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Updated: June 7, 2025
With some impatience she snatched the mirror from the young slave's hand, and then she put it on the pillow and looked straight down into it, whilst her hair fell like golden curtains down each side of her face. "Go on, Licinia," she said with curt indifference.
Nay! if the patriciate of Rome had its will with thee, it would have thee publicly whipped and branded like the arrogant menial that thou art! This and more did my lord Hortensius say," continued Licinia, whose voice now had sunk to an awed whisper at the recollection of the sacrilege; "I hardly dared to breathe for I could see the praefect's face, and could think of naught save the wrath of Jupiter, when on a sultry evening the thunder clouds are gathering in the wake of the setting sun."
She had collected the tire-women round her, and they flocked in her wake like frightened sheep that have been driven into a pen. Licinia herself was evidently the prey of abject terror, for her teeth were chattering, and all the while that she helped her mistress to make a hasty toilet, she uttered low moans as if she were in pain. "The traitors! the miscreants!" she murmured at intervals.
They dealt even more severely with Licinia, Caius's wife, and deprived her even of her jointure; and as an addition still to all their inhumanity, they barbarously murdered Fulvius's youngest son; his only crime being, not that he took up arms against them, or that he was present in the battle, but merely that he had come with articles of agreement; for this he was first imprisoned, then slain.
"My precious one," reiterated the old woman appealingly, "tell me, Dea was it aught that I said which angered thee?" Dea Flavia turned large wondering eyes to her old nurse. "Licinia," she said slowly. "Yes, my goddess." "If a man saith that there is one greater, mightier than Cæsar ... he is a traitor, is he not?"
"What hath happened, Licinia?" she had asked feebly as soon as consciousness had returned. "We brought thee home safely, my precious treasure," replied the old woman fervently, "all praise be unto the gods who watched over their beloved." "But how did it happen?" queried Dea with some impatience.
When she was dressed she went out into the atrium and then sent word to the praetorian praefect and his friends that she was ready to receive them. Some of the news from the busy world outside had already reached her ears. Licinia was not like to be chary in imparting to her mistress the scraps of gossip which she had collected.
"But I am so tired," she added after a slight pause, with a weary little sigh, even whilst Licinia, subdued and frightened, stood silently by: "I would like to sleep." "Then sleep, my goddess," said the old woman, "I'll watch over thee." "No! no! I could not sleep if I were watched," rejoined Dea Flavia with the fretfulness of a tired child. "I would rather be alone."
"And stay " she added as Licinia still grumbling prepared reluctantly to obey "I pray thee find out for me all that is going on in the city. Mayhap Tertius will know what has happened or Piso.... Go seek them, Licinia, and find out all that there is to know, so that thou canst tell me everything anon, when I wake."
"A black and villainous traitor, Augusta," said Licinia, whose voice at the mere suggestion had become hoarse with awe. "And what in Rome is the punishment for such traitors, Licinia?" asked the young girl, still speaking slowly and measuredly. "Death, my child," replied the old woman.
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