“I greet you, fair cousin,” he said with an admiring glance, “for if my aunt, who always speaks the truth, calls you daughter, my cousin you must needs be.”
Claudia muttered a few words that probably were meant for thanks. They did not catch the listener’s [76] ear, though he noticed that they were spoken with the hesitation of one who was using an unfamiliar language. Then the colour which had covered the girl’s cheek, as she came forward, with a brilliant flush, faded as suddenly. She cast an imploring look, as if asking for help, on the elder lady.
“Ah! my child,” cried Pomponia, “you suffer. I have lived so long alone that I have grown thoughtless and selfish, or I should have known that you wanted rest after all that you have gone through. Sit you here till I can call Chloris.” And she made the girl sit in the chair from which she had herself risen, while she pressed a hand-bell that stood on a table close by.
A Greek waiting-maid speedily appeared in answer to the summons.
“Have the litter brought hither,” said Pomponia, “and carry the Lady Claudia to her room.”
“Nay, mother,” said the girl, “I should be ashamed to give so much trouble, and indeed, I do not want the litter. I will go to my room indeed, but it will be enough if Chloris will give me her arm.”
“You are sure?” said the elder lady. “I have seen so little of young people of late years that I am at a loss.”
“Yes, indeed, mother, quite sure,” and she withdrew, supporting herself by the attendant’s arm, but more in show than in reality, for indeed the faintness, quite a new sensation to Claudia’s vigorous health, had quite passed away,
[77] “My dear aunt,” said Lateranus, when the girl had left the room, “this is indeed a surprise. From what quarter of the world have you imported this marvellous beauty? That she is not Latin or Greek I saw at a glance, and I have been puzzling my brain ever since to find out to what nation she belongs. Is she Gaul, or perhaps German?”
“Nay,” replied Pomponia; “you must go further than Gaul or even Germany.”
“Ah!” said Lateranus after reflecting for a minute or two. “By all the gods!�pardon me, aunt,” he went on, seeing a shadow pass over his aunt’s gentle face,�“I had forgotten. Verily, I have it! She must be British!”
“Now you are right.”
“And how long has she been with you? I heard nothing of her when I was last here.”
“A month only. Her coming, indeed, was quite unexpected, and to be quite candid, at first unwelcome. You know my way of life. I had grown so accustomed to being alone that I almost dreaded the sight of a new face.”
“Well,” said Lateranus, “a face like that need hardly frighten you.”
“Ah, you think her beautiful?” cried Pomponia, her face lighted up with one of her rare smiles. “And don’t you see just a little likeness to my dearest Julia?”
“Yes; there is certainly a likeness, especially about the eyes.”
[78] “As soon as I saw that, I began to love her; and indeed I soon found that she is worth loving for her own sake. And there is another reason, too, which I fear, my dear nephew, you will not understand.”
“Ah! I see; she is of the same sect, I suppose. It has reached to Britain itself then. Wonderful!”
“Wonderful indeed, and more than wonderful if it were what you call it, a sect. Oh, dear Aulus, (Footnote: We do not know the pr?nomen or first name of Plautius Lateranus, but there is a certain presumption that it was Aulus. The Roman first names were very few in number (only seventeen in all), and particular families were in the habit of restricting themselves to a few of these. (All the Scipios, for instance, known to history, bore one of the three first names, Lucius, Publius, or Cn?us.) We know that the uncle of Lateranus, the famous General, was an Aulus. I have therefore ventured to give it him, putting it here into Pomponia’s mouth in making this appeal as having a more affectionate sound.) if you would but listen!”
“All in good time, dear aunt, perhaps when my Consulship is over. It would certainly be awkward if you made a proselyte of me before.”
“In good time, dear Aulus! Nay, there is no time so good as this. Who knows what may happen before your Consulship is over?”
“Nay, nay, dear aunt; good words, good words! But tell me, who is this lovely Claudia?”
“You have heard your uncle speak of King Cogidumnus?”
“Yes, I remember the name. He lived somewhere, if I remember right, on the edge of the great south- [79] ern forest, of which my uncle used to tell such wonders.”
“Just so; he was the King of the Regni. Indeed, he is living still. Well, the King took our side. Claudius made him a Roman citizen, and allowed him to assume his own names, so that he is a Tiberius Claudius; and also enlarged his kingdom with some of the country which your uncle conquered.”
“Yes, I remember now hearing about it from my friend Pudens. He was wrecked on the coast in one of those terrible storms that they have out there, and made his way to the chief town of the Regni. (Footnote: Now Chichester.) He found it, he told me, quite a little Rome, with a Senate, and a Forum, and baths, and a library, and I know not what besides. The King himself was quite a polished gentleman, spoke Latin admirably and even could quote Virgil and Horace. No one, to look at him, would have thought, so my friend Pudens used to say, that ten years before he had been running wild in the woods with very little on besides a few stripes of blue paint.”
“Well,” resumed Pomponia, “Claudia is his daughter.”
“You astonish me more and more,” cried Lateranus. “And pray, what brings her to Rome?”
“A prince who pays tribute to Rome in Britain can hardly feel quite safe. His countrymen are sure to hate him, and I am afraid that we who are his [80] allies do not always treat him as we should. Claudia’s father had a terrible fright three years ago, when Boadicea and the Iceni rebelled. His city would have been the next to be attacked after London, if Paulinus had not come up in time to stop them. London, you must know, is scarcely more than seventy miles off, and the Britons don’t take much time over seventy miles. The King had everything ready to embark,�you see he has the advantage of being near the sea,�his wife, who is since dead, and Claudia, who is his only child, were actually on board a galley with the best part of his treasure. If the news had been bad instead of good, they would have sailed at once. Lately, it seems, he has been getting anxious again, and though he loves his daughter dearly,�the poor girl cannot speak of him without tears,�he felt that he should be much happier if she were safe. Then the death of the mother, who was an admirable woman, decided him. His nearest kinswomen are not people into whose charge he would like to put his daughter. So he sent her here, appealing to me on the score of his old friendship with my husband. I could not refuse, though I must confess that the idea was very distasteful to me. What should I do, I thought, with a young barbarian in my house? It was a wicked idea, even if it had been true, which it certainly is not. Who am I,” she added in a low voice which she did not mean to reach her nephew’s ears, “Who am I, that I should [81] call aught that He has made common or unclean? In Him there is ‘neither barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free.’ “
“You interest me greatly in your Claudia. But, my dear aunt, we have to consider the future, both for you and her. You know, of course, who is at the bottom of this business.”
“Yes, I know�Popp?a.”
“But tell me, for I confess it puzzles me, why does Popp?a hate you? That she will spare no one who stands in the way of her pleasure or her ambition I understand; but you, how do you interfere with her?”
“Listen, Aulus. Popp?a has another thing that she cares for besides pleasure and power, and that is what she calls her religion.”
“But I thought�pardon me for mentioning such a creature in the same breath with you�I thought that you and she were of somewhat the same way of thinking in this matter.”
“It was natural that you should. Most people who know anything at all about such things have the same notion. But it is not so. Briefly, the truth is this. The religion to which Popp?a inclines is the religion of the Jews; the faith to which, by God’s mercy, I have been brought, rose up among the same nation. A Jew first gave it to men; Jews have preached it since. But those who still walk in the old ways hate them that follow the new, hate them worse than they hate the heathen. Popp?a, poor creature, knows [82] nothing about such matters, but the men to whom she goes for counsel, the men who she hopes will find a way for her to go on sinning and yet escape the punishment of sin, the men who take her gifts for themselves and their temple, and pay for them with smooth words, they know well enough the difference between themselves and us; it is they who stir her up; it is they who have told her to make a first victim of me.”