by Jack Lindsay
Outside the house of Cytheris a man was pacing up and down, muttering to himself. Fabullus had been standing on the opposite pavement, unable to leave the vicinity, sure that there was more to find out; and in proof of his certainty there had come along a cloaked stranger, a man far too big to be Gallus. Who was it?
Fabullus crossed the road and stood at the side of the outer door. There was a small pillar on either side, and he crouched hidden, able to see through the slit between pillar and wall. A cold wind had blown up, but his curiosity was far greater than his discomfort. He did not notice the passage of time as his ears strained for the sound of footsteps. He would have stood there all night if need be; but it was not long before the sound came. Pressing his forehead against the cold stone, he stared towards the door that would soon open.
It opened, and a man stood on the threshold, adjusting his abolla. Fabullus saw the face clearly in the lamplight. Then the door shut, and the man went off, his slave-attendant trotting at his side.
“They’re all in it,” groaned Fabullus, and still waited, retreating across the road to study the upper windows.
His tactics were well considered; for a slave ran out, and shortly afterwards a litter appeared before the door. Two torchbearers struck flints and lighted their resinous torches. Cytheris hurried out, her head veiled against the night airs.
Fabullus followed at a distance, careless of the wind or the puddles in which he trod as he marched slowly on, his eyes fastened on the torch-bearers. He thought he knew the house at which the litter finally stopped and into which Cytheris was admitted with a loud noise of bolts and bars removed and then re-fixed. Enquiring at the nearest tavern, he learned that it was the house of Dolabella.
*
Not often did Gallus receive an early-morning visitor, and he wondered who it could be. Blinking the waters of sleep from his eyes, Leonidas opened the door and let Amos in.
“I told father I’d go out first thing and buy some nitre he wanted,” Amos explained. “So I came to you.”
Gallus, still dimly lost in dream-memories, argued with the cogent irrelevance of a man drunk. He possessed no nitrous deposits; he wouldn’t sell them if he did; he was the happiest man in the world.
Amos pursed his lips and indicated Leonidas with a great show of secrecy, which annoyed Leonidas extremely. But when Gallus demanded the instant purchase of a small flask of wine, Leonidas had to submit and go, assured that some attack on his character was to be made by the villain Amos behind his back.
Shutting the door, Amos narrowed his eyes, opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, looked under the bed where Gallus was lying, went and peered out of the window, and craned his neck up to make sure that no one was hiding on the roof. Then, rubbing his left eye to extract a piece of grit that had fallen into it from the eaves, he spoke: “What do you think Karni told me?”
“That you’re going to be a father,” suggested Gallus, delighted at the suggestion. Everyone should be begetting children.
Amos was taken aback. He considered. Then he dismissed the idea. “Of course not. What do you take me for? If she said so, I’d know it was someone else’s. She told me who called on the Queen yesterday afternoon. Thatris told someone else who told her on condition she didn’t tell anyone else, and I gave the same promise, so I expect you to keep the secret.”
Gallus swore by the hairs of his beloved.
“The consul Antonius visited her,” declared Amos, his voice cracking with excitement. “And she washed herself in elephant’s milk and rose-water first, and he was with her two hours, and she was all crumpled, and nobody knows what’s going to happen.”
“Elephant’s milk,” queried Gallus, who could see nothing extraordinary in a lover’s meeting; it was only what ought to be happening everywhere. “Where did she get the elephants from?”
“I wasn’t told that,” said Amos, somewhat crestfallen.
“Perhaps she brought it with her, or perhaps some have arrived for a show. I may have got that part wrong, but the consul was with her, whether it was elephant’s milk or cow-dung.” He was irritated at having his effect spoilt.
Gallus was pleased. Antonius was the only one of the past lovers of Cytheris about whom he felt jealous and afraid; and it was good that he should be engrossed elsewhere. He leaped out of bed, breaking the bed-leg that Leonidas had mended with palm-fibre, and dressed himself, splashing water from a small basin over his face. Amos was prattling on, weighed down by the sense of owning grave political secrets.
Up the stairs came the sound of feet; and Leonidas, eager to interrupt a conversation which he was sure aimed at defamation of his character, pushed open the door, but not alone. Behind him entered Fabullus.
“Get out of here,” said Gallus to Fabullus. “Because I’ve bought you a few drinks, it doesn’t mean you can make free with my lodgings. Get out.”
“Wait a moment,” said Fabullus, clucking in a humble manner. “I saw your servant buying some liquor, so I followed him upstairs. But I don’t want your drink. I’ve got my own.” Triumphantly he produced a small jar from under his ragged cloak and set it carefully on the floor.
“Take it away,” said Gallus.
“Hear me out,” said Fabullus, blandly, walking round the jar and then returning to his doorpost. “Judge no man unheard. Hear what I’ve got to say, and then if you don’t look upon me as your best friend, I’ll go and take my drink away with me.”
“I don’t want to hear,” said Gallus, wondering why he hadn’t hurled the fellow out at once; but he was oppressed by the foreboding of evil that he always got from the presence of Fabullus — something inveterate that wore down his opposition. But today of all days he wanted to keep clean and sunlit; at noon he was to see Cytheris again.
“Who do you think called on a certain lady last night?” asked Fabullus, leaning against the doorpost and obtaining a sense of safety from the wine-jar planted on the floor between him and the others. “She’s going up in the world.” He paused, noting with joy how Gallus was torn wretchedly by a wish to hasten the disclosure and a wish to shut his ears against it. “The man that called was the consul Antonius.”
“You’re mad,” shouted Gallus. “He spent the afternoon with Cleopatra.”
Amos clutched his own head and made agonised gestures to Gallus to keep back the secret which had now been fully revealed. He thus drew more attention to it, and even Leonidas grasped that the subject of gossip was not himself but people socially so distant that he didn’t believe in their existence even though he heard about them daily.
“O did he?” Fabullus winked one eye, and having winked it, found difficulty in opening it again. “I knew they were all in it. But he was with your don’t-know-what afterwards. I saw him.”
“He wasn’t,” shouted Gallus, louder still. “Out you go!”
“And where do you think she went afterwards?” Fabullus knew that Gallus couldn’t bear to throw him out while there was more to hear, more to be tortured with. “In her litter? She went off to the other consul, Dolabella. And she hadn’t gone home at dawn. So what do you say to that?”
Gallus ran at him, tore at his clothes, punched him, shouting. Amos and Leonidas in turn grasped Gallus from behind and dragged him away. Fabullus sank to the floor, blubbering. “I only told it for your own good. She’s a wicked woman. She wanted me to go to bed with her. We men ought to stand together. Go and ask her if you don’t believe me.”
Then he noticed Amos, and rose to his feet again. “What’s this Jew doing here? Spying on me?” He advanced menacingly, and Amos shrank into a corner. “Your father sent you here. Own up.”
“Throw the blackguard out!” cried Gallus, struggling with Leonidas; and Fabullus, seeing that he was liable to be assaulted by all three, retreated quickly, making a dive for his wine-jar, shut the door behind him, and was heard weeping down the stairs.
*
The litter in which Cytheris had come back was still outside the door when Gallus turned the corner. At once he kne
w the worst. All the way he had repeated to himself that Fabullus was an irresponsible drunken liar, but now he knew the facts. She had not even bothered to deceive him with any care.
The janitor had received no fresh instructions, and let Gallus pass; and without waiting to be announced Gallus broke into the bedroom. Cytheris was bending over a chest, putting a cloak away. She waved a slave-girl out of the room while Gallus eyed her with steady hatred.
“I can’t see any kiss-marks this time. At least you thought of me to that extent — or perhaps they’re in places that I can’t see.”
Cytheris saw that he already knew. It didn’t matter; it simplified things; she knew intuitively that Fabullus had something to do with the arrival of Gallus. She couldn’t have hidden what she’d done, and yet she knew she hadn’t contemplated such an early discovery. What she had intended, she couldn’t remember; but it wasn’t what was happening now.
“I’ve been to see Dolabella,” she said, defiantly.
“And before that Antonius came to see you. O I know all about it.” Even in his suffering he couldn’t but feel a grim pleasure in thus being able to expose her so thoroughly and so speedily; she must be astonished.
Her heart leaped once, and then she was glad he knew everything. “Yes, my old friend Marcus called after you went. And now I think you’d better leave me. You can still brag in the taverns and tell them how many moles I have, and where.”
Gallus by making the first accusations had dominated the situation; and Cytheris felt suddenly that her retort was feeble, that she had merely used his delinquency as a pretext, and that he would see this. But he was staggered, nevertheless, at her words.
“What nonsense are you talking? I’ve done no such thing ...” His voice trailed off. Then the memory returned. It was all so long ago, the day before yesterday, the day before he had embraced her; aeons past. “But that was before — before I thought you loved me.”
She studied his face. “I don’t understand. How could you brag about taking me before yesterday?”
He saw the position in which he had landed himself. “I’ll tell you the truth. I heard about Dolabella again from Nicias, and was so hurt that I said what he’d been saying — to show that I was as good as he was. I was drinking.”
“It doesn’t matter. You lied about me in public. What could be worse than that? You’re nothing but vanity. You’ve shown me the kind of person you are. Leave me in peace, if you have a shred of decency left.”
He clenched his hands, seeing nothing pathetic this time in her distraught tones. “I won’t go. We’re both fools, and you’re as big a fool as I am. Did your lover the brawny Marcus tell you he’d spent the afternoon with Queen Cleopatra — on the same couch?” He saw that she hadn’t known; she drew back with distressfully open mouth. “Yes, with the beautiful Queen. I don’t suppose he was worth very much by the time he came here. I suppose that was why you had to go to Dolabella afterwards.”
He had hit shrewdly. Cytheris, who had been growing somewhat ashamed, felt angrily stifled. So that was why Marcus had been so respectfully playful; she hadn’t minded it while she thought it the result of his oath to Fulvia; but it was different now she knew he had come drained from Cleopatra’s couch. The beast. Come to send her off to Dolabella. Could he have shown more obviously what he thought of her, how little he cared? Sending her to another man while still smeared with Cleopatra’s kisses. How was it she hadn’t sensed the other woman, like a dog a hare-scent? It was stifling her now.
She turned on Gallus, and for the first time in her life wholly lost her head. “You filthy beast!” she cried, beating at him. “You’re all the same. Get out before I kill you. Get back to the tavern-slut that you keep in case I frown. You’re all liars, beasts, hypocrites — and the worst of all is you with your lying poems and promises. Get out.”
Attracted by her cries, the janitor and two more men-slaves dashed into the room; and pleased at the chance of maltreating Gallus, whom they rated as a penniless and obnoxious interloper, they lugged him out, pushed him through the hall, and flung him into the street.
Left to herself, she sank back on the bed, sobbing and breathing thickly. She forgot Gallus. It was the lie that Antonius had told her. Perhaps he hadn’t lied with words, but he had deceived her; he had thrown her away, coldly given her to another man. Her friendship with him had been the sustaining pillar of her life; he had always been so frank and direct; even when he had left her for his wife, she had felt no anger and he had pretended nothing, she had still felt him a friend in the background. She could never forgive him.
She wanted to hurt him. What could she do? She must do something. He had broken the compact. Why had he come back to her after she had succeeded in putting him aside so happily, come back only to spoil everything? It was all his fault whatever she did. She would do a thing that she had never thought herself capable of doing, a petty spiteful act, the kind of thing that made her loathe being a woman. She had always aimed at a man’s virtue, joviality and lack of pettiness; but her life had beaten her. First Gallus and then Antonius. But her trouble with Gallus had been her own fault, and she would have faced and settled it in her own way after a while. The blow from Antonius was outside all the rules of the game.
*
The note was left by a slave who protested that it must be handed to Fulvia alone, and then ran away. So the porter explained, and Fulvia weighed the folded and sealed paper in her hand. There was a faint scent of violets and femininity about the letter, and she had a feeling that it would tell her why Antonius had been so guiltily boisterous last night, why he had drunk so much and fallen into a heavy slumber on coming to bed — a slumber from which all her efforts could not rouse him. She had lain tightly clasping him till dawn, when he had been forced to take notice of her; but he had been very distrait, blaming the wine-fumes. Now Fulvia looked at the letter and knew she was about to learn the reason.
Tasting the luxury of delay to the full, she raised the note to her nose, ran it along her lips, felt and crinkled it slowly. Then she snapped the frail red thread, and read the contents. “Did your husband smell of Egypt last night and had Cleopatra tied a golden hair round his loins?” Fulvia had known she would read something of the kind, though she had not suspected Cleopatra; but to see the words was different from knowing she would see them. She felt blackness pressing down between her eyes, crushing her mind, squeezing the life out of her like a stick thrust down over a worm. Then she recovered and pushed the paper down between her breasts.
Antonius was in a side-room of the hall, talking with his two brothers. He had tentatively spoken of Caesarion in the Senate and found everyone agreed in hostility to the child’s legitimacy. That had vaguely discouraged him, though he had hardly expected a different reception; but the news of his remarks had not yet reached the Carinae. His brothers, who had not attended the meeting, had not yet heard; and Antonius was postponing the moment of explanation. He was going to say that his suggestion was intended to depreciate Caesar’s will — for who was to pay out the money left to the people? But he knew that Fulvia and his brothers would laugh at this argument, and he felt unhappy.
Fulvia entered with dull staring eyes, went straight across to him, grasped him by the throat, and sank her fingers into the flesh. He tore away, gasping. The suddenness and silence of the attack left Gaius and Lucius stupefied and inert.
With a wrench Antonius got free. “Are you mad, woman?” His throat was badly hurt.
Fulvia had begun to think again. She turned to Lucius. “He was with Cleopatra yesterday.”
Lucius said nothing but looked without sympathy at his brother. Gaius tittered. But Fulvia had turned again to her husband.
“Tell me the truth. Admit it.”
He was too upset, too dazed to think of denials. He hung his head. “Yes, I was.”
Fulvia hit him in the face.
“Look here now,” he said, backing. “Don’t go too far.” She hit him again, coldly, furiously. He r
aised his hands, but Lucius spoke.
“Hear what she’s got to say.”
“I’m not stopping her from talking. But I won’t be hit.” There was a deep silence. At last Fulvia said, “Why don’t you get out and go to her?”
He answered sullenly, “Because I don’t want to.”
“I divorce you. Do you hear?”
“I hear you.”
His relief was followed by panic. He wanted Cleopatra, but he mustn’t be thrown into her arms prematurely. Nothing had been settled, no basis of action built up; he would lose his grip and be flung helpless to the world. The panic grew. He knew only that he must cling to what he already had. Cleopatra wouldn’t want him if he came a discredited man.
“Don’t be a fool. I won’t be divorced. I only went to see her to find out what she was up to.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“O you’re so suspicious. You wouldn’t have believed me.” She laughed scornfully.
“Of course I wouldn’t. Well, what did she say?”
The words were dragged out of him, fibres torn with red-hot pincers; but speak he must. Her dark, burning eyes, dilated enormously, held him, penetrated through his skull. He was like a man tied to a post under the noonday-sun with eyelids sliced off, pestered by the flies, seared by the light.
“She wants her Caesarion to be recognised.”
“And you promised her to do it.”
“I did nothing of the sort.”
“O you fool. What else did she say?”
“Nothing else.” The eyes tore at him, dragged out the words from his dry mouth. “Only what I said. She wants Caesarion to be recognised.”
“Yes?”
“And she hopes to stage riots here. This Marius ... she’s bribed him, I think. She told me as little as she could. That’s all, I swear.”
Fulvia still watched him, bending slightly, as if ready to run from a wild beast she was taming. “And so you promised to help her, to join with her. Why don’t you go off to her now?”
“I don’t want to go. I won’t go.”