, but let us omit no means, however rigorous, of saving
their souls'; and of those who reported the saying, some winked and
nodded more significantly than ever.

Just before sunset on this same day there was trampling of hoofs along
the road ascending to the villa, as two horsemen, with a dozen
followers, some on horses, some on mules, rode up. Summoned to the
atrium, Basil greeted the return of Marcian, and looked with curiosity
at the man standing beside him, who could be no other than Venantius. A
tall and comely man, wearing a casque and a light breastplate, his
years not more than thirty, rather slim, yet evidently muscular and
vigorous, he had a look of good-humoured determination, and the tones
in which he replied to Basil's welcome were those of a born commander.
In contrast with his host's elaborate courtesy, the manners of
Venantius might have been judged a trifle barbarous, but this bluntness
was no result of defective breeding; had he chosen, he could have
exchanged lofty titles and superlatives of compliment with any expert
in such fashionable extravagances, but he chose a plainer speech, in
keeping with his martial aspect. First of all he excused himself for
having arrived with so many followers.

'But our good Marcian,' he added, clapping a hand on his companion's
shoulder, 'had a story to tell me of a fair lady and fairer
maiden--though not long to bear the name, she--who may belike need
protection as well as honourable attendance; whereas you, noble Basil,
have thought little of the use of arms, and probably keep no very
warlike retinue at command. So I mounted half a dozen bowmen, who will
ride and shoot with any Hun, and as many stout fellows who can wield
lance or throw javelin, and here they are at your gates. Have no fear
for the girls within doors; my men are both sober and chaste by
prudence, if not by nature. There was a time when I had to make an
example here and there'--he scowled a smile--'but now they know me.'

Basil replied as became him, not without some slight imitation of his
guest's bluff manliness. Admiring, as he did, above all things, that
which savoured of heroism, he was strongly impressed by Venantius,
whose like, among natives of Rome, he had not yet beheld, who shone
before him, indeed, in a nobler light than any man he had seen since
the days when he worshipped Belisarius. Arrangements were speedily made
for the entertainment of the little armed troop, and as dusk gathered
the host and his two guests sat down to supper. Whilst the meal was
being made ready, Basil had found opportunity of speech with Aurelia,
who heard with great satisfaction of the coming of Venantius, and
promised to receive him early on the morrow.

'The lady Aurelia's name is not unknown to me,' said Venantius, when
Basil spoke of her at table. He would have added a remark, but paused
with a look at the attendant slaves. 'Her illustrious father,' he went
on, 'I spoke with when I was young. But for the illness of Maximus I
should have ventured hither during this year gone by, notwithstanding
some difference in our view of things; or rather, to make sure whether
there really was as much difference as I supposed.'

'Perchance you would have found that there was not,' said Basil.
'Certainly not towards the end.'

'May his soul repose! He had the bearing which suited with his noble
name--a true Anicius to look upon. If Rome have need in these times of
another breed of citizens--and who can gainsay that?--she will not
forget such men as he, who lived with dignity when they could do no
more. You, my dear lord'--he turned towards Basil--'Anicius though you
are, see another way before you, what?'

They talked far into the night. When he spoke of the Imperial
conquerors--'Greeklings' he called them--Venantius gave vent to his
wrath and scorn. The Goths were right when they asked what had ever
come out of Greece save mimes and pirates; land-thieves they might have
added, for what else were the generals of Justinian with their
pillaging hordes? They dared to speak of the Goths as barbarians--these
Herules, Isaurians, Huns, Armenians, and Teutons!--of the Goths, whose
pride it had so long been to defend Roman civilisation, and even to
restore the Roman edifices. What commander among them could compare
with Totila, brave, just, generous?

'By the Holy Mother!' he cried, with a great gesture, 'if I were not
wedded to a wife I love, who has borne me already three boys as healthy
as wolf cubs, I would follow your example, O Basil, and take to myself
a blue-eyed daughter of that noble race. They are heretics, why yes,
but as far as I can make out they pray much as I do, and by heaven's
grace may yet be brought to hold the truth as to the Three-in-One. When
they had the power, did they meddle with our worship? Let every man
believe as he list, say I, so that he believe sincerely, and trust God
against the devil.'

In the stillness of their secluded abode, Aurelia and Veranilda went to
rest earlier than usual this evening, for they were to arise before the
dawn. This afternoon they had been visited by the black monk, who
announced the return of Sisinnius, and invited them to the promised
mass on the morrow; and such was their agitation in the foretaste of
this religious ecstasy, as well as in the hope of having their future
revealed to them, that neither slept much during the night. Not long
after the crowing of the first cock, when all was silent and dark,
Aurelia stepped, with a lamp in her hand, into the maiden's chamber.

'Is it the hour?' whispered Veranilda, raising herself.

'Not yet. I have had a troubled dream. I dreamt that this night the
holy Sisinnius had fought with the demon, and had been worsted. O
Veranilda!'--the speaker's voice trembled--'what may this mean?'

'Dearest lady,' answered the other reassuringly, 'may it not be a
temptation of the demon himself; who at times is permitted to tempt
even the holiest?'

'And you, sweet? You have not dreamt?'

'Only of Basil,' answered Veranilda, with a smile that asked pardon for
her happiness.

They talked over the disquieting vision, whilst the little lamp-flame,
wavering in breaths of air, cast strange shadows about the room. On the
walls were faded frescoes, one of which represented the poetess Proba
on her knees before St. Agnes. Impelled by her fears, Aurelia of a
sudden knelt before this picture, and prayed silently to the virgin
martyr. Then Veranilda rose from the couch, and knelt beside her.
Having solaced their souls, they kissed each other tenderly.

'You are not afraid,' whispered Veranilda, 'that Basil may be in the
garden when we go forth?'

'Basil? Ah, little rogue, have you betrayed yourself?'

'Of a truth, dearest lady, he has been there more than once, but not,
oh not so early!'

'Nay, I hope not,' said Aurelia. 'It were scarce maidenly--'

'Never, never before the east had broken for the dayspring! Never, I
swear to you, O my heart's friend!'

'Then there is small fear of his interrupting us this morning; all the
more that he must have sat late with his friends, talking of many
things. I am glad of the coming of this brave Venantius; it puts an end
to every peril.'

They conversed on this encouraging theme until Aurelia's ear caught the
sound of a footfall in the gallery. She stepped forth and encountered a
female slave, who told her that there wanted two hours to dawn; it was
time, then, to set forth and a few minutes saw them ready. In the
garden they were met by the watchman, who carried a lantern. He, having
merely been ordered to stand in readiness at this hour and being
ignorant of his mistress's intention, showed astonishment when he saw
Aurelia and her companion bent on going out. He took it for granted
that he was to accompany them. But at this moment there appeared in the
rays of the lantern a black figure, which had entered by the breach in
the wall. Aurelia whispered a few words to her watchman, whose religion
was the same as hers, and at once he dropped to his knees.

'Peace be with you, good brother,' said the monk, in his feeble voice,
as he drew a lantern from beneath his cloak. You may not accompany us;
but have no fear. The way is short.'

Forthwith he turned, and Aurelia, holding Veranilda's hand, followed
where he lighted the way. For a few minutes they pursued a level path,
then, passing between myrtles, began to descend the seaward slope. The
ground was rough, but the monk, going before, marked the places for
their footing. A few minutes thus, and they reached trees, black
against a sky sown with stars and overshimmered by a wasted moon.
Veranilda, who was trembling, clung to her companion's arm.

'How much further?' asked Aurelia, striving to make her voice firm.
'This is not the way by which I came before.'

'Scarce fifty steps. See you not the light yonder?'

Among the trees was perceptible a faint shining. Hand tight clasped in
hand, the two moved forward over thick herbage, and still descended.
They drew near to the light, and saw that it issued from a little cave.
Within stood a man, bent as if with age and infirmities, his face
half-hidden under a cowl. When the visitors were near, he stretched
forth his arms, murmuring words of welcome, and the two knelt devoutly
before him.

There was a moment of silence, then the cowled man again spoke, in a
voice firmer and less senile.

'My daughters, you have come hither through the gloom of night and over
rough places, led by a faithful guide, whom you followed without doubt
or fear. You will have your reward. The darkness, the stones that made
your feet to stumble, what are these but symbols of your spiritual
state? In your blindness, you sought one blind as yourselves, to follow
whom was to walk in darkness eternal. But a beneficent Power has
watched over you, guiding your steps in the better way, whereof you
recked not.'

Aurelia and Veranilda had raised their heads, and were gazing at him,
in fearful astonishment.

'Be not troubled,' he went on, taking a step forward and speaking in a
voice strong and clear. 'Though unworthy, I am a priest of the faith in
which you, Aurelia, were baptized. In my hands you will suffer no harm,
no indignity. Be still, be silent. Behind you stand those who will not
permit you to flee, but who will conduct you hence as if they were your
own attendants if you do but follow me, as you needs must, without cry
or resistance.'

Aurelia turned and saw a number of figures whom the dim light showed to
be men with weapons. A moan of anguish escaped her lips. Clinging to
her in terrified silence, Veranilda seemed about to sink to the ground.

'Our way,' pursued the priest, who was now revealed as neither old nor
infirm, 'is down to the harbour. Not far from here a litter awaits you;
summon your strength for the short effort over rugged ground. Speak
words of comfort to this maiden; she also will ere long walk in the
light, and will be grateful to those who rescued her from the path of
destruction. Think not to escape us when we pass through the city; it
were vain to cry aloud; not a man in Surrentum would raise his hand to
release you, knowing, as all do, that we confine your body only to free
your soul from the bonds of the Enemy.'

'Whither are you taking us?' asked Aurelia, suddenly commanding
herself, and speaking with cold scorn.

'That you will know before the evening. Enough for the present that you
will travel without fatigue and without danger. Follow now whither I
lead.'

He moved forward, and the armed men, half a dozen in number, among whom
stood the black monk, closed about the prisoners. Seeing the futility
of any resistance, Aurelia whispered to her companion such words of
encouragement as she could find, and supported her with her arms. But
Veranilda had overcome the first terror which made her droop.

'Basil will find and release us,' she whispered back. 'While he has
life, Basil will not forsake us.'

And with unfaltering steps she moved onward, holding Aurelia's hand.

Their path, illumined by lanterns, the guards presently issued from the
wood, and came to the place where the litter was waiting. Hence the
captives were borne rapidly towards the haven. As they entered the city
gates, Aurelia raised the curtain which concealed her, and looked out
at the men on watch; words exchanged between them and her conductors
only confirmed what the priest had said, and made her understand that
she was powerless amid enemies.

'Are we not to have a look at the Gothic beauty?' cried one fellow,
when the litter was passing.

'Peace!' answered the priest sternly; and nothing more was said.

Through the streets they were followed by a few persons. These, calling
to each other, collected at length a small crowd, which hung about the
litter when it reached the place of embarkation. Here torches were
burning; their red glare fell upon angry or mocking faces, and every
moment the crowd increased. With utmost speed the prisoners were passed
into a little boat, then rowed to a vessel lying at the harbour mouth.
As the ship hoisted sail, dawn began to glimmer over the flank of
Vesuvius.




CHAPTER IX

CHORSOMAN


Fearful of sleeping till after sunrise, Basil had bidden Felix arouse
him this morning; and, as he had much to talk of with Veranilda, he
betook himself to the garden very early.

Aurelia's watchman was standing without, gazing anxiously now this way,
now that, surprised by his mistress's failure to return; on the
appearance of Basil he withdrew, but only to a spot whence he could
survey the garden. All impatience, the lover waited, as minute after
minute slowly passed. Dawn was broadening to day, but Veranilda came
not. An agony of disappointment seized upon him, and he stood at length
in the attitude of one sickening with despair. Then a footstep
approached, and he saw the slave whose watch he had relieved come
forward with so strange a look that Basil could only stare at him.

'My lord,' said the man, 'there is one at the gate of the villa who
brings I know not what news for you.'

'One at the gate? News?' echoed Basil, his heart sinking with dread
anticipation. 'What mean you, fellow?'

'Most noble, I know nothing,' stammered the frightened slave 'I beseech
your greatness to inquire. They say--I know not what--'

Basil sped across the garden and into Aurelia's dwelling. Here he found
a group of servants talking excitedly together; at view of him, they
fell back as if fear-stricken. From one, Aurelia's old nurse, rose a
wail of distress; upon her Basil rushed, grasped her by the arm, and
sternly demanded what had happened. Dropping to her knees with a shrill
cry, the woman declared that Aurelia had vanished, that some one from
the city had seen her carried away before dawn.

'Alone?' asked Basil in a terrible voice.

'Lord, I know not,' wailed the woman, grovelling at his feet.

'Is Veranilda in her chamber?' he asked violently.

'Gone!' replied a faint voice from amid the group of servants.

'Where is this messenger?'

Without waiting for a reply, he sprang forward. In the portico which
led to the villa he heard his name shouted, and he knew the voice for
Marcian's; another moment and Marcian himself appeared, pale, agitated.

'Why do you seek me?' cried Basil.

'You come from yonder? Have you seen Aurelia? Then it is true.'

Marcian told the news brought up from Surrentum by some person unknown,
who, having uttered it in the porter's ear, had at once fled.

'Go call Venantius,' said Basil, when he had heard the brief story,
'and bring him straight to Aurelia's house. They are gone; that
slinking slave shall tell me how, or I will tear it out of him with his
soul.'

Back he rushed, and found the nurse still crouching on the floor,
wailing. He made her lead him to her lady's chamber, and to that of
Veranilda, where nothing unusual met their eyes. The watchman was then
summoned; he came like one half dead, and smote the ground with his
forehead before the young noble, who stood hand on dagger. A fierce
interrogatory elicited clear and truthful answers; when Basil learned
what Aurelia had whispered to her servant as she went forth, he uttered
a groan.

'Marcian! Venantius!' he cried, for at that moment the two entered the
atrium. 'I understand it all. Why had I no fear of this?'

That Aurelia had been deceived and inveigled by one professing to be an
Arian priest, seemed clear from the watchman's story. For the
originator of the plot, Basil had not far to look. This was the
vengeance of Petronilla. But whither the two captives would be
conveyed, was less easy to conjecture. Perhaps to Cumae. The thought
stung Basil to frenzy, for, if Veranilda once fell into the hands of
the Greeks, what hope had he of ever seeing her again?

'Did Petronilla know?' he asked of Marcian.

'Who can say?' answered his friend, easily understanding the curtailed
question. 'Like enough that she had sent to Cumae to learn all she
could; and in that case, she found, you may be sure, ready instruments
of her malice. Were it not better,' Marcian added in an aside, 'to tell
Venantius what danger threatened Veranilda?'

The warlike Roman, who, aroused on an alarm, had instantly equipped
himself with casque and sword, stood listening to what passed, sniffing
the air and rolling his eyes about as if he desired nothing better than
a conflict. The others now drew him aside into a more private place,
and made known to him their reason for fearing that the Gothic maiden
had been seized by emissaries from Cumae.

'Had I heard that story before,' said Venantius, all but laughing with
angry surprise, 'Veranilda would now be safe in my castle; for, instead
of lingering, I should have come straightway, to rescue her and you.
Holy Peter and Paul! You sported here, day after day, knowing that the
hounds of Justinian had scent of the maid you carried away? You, Basil,
might commit such folly, for you were blinded to everything by your
love. But, Marcian, how came you to let him loll in his dream of
security? Why did you conceal this from me? By Castor! it was
unfriendly as it was imprudent. You robbed me of a sweet morsel when
you denied me the chance of balking the Greeks in such a matter as
this. Nay, the bird is caged at Cumae, be sure.'

Marcian's brows were knit, and his eyes cast down as he listened to
this reproof.

'I had not thought of Petronilla,' he murmured. 'But for her, the
danger was not pressing. That thick-skulled Hun at Cumae easily let
himself be blinded, as I told you.'

'How could I forget,' cried Basil, 'that Petronilla would risk
damnation rather than lose her vengeance upon Aurelia But,' he added,
with sudden change from gloom to vehemence, 'that woman is not beyond
our reach. Only yesterday did she set forth for Rome, and she may have
passed the night at Neapolis. A horseman will easily overtake her.
Felix!' he shouted. 'Our horses!--she shall pay for this if my hands
can get at her throat!'

Felix appeared, but not in answer to his master's summons; he came
precipitately, followed by a swarm of frightened slaves, to announce
another surprise. Before the villa stood a hostile multitude, folk of
Surrentum, who demanded admittance, and, if denied, would enter by
force. At this news Venantius hastened to muster his troop of archers
and spearmen. Basil and Marcian, having made sure that all entrances
were locked and barred, went to the front gate, and through a wicket
surveyed the assailants. These seemed to be mainly of the baser class;
they had armed themselves with all sorts of rude weapons, which they
brandished menacingly, shouting confused maledictions. From the porter
Basil learned that those who had first presented themselves at the door
had demanded that 'the heretics' should be given up to them; and by
listening to the cries, he understood that the wrath of these people
was directed against the Arian servants brought hither by Aurelia.
Through the wicket he held colloquy with certain leaders of the throng.

'The heretics! Yield to us the accursed heretics!' shouted a burly
fellow armed with an ox-goad.

'For what usage?' asked Basil.

'That's as they choose. If they like to come before the bishop and turn
Christian--why, a little correction shall suffice. If not, they have
only themselves and the devil to blame.'

By this time Venantius and his retainers stood in the forecourt. To
him, the routing of such a rabble seemed a task not worth speaking of,
but some few would no doubt be slain, and Basil shrank from such
extremities.

'Would you give up these trembling wretches?' asked Venantius
scornfully, pointing to the four slaves, male and female, Arians either
by origin or by conversion to please Aurelia, whom she had brought from
Cumae. On their knees they were imploring protection.

'Nay, I will fight for their safety,' Basil answered. 'But if we can
frighten off this tag-rag without bloodshed so much the better.'

Venantius consented to make the attempt. On the upper villa was an open
gallery looking over the entrance, and fully visible from where the
invaders stood. Hither the armed men ascended and stood in line, the
bowmen with arrows on string. Their lord, advancing to the parapet,
made a signal demanding silence, and spoke in a audible to every ear in
the throng.

'Dogs! You came on this errand thinking that the villa was defenceless.
See your mistake! Each one of these behind me has more arrows in store
than all your number, and never shot bolt from bow without piercing the
mark. Off! Away with your foul odours and your yelping throats! And if,
when you have turned tail, any cur among you dares to bark back that I,
Venantius of Nuceria, am no true Catholic, he shall pay for the lie
with an arrow through chine and gizzard!' This threat he confirmed with
a terrific oath of indisputable orthodoxy.

The effect was immediate. Back fell the first rank of rioters, pressing
against those in the rear; and without another cry, with only a low,
terrified growling and snarling, the crowd scattered in flight.

'There again I see Petronilla,' declared Basil, watching the rout with
fierce eyes. 'I'll swear that, before starting, she set this game
afoot. I must after her, Venantius.'

'Alone?'

'Mother of God! if I had your men! But I will make soldiers of my own.
Some of the likeliest from our folk here shall follow me; enough to
stay that she-wolf's journey till I can choke the truth out of her.'

Venantius, his eyes fixed on the descending road by which the rabble
had disappeared, caught sight of something which held him mute for a
moment. Then he gave a snort of surprise.

'What's this? There are no Greek soldiers in Surrentum.'

Yet unmistakable soldiers of the Imperial army were approaching. First
came into sight a commanding officer; he rode a little in advance of
the troop, which soon showed itself to consist of some two score
mounted men, armed with bows and swords. And in the rear came the
rabble of Surrentines, encouraged to return by this arrival of armed
authority.

'That is Chorsoman,' said Marcian, as soon as he could distinguish the
captain's feature, 'the commander at Cumae.'

'Then it is not to Cumae that they have carried her!' exclaimed Basil,
surmising at once that the Hun was come in pursuit of Veranilda.

'Time enough to think of that,' growled Venantius, as he glared from
under black brows at the advancing horsemen. 'What are we to do? To
resist is war, and this villa cannot be held for an hour. Yet to yield
is most likely to be made prisoners. Marcian!'

Marcian was watching and listening with a look of anxious thought.
Appealed to for his counsel, he spoke decidedly.

'Withdraw your men and go down. Resistance is impossible. Chorsoman
must enter, but trust me to manage him. I answer for your liberty.'

Venantius led his men down to the inner court. Basil, careless of
everything but the thought that Veranilda was being borne far from him,
he knew not whither, went to get horses ready, that he might pursue
Petronilla as soon as the road was free. Marcian, having spoken with
the porter, waited till a thundering at the gate announced Chorsoman's
arrival, then had the doors thrown open, and stood with a calm smile to
meet the commander.

'Fair greeting to your Magnificence!' he began with courtesy. 'Be
welcome to this villa, where, in absence of its mistress, I take upon
myself to offer you hospitality.'

Chorsoman had dismounted, and stood with half a dozen of his followers
behind him in the portico. At sight of Marcian his face became
suspicious.

'By mistress,' he replied gruffly, stepping forward, 'I suppose you
mean the daughter of Maximus. Where is she?'

Marcian would have continued the conversation within, but the Hun chose
to remain standing in the for-court, the gate wide open. From the
Surrentines he had already heard the story of Aurelia's disappearance,
which puzzled and angered him, for no one professed to be able to
explain what had happened, yet his informants declared that the Roman
lady and the Gothic maiden had been carried away without the knowledge
of the men who were their protectors. This was now repeated by Marcian,
who professed himself overwhelmed by the event.

'You have here one Basilius,' said Chorsoman.

'The same whom your greatness saw on a certain occasion at Cumae.'

'They tell me he was about to wed with Veranilda. What does that mean?'

'An idle rumour,' replied Marcian, 'springing from vulgar gossip, and
from the spiteful anger of the lady sister of Maximus, who hoped to
inherit what has fallen to her niece. Let your valorous magnificence be
assured that there is no truth in it. Can you imagine that I, whose
mission is known to you, should have looked on at such an audacity? I
think your perspicuity will not require better proof of the powers with
which I am intrusted than that I gave you at Cumae?'

Of the profound contempt proclaimed, rather than disguised, by
Marcian's extravagant courtesy, Chorsoman had no inkling; but his
barbaric mind resented the complexity of things with which it was
confronted, and he felt a strong inclination to take this
smooth-tongued Latin by the throat, so as to choke the plain truth out
of him. Why, he demanded fiercely, had not Aurelia and her companion
travelled straight on to Rome, as he had been assured they were to do?

'For a simple reason,' answered Marcian. 'I judged an escort necessary,
and only yesterday did I obtain it. This very day should we have set
forth.'

'You speak of one Venantius and his followers--he who just now, I am
told, threatened to massacre the harmless citizens of Surrentum.'

'I would rather say the most noble Venantius, a senator, but for whose
presence this villa would have been sacked by a thievish rabble from
below.'

'Let me see him,' said the Hun, his eyes like those of a boar at bay.

'Will it please your Illustrious Magnanimity to eat with us?'

'I will eat when I choose. Fetch here Venantius.'

Marcian despatched the porter, and in a few moments Venantius appeared,
behind him his armed men. A hand lightly on his sword, as though he
played with the hilt, his head proudly erect, the Roman noble paused at
a few paces from the Hun, and regarded him with bold steadfastness.

'You serve the Emperor?' said Chorsoman, somewhat less overbearingly
than he had spoken hitherto.

'When occasion offers,' was the dry response.

On the Hun's countenance grew legible the calculation busying his
thought. At a glance he had taken the measure of Venantius, and gauged
the worth of the men behind him. A smile, which could not mask its
cunning, came on to his lips, and all of a sudden he exchanged his
truculence for amiability.

'Lord Venantius,' he said, laying an open palm on his own breast, and
then motioning with it towards the Roman, 'you and I, two men of
valour, can understand each other in few words. I am no talker'--his
narrow eyes glanced at Marcian--'nor are you. Tell me, if you can, what
has become of the lady Aurelia and of the Gothic maiden who attended
upon her.'

'Lord Chorsoman,' replied Venantius, 'I thought it was you who could
have answered that question. The ladies Aurelia and Veranilda have this
morning disappeared, and we judged it likely that they had been enticed
from the villa to be captured and borne to Cumae.'

'Who should have done that?'

'Emissaries of your own, we supposed.'

The Hun reflected.

'This man of words'--he nodded sideways at Marcian--'spoke of a woman's
malice. Explain to me.'

Venantius told what he knew of Petronilla's enmity, and the listener
had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion which to Basil had been
evident from the first. It was possible moreover, that Cumae might be
the place to which the captives had been conveyed, for Chorsoman had
left the fortress yesterday to come hither by way of Neapolis, his
reason for the expedition being news of Veranilda's approaching
marriage, brought to him by a fisherman who said he had been paid by a
person unknown. Did Petronilla, he next inquired, know that Veranilda
was to be sent to the East? To this Marcian replied with a negative,
adding:

'Unless your Illustrious Discretion have seen fit to spread abroad what
I imparted to your private ear.'

'My tongue is not so loose as yours,' was the Hun's rejoinder.

Again he reflected, with the result that he decided to send a messenger
at once to Cumae. Until news could be brought back he should remain
here in the villa. This intention he announced in a tone abundantly
significant, his hearers understanding that Aurelia's property was now
in hands not accustomed to relax their grasp.

'Lord Venantius,' he added, 'as your escort is no longer needed, you
will wish, no doubt, to return forthwith to your own abode. It will not
be long before you have the occasion you desire of proving your loyalty
to the Emperor. Brave men both, we may presently fight side by side.
Let us sit at table together, and then good-speed!'

With a haughty glare Venantius heard this dismissal. A reply surged
into his throat, but he swallowed it again, remembering that more than
his personal safety was at stake.

'You will pardon me, lord,' he replied, 'if I do not stay to break my
fast. I am of impatient humour, and never willingly linger when a
journey is before me.'

'As you will,' said Chorsoman, with a slight knitting of his brows.
'You ride alone, I suppose?'

'The lord Basil, who starts for Rome, will give me his company as far
as our ways are one.'

Chorsoman gave a glance at the soldiers in his rear, then at Marcian,
and smiled grimly.

'I fear you must go without lord Basil. I shall have need of him.'

There was a very short silence; then Marcian spoke, with bland decision.

'Commander, this cannot be. Basil carries letters of urgency to Rome
and Ravenna; letters which I would not intrust to any one else. Your
Sublimity will see that it is impossible to delay him.'

Teeth hard set, and eyes aflame, the Hun took a step forward. In the
same instant, Venantius laid a hand upon his sword, and, at the
gesture, his armed men looked to their weapons.

'Where is this Basil?' demanded Chorsoman.

'I will let him know if you wish to speak with him,' replied Marcian.

'You shall be spared the trouble. Lord Venantius, bid your followers
retire and get their horses ready, whilst you and I go in search of
lord Basil. You will not refuse me your company for a few minutes?'

Cunning had again subdued the Hun's violence, and discretion prevailed
with the Roman. Together they passed through the atrium, Chorsoman
casting eager glances about him, and to the inner court; but the
followers of Venantius, obedient to a silent order, still kept their
position in face of the Greek soldiers, and this Chorsoman knew.

'You understand,' said the Hun, when they were alone together, you, a
brave and honourable man, how my duty to the Emperor obliges me to act.
I, of course, take possession of this villa until Aurelia is
discovered. And, however important his mission, I cannot allow Basil to
depart without some security--you will understand that.'

The barbarous accent with which these sentences were uttered caused
Venantius almost as much disgust as the plundering purpose they avowed.

'What security?' he asked.

Chorsoman named a large sum of money. As he spoke, Basil himself
appeared; and with brief preface, the matter under debate was reported
to him. He glanced at Venantius but could find no counsel in the dark,
stern face. Foreseeing the result of the Hun's visit, Basil had
hastened to conceal on his own person a considerable weight of coin,
and had intrusted something like the same amount to Felix. In the
treasure chamber lay a mass of wealth now belonging to Aurelia, and the
mere fact of this being under lock and key by no means secured it
against the commander's greed. Marcian came forward, and hearing the
talk of ransom, endeavoured to awe the Hun into moderation, but with
less success than he had had at Cumae. So he led Basil aside, told him
of the messenger sent to Cumae, as well as of the inventions by which
Chorsoman had been beguiled, and counselled mere inaction until news
came. Marcian then inquired of the commander whether, in case Veranilda
were found at Cumae, he would permit her to be sent on to Rome under
the escort already provided; but to this Chorsoman vouchsafed no direct
reply: he would consider the matter.

Negotiations had reached this point when new visitors arrived, the
Bishop of Surrentum and presbyter Joannes. Though suffering much, the
good bishop had risen from bed as soon as the exciting events of this
morning had reached his ear His innocence of complicity in the plot
against Aurelia and Veranilda, no one who saw him could doubt; with
astonishment he had heard of the priests and their armed attendants,
and with indignation of the citizens' tumultuous behaviour. What right
or reason had folk to proclaim that Aurelia was still a heretic, and
that she should not have been allowed to inherit property? Who, he
asked severely, could read her heart? And when inquiry made it too
certain that all this angry feeling had originated with Petronilla, the
prelate shook his head sadly, thinking more than he cared to say.
Arrived at the villa, he first of all learnt all he could as to the
position of things (declaring total ignorance when the Hun sought to
examine him as to the relations of Basil and Veranilda), then made
earnest inquiry whether there really were slaves here who professed
Arianism. The four were summoned; overcome with dread, they prostrated
them selves, and entreated the bishop to make them Catholics Having
heard from them that they all had been baptized (the Roman Church held
the baptism of Arians valid), he sent them apart for summary
instruction by Joannes, and afterwards laid his reconciling hands upon
them. Thus had the Church gained four members, and the good folk of
Surrentum lost a heretic-baiting.

With the proceedings of the Imperial commander the worthy cleric could
not interfere. He spoke privately with Basil, and betrayed, in a gentle
severity of mien, his suspicion of the young noble's state of mind, but
of this not a word fell from him; his concern seemed to be solely with
the lady Aurelia, regarding whom he would set every possible inquiry on
foot. He advised Basil not to leave the neighbourhood for a day or two,
and to communicate with him before he went far. Gratefully Basil kissed
the old man's hand. They never met again. A week later the bishop was
dead.

After all, Venantius sat at table with Chorsoman. Fuming, he waited
till the next morning, when, if the news could be believed, it became
certain that Aurelia and her companion were not at Cumae. Basil, having
no choice, then paid for ransom nearly all the money he had secreted,
and rode away with Venantius, purposing to remain at Nuceria until
joined by Marcian. Three days later Marcian appeared at the castle He
brought no intelligence of the lost ladies. As for their abode, it had
been thoroughly pillaged; the treasure chamber was discovered and
broken open; not a coin, not a vessel or ornament which had its price,
not a piece of silk, had escaped the clutches of the Hun.

Chorsoman's departure was followed by an invasion of the Surrentines,
who robbed more grossly. A fire broke out in the house of Proba, and
much of that building was destroyed. In the once magnificent villa
there lurked but a few slaves, who knew not whether their owner lived.




CHAPTER X

THE ANICIANS


Not many days after, in a still noontide of mellow autumn, Basil and
Marcian drew towards Rome. They rode along the Via Appia, between the
tombs of ancient men; all about them, undulant to the far horizon, a
brown wilderness dotted with ruins. Ruins of villas, of farms, of
temples, with here and there a church or a monastery that told of the
newer time. Olives in scant patches, a lost vineyard, a speck of tilled
soil, proved that men still laboured amid this vast and awful silence,
but rarely was a human figure visible. As they approached the city,
marshy ground and stagnant pools lay on either hand, causing them to
glance sadly at those great aqueducts, which for ages had brought water
into Rome from the hills and now stood idle, cleft by the Goths during
the siege four years ago.

They rode in silence, tired with their journey, occupied with heavy or
anxious thoughts. Basil, impatient to arrive, was generally a little
ahead. Their attendants numbered half a dozen men, among them Felix and
Sagaris, and two mules laden with packs came in the rear. Earthworks
and rough buildings of military purpose, again recalling the twelve
months' blockade, presently appeared; churches and oratories told them
they were passing the sacred ground of the catacombs; then they crossed
the little Almo, rode at a trot along a hollow way, and saw before them
the Appian Gate. Only a couple of soldiers were on guard; these took a
careless view of the travellers, and let them pass without speaking.

Marcian rode up to his friend's side, and spoke softly.

'You have promised to be advised by me.'

Basil answered only with a dull nod.

'I will see her to-day,' continued the other, 'and will bring you the
news before I sleep.'

'Do so.'

No more words passed between them. On their left hand they saw the
Thermae of Caracalla, their external magnificence scarce touched by
decay, but waterless, desolate; in front rose the Caelian, covered with
edifices, many in ruin, and with neglected or altogether wild gardens;
the road along which they went was almost as silent as that without the
walls. Arrived at a certain point, the two looked at each other and
waved a hand; then Marcian, with Sagaris and one other servant, pushed
forward, whilst Basil, followed by the rest of the train, took an
ascending road to the right.

The house in which he was born, and where he alone now ruled, stood on
the summit of the Caelian. Before it stood the ruined temple of
Claudius, overlooking the Flavian Amphitheatre; behind it ranged the
great arches of the Neronian aqueduct; hard by were the round church of
St. Stephen and a monastery dedicated to St. Erasmus. By a narrow,
grass-grown road, between walls overhung with ivy, Basil ascended the
hill; but for the occasional bark of a dog, nothing showed that these
buildings of old time were inhabited; and when he drew rein before his
own portico, the cessation of the sound of hoofs made a stillness like
that among the Appian sepulchres. Eyeless, hoary, with vegetation
rooted here and there, the front of the house gave no welcome. Having
knocked, Basil had to wait for some moments before there came a sign of
opening. With drooped head, he seemed to watch the lizards playing in
the sunshine upon a marble column.

A wicket opened, and at once there sounded from within an exclamation
of joyful surprise. After much clanking, the door yielded, and an
elderly servant, the freedman Eugenius, offered greeting to his lord.
Basil's first question was whether Decius had been there; he learnt
that his kinsman was now in the house, having come yesterday to reside
here from the Anician palace beyond the Tiber.

'Tell him at once that I am here. Stay; I dare say he is in the
library. I will go to him.'

He passed through the atrium, adorned with ancestral busts and with the
consular fasces which for centuries had signified nothing, through a
room hung with tapestry and floored with fine mosaic, through the
central court, where the fountain was dry, and by a colonnade reached
the secluded room which was called library, though few books remained
out of the large collection once guarded here. In a sunny embrasure, a
codex open on his knees, sat the pale student; seeing Basil, he started
up in great surprise, and, when they had embraced, regarded him
anxiously.

'How is this? What has happened? Some calamity, I see.'

'Seek some word, O Decius, to utter more than that. I have suffered
worse than many deaths.'

'My best, my dearest Basil!' murmured the other tenderly. 'You have
lost her?'

'Lost her? yes; but not as you mean it. Is Petronilla in Rome?'

'She arrived the day before yesterday, two hours after sunset.'

'And you have seen her, talked with her?'

'I was at the house yonder when she came.

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