CHAPTER EIGHT

There will never be a place so lovely to my heart as this island, thought Marcus as he stood on the bank and looked at the rivers and the illuminated distant view of the hills.

It was near sunset. He gazed at Arpinum. It was a rising line of broken, golden radiance, brilliantly gold, brilliantly light, against the shining bronze mountain on which it lay. The time was early autumn, with all the trees burning red or gold or copper on the island; the rivers were blazingly blue. The waters chattered busily, or murmured against the bank on which Marcus stood. The birds conversed; the wind was sweet with brazen grass and ripening fruit and heavy grain. Blue haze enveloped distant trees and distant water. A heron paused on its stilts to look at the youth, then fished in the water. Three crows, gossiping merrily, laughed among themselves on a branch. A cow lowed; a sheep called to her young. Somewhere goats exchanged a burst of mirth. Why do all things laugh innocently, except man? thought Marcus.

He saw the bridge leading to the mainland. No one had been there before, as it arched over the waters, for this was a private island owned by the grandfather. But now a figure stood on it, looking down at the rushing river, the figure of a maiden. A slave from the household? thought Marcus. A wanderer from Arpinum? But girls of discreet family did not wander. They were always chaperoned, and slaves from the household were kept busy by Helvia. It was approaching the hour of dinner. Curious, Marcus sauntered diffidently toward the figure, squinting his eyes against the red sun.

He reached the approach to the bridge. The young girl; who was leaning on the stone ledge, turned to look at him idly, and without apparent curiosity. She did not speak. Marcus hesitated. Should he tell her that the bridge was private, as was the island? But she did not stir in confusion, nor remove her folded arms from the parapet. It was as if he, not herself, was the intruder.

“Greetings,” said Marcus at last, setting foot on the bridge.

“Greetings,” she responded in the softest and clearest voice. She looked down at the river then at the island, then at Arpinum. “It is beautiful,” she said.

Marcus slowly approached her. She smiled at him without shyness. She was tall and graceful, almost as tall as himself, and near his age. She wore a green chiton and a filmy white palla, and from her dress and her ornamented sandals he guessed she was no servant girl. She had an air of assurance and simple dignity. Then he could see her more clearly, and he thought he had never seen a girl so lovely. She was like spring, exquisitely formed and budding. Auburn hair flowed far below her waist, burnished in the setting sun, and rippling like water. It seemed to catch fire around her face, which was luminously pale. She had eyes of so deep a blue that the color overflowed, and her lashes were as auburn as her hair, as were her brows. Her nose was fine and slender and like marble, and so were her chin and throat. Her mouth was sweet, as full and fresh as raspberries, with a deep indentation on her lower lip as if laughter had kissed it.

“I am Marcus Tullius Cicero,” said Marcus. He could not look away from this entrancing creature, and stared openly.

Her face changed, but only a little. She smiled; she had teeth like shining porcelain. “I am Livia Curius,” she said. “I am visiting family friends in Arpinum. This is your island, is it not?”

“It is my grandfather’s,” said Marcus. He wondered why the girl’s face had changed so subtly when he had told her his name. “Did you not know?”

“Yes,” she said. She turned her profile to him and studied the river. “But, is beauty forbidden? Do you feel offended that I am here?”

There was spirit in her voice. “No,” said Marcus. Her name hung on his thoughts. Then he remembered. Quintus Curius, the formidable, dark and intellectual youth who was the friend of Lucius Sergius Catilina, the sullen and hateful youth who was his, Marcus’ enemy, solely because Lucius was his enemy!

“Is Quintus Curius your cousin, Lady Livia?”

The girl shrugged lightly. She still contemplated the river. “A distant one,” she said. “I am the betrothed of Lucius Sergius Catilina. I believe you were schoolmates?”

What else has she heard about me? thought Marcus, disturbed. He wanted the girl to look at him, to see him as he was. Then he thought: Betrothed!

“Is Lucius here also?” he asked.

“No. He is again in Greece.” Her tone was indifferent. “Do you not correspond?” Now she looked at him fully and the blue of her eyes lilted.

“No,” said Marcus. “We are enemies.”

He knew he was blunt. He stood near the girl and stared at the river. “You must know that, Lady Livia.”

“Yes. I know. Even if I also know that Lucius is a liar.” She spoke calmly. “But a delightful liar. He is marrying me because I am an heiress. Let us talk of pleasanter things.”

Marcus was silent. Was it his imagination only that the colors of land and air became suddenly more vivid and brighter and warmer? He let his glance move sideways. He saw the white and dimpled arms of the girl lying on the arched parapet. He saw her dainty hands and the rings upon them, and the bracelets and the colored fingernails. The wind lifted her veil and it blew across his face. It seemed to have a natural scent of its own, as sweet as spring.

“Why are you marrying Lucius?” he asked, understanding he was rude, but an urgency was upon him. “You say he is a liar.”

“But a delightful liar.” She turned her head and looked at him and she was laughing. “And, is he not marvelous in his appearance?”

“Fascinating,” said Marcus, wryly. “But something more is required in a husband.” The girl’s smile was a little mocking as she surveyed him.

“Show me your island,” she said, with a quick maidenly hauteur.

“It is sunset,” he said.

He hated himself for being so abrupt, but he wondered where the guardians of the girl were, and why she moved about so freely. Now she was openly laughing at him, and dimples flashed about her mouth. “I heard you were very circumspect,” she said. “Lucius and my cousin do not speak of others often, but they spoke of you, as if you were irritating them constantly.”

“I was not brought up to hate, but I hate them,” said Marcus, and he disliked her laughter which seemed directed at him.

Her face changed again. “I dislike my cousin, Quintus,” she said. “A sour and savage youth. I am not offended by what you have said. And, as you said yourself, Lucius Catilina is fascinating. Moreover, my guardians have arranged and approved the marriage, and what have I to say? I exchange money for a great name. It is a fair exchange.”

A sensation of calamity came to Marcus. He wanted to seize the girl’s arm and shake her and tell her she must not marry Lucius. But she was gazing at him with coolness as if affronted. “Show me your island,” she said again to him.

Before he could say another word she had run behind him and was racing down the bridge to the island, her palla floating behind her like a sunlit cloud. Her spirit, her quick changes of mood, her subtle expressions, dazed Marcus. He followed her more slowly. She stood on the bank as if with impatience at his delay. “Look at that heron!” she cried, and waved her hand at the silent and impassive bird. “He is not afraid of us.”

“Why should he be afraid? He knows I will not hurt him,” said Marcus.

The girl was still again. The blue of her eyes dwelled on his face thoughtfully. Then, just as he believed that he had made her understand she laughed merrily at him, and ran back from the bank like a flash of quicksilver. She made hardly a sound; she was like an unpredictable wood nymph, illusive at one moment, too open and free the next, quiet for an instant, then mocking. Marcus followed the faintly fragrant movement of her into the small forest of the island. She was nowhere in sight. Had he dreamed that he had seen her and had talked to her? He looked about him through the dim aisles of poplars and oaks. Behind him the waters plashed and revealed themselves like blue and racing light, but here it was dusky, the silence broken by the rushes of forest creatures and the slow falling of vivid leaves.

“Livia?” he called.

There was no answer. Had this baffling girl circled, returned to the bridge and crossed it, forgetting him or dis-dismissing him as of no consequence?

“Livia?” he called again, less surely now. Why did the forest aisles appear so empty now, so alien, as they had never appeared before? Why was the fragrance of autumn less, and the wind cooler?

A piece of bark fell smartly on his head, and he uttered an exclamation. He looked up at the tree and saw Livia perched as agilely as Quintus on a high branch, laughing down at him like a wood nymph indeed, her green dress vivid against the scarlet leaves, her palla like mist floating about her, her lovely face shining with beauty.

“You are no woodsman,” she said in her sweet and penetrating voice, “or you should have found me at once.” She threw another piece of bark down on him, gleefully, then like Quintus she called, “Catch me!”

Marcus did not pause to consider it unseemly that a betrothed girl should behave like a boy. He was up on the first branch before he realized it. The girl bounded higher above him and his face became hot at the sight of suddenly revealed and beautifully formed smooth young calves and thighs. She seemed to climb without effort, without tearing her clothing, without uttering irritable noises at any scraping of rough twig or branch. Then she was easily at the top of the tree, swinging lightly. She did not look down at the climbing youth. She looked, from her perch, at some distant scene and began to sing in soft voice, some weird, hardly heard melody. Marcus paused halfway to gaze up at her, full of wonder. Never had he met such a strange and delightful creature, untouchable, removed, full of fantasy. She gave the aspect of one alone, unaware of man, clothed in secrets, immortal. The high light flashed on her uplifted face and in her wildly blue eyes, and Marcus, for an instant, was conscious of a little fear. Her veil, freed at that height from restraining foliage, lifted and’ blew in the wind, concealing her features one second, like a nymph in moonlight, revealing them the next. Her hair was a glow of fire on her shoulders and breast and back. She swung and sang, detached from the earth, in an aloneness that defied the youth, or separated him from her.

Then she glanced down at him and her face changed again, became solemn, almost cold.

“It is dangerous,” said Marcus. “For a girl.”

She regarded him musingly as if he spoke in a language she did not know, as one listens to the conversation of creatures not of one’s kind.

“Shall I help you down?” he asked, afraid of her remoteness.

She did not answer. Without visible effort she stepped down through the branches, balancing gracefully, descending without sound, never once slipping or clutching. She passed him and did not look at him. She fell to the ground from the last branch as lightly as a falling leaf. Then, her head drooping a little, she stood as if waiting, and Marcus, climbing down, wondered if she waited for him or for some voice he would never hear, or some call beyond his ears.

Then he stood beside her. They did not speak. They did not look at each other. They only looked through the arches of trees at the incandescent water, now tipped with crimson on the hurrying crests. All at once a sense of peace and fulfillment came to Marcus. It was rare for him to make an overt gesture to anyone, out of his shyness and his respect for others. But his hand moved a little and took the hand of the girl. He expected her to change her mood again and snatch her hand away, offended or laughing. But her hand lay in his, smooth, cool as leaves.

“What were you singing?” asked Marcus in as low a voice as he could.

The girl said nothing.

“It was the sound of the wind in the spring,” said Marcus, “or like a fountain at night when everyone is asleep.”

“It is my own song,” said the girl. She looked at him again, and again he was startled by the absolute blue of her eyes, darkened faintly now by her lashes. “They say I am a very peculiar girl. They do not know.”

“Then I am peculiar also,” said Marcus. The girl smiled at him. “Yes,” she said. “Were you not I would not be standing with you now.” Her young breast, just rising under her dress, lifted and trembled. “They do not know,” she repeated. “I have never told them. My dear mother had a mortal disease and while she was dying my father plunged his dagger into his breast and died with her. They think I did not see them, but I stood in the doorway in the moonlight. When my father was dying he held my mother in his arms, and they died with their lips together, and my father said, ‘Where you go, my beloved, there will I go also.’ I have never forgotten. I sing my song to them, so they will hear me in the Elysian Fields.”

Marcus thought the story not horrifying, but infinitely moving. The girl said, as if she heard his thoughts, “I was five years old, my mother was but twenty, and my father a year older. I did not grieve for them; I do not grieve for them now. They could not endure to be separated. Not even the gods could part them.”

Marcus thought of his own parents. Was it possible that disparate as they were in character they were one flesh? Was marriage truly sacred, as the old laws asserted?

The girl startled him by speaking in a different voice. “Why was the heron not afraid of you? They are the shyest of birds.”

“I have never hurt one of them, nor any other creature,” said Marcus. “Surely God loves them also. I respect that love in them.”

The girl dropped his hand. She bounded ahead of him, her palla caught by the evening breeze. Marcus did not follow her. She raced to the bank and the bridge, and then she was upon it.

“Will you come again, Livia?” he called after her.

But she did not answer. She disappeared as a nymph disappears, and he was alone in the forest, to wonder again if the brief and baffling encounter had occurred at all. He was only sure of it when he felt a sharp abandonment as though something ineffably lovely had left him after the smallest of glimpses.

At dinner that evening he was unusually silent among his grandfather, his father, and his adoring brother, Quintus. His mother, as befitted an old Roman, did not dine with the men. Tullius had recovered, as Helvia had predicted, from the bout of illness which had brought him close to death.

“Something has disturbed our Marcus,” he said.

“It is the pangs of youth,” said the grandfather. “How I remember them! All things seemed wondrous and engrossing to me at that age. Yet, in the light of years, how ordinary they truly were!”

But Tullius was not satisfied, because he still had dreams.

“Do not let your dreams die, Marcus,” he said in a low voice to his son.

Marcus could not understand his curious unease and his inner excitement. He knew these had been aroused by the strange girl he had encountered—if he had really encountered her at all. But what they portended, what they meant, he did not know. He thought about her betrothal to Lucius Sergius Catilina, and his mind recoiled incredulously. It was something out of place, out of reality, not to be accepted. A marriage between those two would be like a marriage between a nymph and an evil centaur. A marriage between a stone and a flower. A marriage between a dryad and a wolf. He put down his knife and stared emptily at his plate.

“What is it, Marcus?” asked Tullius.

But Marcus could not answer. For once, he could not speak to his father, nor to anyone. Something was sealed within him. So, he thought, there are times when there is no communication, not even among those who love. Could he speak to Archias, who was a poet and wise? No. All at once he thought, I am sure of nothing, and he passed completely into manhood.

Then Quintus, who was feeling his own first surges of adolescence, said, “Marcus is in love.” And he grinned delightedly at his brother.

“Nonsense,” said the grandfather. “He knows no girls, and he has not yet passed through the ceremonies of his age.”

“He is in love with life,” said Tullius, remembering his own youth.

I am in love with Livia, thought Marcus, and suddenly he was taken by ecstasy and by desolation and a sense of loss which in itself was pleasurable.