AURELIUS returned from Syria with his victorious army in the nine
hundred and twenty-ninth year of Rome, 176 of our era, ten years after
the great pestilence. He had merely crushed a local rebellion, but a
vast coalition of nomadic Arab tribes of the desert had been allied with
the rebels, and to the Romans it seemed that their Emperor had won a
great victory in a mighty campaign. Aurelius humored their mood, and
with good judgment, for they needed all the encouragement possible. He
arranged to have his return celebrated by shows of all kinds,
theatrical performances, fights of gladiators, beast fights, horse-races
uncountable and above all, by that thrilling procession of a victor and
his armed soldiers through the city along the Sacred Street, up to the
great temple on the Capitol, which was the highest honor an army and
a commander could receive at the hands of the Roman government, which
signalized a notable victory over notable odds, which was called a
triumph. Of triumphs Rome had seen fewer than three hundred in more than
nine hundred years. Not one of the three hundred had been as magnificent
as the triumph of Aurelius.
Its auxiliary spectacles were similarly magnificent. In particular the
gladiatorial shows surpassed anything within the memory of the oldest
living spectator.
Causidiena, whose eyes troubled her greatly, found that watching the
triumphal procession caused her so much pain that she absented herself
from the remaining shows. To all of these, races, beast-fights and
combats of gladiators, she insisted that the other five Vestals should
go together. The arrangement was unusual, but no one could object, for
no one would hint or even think that the sacred fire would be in any
danger of going out with such a Chief Vestal as Causidiena caring for
it or that she needed any other Vestal to assist her. Likewise her five
colleagues were genuinely pleased that not one of them would miss any
part of the shows.
As the number was odd, Causidiena decreed that they should be conveyed
to the spectacles each in her own state coach, attended by her maid of
honor. The maids, of course, did not sit with the Vestals, but had seats
far back with the populace.
In their luxurious private box in the Colosseum the five Vestals sat
in the ample front row arm-chairs. They were seated not according to
seniority, but Numisia in the middle, Meffia and Brinnaria, as the
youngest, on either side of her, Gargilia next Meffia, and Manlia next
Brinnaria.
In the Imperial loge near them Aurelius, now for more than a year a
widower, presided over the games, clad in his gorgeous silk robes and
attended by his fifteen-year-old son Antoninus, afterward known by his
nickname of “Commodus.” The four tiers of the Colosseum were packed
with spectators, pontiffs, senators, nobles, ambassadors magistrates and
other notables in the front seats along the coping of the arena wall,
lesser notables in the first tier, well-to-do persons in the second
tier, traders and manufacturers and such like in the third tier and the
commonalty in the fourth.
Besides the ninety thousand seated spectators* many thousand more stood
in the galleries, in the openings of the stairways, in any place where
a foothold could be found and from which a view could be obtained. The
outlook from the Vestals’ box was across the level sand to the gigantic
curve of seats, all hidden under their occupants, so that the interior
of the Amphitheatre was a vast expanse of flower-crowned heads, eager
faces and waving fans.
*The author forgets himself. Earlier in the book he
describes an audience of 100,000 as Brinnaria tells the
emperor how she felt down on the sand in her shift, with
“two hundred thousand eyes” (implying one hundred thousand
people) staring at her. In fact, the Colosseum could handle
an audience of about 45 to 50 thousand.--GB ed.
During that second day of gladiatorial fighting Manlia had several times
said to Brinnaria:
“Is there anything wrong? Are you ill? You do not seem yourself!” Each
time Brinnaria had positively denied that anything was wrong and had
asserted that she was entirely herself.
About the middle of the afternoon, the arena was filled with pairs of
gladiators, all the couples fighting simultaneously. Each pair had
with it a trainer, called a lanista, who watched, guided or checked the
fighting.
The contending pairs were of a kind much liked by the Romans, because
of the excitement they afforded, each pair consisting of a light-built,
light-armed, nimble expert pitted against a heavily built, heavily
armed ruffian, the two supposed to be equally matched, the strength and
weapons of the one fully balanced by the skill and agility of the other.
Viewing fights of this kind Manlia felt rather than heard or saw a
change in Brinnaria next her, felt her stiffen and grow silent,
rigid and tense. Manlia glanced at her, followed her gaze and became
interested in the fight Brinnaria was watching. Before them, not
immediately below them, but some distance out in the arena, fought a
conspicuous pair of gladiators. One was a great hulking full-armored
brute of a Goth, helmeted and corseleted, kilted in bronze-plated
leather straps, booted, as it were, with ample shin-guards of thick
hide, bronze-plated like the straps of his flapping kilt. He carried a
big oval shield and threatened with a long straight sword his adversary,
a Roman in every outline, a slender young man, barefoot, bare-legged,
kilted with the scantiest form of gladiator’s body-piece and apron,
clad in a green tunic and carrying only the small round shield and short
sabre of a Thracian. He wore a helmet like a skull cap with a broad
nose-guard that amounted to a mask, above which were small openings for
his eyes.
Conning this pair Manlia’s attention was riveted by the slighter man.
He was very light on his feet, jaunty of bearing and, as it were, ablaze
with self-confidence.
Manlia, who was an expert judge of sword-fighting, perceived at once
that he was a master of his art. His method for the moment was to
hold back, lead his opponent on and bide his time. His attitudes and
movements bespoke the most perfect knowledge of sword play in all its
finest details. But what most held Manlia’s attention was his beauty
of form and a strange something about him, a long-armed, long-legged
appearance. She turned to Brinnaria.
“I should have sworn,” she said, “that there was not in all the world
another man like Segontius Almo. But that Thracian is a duplicate of
him, as like him as if he were his twin brother.”
“More like him than a twin brother,” Brinnaria replied, her voice
muffled and choked. “I’ve been watching him ever since he came in. I
recognized him in the procession this morning. That is Almo.”
“Almo!” breathed Manlia, in a horrified whisper.
“Yes, Almo!” hissed Brinnaria.
“What shall we do?” quavered Manlia.
“Do?” snorted Brinnaria, “do nothing.”
“But we can pray,” Manlia panted. “We can pray. Surely you are praying,
Brinnaria?”
“I am praying,” came the answer, in a viperish whisper. “I’m praying he
may be killed.”
“Killed!” Manlia gasped.
“Yes, killed,” repeated Brinnaria, viciously. “Killing is what he
deserves, mere killing is too good for him. If he wanted to commit
suicide why couldn’t he do it decently at once and privately without all
this elaborate machinery of selling himself as a slave, and lying about
his intentions and disgracing himself by becoming a prize-fighter and
exposing himself to getting killed in public? Why couldn’t he get
killed at Treves or Lyons or Aquileia? Why must he humiliate me by this
exhibition of himself before me and all Rome? The quicker he is killed
the better. I’m praying he’ll be killed at once.”
“Oh, Brinnaria!” groaned the horrified Manlia.
The Thracian was not killed in that first fight; he was never in any
danger of being killed. He played with his man as a cat plays with a
mouse; held him off without an effort, caught the attention of all
the nearby spectators; won their interest by the perfection of his
sword-play; and aroused their enthusiasm by that nameles quality which
marks off, from even the best drilled talent, the man who is a born
genius in his line.
He pinked his victim between corselet and helmet, so lightly that only
those spectators watching most closely saw the lunge, so effectually
that the man died almost as he fell.
“You must have prayed for him to win; I did,” spoke Manlia.
“I didn’t,” Brinnaria snapped. “I prayed for him to be killed. I wish he
had been. I’m not the only one who has recognized him. Aurelius has and
he has told Antoninus; I watched him.”
“How could you?” Manlia exclaimed. “How could you watch anything but
Almo?”
“I could and I did,” Brinnaria asseverated. “I’m looking all ways at
once, just now. The news is all over the Imperial loge already. They are
looking at me as well as at him. I hope he’ll be killed this next bout.”
The lanista, in fact, at once matched Almo with another full-armed
giant. Again Almo gave an exhibition of perfect swordsmanship. The
Romans were as quick to appreciate form in fighting as we moderns are
to applaud our best bail players; they recognized pre-eminence in the
swordman’s art, as we acclaim the skill of a crack baseball pitcher or
cricket bowler.
Almo caught the eye of spectator after spectator, till most of the
audience on that side of the arena were watching the fight in which
he took part to the exclusion of everything else that was going on. He
displayed that perfect balance of all the mental and physical faculties,
that instantaneous co-ordination of eye, brain and muscle, which only an
occasional phenomenon can attain to. He made no mistakes, bore himself
like a dancer on a tight-rope, circled about his adversary, warded off
all his thrusts, lunges and rushes, turned aside his long sword with his
small round shield without a trace of effort, and at his leisure found
a joint in his body armor and pierced his heart with an ostentatiously
difficult lunge delivered with the acme of apparent ease.
“There,” sighed Manlia, “I prayed hard.”
“So did I,” Brinnaria murmured, “but I prayed the other way. He ought
to have been killed already. Numisia has recognized him and he has
been recognized by three or four nobles along the coping. The rumor is
spreading from each of them and running through the audience.”
Manlia, in fact, looking about was aware of an unusual stir among
the spectators, of notes being handed along and read, of whisperings,
callings, signs, pointings; of messengers worming their way from row to
row and from tier to tier.
Almo won his third bout. While it was in progress Manlia had seen one of
the Emperor’s orderlies enter the arena from one of the small doors in
the wall and confer with the chief lanista, who directed the fighting.
By the time Almo began a fourth bout half the audience was looking at
him or at Brinnaria. There were thousands present who had survived the
pestilence, who had been present fifteen years before when she had
let herself down into the arena and had rescued the retiarius. They
remembered her spectacular interference and were curious as to how she
would now comport herself. Brinnaria, erect and calm, fanned herself
placidly.
Almo won his fourth bout.
By this time the arrangements of the lanistas had been so far modified
that, instead of a great throng of fighters, there were, in the whole
immense arena, not more than twenty pairs.
With scarcely a breathing space Almo was pitted against a fifth
adversary. By the time he had disposed of him the entire audience, fully
a hundred thousand souls, were as well aware of what was going on as was
Brinnaria herself. She was pale, but entirely collected. To Manlia she
whispered venomously:
“Castor be thanked, he is certain to be killed, Aurelius has attended
to that.” In fact the Roman sense of fair play was offended when the
lanista gave Almo a mere moment of rest and then set against him a
sixth antagonist. Murmurs ran from tier to tier, there were hoots and
cat-calls.
Aurelius put up his hand and the people became still.
It was not often that the entire throng in the Colosseum focussed its
attention on anyone fighter. That happened now. The dozen or more
other pairs of fighters were ignored, all eyes were on Almo and his
opponent--all eyes that did not stray towards Brinnaria.
Almo was not showing any signs of weariness, but he was plainly
husbanding his strength. The sixth bout was tame--seldom had the
Amphitheatre displayed so mild a set to. The heavy-armed man had seen
Almo dispose of five like himself, he was timid; Almo was not timid,
but he was cautious. The result was a tedious exhibition of fencing for
position, each sword monotonously caught on the other shield. At the end
Almo slashed his opponent’s wrist, feinted, pretended to be unable to
avoid a clumsy thrust, slipped inside the big man’s guard and drove his
sabre deep under his arm-pit.
The Colosseum rang with cheers.
Without so much as a sponging down or a mouthful of wine Almo was faced
by a seventh fresh swordsman in complete armor. This time there were no
caterwaulings or groans. Even the upper gallery had recognized Almo
or been told who he was, even the populace had remembered or had been
informed of the relation between Almo and Brinnaria. Everybody had
recalled or been reminded of her rescue of the retiarius.
The audience collectively comprehended that Aurelius meant Almo to be
defeated and put at an adversary’s mercy before Brinnaria, that he was
testing her.
The habitual hubbub, hum, and buzz of undertones was checked to a very
unusual degree, the Amphitheatre became almost still.
But when Almo fairly duplicated his first bout and neatly, almost
without effort, cut his victim’s throat, the audience cheered him
vociferously.
Louder, if possible did they acclaim his calm and adequate strategy
against his eighth antagonist.
A ninth and a tenth were promptly put beyond power to hurt him by wounds
ingeniously disabling, but far from deadly.
The eleventh bout was more tedious than the sixth.
Almo divined some greater strength or skill in this adversary and played
him warily. When the audience was bored to the point of being almost
ready to call for something diverting Almo slaughtered his man with a
terrible wound between his corselet and kilt.
The twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth antagonists Almo plainly
despised. He stood almost still, hardly altering the position of his
feet except to turn as the huge barbarians circled ponderously about
him. Each he brought down with his first lunge.
As the fifteenth bout began the audience was manifestly impatient and
restive. But they were not bored. That one Thracian, almost without
rest, should successively dispose of fourteen antagonists, in the
fullest armor, was a notable feat. The perfect form of Almo’s fighting
was even more notable. At each victory the audience cheered him till
they were hoarse. They seemed to cheer quite spontaneously and to need
the relief for their feelings. But also they seemed to mean to give him
as long a rest as was in their power. They were all for him.
But no man could go on fighting continually without fatigue. In his
fifteenth bout Almo moved heavily.
The other man was unusually quick for a big man. He handled his big
sword deftly. After much sparring he was too quick for Almo, and the
point of his slender blade scratched Almo’s splay vizor, nicked his
chin, and tore a long shallow slash in the skin of his right breast.
Blood welling through it stained the green of Almo’s tunic; blood
dropping from his chin spotted the bright green.
The populace groaned.
Manlia prayed.
Brinnaria, under scrutiny of two hundred thousand eyes, sat erect,
fanned herself steadily, and gazed straight before her. To all
appearance she was as indifferent to Almo as if he did not exist.
After that Alma moved like a sleep-walker or a man in a dream, dully and
dazedly.
The big man feinted and lunged cleverly. The point of his weapon ripped
Alma’s thigh on the outside above the knee. No man could stand up after
such a wound. He went down, his shield under him.
From all around the arena, from every tier, automatically, thousands
of arms shot out, thumb flat. Instantly every arm whipped back and was
hidden under its owner’s robe. All realized that expression of sympathy
was not their business. A hush fell. Everybody looked at the Emperor and
at Brinnaria.
Brinnaria sat erect in her arm-chair, fanning herself evenly, staring
straight across the arena. The same instinct, the same curiosity which
actuated the rest of the audience, restrained the Vestals from giving
the sign of mercy. All felt that the matter concerned only Aurelius
and Brinnaria, that for anyone else to interfere would be flouting the
Emperor.
Brinnaria, white as a corpse, dizzy and numb, kept up the unvarying
motion of her fan. Otherwise she was perfectly still.
The victor rolled his eyes along the rows of spectators. He got no
inkling of their feelings.
He gazed at the Vestals. The audience saw him gaze that way. Brinnaria
ignored him. Almo and all the world.
The victor looked toward the Emperor.
Aurelius held out his right hand, thumb out.
The lanista removed Almo’s helmet. If anyone had doubted his identity
the doubt was dispelled among all near enough to make out his face.
The victor put one foot on Almo’s chest. Almo stretched his neck.
Brinnaria sat there, tense, pale, but as collected as if she had no
interest in what was going on.
The savage standing over Alma glanced a second time towards the Emperor.
Aurelius was holding his arm at full stretch over the coping, thumb flat
against the extended fingers.
Brinnaria knew that she had won, that Aurelius had put her to the test
before all Rome, that she had stood the test, that all Rome was witness.
Her fingers clutched the handle of her fan. She could hardly feel it in
her grasp.
The big man took his foot from Almo’s chest.
The audience broke into howls of applause, gust after gust of cheers,
roaring like a storm wind in a forest.
Brinnaria saw the arena, saw the spectators, through a film of mist,
through a gray veil, through a fog of blackness. She realized that,
for the first time in her life, she was on the verge of fainting.
Mechanically she looked about her. Her glance fell on Meffia crumpled in
her arm-chair.
That steadied her. If Meffia had fainted, she would not, she would not.
She did not faint. She fanned herself steadily as she watched the
lanistas help Almo to hobble from the arena. When he was gone her
attention returned to Meffia. Gargilia and Numisia were trying to rouse
her.
She remained crumpled, she collapsed, she slid off her chair to the
floor of the box. She lay in a horrid heap unmistakable in its limpness.
The excitement had been too much for Meffia. She was stone dead.
BOOK III--THE REBELLION OF DESPERATION
CHAPTER XV - REHABILITATION
THE death of a Vestal, except from old age, was always regarded by the
Roman populace as a sign of the gods’ disfavor. The death of a young
Vestal, sudden, unexpected and unexplained, could not but cause great
uneasiness throughout all classes of the population.
Moreover, gladiatorial exhibitions were part of the Roman public
worship, which largely proceeded on the naive assumption that the gods
liked just about what men liked and that, the best way to please the
gods and win their favor was to delight them with such spectacles as men
enjoyed, acrobatic exhibitions, dramas, beast-fights, fights of
beasts with men or of men with men, chariot-races and similar exciting
displays, and so put the gods in a good humor. This underlying theory
of diverting spectacles as a species of prayer and as the most effective
kind of prayer was not so much definitely expressed by the Romans, as
tacitly and unconsciously assumed. It was, nevertheless, entirely real
and all Romans felt every public show as an act of public worship, as a
hallowed function.
Most Roman rites were held to be entirely vitiated if a death took
place among the worshippers during the course of the ceremony. To
all solemnities at which only a few persons were present this applied
without qualification and positively. Naturally a death among the crowd
about a temple was held of much less import.
Still less could anyone regard a death amid the vast throng in the
Colosseum or the Circus Maximus. So that Meffia’s sudden end was not
necessarily held a certain indication of the wrath of the gods. But,
as the death of one of the most important functionaries present at the
spectacle, it caused much concern. The dismay of the people the pontiffs
tried to alleviate by all the means in their power, by consultation
of the augurs, soothsayers and professional prophets, and by official
consultation of the Sibylline Books. The general anxiety was somewhat
allayed by their placards and proclamations, announcing that Meffia’s
death was wholly due to her personal weakness and was not to be regarded
as a portent, in particular that it in no way indicated the wrath of the
gods or their rejection of the petition for public safety embodied in
the spectacles celebrating the triumph of Aurelius.
The Temple and the Atrium of Vesta made up an institution in which death
was entirely disregarded. As no seriously ill Vestal was ever allowed
to remain within the limits of the Atrium, but, as soon as alarming
symptoms appeared, was removed from the Atrium and put in charge of
relations or friends, so also the body of a dead Vestal was always
turned over to the care of her family or connections. Though the
Vestals, alone among Romans, possessed the privilege of being buried
inside the walls of Rome, though their funerals were magnificent public
processions, participated in by all the functionaries of the state and
lavishly provided at the public expense, yet the death itself was held
to be a concern of the family of the dead Vestal, not of her surviving
colleagues. The Vestals might mourn but the Atrium was never in
mourning. Its routine went on as if nothing had happened; no sign of
grief was displayed or even permitted; visitors were received as usual.
Among the first visitors to the Atrium on the morning after Almo’s fight
and Meffia’s death was, naturally, Flexinna.
At the first word Brinnaria cut her short.
“I don’t want to hear his name,” she declared. “I’m done with him
forever. I don’t love him any longer; I don’t care for him, even; I hate
him. It does not concern me whether he recovers or not. I’d rather he
wouldn’t recover. The best thing for both of us would be for him to die
anyhow. I wish he were dead; I wish one of those heavy men had killed
him.”
“B-B-Brinnaria!” Flexinna remonstrated, “you t-t-talk like a raving
maniac! You look like a F-F-Fury!”
“I’m furious enough!” Brinnaria snarled, “and I’ve plenty of good cause
for being angry. Was ever woman on earth put in a position so invidious,
so embarrassing? Everybody knew of my rescue of the retiarius, thousands
had seen me rescue him. Everybody knew of my involvement with Almo
before I was taken for a Vestal, of our love for each other, of my
expressed intention to marry him at the end of my service. Everybody
recognized Almo.
“And there I was with the one man on earth in the jaws of death before
my eyes and I with the power to save him if I chose and a hundred
thousand people watching me to see what I would do. And because I had
once before rescued a man in that same situation everybody expected me
to do something unusual and spectacular to save Almo.
“If it had been any other man it would have been the most natural thing
in the world for me to give the signal for mercy and nobody would have
thought anything of it. But, because the man before me was the man I had
expressed my intention of marrying at the end of my service, therefore,
if I had tried to save him, that would be taken as a confession of my
being actuated by the sort of interest which no Vestal has a right to
feel for any man.
“A delightful situation to be placed in!
“And he must needs go out of his way to put me in that position! When
all he had to do was to live the normal life of a Roman gentleman and
all things would in time come right for both of us, he must needs strain
the powers of human ingenuity, compel the forces of time and space, of
wind and wave to conspire to produce that situation and make me suffer
those unnecessary agonies!
“Furious!
“Of course I’m furious.
“Never name him to me!”
When Lutorius Rusco, the new Pontifex of Vesta, called on her she was
less explosive, but still fuming.
She received him in the large room at the east end of the peristyle of
the Atrium, a sort of parlor which had on either side of it three very
small rooms, the six, used as private offices by the six Vestals.
There each had her writing desk, and the cabinets in which she kept her
important papers, letters and such possessions.
After they had exchanged greetings Lutorius motioned towards Brinnaria’s
little sanctum. Brinnaria bridled.
“I’ve nothing to say that we cannot say out here,” she advertised, “and
I do not want to hear anything that cannot be said out here.”
Lutorius was tactful and had his way. When they were alone, he said:
“You were magnificent! You behaved splendidly. You could not have done
better. We are all proud of you, from the Emperor down to the lowest
slumgullion, every single Roman of us. You are certainly the most
popular woman alive and your popularity is now of a sort to last as long
as you live, complete and unqualified. You were popular before, but with
considerable reservations. The hierarchy liked you, but were not sure
that they ought to approve a Vestal who had perpetrated such exploits
as yours, particularly your trouncing poor old Faltonius. The nobility
admired you, but shook their heads over your stock-farming. The populace
were enthusiastic about you, but, like the upper classes, were uneasy
because of your expressed intention to marry at the end of your service
and to marry a specified man, who had been your boyish lover. All
classes acclaimed you as a woman, but nearly everybody was dubious about
you as a Vestal.
“Now nobody has any hesitation about feeling that you are all a Vestal
should be, a priestess whose prayers are certain to be heard and
answered.”
Brinnaria made a wry face.
“My prayers were not heard yesterday,” she sighed. “Almo was not killed.
I was praying hard to have him dead and have it all over with and done
with forever.”
Lutorius turned on her a slow, benignant, indulgent smile.
“Daughter,” he said, “you must remember that you are not the only
Vestal. Four Vestals were praying that Almo be saved, each praying not
only with her lips but with every fibre of her being. And your heart and
soul were praying silently with them and against the fierce prayers of
your lips.”
“It is not so,” she denied. “Every fibre of me was praying as my lips
prayed. My prayers were genuine.”
“I am sure you thought so,” Lutorius agreed. “It was natural for you to
feel that way. You were very angry. But your anger will wear off.”
“My anger may,” Brinnaria admitted, “but never my resentment and my
disgust.”
“Only time can prove whether your forecast is correct,” the Pontiff
soothed her, “but are you justified even in being resentful? Ought you
not rather to be thankful that chance or fate or the direct intervention
of the gods working through Almo gave you the precious opportunity to
free yourself from the shadow of an imputation that lay upon you from
your entrance into the order? Rome vaguely suspected you of too warm an
interest in Almo. Much of Rome had seen and all Rome had heard of your
theatrical rescue of a gladiator totally unknown to you. All Rome knew
your impulsive nature. All Rome has now seen you perfectly controlled
and outwardly calm with Almo on the verge of death before your eyes.
Everybody has watched you ignore him and show less interest in his
fate than you once manifested towards a casual savage. Your outward
observance of the conventions under such trying circumstances has
abolished any qualms the people felt because of your many past
unconventionalities. This puts you in a very strong position toward any
possible accusation or trial. You know how earnestly you have talked to
me of your dread of such contingencies. Ought you not, after thinking it
over, to forget your anger against Almo and to feel positively grateful
for the opportunity so to exalt ourself?”
“Perhaps I ought,” Brinnaria mused. “The value to me of the results I
had not thought of, but admit it now that you expound it. But I am not
grateful. I suffered too much. I am still smarting with indignation.
“And, apart from any remains of anger, I ache with the humiliation of
it all. Think of the infamy, of the degradation Almo has brought on
himself!”
Lutorius pursed his lips.
“There is a certain social stigma upon any man who has joined a
prize-fighting gang,” he conceded, “but the obloquy resulting from
having been a gladiator has greatly attenuated amid the loose manners
of our day. Nothing that becomes fashionable remains disgraceful. The
social disgrace of it has greatly lessened as the thing has become more
usual, and freemen who have been gladiators are rather acclaimed and
sought after than condemned and shunned. They win a sort of vogue, if
successful fighters.
“The treatment of such persons has greatly changed in recent years. Even
since I began to remember there has been an all but universal alteration
in the general attitude towards such cases--they have become too
numerous for the old feelings to survive. Not only Roman citizens have
entered gladiatorial schools, risen high in the profession, fought
countless fights, served out their time as prize-fighters, and returned
to their families, but noblemen have done so, even senators. Vescularius
is as much a senator as if he had not won seventy-eight bouts in three
years.”
“I know it,” Brinnaria admitted, “and I have thought over all that. But
I am old-fashioned in my feelings even if I have often been the reverse
in my behavior. I am revolted at the thought of Almo as a professional
cut-throat--I was insulted at the sight of him in the arena. I feel that
by his abasement of himself he has obliterated my love for him. It is as
if he had never existed. I shall not marry him, even if we both outlive
my obligatory term of service. I shall never marry anybody. I shall die
a Vestal.”
“You feel that way now, of course,” Lutorius agreed, “but you will get
over it, though you do not think so now.”
“I do not believe I shall ever get over it,” Brinnaria declared. “So
many things rankle in my thoughts, the small things even more than what
is more important. I grind my teeth over the mere legal consequences
of his having been a gladiator. He will forfeit half the properties he
inherited and he can never hold any office, civil or military.”
“All that,” said Lutorius, “the Emperor will attend to in full. And your
thinking of such trifles shows that you even yet care more for Almo than
you admit to yourself.
“You must let me tell you about him. He is in the care of the best
physicians in Rome. They assure me that he will recover, that his face
will show but the merest trace of a scar, no disfigurement whatever,
and that he will walk without the slightest limp. He is comfortable and
convalescing nicely. I am going to bring you news of him daily, whether
you think you want it or not, and you are going to listen to me because
I tell you to.”
Brinnaria, for once in her life, was submissive and silent.
Not many days later the Pontiff greeted her with a contented smile.
“Almo,” he said, “is now practically recovered. He is well enough to
have enjoyed brief visits from several of his former cronies. He is in
his house on the Carinae, and it is besieged by all the fashionables
of Rome, not only his boyhood friends and acquaintances, but people who
never spoke to him. Everybody is rushing to call on him.
“He is a free man again. At an intimation of the Emperor’s wishes
Elufrius became as supple as possible and all willingness to oblige.
He asked a huge price for Almo’s release, and no wonder, for after the
advertisement you gave him, Almo could have commanded fabulous fees for
all future fights and the profits accruing to Elufrius must have been
enormous. So Elufrius had to be paid a large sum, but nothing compared
to even one year’s accumulation of revenue from Almo’s estates
administered by his agents. So Almo will never feel that. The papers
have all been drawn, signed and sealed. The cash has been paid. Almo is
no longer a member of a gladiatorial band.
“And, at a word from the Emperor, the Senate framed and passed a decree
relieving Almo of all the legal disabilities inhering in his past. He
has been restored to his former rank in the nobility, has been confirmed
in the possession of all inheritances which he might otherwise have
forfeited, has been declared free from all stain and entirely fit to
hold any office in the service of the Republic. The decree has been
engrossed, sealed and signed by the Emperor. Almo is a nobleman as
before. Are you pleased?”
“I am,” Brinnaria confessed.
Lutorius nodded.
“Now, do not take umbrage,” he said, “at what I am about to ask. If you
must say no, say no without being offended. May I tell the Emperor what
you have said to me?”
“Certainly,” Brinnaria authorized him. “Aurelius is so good a friend to
me that sometimes I think he is the best friend I have on earth.”
After an interval of some days the Pontiff hinted that the Emperor
desired to see her. Brinnaria’s disposition to stand upon ceremony
and to insist on her full rights as a Vestal had waned as she grew
to maturity. In her dealing with Aurelius she had long laid it aside
altogether and likewise with Lutorius, both were so unassuming, so
manifestly actuated by the sincerest regard for her. Now she obediently
sent in her application for an audience with the Emperor.
It was accorded her about twenty days after Almo’s fight. Aurelius came
straight to the point.
“Daughter,” he said, “I want you to tell me the entire truth. You
can confide in me without reservation and you should do so without
hesitation, since I ask it.
“What I wish you to tell me is this: Has your lover’s behavior
effaced your regard for him, as you asserted to Lutorius, or were you
self-deceived? Is everything at an end between you and will you ignore
his existence in future and remain a Vestal for life or have your
feelings overcome your displeasure and are you again thinking of him and
of your future as you did in the past?”
“Castor be good to me,” Brinnaria confessed. “I did think his folly had
alienated me from him forever, but the more I brood over it all the more
I realize that no matter what he has done or does or will do I love
him just as genuinely as if he deserved it, and as far as I can judge I
shall love him to the last breath I draw. I am ashamed of my weakness,
but I foresee that, when my service is over, I shall be just as eager to
marry him as if he had been all he ought to have been.”
“You please me,” said Aurelius, “particularly in the way you put it.
“I am not in the habit of giving a second chance to any man. But Almo’s
case is so peculiar and the circumstances so unusual and my interest in
him is so compelling that I am going to make an exception in respect
to him. I shall give him another opportunity as an officer. I have
reflected where to send him and I have concluded to relegate him to
Britain. There, in the north, our frontier, pushed far beyond the
former line, is ceaselessly attacked by the Caledonian savages. My
predecessor’s great earthwork needs larger garrisons. There Almo will
find occupation and may rehabilitate himself. There he will be under the
watch of Opstorius, who is a stern and scrupulous governor. He sets out
this very day.
“Now is the time for me to speak to you of Calvaster. Calvaster,
unfortunately, is as indispensable as ever, even more so. My impulse
was to banish him, but I had to forego the idea. I contented myself with
summoning him to my presence and telling him in so many words that the
slightest suspicion of any further machinations by him against you or
Almo would draw down on him the unescapable consequences of my severest
displeasure. By that admonition, and by his chagrin at the unexpected
and unwelcome outcome of his plot, I think him sufficiently punished.
Also I think him thoroughly cowed. He will make no further attempt to
trouble you.
“It appears that when he was touring Spain, inspecting the copies of
the sacred books at all the chief temples of the five provinces,
he recognized Almo in the arena at Corduba. He at once used all the
influence in his power to arrange that Elufrius should bring his gang
of fighters to Rome and that their bouts should be so managed that Almo
would be saved to fight before you as he did. Almo himself found this
out through Elufrius since he became again a free man and in control of
his fortune, and it took a great deal of money and the participation of
a great many experts to uncover and prove the facts. Proved they have
been to my satisfaction and Calvaster’s confusion.
“Almo had expected to serve his three years in Spain and was as dismayed
as possible when he found he was to be transferred to Rome. But an
articled gladiator has taken oath to submit to anything, specifying
death, torture, burning, wounding, flogging and more besides, an
articled gladiator cannot object to fighting anywhere. Almo had to
acquiesce.
“And now, having heard that it was not wholly his fault that you were
so cruelly tried before all of us, will you not agree to say farewell to
him a second time?”
In the flood-tide of her revulsion of feeling Brinnaria could refuse
Aurelius nothing. The Emperor gave a signal and Almo was ushered in as
he had been six years before.
Brinnaria’s eager scrutiny could detect no limp in his gait, could
barely descry the scar on his chin, even when she knew so well where to
look for it. She noted that he looked well, vigorous and very handsome
in his gilded armor and scarlet cloak. She contrasted their magnificent
surroundings with the rough frontier to which he was going.
Almo tried to speak and choked.
“Caius,” she said, “the Emperor has told me how it all came about.
Don’t ask me to forgive; I ask your pardon for misconceiving you; I have
nothing to forgive in you. If you are what I believe you to be I shall
never have to forgive anything from you. Go, and with the help of the
blessed gods, prove yourself all you ought to be. Farewell!”
And Almo, as he bowed, managed to say:
“Farewell!”
CHAPTER XVI - VAGARY
TERENTIA FLAVOLA, who was taken as a Vestal to fill Meffia’s place, was
a really beautiful girl.
Her hair was golden hair in fact, not merely in name; her eyes were an
intense, bright blue; her complexion was exquisite, the delicate texture
and perfect whiteness of her skin emphasized by the healthful coloring
which came and went on her cheeks. Every one of the Vestals fell in love
with her at once, most of all Brinnaria.
Besides her good looks Terentia had a charming disposition, a pretty
unconsciousness of herself and a winning deferentialness towards her
elders. The combination made her irresistible.
Also she was an interesting child, being amazingly precocious, not as
Brinnaria had been, in growth and behavior, for she was a complete
child in all respects, but in being what moderns call an infant prodigy.
Infant prodigies in ancient times displayed their unusual powers chiefly
by recitations, mostly of poems, which they learned by rote and repeated
with very little understanding of what they rehearsed. More than most of
her kind Terentia comprehended what she declaimed, but she knew by heart
many poems entirely beyond her childish grasp. At barely eight years of
age she was able to reel off without hesitation or effort anyone of an
amazingly long list. With little prompting she could recite some of the
longest narrative poems in Latin literature and she needed prompting
only to give her the cue words at the beginning of each book and of each
important episode.
Besides her amazing powers as a reciter she was already proficient in
Greek, talked it easily and knew many poems in that language, which all
educated Romans spoke and which was used more than Latin at Court.
But her chief distinction came from her capability as a musician.
In music she was not only an infant prodigy, but very much of a born
genius. Her memory for any composition she heard once was unfailingly
accurate; her rendition of anything she knew was more than perfect,
since to perfection of rendition she added sympathetic interpretation.
She was already reputed the best female performer on the lyre, the most
popular instrument in ancient times. The lyre had an effect something
between that of a guitar and a harp, with some of the characteristics of
the modern banjo, zither and mandolin.
Since the lyre was looked upon as frivolous and unsuited to the gravity
of a Vestal, Brinnaria introduced Terentia to the organ. This instrument
the child had heard, but had not learned to play, as organs were
expensive in those days, whereas Terentia’s family, although of the most
ancient nobility, were in very straitened circumstances.
To the organ Terentia took with great enthusiasm, and in performing on
it she soon surpassed her teacher.
Brinnaria’s playing on the water-organ was similar to the piano music
of a modern girl who has mostly taught herself and who plays largely by
ear; Terentia played it as a born genius in our days plays her piano,
with impeccable exactitude, inimitable individuality and compelling
charm. Her organ recitals were soon a chief feature of the social life
in the Atrium, each thronged by the most fashionable ladies in Rome,
who competed for invitations. Her vogue in no way spoiled Terentia, who
played with just as much zest for her co-inmates of the Atrium, or
when she was entirely alone amusing herself at the organ. Teaching her,
playing with her, listening to her, took up a good deal of Brinnaria’s
time and came to be a great solace and comfort to her.
Even more was this abundance of good music a solace and a comfort to
Causidiena, for, like Dossonia, her predecessor, like so many former
Chief Vestals, Causidiena was going blind from some disorder slow,
painless and obscure, altogether baffling to the best medical and
surgical skill.*
*Clearly cataracts. As a matter of fact they WERE sometimes treated even
this long ago, but the treatments did not meet with much success, and
Causidiena probably would not have cared to take the risk.
For much of the ritual of Vesta and much of the participation of the
Vestals in the public worship in general, the presence of the Chief
Vestal was essential.
She was the Vestal, the others were only her assistants and in training
to succeed her. But as Causidiena became less and less able to see, all
matters which could be attended to by others devolved more and more
upon Numisia. Among her colleagues Numisia had greatest confidence in
Brinnaria, so that Brinnaria’s duties occupied her insistently.
Besides her ritual duties and her music she kept up her interest in
horse-racing; in fact, she became more and more devoted to this pastime,
which Lutorius countenanced, but which her detractors characterized as
indelicate.
The success of her venture was notable. She became an important local
dealer in racers. Her colts, sold at well-advertised auctions, were
sought after, were competed for, brought fancy prices, won many races,
came to have a reputation that spread beyond the city, over all Italy,
even into the provinces. Her career as a stock farmer was brilliant,
meteoric, phenomenal.
Between her duties, her music and her horse-breeding Brinnaria’s mind
was pretty well occupied. She had no time to brood and passed six
contented and almost happy years.
She had reason for happiness in the fact that reports from Almo were
uniformly good. To Flexinna he wrote at intervals and his letters
reached their destination without much irregularity. In those days
communication with Britain was by no means so easy as with Africa. Gaul
was a country well Romanized and very populous, busy and prosperous. All
across it were good roads, excellent bridges and frequent post houses.
But between Italy and Gaul were the Alps, where the winter snows blocked
the roads for months at a time and where avalanches and floods suspended
traffic at unpredictable intervals at all times of the year. The only
sure road uniting Italy and Gaul was not through the Alps but past them
along the sea-coast, and that was roundabout.
At the other end of Gaul the sea interposed a barrier which the Romans
found annoying. In the state of seamanship in those ages a head-wind was
an insuperable obstacle. As long as the wind blew the wrong way there
was nothing to do but wait for the wind to change. High winds made
navigation altogether impossible. Between storms and head-winds, on more
than half the days in the year attempting the passage of the channel was
not to be thought of. Moreover, bitter experience had taught the Romans
that the weather-signs of the Mediterranean were not to be relied on
when one dealt with Atlantic weather conditions. In particular they
found that a clear sky, a light breeze, warm air and a calm sea in the
morning not infrequently heralded a terrible storm before dusk.
Consequently their attempts to cross from Gaul to Britain or from
Britain to Gaul were restricted to occasions when, at and after sunset,
the sky was clear, the sea calm and the wind favorable. Only under those
circumstances could they be reasonably sure of the conditions remaining
unaltered until the transit was accomplished. In practice about
sixty-five nights in a year promised well for traffic. With sea transit
so restricted, communication with Britain was infrequent, and news of
Almo irregular.
Besides his letters to Flexinna he wrote occasionally to Vocco. Vocco
also had hopes of hearing from some of his comrades in arms. But as
Valentia was a place of semi-exile for incompetent, illiterate, drunken
and reckless officers, small reliance could be placed on any such
channel of news.
Therefore, with Brinnaria’s knowledge and at her expense, Vocco had
arranged to have an unremitting watch kept on Almo by skillful hirelings
of the Imperial information department. These men sent messages whenever
it was possible, and their reports were consistently favorable.
The frontier of Caledonia offered no such opportunities for distinction
and promotion as the outskirts of the Sahara had afforded. Military
duty from the Forth to the Clyde was monotonous and wearisome. But,
considering his environment, Almo did very well. He was liked by his
companions, loved by his subordinates and worshipped by his men. What
there was to do he did capably, and in his leisure, among comrades who
guzzled wine and gambled like madmen, he was always sober and never
abused the dice, which were an inevitable social feature of all Roman
outpost existence.
Aurelius spent the last four years of his life along the headwaters of
the Danube and Rhine, where the rising tide of Germanic migrations beat
incessantly at the outworks of the Empire. His death at Vienna occurred
when Brinnaria was twenty-nine years old and had been nineteen years
a Vestal. He was succeeded by his son Antoninus, whose obliging
disposition and easy-going manners made him exceedingly popular with his
cronies, the young fops, dandies and sports of Roman society, and led
to his being known among them as “the good fellow,” which nickname of
“Commodus” soon supplanted his given names and official titles, on the
lips first of the Romans, then of the Italians, soon of all his subjects
everywhere.
Commodus was not in Rome when his father died and it was therefore not
possible for Brinnaria to have an audience with him. She dreaded that a
change of governors in Britain might work unfavorably for Almo.
In consultation with Vocco she did what she could, through the city
Prefect in charge of Rome during the Emperor’s absence, and through
other officials, to make sure that any new governor of Britain would
be fully informed of the secret instructions which Aurelius had given
Opstorius concerning Almo. She also did all that was possible to have
Commodus reminded of the matter. This was difficult at a distance and
a delicate undertaking at any time and in any place, no Emperor ever
relishing the assumption that he need be reminded of anything, while the
necessity for emphasis and secrecy at one and the same time taxed the
best ingenuity. With the great influence possessed by the Vestals, they
hoped that they had succeeded.
But when Commodus had been Emperor a little over a year, Brinnaria, as
she descended from her carriage at Vocco’s door, felt a thrill of vague
foreboding. On entering the house her premonition of something wrong
intensified. At first sight Flexinna’s face confirmed her suspicions.
However, she asked no questions and worked off her feelings by a series
of high dives, followed by fancy-stroke swimming under water. She came
up from her tenth plunge sufficiently exhausted to feel to some extent
soothed.
As they composed themselves on the dining-sofas Vocco and Flexinna
exchanged glances. Brinnaria did not wait for either to speak.
“I am afraid,” she said, “that my appetite is not as reliable as it was
ten years ago. I think we had best eat our dinner first and discuss our
bad news afterwards.” Vocco and Flexinna looked distinctly relieved.
Brinnaria’s appetite seemed excellent. She ate abundantly, and, after
the dinner tray was removed and the dessert tray brought in, she
relished a half a dozen of her favorite purple figs. Savoring her glass
of Vocco’s exquisite Setian wine she asked:
“What has gone wrong, Quintus?”
“Just precisely what we feared has happened,” Vocco replied. “In spite
of all our efforts Hostidius appears to have known nothing whatever
about Almo’s peculiar past or of the special instructions Aurelius gave
Opstorius.
“Almo has practically repeated the vagary he perpetrated at Hippo. He
induced Hostidius to give him a full, honorable discharge from the army
and later wheedled the governor into authorizing him to have himself
sold as a slave.”
“What maggot can he have in his brain,” Brinnaria burst in, “that he is
so fascinated with the idea of being sold as a slave? What earthly basis
can there be for the enticement it holds out to him? Being sold as a
slave is universally regarded as the worst fate that can befall a man in
life. What makes the prospect of life as a slave so alluring to him?”
“Flexinna and I have been debating that point,” said Vocco, “but we
cannot so much as think up a conjecture.
“As to the facts there can be no doubt. He was publicly sold in the
marketplace of Eboracum.”
“At least,” Brinnaria breathed, “we have not lost track of him this
time.”
“We have not,” Vocco answered, “and I’ll wager we shall not.”
“Is it prize-fighting again?” Brinnaria queried, “or is it really
charioteering this time?”
“Neither,” said Vocco. “I must say it sounds like lunacy. But all
Almo’s words and all the small details of his behavior show no signs of
derangement. Up to the last report he slept well, ate well, looked well,
talked sensibly, in respect to all minor matters acted like a rational
being, and seemed to thrive. But what he did in the large sense appears
incredible.
“He had himself advertised for sale as an expert farm overseer, was
bought by a prosperous proprietor whose properties are situated in the
southwestern part of Britain and there, near Ischalis, he has settled
down to the management of a large estate; large at least for that part
of the world. He was giving excellent satisfaction in his dealings with
the slaves and by his knowledge of budding, grafting, transplanting and
of all the mysteries of gardening, orchard lore, and of agriculture in
general.”
“Yes,” Brinnaria reflected, “he was keen on all that sort of thing while
he was at the villa near Falerii. Such knowledge, gained in boyhood,
sinks in deep and is never forgotten. He is not playing a part or
pretending; he is really enjoying farm life. But what kink in his head
makes him fancy that he prefers to enjoy it as a slave rather than as
a free man? That puzzles me. Why be sold as a slave in order to bask in
rural delights when he could buy the ten largest estates in Britain and
never feel the outlay? When after his honorable discharge from the army
he was at liberty to remain in Britain openly and to do as he liked? Can
you see through it?”
Flexinna and Vocco agreed that they saw no glimmer of light.
“At least,” Brinnaria summed up, “he is in Britain and we can arrange
to prevent his leaving the island. Certainly we can have him watched,
wherever he goes.”
Vocco at once set about making the arrangements to ensure that Almo
would not leave Britain. Within a half year he had to report that their
efforts had been futile.
“We were too late,” he said. “He did not remain at Ischalis a year.
Egnatius Probus, of Fregellae, had been in Britain more than ten years
as adviser to the tax-department. His health had given way and he was
taking the waters at Aquae Solis. He was an acquaintance of Almo’s owner
and went down to Ischalis after his water-cure had had its effect and
he felt better. While visiting and idling at Ischalis he took a fancy to
Almo, offered a high price for him and bought him. He returned home by
way of Marseilles and from there by ship to Puteoli. He is now on his
estates near Fregellae and Almo is his head overseer, in charge of the
entire place. He has been there three months already.”
Brinnaria fidgeted on her sofa, for, as on the previous occasion, Vocco
had imparted his news after dinner.
“Give me another goblet of that Setian you bought from Zaelis,” she
said. “I’m getting to be a confirmed wine-bibber. At every piece of bad
news I need a bracer.”
After she had emptied her glass, she burst out:
“If Almo is acting as villicus of an estate near Fregellae he must be
living with some slave-woman or other.”
“He is not,” Vocco informed her. “I made careful inquiries on just
that point and got my information from two different sources. Almo told
Egnatius that he was a woman-hater and could not endure a woman about
him. Egnatius humored him and he is acting villicus without any villica.
The wife of the assistant overseer does whatever is necessary in the
way of prayers and sacrifices and such duties of a villica. She and her
husband occupy the overseer’s house and Almo is living in the hut meant
for the assistant villicus.”
“Did anybody ever hear the like!” exclaimed Brinnaria.
Vocco’s agents verified this news and made it quite certain that Almo
was masquerading as a slave and as a villicus of a fine estate in lower
Latium, near Fregellae, southeast of Rome on the Latin highroad, about
half way between Capua and the capital.
Brinnaria found herself very much in a quandary, and discussions with
Flexinna and Vocco, however lengthy and however often repeated, left her
just where she started. They could not decide whether it was best to do
nothing or to interfere, and whether, if they were to interfere, what
form their intervention should take.
Should Vocco travel to Fregellae and force an interview with Almo
and try to appeal to his better self? If so, should he do so without
apprizing Egnatius of the real name and origin of his overseer? Or
should they enlighten Egnatius under a pledge of secrecy and afterwards
decide whether or not to make an attempt to recall Almo to his natural
way of life? Should they do any of these things without appealing to
the Emperor or would it be better first to inform Commodus? They debated
over and over every line of conduct any one of them could suggest. After
all complete inaction and entire secrecy seemed best.
This view was confirmed when Brinnaria consulted Celsianus, the most
reputed physician of Rome. She had already confided in Lutorius, who
informed Celsianus, arranged for an interview and was present at it.
The great man said: “Almo is not necessarily or even probably deranged.
On the face of what you tell me the most unfavorable conjecture I could
form would be that he has resolved to commit suicide. You will say that
the idea is absurd, that suicide is easy and that the means are always
at hand, which is quite true.
“But there are cases, more numerous than you could fancy, of persons
who make up their minds to bring about their end in some unimaginable
manner, of which nobody but themselves would ever have thought. Then
they lay complicated plans and by devious ways approach their purpose.
If they are thwarted or diverted, they never end their lives in any
other fashion than by the special method they have devised.
“I am inclined to think that Almo’s entrance into a gang of
sword-fighters was caused by some such intention, that he is alive
because the circumstances he looked forward to never conspired to give
him just the kind of death he preferred. I am inclined to think that he
is now working towards some unthinkable exit from life.
“But I am not much disposed to think his such a case at all. It may be
a mere whim of self-torment, or it may be spontaneous yielding to a
genuine liking for the life he is living. What one human being likes
cannot be realized by other human beings, in many cases.
“My advice is to let him entirely alone. If you interfere you may
precipitate his suicide, if he meditates suicide. By calling in the help
of the Emperor or of his owner or both, you may destroy the chances, the
very good chances, of his returning to his full senses. Men in his state
of mind are often sane in all respects, and, if unsettled, are deranged
only in one particular. They are generally wholly reasonable on all
points except as to their fad of the moment. If that wears off they are
entirely rational. Let him alone. Watch him, but take no other steps.”
This advice seemed simple enough, but carrying it out proved more of a
strain than Brinnaria could have foreseen. The knowledge that Almo was
in Italy, near Fregellae, actually in Latium and within seventy miles
of Rome, that he was living in the hut of an under-farm-bailiff, that he
perhaps purposed some eccentric method of suicide proved racking to her
nerves. She became irritable and fidgety, her music failed to solace
or comfort her and sometimes almost bored her. She groped blindly for
something to distract her mind.
First she had a brief but violent attack of solicitude for her pauper
tenants. She found entertainment in visiting her slum properties and in
endeavoring to alleviate the condition of their inmates. They were far
from grateful. To have a Vestal, clad in the awe-inspiring dignity of
her white robes, with all her badges of office, six braids, headdress,
headband, tassels, ribbons, brooch and all descend from her dazzlingly
upholstered carriage and invade the courtyard of their hive was
thrilling but still more disconcerting to a swarm of slum spawn. They
bragged of the honor for the rest of their lives and strutted over it
for months, but they were unaffectedly relieved to see her depart.
Her inquiries as to their means of livelihood were excruciatingly
embarrassing. The Roman populace, all freemen with their wives and
children, were legally entitled to free seats at the spectacles and to
cooked rations from the government cook-shops in their precinct. They
throve on their free rations. Of their own efforts they had merely to
clothe themselves and pay the rent of their quarters. Cash for rent and
garments they obtained in whatever way happened to be easiest, often by
dubious means. As to their resources they were reticent.
In particular, Brinnaria was unable to cajole any admission, by word or
silence, from any dweller in one of her largest rookeries, and they
were better off than any tenants she had, too. What was more, not one of
their neighbors would impart any information about them..
Brinnaria’s curiosity was aroused. She bethought herself of Truttidius,
the sieve-maker, and of his intimate knowledge of all the dens and lairs
in the city.
She asked him. He laughed.
“On the Fagutal?” he made sure, “at the second corner beyond the end of
the Subura?”
He laughed again.
Then he tactfully explained that the tenants in that particular
congeries of buildings were professional secret cut-throats, good enough
husbands and fathers and amicable among themselves, but earning an
honest livelihood by putting out of the way any persons displeasing to
anybody able to pay for their services.
Brinnaria abruptly ceased slumming.
All the more she threw herself into her horse-breeding. She visited her
stud-farms oftener; and, oddly enough, as the result of her overwrought
state of mind, the management of the farms themselves came to mean less
to her than the means of reaching them and returning. She paid close
attention to the make of her road-carriage, to the speed and pace of
her roadsters. She bought picked teams of blooded mares, selecting them
especially for their ability to keep up a fast walk without breaking
pace. She boasted that she had six spans of mares, any one of which
could, at a walk, outdistance any team in Rome owned by anybody else.
By specializing in fast-walking cattle she saved much time in passing
from the Atrium to the city gates and in returning.
Outside the city her mares displayed their capacity for other paces
than the walk. She saw to it that her coachman kept them at their
utmost speed. The sight of her tearing along a highway became familiar
everywhere throughout the suburban countryside. She made a hobby of
extremely fast driving and of buying fast mares.
Also she fell into another fad, at the time all the rage, invented since
the accession of Commodus and made fashionable by the young Emperor.
Some popinjay had conceived a whim for travelling by litter instead of
in his carriage. It was far less expeditious and far more expensive. But
the notion took. All at once every fop in Roman society must needs take
his country outings, go to his villa and come back from it, not in his
carriage but in his litter. The plea was that a carriage jolted and that
riding in a litter was less tiring. There was something in that, for
carriage springs had not been invented in those days. But mostly it was
just a craze among the very wealthy, as distinguishing them from people
who could afford but one set of litter-bearers. An ordinary four-man
litter could be used only for going about the city--longer distances
were impossible, and excursions into the country soon tired out eight
bearers. For road travelling one must have sixteen bearers, two sets
relieving each other in turn. Brinnaria bought sixteen gigantic negroes
and tested them on her inspections of her stock-farms. She tried German
bearers, Goths and Cilicians. Her bearers became famous for their speed
and endurance. If she heard of any squad reputed better than hers,
she bought it at any price, until, not counting the teams of bearers
belonging to the Palace, there was only one gang in Rome which she
envied. She tried to purchase them but could not. They belonged to her
mother’s friend Nemestronia.
Nemestronia always had been a wonder and was a marvel. She was one of
the wealthiest women in Rome and had never been ill a moment in her
life. A very beautiful girl, she had kept her looks and a wonderful
singing voice, still clear and sweet when she was over sixty. She had
been, since within a year after her first marriage, one of the social
leaders of Rome. She had become the social leader of Rome, her influence
almost equal to that of the Empress. She had outlived three empresses
and had reigned unquestioned in the social world for over fifty years,
yet had not an enemy in Rome. Everybody loved Nemestronia. At the
time of the litter craze she had already celebrated her eighty-first
birthday, was plump, rosy, merry and spry, always ready for any
amusement, and was living happily with her fifth husband.
She prided herself on her litter-bearers and with her unerring social
instinct anticipated the caprice of her world and provided herself
with three sets of carriers, sixteen to a set. One gang, of brawny
Cappadocians, outclassed any but the Emperor’s own.
These Brinnaria tried to buy, tried in vain. Nemestronia was willing to
exchange, if she could do so to her advantage. But sell she would not.
Amid her opulence no sum could tempt her.
Brinnaria fumed and drove her horses almost to death, urged her
litter-men almost to exhaustion. But, with all her haste, care outpaced
her steeds or carriers. She gnawed her heart out.
Only at Vocco’s house, amid Flexinna’s bevy of youngsters, did she find
peace of mind.
Even there, at last, care followed her.
When Alma had been more than a year at Fregellae, Brinnaria, visiting
Flexinna about the middle of May, scented more trouble. As they lay down
to dinner she said:
“The occasion, I perceive, calls for an extra supply of wine. Let it be
the old Falernian this time and have the mixture strong.” After they had
eaten, none any too heartily, Vocco told his news.
Almo had left his master’s estate without a permit, in plain words had
gone off like any runaway slave and had thereby exposed himself to the
penalties incurred by a fugitive. Egnatius had taken the usual steps to
recapture him, but neither he nor the authorities had any clue to Almo’s
whereabouts. As far as they were concerned he had vanished.
He had not, however, eluded the vigilance of Brinnaria’s agents, of
the men Vocco had employed to keep him in view. They understood that
Egnatius was to be kept in ignorance of their activity, and gave no aid
to the police of the neighborhood in their efforts to retake him. They
had reported only to Vocco.
Almo had money with him and at Arpinum had garbed himself decently
for the road. He avoided the main highway and wandered along by-roads,
zigzagging and circling about. He idled at inns, sometime for days in
one place, often in small towns, oftener at road-houses between.
He was then near Atina.
At intervals during June and July Vocco gave Brinnaria reports about
Almo. He seemed to enjoy the society of the casual travellers he met at
small inns and of the local frequenters of them. He got on famously
with everybody. Nowhere was he suspected of being a runaway slave and
naturally, for he had the unmistakable carriage and bearing of a born
freeman. The hue and cry Egnatius had set loose after him was active
wherever he went, but he sat under placards offering rewards for his
capture and no one applied the description to him.
Early in June he was at Casinum and Interamna, before it ended at Fundi
and Privernum. In July he passed through Setia, Ulubrae, Norba and
Cora. Early in August he was idling at Velitrae, playing quoits in the
inn-yard morning after morning.
He seemed to like Velitrae. He stayed there longer than anywhere else.
CHAPTER XVII - RECKLESSNESS
ON the fifteenth of that same August, not long after noon, Brinnaria was
much surprised by a call from Flexinna.
“The most amazing weather that ever was,” Flexinna stated. “I never
heard of such, everybody says nobody ever heard of the like. Even
Nemestronia says she never saw or heard of anything to compare to it.
The densest imaginable fog, as white as milk. You c-c-can’t see across a
street, you c-c-can hardly see the bearers in front of your litter.”
“I noticed it in the courtyard,” Brinnaria replied, “and it is thicker
than usual. But we often have morning fogs and I have seen several
almost as dense as this.”
“Nothing unusual in a fog d-d-down hereabouts and along the river,”
Flexinna admitted. “B-B-But this fog is most unusual. It is all over the
whole city. I have lived on the Esquiline ever since I was b-b-born and
I never saw a fog up there except p-p-perhaps a whiff just about
sunrise and then only in wisps. This fog is high up on the Esquiline,
as d-d-dense as along the river. I know the fog is all over the
city b-b-because I sent two slaves to the P-P-Pincian and two to the
Aventine, and they reported that it is just as b-b-bad everywhere
as here and at home. And I met Satronius Satro, just b-b-back from
B-B-Baiae. He slept at B-B-Bovillae last night and he says the fog is
just as b-b-bad all the way from B-B-Bovillae. He says it is heavy over
the whole c-c-country for miles. It amounts to a portent.”
“Flexinna,” said Brinnaria, “you never came here and at this time of
day, to talk about the weather.”
“I d-d-didn’t know how to b-b-begin,” Flexinna admitted.
“What has Almo done now?” Brinnaria queried.
“He left Velitrae day before yesterday,” said Flexinna, “and went to
Aricia. Yesterday he challenged the K-K-King of the G-G-Grove.”
“Just as Celsianus conjectured,” Brinnaria groaned. “Some unthinkable
method of suicide. Is he dead?”
“No,” Flexinna replied. “He’s very much alive.”
“Then he is the King of the Grove!” Brinnaria cried.
“They haven’t fought yet,” Flexinna informed her.
“Impossible!” Brinnaria exclaimed. “Or there is something wrong with
your information. There is only one way to challenge the King of the
Grove and that is to enter the Grove with a weapon. Almost as many men
as women go to worship at the Temple of Diana in the Grove by the Lake;
the King of the Grove never notices any unarmed man. But let a man with
a weapon of any kind, spear, sword, or what not, even a club, step over
the boundary line of the Grove and that act of entrance there with a
weapon constitutes a challenge to the King of the Grove; at sight of an
armed man the King or the Grove attacks him. They fight then and there
till one is killed. The survivor is the King of the Grove.
“The challenger is supposed to pluck a twig from the sacred oak-tree and
the act of picking the branch is supposed to be the challenge. But, in
practice, the King of the Grove watches the sacred oak so carefully,
that nobody remembers any challenger who succeeded in pulling a twig
unless he won the fight.
“That is the only way to challenge the King of the Grove. Everybody
knows that.”
“That is just what I always thought,” Flexinna confessed, “b-b-but, it
seems we are b-b-both mistaken. There is another way to challenge the
K-K-King of the G-G-Grove; that is to go to the Dictator of Aricia and
enter formal challenge. In that c-c-case, the Dictator notifies the
K-K-King of the G-G-Grove that he must face the challenger at
midnight next d-d-day. Meanwhile, the challenger is entertained in
the t-t-town-hall of Aricia. He is b-b-bathed, p-p-provided with fresh
c-c-clothing, g-g-given whatever food he asks for and accommodated with
a c-c-comfortable b-b-bed for the night after his challenge. Then, when
he has had a g-g-good chance to sleep all night and has had at least
four g-g-good meals, he is c-c-conducted by the aldermen to the
G-G-Grove just b-b-before midnight. The aldermen t-t-take with them
two ancient shields, p-p-precisely alike, and two ancient Amazonian
b-b-battle-axes, also p-p-precisely alike, which are k-k-kept among the
t-t-treasures in the strong room of the t-t-town hall at Aricia. The
challenger plucks a t-t-twig from the sacred oak. Then he and the
K-K-King of the G-G-Grove face each other in the open space b-b-before
it. A shield and a b-b-battle-axe are handed to each. Then they wait for
the word of the Dictator of Aricia. At the word they fight.
“That is the other way to challenge the K-K-King of the G-G-Grove.”
Flexinna, as generally happened, had been shown at once up to
Brinnaria’s private apartment and had walked straight into Brinnaria’s
bedroom. In that small room they sat facing each other.
“Then they fight at midnight to-night,” Brinnaria deduced.
“Yes,” Flexinna corroborated.
“How did you come here?” her friend queried.
“In Nemestronia’s litter,” the visitor answered. “I b-b-borrowed it.”
“With her Cappadocian bearers?” queried Brinnaria.
“Eighteen, of them,” said Flexinna; “two extras.”
“How on earth did you come to do that?” Brinnaria wondered.
“I had a notion,” Flexinna explained, “of trying to get to the G-G-Grove
by the Lake b-b-before the fight. I thought p-p-perhaps Almo would
listen to me if I c-c-could see him in t-t-time.”
“Did you tell Quintus?” Brinnaria demanded.
“Of c-c-course,” said Flexinna. “He wanted to go alone, b-b-but I said
Almo would not listen to him, so I p-p-persuaded him to let me t-t-try.
I c-c-couldn’t think of riding, of c-c-course, as I am. He wouldn’t even
hear of my d-d-driving, said I might as well hang myself and be d-d-done
with it as risk the jar of a t-t-travelling c-c-carriage. I said I’d
use my litter. He said our b-b-bearers c-c-could never g-g-get there in
t-t-time for me to hope to d-d-do any g-g-good. I said I’d b-b-borrow
Nemestronia’s fastest gang. He said he c-c-could g-g-go and c-c-come
b-b-back on a horse quicker than any litter c-c-could reach the
G-G-Grove. I repeated that Almo would certainly p-p-pay no attention to
him, b-b-but might listen to me. So I b-b-borrowed Nemestronia’s litter.
Shall I g-g-go? Shall I start at once?”
“No!” Brinnaria cut her off. “Let me think. Sixteen miles? They could
do it in a little over five hours, if everything went just right. They’d
take at least eight hours for the return journey. You wouldn’t be back
at the Appian gate before sunrise. It would be a hungry job.”
“I thought of that,” Flexinna informed her. “I’m always ravenous when
I’m this way* and c-c-can never g-g-go from one meal to the next. I had
a k-k-kid-skin of wine p-p-put in the litter and b-b-bread and cheese
and fruit.”
*In other words, she’s pregnant. --PG ed.
“You did!” cried Brinnaria. “Where is Vocco?”
“On horseback b-b-beside the litter,” said Flexinna, “waiting for your
d-d-decision.”
“I’ve made it,” Brinnaria proclaimed.
“Shall I g-g-go t-t-try?” enquired Flexinna.
“No!” Brinnaria fairly shouted, pulling off her headdress.
“What shall I d-d-do then?” Flexinna queried.
“Undress,” Brinnaria ordered, “undress quick!” Flexinna stared at her,
horrified.
“What for?” she quavered.
“Undress first and ask afterwards,” Brinnaria commanded. “Undress,
woman, undress!” She was tearing off her clothes as she talked.
“Can’t you see, you fool!” she hissed. “The gods have made it all easy.
The densest fog Rome ever saw and all over the country-side, a curtained
litter with the fastest bearers alive right at my door, my best friend
on horseback beside it, drink and food enough and to spare, me off duty
till to-morrow noon and you here to change clothes with me. I put on
your clothes and go save Almo.”
“You’ll be outside Rome all night,” Flexinna objected. “That’s
sacrilege.”
“Not a bit of it,” Brinnaria retorted. “I know a regulation from a
taboo. When the Gauls captured Rome the Flamen of Jupiter went up into
the Capitol with the garrison. He might not leave Rome, it would have
been impious. But the other flamens nd the Vestals left Rome, the
Vestals were months at Caere. It is not impiety for a Vestal to be
outside the city walls over night, it is merely forbidden by the rules.
I’m going.”
“You might as well g-g-go b-b-bury yourself alive and b-b-be d-d-done
with it,” Flexinna protested. “You’re certain to b-b-be found out. It’s
sure d-d-death for you.”
“Hang the risk!” Brinnaria snarled. “I never realized how much I loved
Almo till you brought this news. I don’t care whether I live or die or
what death I die, if I can only save him.
“And the risk is too small to think of. All you have to do is to stay
abed and keep still. Utta will never tell and she won’t let anyone
in. Numisia will not suspect anything: any Vestal has the right to
twenty-four hours abed and no questions asked, Meffia spent one day out
of ten in bed. Manlia takes a day’s rest a dozen times a year. Even I
have done it several times, when I was sore all over with jolting too
long at full gallop over our so-called perfect roads. I was abed all
day about a month ago, and certainly I rove hard enough and long enough
yesterday and I was in the Temple half the night. I’ll be back here long
before noon to-morrow.
“Don’t you see how easy it is? Flexinna has called on Brinnaria to-day,
as usual, except the hour. And Flexinna often calls on Brinnaria at odd
hours. Flexinna makes a short call and goes out to her litter. Flexinna
makes an excursion into the country in a litter with drawn curtains,
her husband riding by it. Nobody can take any notice of that. Flexinna
returns from her outing, calls at once on Brinnaria, pays a brief call,
goes out, gets into her litter and goes home. Brinnaria, refreshed by
twenty-four hours abed, goes about her duties. The plan simply can’t
fail.” She had on all Flexinna’s clothes by the end of her explanation
and was adjusting er two veils, one over her face, the other tied over
the broad-brimmed travelling-hat, so that the edges of the brim, drawn
down on either side, almost met under her chin and her face was lost in
it.
Flexinna continued to protest feebly, but Brinnaria made her compose
herself in the bed.
“You can have anything you want to eat,” she reminded her, “and as much
as you want, any time.”
Utta came at the first signal.
“Now listen,” Brinnaria instructed her, “I am in that bed and I am going
to stay there until the lady who has just called on me comes back. That
will be tomorrow morning. I am tired and need rest, the same as I did
the day after the axle broke and I barked my knee in the gravel. I am
not going out now; oh, no the lady going out is the lady who called on
me. Do you understand?”
Utta understood.
Flexinna, quaking in the bed, prayed under her breath.
“For Castor’s sake,” was her farewell, “d-d-don’t forget to
s-s-stutter.” In a fashionable costume of brilliant pink silk with
pearly gray trimmings, feeling horribly conspicuous, but unaccosted and,
as far as she could judge, unnoticed, Brinnaria descended the stairs,
traversed the courtyard and passed the portal. Just outside, in the nook
left by the angle of the wall enclosing the Temple, she found the litter
set down clear of the throng that surged and jostled ceaselessly up and
down the Holy Street. The bearers stood about it, one holding Vocco’s
horse; all, like the street-crowd, vague and unreal in the fog. Through
the fog Vocco strode towards her and checked, amazed. She put her
fingers to the folds of the veil over her lips.
“C-C-Careful,” she warned him, laboriously stuttering. “I am Flexinna
come back. Now for Aricia, as fast as the b-b-bearers can hoof it.”
Vocco, dazed, helped her into the litter, gave the order and mounted his
horse.
Composed in her litter, Brinnaria’s sensations were all of the
strangeness of the outlook; fog blurring the outlines of familiar
buildings; fog hiding the landmarks she looked for, fog wrapping her
round till she could hardly see the front pair of carriers tramping
ahead or even Vocco beside her on his horse; fog concealing all the wide
prospect of the levels south of Rome, fog so thick that they positively
groped their way through the towns along the road, fog so dense that she
could not discern the gradations by which afternoon melted into evening
and dusk into darkness.
When they were clear of the city Vocco ranged his horse alongside the
litter and expostulated with Brinnaria, talking Greek that the bearers
might not understand.
“The best thing you can do,” he said, “is to give up this harebrained
adventure and merely swing round through the suburbs for some hours and
return to the Atrium by some other gate.”
“Not I,” she replied in her hardest tone.
“How do you expect to succeed in speaking to Almo?” he asked.
“I leave that to you,” she said; “you must manage to see the Dictator of
Aricia and tell him that you have with you a lady in a litter who must
speak to the challenger before the fight.”
“I’ll attempt the commission,” said Vocco, “and I’ll do my utmost, but I
hold it impossible.”
“In any case,” spoke Brinnaria, “I keep on even if I have to expose
myself and be recognized in Aricia.”
Vocco gave up the effort to influence her.
The roads joining the Appian Way were paved with similar blocks of the
same sort of stone. In the fog they went wrong three several times where
side-roads branched off at a thin angle. In each case they failed to
discover their mistake until they had gone on for some distance; in each
case they had to retrace their steps for fear of getting wholly lost if
they tried a cross-road; in each case they wasted much time.
Twice the leading bearers were all but trampled on by the recklessly
driven horses of careless drivers. Both times the mix-up delayed them.
Just beyond Bovillae they had a third collision, in which one pole of
the litter was snapped and two of the bearers injured. It barely missed
resulting in a free-fight. All of Vocco’s tact was needed to allay the
feelings on both sides. By great good luck he succeeded in getting a
substitute litter-pole from a near-by inn without too much publicity.
The delays caused by missing the road and by collisions had cut down
the margin of time they had hoped for at Aricia. This last misfortune
delayed them so much that it seemed unlikely that they could reach the
Grove until midnight.
In fact, before they reached Aricia, the road was alive with parties of
celebrants, men and women, but no children, every man carrying a lighted
torch, nearly every man accompanied by a slave with an armful or a
back-load of spare torches, all moving in the same direction with them.
With torch-bearing crowds the streets of Aricia were jammed. From gate
to gate of the town they crawled, wading slowly through the press of
revellers. Along the road to the Grove they were as a chip floated along
on a tide of torchbearers, for the parties of worshippers converging to
their great local yearly festival from Tusculum, Tibur, Cora, Pometia,
Lanuvium and Ardea formed a continuous procession, their pulsing
torch-flames looking strange and blurred through the fog.
When they reached the top of the ridge enclosing the Lake, Vocco
dismounted and trusted his roan to one of Nemestronia’s extra bearers,
as horses were not allowed within the Grove or its precincts.
Not much before midnight the bearers swung sharply at the brink of
the cliff and plunged down the steep narrow road cut along its face.
Brinnaria felt the dampness of the lake air on her cheek.
By the Lake the fog was, if possible, more impenetrable than elsewhere.
The Grove, the lodging for the cripples and invalids who thronged the
place to be cured, the vast halls about the temple, the temple itself,
all were doubly whelmed in the darkness and the mist.
Brinnaria made out only the six channelled vermilion columns of the
temple portico and the black boughs of the sacred oak. These, to right
and left of the temple area, showed vaguely in the light of thousands of
torches in the hands of the throng packed about it.
Respect for a closed litter with sixteen bearers accompanied by a
gentleman in a Senator’s robes won them a way through the crowd, the
torches surging in waves of flame as they ploughed through.
When they reached the margin of the open space, Brinnaria, choking with
the realization that she had arrived too late, peered between the drawn
curtains of her litter and saw the pavement of the temple-area bright
under the splendor of the torch-rays; saw a dozen young women, dressed
in gowns of a startling deep orange, standing in a row clear of the
torch-bearing crowd; saw the five aldermen of Aricia in their official
robes, grouped about the square marble altar; saw before the altar a
circular space of clipped turf midway of the area pavement, saw standing
on it to the right of the altar the King of the Grove, clad in his
barbaric smock of dingy undyed black wool, his three-stranded necklace
of raw turquoises broad on his bosom, the fox-tails of his fox-skin cap
trailing by his ears; saw facing him Almo, bare-kneed, his hunting-boots
of soft leather like chamois-skin coming half way up to his calves,
his leek-green tunic covering him only to mid-thigh, his head bare, his
right hand waving an oak bough.
After she recognized Almo and glimpsed the bough in his hand she hardly
looked at him. She stared, fascinated, at the white marble altar on
which, as an offering to Diana of the Underworld, the victor of the
fight would lay the corpse of his victim.
The Dictator of Aricia, chief of the Aldermen, raised his hand. From
somewhere in the darkness behind the dozen simpering wenches appeared
two slaves, each carrying a small round shield and a double-headed
battle-axe. The shields had painted on each a horse, the battle-axes
were of the pattern always seen in pictures of the legendary Amazons.
The blade of each axe-head was shaped like a crescent moon. From
the inner side projected a flat, thick shank, by which the blade was
fastened to the helve. The curve of each blade made almost a half
circle, the tips of the crescents almost touched the haft between them,
so that their outer cutting-edges made a nearly complete circle of
razor-sharp steel, from which protruded the keen spear-head tipping the
shaft.
Two of the aldermen received these accoutrements from the slaves.
Brinnaria noticed that one of the other aldermen held the broad,
gold-mounted, jeweled scabbard containing the great scimitar with which
the King of the Grove kept girt, waking or sleeping. She even noted how
its belt trailed from his hands and the shine of its gloss-leather in
the torch-rays.
The two aldermen handed a shield and an axe to each contestant. One took
from Almo the oak-bough and passed it to the Dictator.
The two champions fitted the shields on their arms, balanced them, and
hefted their battle-axes. Each assumed the posture that suited him best,
his feet well under him. So they stood facing each other, waiting for
the signal.
The King of the Grove was a stocky, solidly-built ruffian of medium
height and weight. Almo seemed much taller and very much slenderer and
lighter. His delicate features and thin nose contrasted strangely to the
high cheek-bones, small, close-set eyes, and wide, flat nostrils of his
antagonist.
The Dictator waved the oak-bough and shouted.
The two champions warily approached each other.
Each kept his left foot forward; each crouched, as it were, inside the
shield tight against his shoulder; each held his axe aloft.
Each struck, each dodged, Almo awkwardly, his axe trailing behind him
after it missed.
The stocky man thought he saw his chance and whirled his weapon,
bringing it down in a terrible sweep. Craftily Almo caught it against
his shield, just below the upper rim, horribly it grated against the
bronze plating of the shield, with the full weight of the mighty swing
it buried itself in the sod.
The force of his blow carried the assailant with it so that he almost
fell face forward on the sward.
Before he could recover himself Almo’s ready axe swung.
Brinnaria saw it flash in the air. Then she saw the fox-skin cap in two
halves, a horrid red void between.
“Oh Vocco,” she called, “t-t-take me home, t-t-take me home.” At that
volcanic instant, at the bitterest moment of her life, what kept back
her tears was her tendency to laugh at the fact, that, ill the midst of
her agony, she did not forget to stutter.
CHAPTER XVIII - FURY
THE darkness of the night, the impenetrability of the fog and the
weariness of the bearers all contributed to impede their return journey.
While on her way and buoyed up by her wild purpose, Brinnaria had been
able to rest herself by dozing along the roadway and had remembered to
keep up her strength with food and wine. After they had turned back she
could not have swallowed anything, if she had thought to try, and the
nearest she came to sleep was an uneasy drowse which seemed a long
nightmare. The Cappadocians, famous for their strength, endurance and
indifference to wakefulness, exertion, hunger or thirst, were also
astute foragers. On their way from Rome the reliefs had invaded every
inn they passed and, lavishly provided with small coins by Vocco, had
provisioned themselves abundantly. These supplies they handed over to
their fellows when they took up the litter. All the way back the spare
carriers, plodding behind, munched their provender and conversed in
undertones. The bearers, necessarily flagging, trudged leadenly.
Through it all Brinnaria was haunted by her memory of two pictures.
One was of the row of saffron-clad hussies watching the fight.
The King of the Grove was the only legal polygamist in Italy.
Concomitant with the barbarous and savage conditions determining his
tenure of the office as High Priest in the Grove by the Lake of Diana of
the Underworld, congruent with his outlandish attire and ornaments, he
had the right to have twelve wives at once. Seldom had a King of the
Grove failed to avail himself of the privilege; and, indeed, to have
twelve wives was regarded as incumbent upon him, as necessary to his
proper sanctity and as indispensable to maintain the curative potencies
of the locality, which restored to health each year an army of
sufferers.
He had the power to repudiate any wife at any time, to dismiss her and
expel her from the Grove. Any former wife of his, when expelled or after
leaving the Grove of her own accord, became a free woman with all the
privileges of a liberated slave. Most of his ex-wives, however, elected
to remain in the Grove and formed a sort of corps of official nurses
for the sick who flocked there to be cured. In practice the King of the
Grove usually repudiated any wife who lost her youthful charms.
His wives were commonly, like himself, truant slaves.
Fugitive male slaves were an ever-present feature of country life in
all parts of the ancient world, as tramps are in modern times. A female
runaway, however, was a distinct rarity. But the sanctuary afforded them
by the Grove encouraged them about Aricia and many fled to it. If
young and comely they became wives of its King. Also slave-girls were
constantly being presented to him by grateful convalescents, who had
come to the Grove as invalids or cripples and had left it hale and
sound. Thus the twelve wives of the King were always as vital and buxom
a convocation of wenches as could be found anywhere.
The spectacle they had made haunted Brinnaria.
They had been so utterly callous, so completely indifferent, so merely
curious to see which contestant was to be their future master, so
vacant-mindedly giggling and nudging each other. The impression they had
made on her nauseated her, while the memory of their red cheeks, full
contours, youthfulness and undeniable animal charm enraged her.
The other picture which had branded itself on her memory was the sight
of Almo, straightening up after stooping over his butchered predecessor,
clasping the triple turquoise necklace about his throat.
Almo was King of the Grove.
At that thought and at the recollection of the dozen jades wriggling and
smirking, her blood boiled.
By the margin of the cliff Vocco had had much ado finding his horse.
On the road back to Aricia they passed through many parties of belated
worshippers. As the torch festival kept up until dawn that town was
open all night. Unquestioned they passed in at a wide-open gate, through
torch-lit, but almost deserted streets, out at another wide-set gate.
In the Roman world travelling by night was almost unexistent. Only
imperial couriers and civilians driven by some dire stress kept on their
way after sunset. In general travellers halted for the night at some
convenient inn or town, or camped by the road if darkness overtook them
far from any hostelry. But on the night of the yearly festival of Diana,
many parties were abroad. Between Aricia and Bovillae they met several
convoys, and about half-way they were overtaken and passed by a rapidly
driven carriage, and somewhat tater by a troop of horsemen, trotting
restrainedly, one of them on a white horse which showed rather
distinctly, even in the fog and darkness.
Near Bovillae they overtook the same band of horsemen, halted about the
wreck of two travelling carriages which had crashed together in the
fog. Two of the horses lay dead on the stones, killed to put them out of
their misery. From curb to curb the pavement was cluttered with pieces
of wreckage and the carcasses of the horses. The roadway was completely
blocked and the bearers, at first, could find no way around the
obstacle.
Some women were wailing over a little boy whose leg had been crushed and
who was uttering frightful shrieks. The child screamed so terribly that
Brinnaria impulsively leaned half-way out of her litter, carried away by
her sympathies. Close beside her she saw the white horse and astride of
it, vague in the mist, but unmistakable in his lop-sided, bony leanness,
outlined against the glare of the torches behind him, she recognized
Calvaster.
Instantly she shrank behind her litter curtains.
Almost at once a relief bearer who had gone to scout reported a free
path through the fields by the road.
They continued on their way.
Bovillae, not being one of the towns participating in the Festival of
Diana, was closed for the night, its gates shut fast, its walls dark.
Going round it was a trying detour over rough cross-roads.
After they were again on the Appian Road they were for a second time
overtaken by the same band of horsemen. When their hoof-beats had grown
faint in the distance ahead, Vocco ranged his horse alongside the litter
and asked:
“Did you notice the man on the white horse?”
“I recognized him,” said Brinnaria briefly.
The fog held all the way to the Appian Gate, which they reached as some
watery sun-rays struggled through the mist, held until they reached the
Atrium.
Out of her litter tumbled Brinnaria in Flexinna’s rumpled finery,
feeling unescapably recognizable, even inside her double veil and under
her broad-brimmed, tied-down travelling hat.
But the heavy-built, sinewy slave-woman who guarded the portal of the
Atrium passed her in without remark. She met no one on her way up to her
suite, where she found Utta squatted outside her bedroom door.
Flexinna was incredulously delighted, pathetically overjoyed to see her.
“You have a wonderful larder here,” she said. “Every single thing I
asked for was b-b-brought me at once. I d-d-didn’t have any appetite,
b-b-but I had to have food. And I g-g-got it.”
Promptly she put on her own clothing and was gone.
In a trice Brinnaria was flat on her back in bed with Utta massaging her
vigorously and methodically. After one comprehensive rubbing she went
off for hot milk, hot wine, honey, barley-meal and spices. The posset
she brewed she compelled her mistress to swallow. Then she gently
massaged her until she was asleep. Thanks to these attentions Brinnaria,
after some four hours abed, was able to reappear in the Temple looking
not much unlike a Vestal who had enjoyed twenty-four hours of unbroken
repose.
Numisia appeared to suspect nothing. Certainly she remonstrated with her
and begged her not to exhaust herself so by hard riding.
After that first sleep, induced by fatigue and by Utta’s ministrations,
Brinnaria slept little. She tossed and turned. Before her eyes was
continually the recollection of that row of saffron-clad minxes, of
their exuberant health, heartiness and rollicking vivacity.
The memory of them suffocated her. In the Atrium she had to conceal her
inward convulsions of rage, had to appear calm, placid and collected.
The effort made her the more explosive when she was at Flexinna’s and
could speak out. She stormed.
Flexinna let her talk herself hoarse. But no amount of talking relieved
her. Whatever she said, no matter how often she had said it, she wound
up the same way:
“Here I am, packed in ice, so to speak, for thirty years and there he
is, King of the Grove, with twelve wives, twelve wives, _twelve wives_!”
Jealousy, in its most furious form, is not a mild malady, even in our
days, and in women of northern ancestry and cold blood. Brinnaria was a
hot-blooded Latin and the pulses of her heart were earthquakes of fire.
The Romans were a ferocious and sanguinary stock. Even among the most
delicately nurtured women love turned quickly into hate and solicitude
might in a brief time give place to the thirst for vengeance.
Brinnaria struggled with herself for some days.
Then she bade her coachman drive her to the Fagutal. Her appearance
among her tenants caused general trepidation, as usual.
When the clustering drabs and brats discovered that she felt no present
interest in women and children, but that she demanded speech with the
men, the elder men, their dismay deepened into acute consternation.
Since she would take no denial some dotards and striplings were routed
out and the patriarch of the clan was thrust forward. He looked senile
from his slippered feet to the shine on his bald-pate, he was blear-eyed
and hard of hearing, but he understood plain Latin when he heard it, he
knew of old the signs he read in the flash of her eyes, the set of her
jaw and every feature as she stood or moved. Also no dog ever had a
keener scent for game than he for business.
He shouted in the slang of his caste.
The women and children vanished.
Promptly a chair was brought, carefully dusted and she was invited to
seat herself. Before her cringed, in attitudes of obsequious deference,
a group of as hulking, truculent, ruthless villains as could have
been found anywhere on earth. Just out of earshot of a low-voiced
conversation, stood younger men, sentinels, to keep all others at a
distance.
The patriarch’s son, recognized chief of the brotherhood, an appallingly
inhuman brute, acted as spokesman.
At the first word their wary expression altered to one of brotherly
comprehension. There was a man to be killed. Pride in their vocation
shone all over them. Yes, they knew of the King of the Grove, who
did not? and they especially, since the patriarch’s grandfather,
great-grandfather to the spokesman, had at an advanced age ended his
life in the Grove, after years as its priest, having become King late in
life, the last of a long series of challengers whom the Emperor Caligula
had suborned against an insufferable and all but invincible hierophant.
Could they find a swashbuckler willing to assail the present incumbent?
Of a surety and what was more able to vanquish anybody.
Could it be arranged secretly?
No human being would ever suspect that she knew anything about the
matter; what was more, the most inquisitive would never divine that they
themselves had any hand in the change of priests at Aricia.
How could this be accomplished?
In countless ways. One might find a discontented slave, mighty and
skilled with weapons, and reveal to him a means of bettering his
condition, or one might bribe the owner of a capable slave to wink at
his running away, or if no fit slave could be found, a suitable freeman
might be induced to become a slave under a master also in the plot. It
was easy, merely a matter of money.
How much money would be needed?
That would depend. If they could cajole a slave the job would call only
for cash for the instigator’s expenses, for journey-money and for
a good sabre for the challenger, and at the last a bonus for all
concerned. If a slave-owner had to be bribed, more cash and more money
for bonuses would be required. If a freeman had to be employed the
enterprise would be still more expensive. It was all a matter of money,
above all, of cash.
Cash was forthcoming.
Brinnaria returned to the Atrium by a circuitous drive out the Tiber
Gate, round through the suburbs and in at the River Gate. She needed
fresh air. All the way, all the afternoon, all the wakeful night, she
was in an eery state of icy, numb exaltation. It was all over--Almo was
a dead man, she had avenged herself, she had vindicated the proprieties,
her wrath was righteous, her vengeance laudable. This tense condition of
her nerves lasted for some days.
According to stipulation the messenger from the tenements on the Fagutal
was a decently clad woman of inconspicuously respectable appearance.
She came after an interval of about ten days. She was apologetic. Their
first champion had perished.
Twice more she brought the same message. Then Brinnaria ventured a
second visit to the unsavory locality. She was sarcastic. The chief was
abashed.
This, he said, was evidently a task unexpectedly difficult. The more
certain was it that they would measure up to the requirements. They felt
that their time-honored reputation was at stake.
There followed for Brinnaria an exciting, a wearing autumn and winter.
For some months messages came to her at about nine-day intervals, all
of the same tenure. Towards mid-winter, on a mild fair day, she risked a
third expostulation with her hirelings. On an apologetic and humiliated
rabble she poured her scorn.
Thereafter the messages came thicker, about one every four days, but
monotonously unwelcome. Brinnaria set her teeth and sent all the money
asked for.
Meanwhile her wrath, her jealousy, her thirst for vengeance steadily
waned and their place was largely taken by admiration for Almo’s
incredible skill and by a sort of pride in him.
But again and again the vision of the twelve baggages returned to her
and she steeled her heart. One warm June morning she lost patience and
burst in on her gang of cut-throats.
Inundated by a cascade of vitriolic denunciations and stinging sneers
they hung their heads, too limp to utter a protest. The patriarch was
weeping openly.
Turned from anger to curiosity she found the rookery was in mourning.
Their chief, the apple of their eye, aghast at the failures of his
minions, had himself undertaken to redeem their honor. For him they
grieved. They owned themselves beaten. They had scoured Italy, had sent
against Almo every promising bully in the fifteen districts. Their best
young men had gone, lastly their adored leader. They could do no more;
Almo was invincible.
Brinnaria, reflecting that, after all, she was to blame for their
dejection and woe, that, after all, they had done their best,
distributed what cash she had with her and promised them a lavish
apportionment of gold.
As she went she realized, as they realized, that the place would never
see her again.
Next morning she sent for Guntello. That faithful Goth, still huge,
mighty and terrific, came, mild as a pet bulldog.
“Go kill him!” she commanded.
“Certainly, Little Mistress,” he acquiesced, “but whom am I to kill?”
She explained.
Guntello, always parsimonious, asked a moderate sum for the purchase of
a sabre and for road-money. She gave him ten times as much.
When he was gone, she felt, as at first, a painful numbness of
exaltation. Almo was now certainly a dead man.
This mood suddenly inverted itself into an uncontrollable passion f
solicitude. Off she posted to Flexinna and confessed everything to
Vocco. In a frenzy she demanded they again borrow Nemestronia’s litter
and that Vocco again accompany her to Aricia. To their expostulations
she retorted that go she would, if not escorted by Vocco, then alone, if
not disguised and in a borrowed litter, then in her own and openly, or
openly in her carriage or afoot if need be; but go she would!
Flexinna succeeded in getting her to listen long enough to urge that
there was no need for her to go personally, as Guntello would obey Vocco
at sight of her signet ring, moreover that Guntello now had a long start
and that only a swift horseman might hope to intervene in time. To these
representations she yielded.
Vocco returned amazed and manifestly relieved. He had arrived too late.
Guntello was dead.
That night Brinnaria wept long and bitterly.
“The poor, brave, harmless, faithful fellow,” she moaned. “Out of the
malignity of my heart, in my pride and callousness, I sent him to an
undeserved death! Oh, I am a wicked woman!” Strangely enough Guntello’s
death seemed to divert her mind entirely from the idea of avenging
herself on Almo. From hating him, she came to realize that she had
really loved him all the while, that she loved him unalterably. From
thinking that she desired his death she came to dread acutely that,
exhausted in body by more than a hundred fights in ten months and worn
by the strain of ceaseless anxiety and vigilance, Almo might succumb to
even a chance-brought adversary.
In this new mood she confided in Lutorius.
The good man was horrified.
“And I never suspected anything wrong!” he exclaimed. “At least you have
been outwardly collected. Nobody has suspected anything. But this is
terrible. A Vestal should menace no man’s life, should not desire any
man’s death. Far from it, her heart should be clean of hate, malice or
envy.”
“Never mind what I have been,” said Brinnaria.
“No disasters have befallen Rome. There is no sign of any wrathfulness
of the gods, or of their displeasure, and I am no longer as I was. That
is all over, I am chastened. I desire harm to no one. Quite the reverse.
What fills my mind now is the thought that, sooner or later, Alma must
perish at the hand of some challenger. I long to save him. I would move
earth and sea to save him. Must a King of the Grove live and die King of
the Grove? Is there no way to rescue him?”
“Consult the Emperor,” said Lutorius. “He is Chief Pontiff of Rome.”
CHAPTER XIX - COMFORT
COMMODUS received Brinnaria in the same palatial room in which she
had so often conferred with his father. The majestic impression of
the magnificent hall was, however, marred by the evidence of the young
Emperor’s chief interests. On one of the great chests lay a pair of
boxing gloves, on another a quiver of arrows and two unstrung bows, on a
third a bridle; a fourth was open and from it protruded a sheaf of
those wooden swords which the Romans used for fencing-practice as we
use foils. Commodus could never wholly free himself from his absorbing
passion for athletic sports.
He himself was a sort of artistic caricature of his father, being very
like him in height, build, features and complexion, with similarly
abundant hair and beard falling over his shoulders and bosom in long
ringlets. But in place of the gravity, wisdom, intelligence and sympathy
which had ennobled the countenance of Aurelius, his face wore an
expression of boyish frivolity, silly vanity, vapid stupidity and
impatient selfishness.
Brinnaria had seen him countless times and often near at hand, not only
close to her when both occupied their official seats in the Amphitheatre
or the Circus, at horse-races or other shows, but almost at arm’s length
at various religious functions, processions, sacrifices and other
acts of public worship. Necessarily they had often exchanged formal
greetings, but never yet any other words.
He greeted her effusively, with a comical mixture of hobbledehoy
clumsiness and imperial dignity.
“I’m glad you demanded an audience,” he said, as she sat down; “we
should have had a good talk long ago. You lambasted old Bambilio. That
is one for you. A juicier story I never heard. You are made of pepper.
And you saved the retiarius, the year after I was born. I’ve often
gloated over the story and wished I had been there to see. I was
there when you had your embarrassing experience and came through it so
gallantly. I was proud of you, like everybody else. I remember it well.
And Father gave me special instructions about you, so emphatically
that even scatter-brained as I am I have not forgotten them. I’ve been
meaning to have a talk with you ever since I took up this Emperor job.
But you know how it is. Every day there are ready and waiting for me to
do more things I really want to do than anyone man could get through in
anyone day, and three-quarters of them I have to forego doing because
of the pressure of my official duties. I can never seem to get time for
half the sword-exercise and archery drill and driving practice I need,
let alone for chats with heroines.
“I trust you’ll accept my apologies.
“There! That is all the talking I mean to do. I’m going to listen, now.
Tell me what you want and I’ll see your desire accomplished. I’ll do
anything for you, not only for your heroism and on account of Father’s
directions, but because of your horse-breeding. They say you’re as good
a judge of a horse as any man in Italy and I believe there are not a
dozen to equal you.
“I’ve driven several pairs of your crack colts and they are paragon
racers, docile as lambs and mettlesome as game-cocks.
“There! I’ve gone on talking! But I am really going to stop now and
listen. State your wishes.”
“I’ll have to make a long story of it,” said Brinnaria, hesitatingly.
“And one sixty times better worth listening to than ninety-nine out of
a hundred of the long stories folks bore me with, I’ll wager,” said
Commodus. “If it is long we’ll get to the end quicker by beginning at
once. And take your time, I’ll talk to you till dark, if need be. You
are entitled to all of my time you choose to claim.” Brinnaria began at
the beginning and rehearsed her story fully, Commodus listening without
much fidgeting and interrupting only to say now and then:
“Yes, I know about that. I remember that.” When she came to Almo’s
escape from Britain the Emperor slapped his thigh and emitted a sound
between a grunt and a squawk.
“The joke is on me!” he guffawed. “Just like me! Father told me
particularly about his injunctions to Opstorius, and Pertinax himself
reminded me about Almo after Father’s death. But it all went out of my
head and I never thought of it from the moment Pertinax bowed himself
out until this very instant. I’ll make up to you for my forgetfulness, I
promise you. Go on.” Upon her telling of Almo’s idling at inns after he
ran away from Fregellae, Commodus cut in with:
“I liked Almo, what little I saw of him, but I had forgotten him.
You make me remember him, make me recall trifling things about him,
attitudes, smiles, tones of his voice, witty replies, quips. I liked
him. But I like him better than ever from what you tell me of him. I
understand him. I know just how he feels. I long, sometimes, to chuck
Emperorizing and go off alone, with no responsibilities, and have a
really good time hobnobbing with the good fellows the world is full of.
I envy him. I dream of doing it, but he cut loose and did it. Good for
Almo.” At first mention of the King of the Grove Commodus leapt up from
his throne, strode up and down the room and clapped his hands.
Two pages rushed in.
“Get out!” he shouted. “I wasn’t clapping for you.” He paced the room
like a caged tiger.
“Think of it!” he exclaimed. “Think of it! Your lad certainly has fire
in his belly, yes and brains in his head, too! Think of it! He thought
it all out up there in the raw all-day mists, thought it all out, and he
works towards his purpose like a pattern diplomat, like a born general,
like a Scipio, like a cat after a bird! Has himself sold as a slave,
bides his time, puts himself in the pink of condition, watches his
opportunity.
“Think of it! Disconsolate because he couldn’t marry you, moody because
he has to wait so long, he seeks comfort in challenging the King of the
Grove. Oh, I love him! Only a prince of good fellows would have thought
of it. No ordinary adventure would divert him. He picks out the most
hazardous venture possible. Oh, I love him!”
When she narrated her interchange of clothing with Flexinna and her
litter-journey, Commodus looked grave. The loutishness vanished from his
attitude and expression. He became wholly an Emperor.
“Out of Rome, outside the walls, beyond the Pomoerium all night!” he
exclaimed. “That sounds bad. You were fool-hardy, too reckless entirely.
Why that is impiety. That amounts to sacrilege!” As with Flexinna,
Brinnaria reminded him of the Vestals’ flight after the disaster at
the Allia and of their sojourn at Caere, again emphasizing the contrast
between their unreprehended departure and the scrupulous steadfastness
of the Flamen of Jupiter.
“You have me!” he acknowledged. “Your contentions are sound. But, all
the same, even if it was merely a violation of rule, still, it is a
mighty serious matter. It is a good thing for you that I like you, that
my Father trusted you so notably, and gave me such explicit and emphatic
injunctions about you, that you have made a clean breast of it all
to me. If I had known nothing more about you than I know of Manlia or
Gargilia, if I had learned of your escapade from anyone but you, I’d
have had you formally accused, tried, convicted and buried alive with
the utmost dispatch.
“As things are, after all Father had to say about you, after his
detailing to me your several conversations with him, I understand, I
sympathize, I am convinced of the innocence of your feeling for Almo,
of the austerity with which you have banished from you all thoughts
unbefitting a Vestal and have postponed your anticipations of marriage
until your service shall have come to an end, I believe in the
impeccable correctness of your attitude.