Hey everybody! Thanks for the reviews and please keep them coming! It's a great encouragement to me. School is over for me now, so hopefully I will have more time to update and finish this book!
This chapter really introduces a new twist—try to keep up!
For many weeks after the death of the child, Marcus Agrippa could not bear to have Calliliana in his sight. This pleased the young woman well indeed; she had time enough now to spare during the long, listless days in her captor's prison.
The young woman took to traversing the many rooms of the villa, her sad, slow step always whisperingly preceding her on the tile floors. She shied away from all save Lavina and her kind friend Appius, who always had a gentle word to say to soothe her aching heart.
"Death," she whispered to herself sadly one afternoon, as she traipsed through the many halls of the house, "death comes to all and all come to death. It should be beautiful, I think, to be dead. Death reunites those who have perished apart—it heals breaches of trust, love, and honor. It punishes the unjust, and rewards the righteous. Yes, yes indeed, death must be a welcome savior to this life…"
"What do you speak of, Darling?" Calliliana turned abruptly, her green eyes wide with surprise, to behold Lavina gazing upon her, a troubled light in her eyes.
"I was only wishing, my friend. That is all." The slave girl bit her lip and tears filled her eyes.
"I did not think it possible that you could be more anguished than you were before. Yet now, now a sadness not of this world seems to fill you—ever since the death of that little babe." Fury filled the face of the maiden and she turned her back upon her friend.
"Never speak of that thing again. I told you once, Lavina, and I shall tell you again—it was not my son. It was the seed of the devil's loins…and that is all. I am not glad of its death, that is certain…" an uncanny fire filled the maiden's sea-eyes, "…and yet…yet I would not have wished it to live. I could not have taken that child to my breast, could not have loved it, and could not have mothered it. It would not have had joy in this life." Lavina nodded slowly and wiped at her eyes.
"We shall speak of this no more. Come, Dear, Agrippa is not in the villa. Will you not join Appius and myself for some refreshment?" Calliliana looked at her without understanding, as if the words spoken to her were in another language.
"I do not wish food, thank you." Lavina frowned and took the maiden's hands in her own.
"You have not eaten anything since yesterday morning, Calliliana, and even then it was only a small piece of dry bread. You must eat; you must keep up your strength…"
"WHY?" Calliliana wrenched herself away from the touch of her friend, and placed her hands on her brow. "WHY SHOULD I EAT? WHY SHOULD I KEEP UP MY STR…" her voice broke in a sob in the middle of her scream. The tormented girl wrenched her hands through her golden hair, her face wet with the tears of her anguish. "Do you see me now?" she gasped, turning wide, hysterical eyes upon the now-frightened slave woman. "Do you see this face? These eyes? They appear the same to you and the world as they were before. My mind, however, you cannot see…and thank God for that! He has damaged me, Lavina, damaged me past all bearing and endurance. I feel as if I have no mind anymore…the kindness and love in my heart has been shattered and turned to hatred…"
"What of your God, Calliliana? It was you who encouraged me in the bitterness of my anguish and despair; it was you who taught me how to hope again…"
"WHERE IS HE THEN?" shrieked the girl. She fell to her knees upon the cold tile floor, ignoring the sharp pangs of agony that the action instigated. She could not speak for a few moments, a few wretched moments as she let the tears of distress course down her face. "F-forgive me," she whispered brokenly. "But I am now where you were before—I doubt, and I have no hope." The face of Lavina fell tragically, and she stepped away.
"Then it is now I who must pray for you, my friend." Calliliana covered her face as if ashamed of her outburst.
"You are welcome to do so…if you think it will be of any good. I have been tested, Lavina…I have been 'refined by fire'. And I have not come through the fires unscathed." She stood then, and turned her back upon her loving friend once more. "Leave me be, I beg of you. I must go and collect myself." Wordlessly, Lavina nodded and slowly left the side of her anguished companion.
"Do not think," Calliliana whispered to herself fiercely, as she entered the library-room of the villa, "do not allow yourself to think. It will only cause greater pain; greater heartache." She leaned her head against the bookshelves lining the wall and sighed. "Find something to read, try to relax…" It was at that moment, the shelves behind her fingers shifted slightly.
The woman jumped away, startled, and looked at the wall in shock. How many times had she entered the library to find something to read…and yet only now did the wall move.
"A door," she whispered incredulously, as the full meaning of the shifting shelves dawned upon her tormented senses like light smiting the eyes of a confined prisoner. "These shelves are a secret door…" Without stopping to think of the consequences, Calliliana leaned her full weight upon the shelves.
With a rather quiet squeak of hidden hinges, the shelves turned, and the next thing the maiden knew she was lying upon a dusty floor. Slowly, painfully, she picked herself up and gazed about the room. The only light illuminating the place came from the opening in the secret door, so the girl had to squint to make out anything at all. As she walked slowly forward so as not to injure herself on anything the pall of darkness might be hiding, she descried a small parchment-covered table near the back of the room. "What can this mean?" she whispered softly, as she picked her way carefully towards the table, "Agrippa already has a study…what can be so secret that he keeps it here?" Her hands found the edge of the table, and she carefully gathered the musty-smelling parchments to her chest. The light was far too dim to read the spidery writing scrawled across the parchment, so she cautiously exited the secret chamber." Now," she whispered softly, as she slowly sank to the floor and spread the documents before her, "what can this mean?"
The first few parchments appeared to be pictorial representations of the interior of a large building. There were rooms that looked as if they were for sleeping, chambers that appeared to be fabulous bath-houses, and even one that seemed to be like to a large, central courtyard. Calliliana shook her head in confusion, and cast the first document aside to see if the others could provide more helpful information. "A beautiful edifice it is," she murmured softly, as she squinted her eyes at the infinitesimal writing lining the successive pages, "it looks almost to be a palace…"
And it was. The writing upon the other parchments confirmed that the first document was indeed a sketch of the palace of Emperor Commodus—a thorough sketch, with every room labeled and detailed. "A soldier of the empire is Agrippa," thought Calliliana, "and not a workman. Why would he possess such intricate knowledge of the palace?" Confused, she gazed intently at the diagram of the citadel once more—and noted a small, dark ink stain marking one of the rooms.
The woman peered closer, and saw that the room in question was large compared to the others, that it was comprised of a central room and many surrounding smaller chambers, and that it appeared to be very beautiful and intricate in design. The ceilings were high and vaulted; pillars lined the various smaller rooms of the inner chambers, and a tiny detail appeared to show where a luxurious bed would be positioned. As she gazed upon the splendor of the lovely pictured room, the maiden gasped. "Surely, a room such as this must be the sleeping quarters of the emperor!" Calliliana sat back on her heels, a frown creasing her white brow. Why ever would her master own something such as this…and why would a mark be made upon the Emperor's room?
The girl hastily gathered the papers once more and deposited them in the secret chamber. She rummaged through the others, unsure of what she was looking for, or even why she was searching for it. It was enough to the woebegone, lonely woman that something had at last taken her mind from her own troubles and given her an enigma to solve.
As Calliliana was about to seize the first parchment that she found next, her wandering hands fell upon a small bound book. She took it quickly and entered the library once more, hoping against hope that the book might provide some information she needed to solve the puzzle.
"Maius the thirteenth, in the first year of the reign of Commodus, Emperor of the Roman realm," she read, her voice low and quiet and her emerald eyes casting cautious glances about her as she did so.
"By the order of the Emperor I, Marcus Agrippa, have been sent from his side. I served his father well as did my father before me, yet the Emperor wished me instead to leave my men and my army and hunt for followers of the Christian sect."
Calliliana's breath came quickly, her face flushed, and she convulsively clenched the tablet to her chest.
"I departed as my orders dictated I must, but not without bitterness in my heart. I must respect a ruler in order to serve him, and respect I have none for the boy who now sits upon the throne of Rome. His father was, indeed, a true leader possessed of a brave and noble heart. His son is far too weak to rule the realm—thus it seems to me, and to others. By sending me from his side, young Commodus has unwittingly dug himself into an early grave. There are those who support me, who follow me—my men mostly, yet there are indeed others who find me to be a much more fit ruler than he who now wears the crown."
The young woman stood and let the book fall from her fingers. The soft noise it made as it fell to the floor seemed louder to her than the thunder of a summer storm, and she covered her ears in numb shock. "This is treason," she murmured thickly, as if barely comprehending what she had read, "and treason brings death! What am I to do with this information?" A thought, a horrible thought, suddenly filled the half-crazed mind of the girl. If Agrippa felt the emperor was too naïve to rule all of Rome; if he felt as if he himself would be a "much more fit ruler"…then how would he plan to dispose of the emperor?
She lifted the book once more and frantically looked through it—but the writing stopped abruptly after what she had read. The maiden flew into the mysterious chamber once more, threw the book on the table, and snatched up the sketch of the Emperor's bastion once more. "What does he plan to do?" she whispered, as her eyes rapidly flickered over the page, "how does he mean to depose the emperor?" It was then, upon closer observation of the diagram, that the girl noticed something strange—strange enough to make her gasp in shock.
The large ink-mark upon the Emperor's bed-chamber was not, in fact, a mark.
It was a sketch.
A sketch of a set of bookshelves, near to the Emperor's bed—bookshelves alike to the ones concealing Agrippa's secret chamber.