Chapter LIV

LYGIA, in a long letter written hurriedly, took farewell to Vinicius

forever. She knew that no one was permitted to enter the prison,

and that she could see Vinicius only from the arena. She begged him

therefore to discover when the turn of the Mamertine prisoners would

come, and to be at the games, for she wished to see him once more in

life. No fear was evident in her letter. She wrote that she and the

others were longing for the arena, where they would find liberation

from imprisonment. She hoped for the coming of Pomponia and Aulus; she

entreated that they too be present. Every word of her showed ecstasy,

and that separation from life in which all the prisoners lived, and at

the same time an unshaken faith that all promises would be fulfilled

beyond the grave.

“Whether Christ,” wrote she, “frees me in this life or after death,

He has promised me to thee by the lips of the Apostle; therefore I am

thine.” She implored him not to grieve for her, and not to let himself

be overcome by suffering. For her death was not a dissolution of

marriage. With the confidence of a child she assured Vinicius that

immediately after her suffering in the arena she would tell Christ that

her betrothed Marcus had remained in Rome, that he was longing for her

with his whole heart. And she thought that Christ would permit her soul,

perhaps, to return to him for a moment, to tell him that she was living,

that she did not remember her torments, and that she was happy. Her

whole letter breathed happiness and immense hope. There was only one

request in it connected with affairs of earth,--that Vinicius should

take her body from the spoliarium and bury it as that of his wife in the

tomb in which he himself would rest sometime.

He read this letter with a suffering spirit, but at the same time it

seemed to him impossible that Lygia should perish under the claws of

wild beasts, and that Christ would not take compassion on her. But just

in that were hidden hope and trust. When he returned home, he wrote

that he would come every day to the walls of the Tullianum to wait till

Christ crushed the walls and restored her. He commanded her to believe

that Christ could give her to him, even in the Circus; that the great

Apostle was imploring Him to do so, and that the hour of liberation

was near. The converted centurion was to bear this letter to her on the

morrow.

But when Vinicius came to the prison next morning, the centurion left

the rank, approached him first, and said,--

“Listen to me, lord. Christ, who enlightened thee, has shown thee favor.

Last night Cæsar’s freedman and those of the prefect came to select

Christian maidens for disgrace; they inquired for thy betrothed, but our

Lord sent her a fever, of which prisoners are dying in the Tullianum,

and they left her. Last evening she was unconscious, and blessed be the

name of the Redeemer, for the sickness which has saved her from shame

may save her from death.”

Vinicius placed his hand on the soldier’s shoulder to guard himself from

falling; but the other continued,--

“Thank the mercy of the Lord! They took and tortured Linus, but, seeing

that he was dying, they surrendered him. They may give her now to thee,

and Christ will give back health to her.”

The young tribune stood some time with drooping head; then raised it and

said in a whisper,--

“True, centurion. Christ, who saved her from shame, will save her from

death.” And sitting at the wall of the prison till evening, he returned

home to send people for Linus and have him taken to one of his suburban

villas.

But when Petronius had heard everything, he determined to act also. He

had visited the Augusta; now he went to her a second time. He found her

at the bed of little Rufius. The child with broken head was struggling

in a fever; his mother, with despair and terror in her heart, was trying

to save him, thinking, however, that if she did save him it might be

only to perish soon by a more dreadful death.

Occupied exclusively with her own suffering, she would not even hear of

Vinicius and Lygia; but Petronius terrified her.

“Thou hast offended,” said he to her, “a new, unknown divinity. Thou,

Augusta, art a worshipper, it seems, of the Hebrew Jehovah; but the

Christians maintain that Chrestos is his son. Reflect, then, if the

anger of the father is not pursuing thee. Who knows but it is their

vengeance which has struck thee? Who knows but the life of Rufius

depends on this,--how thou wilt act?”

“What dost thou wish me to do?” asked Poppæa, with terror.

“Mollify the offended deities.”

“How?”

“Lygia is sick; influence Cæsar or Tigellinus to give her to Vinicius.”

“Dost thou think that I can do that?” asked she, in despair.

“Thou canst do something else. If Lygia recovers, she must die. Go

thou to the temple of Vesta, and ask the virgo magna to happen near the

Tullianum at the moment when they are leading prisoners out to death,

and give command to free that maiden. The chief vestal will not refuse

thee.”

“But if Lygia dies of the fever?”

“The Christians say that Christ is vengeful, but just; maybe thou wilt

soften Him by thy wish alone.”

“Let Him give me some sign that will heal Rufius.”

Petronius shrugged his shoulders.

“I have not come as His envoy; O divinity, I merely say to thee, Be on

better terms with all the gods, Roman and foreign.”

“I will go!” said Poppæa, with a broken voice.

Petronius drew a deep breath. “At last I have done something,” thought

he, and returning to Vinicius he said to him,--

“Implore thy God that Lygia die not of the fever, for should she

survive, the chief vestal will give command to free her. The Augusta

herself will ask her to do so.”

“Christ will free her,” said Vinicius, looking at him with eyes in which

fever was glittering.

Poppæa, who for the recovery of Rufius was willing to burn hecatombs to

all the gods of the world, went that same evening through the Forum to

the vestals, leaving care over the sick child to her faithful nurse,

Silvia, by whom she herself had been reared.

But on the Palatine sentence had been issued against the child already;

for barely had Poppæa’s litter vanished behind the great gate when two

freedmen entered the chamber in which her son was resting. One of these

threw himself on old Silvia and gagged her; the other, seizing a bronze

statue of the Sphinx, stunned the old woman with the first blow.

Then they approached Rufius. The little boy, tormented with fever and

insensible, not knowing what was passing around him, smiled at them,

and blinked with his beautiful eyes, as if trying to recognize the men.

Stripping from the nurse her girdle, they put it around his neck and

pulled it. The child called once for his mother, and died easily. Then

they wound him in a sheet, and sitting on horses which were waiting,

hurried to Ostia, where they threw the body into the sea.

Poppæa, not finding the virgo magna, who with other vestals was at the

house of Vatinius, returned soon to the Palatine. Seeing the empty bed

and the cold body of Silvia, she fainted, and when they restored her she

began to scream; her wild cries were heard all that night and the day

following.

But Cæsar commanded her to appear at a feast on the third day; so,

arraying herself in an amethyst-colored tunic, she came and sat with

stony face, golden-haired, silent, wonderful, and as ominous as an angel

of death.