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"If one of my servants should betray me! Like enough the gate is closed at all times. It is said that Hannibal enters the town to-night." "Hannibal in Capua to-night!" came a voice from the rheda a woman's voice, softly and delicately modulated, yet deep and rich in its tones. At the same moment the curtains were drawn aside, and she looked out, beckoning imperiously to the would-be host.
There was a short silence punctuated by the cracking of the whip, the clatter of hoofs, and the crunching of wheels along the pavement; then the curtains once more parted slightly, and Caipor, watchful to serve, saw Marcia's beckoning hand and drew closer to the rheda. "Bend down," she said, and, as he obeyed, she whispered: "You were my brother's servant, Caipor, and you bear his name.
Standing by the rheda, he met Marcia's look of proud defiance, for a moment; then his eyes shifted and seemed to wander; but, cloaking with martial sternness the embarrassment of the barbarian, he spoke in Gallic: "Who are you?" Unable to understand the question, much less to answer it, she turned away and ignored both the man and his words.
"Come," repeated Marcia, and the little inn-keeper trotted up to the rheda and stood watching her with an expression of canine wonder and subservience in his big, dull eyes. "Did I not hear you say that Hannibal was to be in Capua to-night? Have these false Campanians indeed carried out the treachery rumoured of them?"
We will take his advice, and instead of traveling in the clumsy rheda over the sandy road, we will ride out on horseback. The views along the road are pretty now in a woody skirt, now by meadows in which the sheep and cattle find a later pasturage than higher up the country; so, by a winding path, we come upon a roomy and hospitable villa. This is Laurentinum, near Laurentum.
On his finger was another emblem of nobility a large, plain, gold ring, conspicuous among several other rings with costly settings. Rheda. Most wealthy Romans had such a major domo, whose position was often one of honour and trust. Pænula. The second order of the Roman nobility. "Salve! Salve, Domine!" cried the slaves a second time, as the carriage drew near.
He signed to his attendants, and, with an obeisance that had in it haughtiness rather than courtesy, he rode away. Glancing cautiously up and down the street, Calavius approached the rheda. "And is it the lady Marcia who is to honour my house?" he began, in words that carried more welcome than did the tone. "A dangerous journey, in these days, and a dangerous destination.
Marcia leaned far out of the rheda and gazed eagerly at the nearing town, Caipor seemed scarcely able to restrain his eagerness to dash forward, while Ligurius shaded his eyes with his hand and viewed the spectacle like a general counting the power of his approaching foe.
His tone changed, as he spoke, to one of fierce enthusiasm, and his listener shuddered. Then, sinking his voice, he went on, as if speaking to himself: "Even now even now before the winter closes in, there might be a chance. Later, they will recover strength and courage, and we we shall become Capuans." Marcia hid her agitation behind the curtains of the rheda.
A distance of one hundred miles was no extraordinary day's journey for him in a rheda, such as we have described it.
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