AFTER her audience with the Emperor, Brinnaria felt more at peace with herself, succeeded better in curbing her native wildness, incurred less and less disapprobation and won increasingly the respect and affection of her elders. Her outbursts were less frequent and less violent; she learned to hold her tongue, to appear calm, to stand with dignity, to move with deliberation. Her admiration for Causidiena and Numisia and of their statuesque attitudes and queenly movements helped her a great deal by both conscious and unconscious imitation. It helped her more to find that she was succeeding better than Meffia. At first Brinnaria had been notably more prone than Meffia to assume gawky or ungainly postures, and, as she was the bigger of the two, she was the more conspicuous.
Before long she began to improve in her bearing, but Meffia did not. Brinnaria held herself erect, head up and shoulders back. Meffia slouched and sagged along, a semi-boneless creature, her clothing hanging on her baggily and unbecomingly.
The difference was particularly noticeable at meals.
In the Roman world all well-to-do people lay down to meals luxuriously extended on broad sofas. Brinnaria had always had trouble about her meal-time attitudes, and her mild easy-going mother had often had to speak to her and bid her remember herself. In the Atrium she had found her legs kept up their old habits of getting into strange postures, her feet seemed distressingly in evidence, and her knees always in the wrong place.
Causidiena, tactful and sympathetic, solved the problem of how to influence her by getting her to watch Meffia and to contrast her with Manlia and Gargilia.
They were almost as statuesque as their two elders, who reclined at table in attitudes scarcely less majestic than those of the Fates on the Parthenon pediment. Meffia sprawled uncouthly and was forever spreading her knees apart, generally with one up in the air. Her postures were so disgusting that Brinnaria was hot all over with determination not to be like Meffia.
She succeeded.
Great was her exultation when she perceived that it was no longer Brinnaria and Meffia who gave cause for concern to Causidiena, but Meffia and Brinnaria, great her triumph when she made sure that Causidiena had ceased worrying about her, or worried only at long intervals, but was perpetually solicitous concerning Meffia.
Meffia was indeed a cause of solicitude. She was stupid, slow and idle about her lessons, tearful on the slightest provocation, inert at all times and generally ailing, though never actually ill. She never looked clean, no matter how faithfully her maid toiled over her; she could somehow reduce, in an amazingly short time, the neatest attire to the semblance of mussed and rumpled rags; she slouched and shambled rather than walked, she lolled rather than sat.
Her hands were feeble and ineffective, her writing remained a childish scrawl, no matter how much she was made to practice, she dropped things continually and frequently spilt her food at meal-time. Most of all was her awkwardness manifest in the temple.
The temple was circular, its roof supported by eighteen splendid marble columns, the intervals between which were walled up to the height of not much more than five feet, the space from the top of the low wall to the roof being filled in with magnificent lattices of heavy cast bronze; so that the temple was a pleasant, breezy place on warm days, but very draughty in chilly weather and bitterly cold in winter. It contained no statue, nor any other object of worship, except in the center of its floor the circular altar on which burned the sacred fire, solemnly extinguished and ceremonially rekindled on each first of March, the New Year’s day of the primitive Roman Calendar, but which must never at any other time be permitted to go out, upon whose continual burning depended the prosperity of Rome, according to the belief implicitly held by all Romans from the earliest days until Brinnaria’s time, and for centuries after. The extinction of the perpetual fire, whether by accident or by neglect, was looked upon as a presage of frightful disaster to the nation, as an omen of impending horrors, almost as the probable cause of national misfortunes. Without qualification or doubt the people of Brinnaria’s world believed that, as long as Vesta’s holy fire burned steadily and brightly, Rome was assured the favor and protection of her gods; that, should it die out, their wrath was certain to be manifested in terrible afflictions involving the entire population.
The care of the fire was the chief duty of Brinnaria and her five associates, as it had been of their predecessors for more than nine hundred years. As maple was the sacred wood in the Roman ritual, maple only was used for the holy fire. The size of the pieces used and their shape was also a matter of immemorial ordinance. Each piece was about a cubit long, about the length of the forearm of an average adult, measured from elbow to finger-tips. Each piece must be wedge-shaped, with the bark on the rounded side and the other two sides meeting at a sharp edge where had been the heart of the trunk or branch from which it had been cut. Each piece must have been clean cleft with a strong sweep of the axe. The pieces varied from sections of stout trunks to mere slivers from slender boughs. All were of dry, well-seasoned wood, carefully prepared.
The placing of these on the fire was a matter of ritual and might be done no otherwise than as prescribed. It was quite a delicate art to lay the necessary piece in just the right place and at just the right angle; it required more than a little good sense and discretion to know just when a piece was required, for the fire must not burn violently nor must it smoulder, it must be steady but not strong. This discretion, this good sense, Meffia was slow to acquire. The art of laying the wood properly she acquired very imperfectly. She did it well enough under direction; but, even with Causidiena watching her, she was likely to drop the piece of wood on the floor, or, what was worse, to drop it on the fire instead of laying it on. The scattering of ashes on the floor of the temple was held unseemly, that live coals should fall from the Altar was considered almost sacrilegious. Meffia, more than once, perpetrated such appalling blunders. Very tardily did she learn her duties; only after four years could she be trusted to take her regular turn in care of the fire and to stand her watch of half a night each time her turn came between sunset and sunrise.
During these four years she had grown into a not unpersonable young woman, for Roman girls were generally young women at fourteen years of age. She was never ruddy or robust, always pale, delicate-looking and fragile-seeming, never actually ill, but usually ailing, peevish, limp and querulous. Life in the Atrium largely consisted in the effort to keep Meffia well, to make sure that she was not overtired, to foresee and forestall opportunities for her to blunder, to repair the consequences of her mistakes, generally to protect and guide her.
In the same four years Brinnaria had developed into a muscular girl, tall, amply fleshed, robust, rosy, full of healthy vigor, lithe and strong. She was radiantly handsome, knew it, and was proud of it. Her duties she knew to the last, least detail, and Causidiena trusted her quite as much as Manlia or Gargilia.
One spring night it was Mafia’s watch until midnight, at which time Brinnaria was to relieve her. It was the custom that, at the end of her watch, the Vestal on duty made sure that the fire was burning properly and then left it and herself waked her relief, it being entirely inconceivable that, under roof and protected all round by bronze lattices, a properly burning fire could go out in the brief space of time required to leave the temple, enter the court-yard, cross it, ascend the stairs and for the relieving Vestal to reach the temple by the same path reversed.
Brinnaria was a sound sleeper. She woke in the pitch dark with the instant conviction that she had slept long past midnight, with a sudden qualm of apprehension, of boding, almost of terror.
She was a methodical creature for all her wildness, and very neat in her habits. By touch, almost without groping, she dressed in the dark. Silently she slipped out of her room, noiselessly she closed the door, softly she groped her way to the stairs, down the stairs out into the courtyard to the corner of the colonnade.
There, a pace or two beyond the pillars, under the open sky, she peered up.
The gray light of dawn was faintly hinted in the blackish canopy of cloud above her.
Swiftly she flitted the length of the court, whisking past the dimly-seen columns; swiftly she traversed the three small rooms at its eastern end, panting she plunged through the dark doorway into the dark temple.
There was no flicker of fire-light on the carved and gilded panels of the lofty ceiling; the ceiling, in fact, was invisible, unguessable in the gloom.
There was no glow upon the altar, not even a glimmer of redness through the ashes.
Brinnaria held her hand over the ashes. Nowhere could she discern more than the merest hint of warmth.
On the back of her hands, as on the back of her neck, she could feel the chill of the faintly stirring dawn wind that breathed through the bronze lattices and across the temple interior.
She felt among the wood piled ready, found a slender sliver of a cleft branchlet, and methodically ploughed the ashes across and across. She did bring to the surface a faint redness, but not even one coal which could have been blown into sufficient heat to start a flame on her splinter of dry maple.
A sound assailed her ears.
Meffia snoring!
Guided by the gurgling noise she found Meffia crumpled in a heap on the mosaic floor against the base of one of the pillars.
Brinnaria kicked her once viciously and shook her repeatedly.
Slowly, dazedly, Meffia half awoke, whining:
“Where am I?” she gasped.
“In the temple!” Brinnaria replied.
“Oh!” Meffia exclaimed, “what has happened?”
“You went to sleep, you little fool,” Brinnaria raged at her, “and the fire has gone out.”
“Oh! what shall we do?” wailed Meffia, “what shall we do?”
“Do?” snarled Brinnaria. “It’s plain enough what you have to do. Go to your room, go to bed and go’ to sleep, stay asleep, keep your mouth shut, say nothing, pretend you woke me at midnight, pretend you had nothing to do with the fire going out, pretend you know nothing about it, keep your face straight, keep mum, leave the rest to me!”
“But,” wailed Meffia, “if they think you let the fire go out you’ll be scourged for it.”
“Well,” snapped Brinnaria, “what’s that to you? Go to bed.”
“But,” Meffia insisted, “I let it go out. I ought to take the blame, not you. I ought to be scourged with you.”
“You insufferable little idiot,” Brinnaria hurled at her, “you never could stand a flogging, you’d die of it most likely. To a certainty you’d be ill, and have to be sent off to be nursed and kept away for a month or more to recover. I won’t have Causidiena worried with any such performances. And as sure as the fire is out, you’d behave like the poor creature you are. You’d scream and howl and faint and shame us all.
“No flogging of you if I can help it!
“Now, go to bed!”
“But,” protested Meffia, “why need either of us be flogged? I have tinder and flint and steel in my room. We could light the fire and no one ever know it.”
“You imbecile child! You silly baby! You wicked, horrible, sacrilegious girl!” Brinnaria stormed. “You irreligious, atheistical, blasphemous wretch! To save your hide you’d desecrate the temple, pollute the Altar, anger Vesta, make all our prayers in vain, bring down curses without count on Rome and all of us. Be silent! Don’t you dare to speak another word! Off to bed with you!”
“But,” Meffia trembled, “you hate me; why do you take my punishment?”
“I don’t hate you,” hissed Brinnaria. “I despise you! And I’ve told you why I’m going to take the licking. Off to bed with you!”
“But,” Meffia still persisted, “what will you do?”
“Do?” whispered Brinnaria. “Do? Why I’ll curl up where you’ve left a warm spot on the floor and go to sleep and sleep till some one finds me. I can sleep any time.”
“But think of the scourging!” Meffia insisted.
“I shan’t,” Brinnaria maintained. “I shan’t think of it a moment. I never did mind a licking. It’s bad enough while it lasts, but soon over. No licking will worry me. I’ll sleep like a top. Now to bed with you, or I’ll break every bone in your worthless body!” Meffia started to speak again; Brinnaria caught her gullet in one strong, young hand, clutched her neck with the other, and craftily pressed one thumb behind one of Meffia’s ears.
Meffia squeaked like a snared rabbit.
“There!” Brinnaria whispered fiercely. “Now you know how badly I can hurt you when I try. If you let on that it was you and not I that let the fire go out what I did to you then won’t amount to anything to what I’ll do to you. I’ll kill you. Promise you’ll keep mum.”
“I promise,” gasped Meffia.
“Go to bed!” Brinnaria hissed.
Meffia went.
Brinnaria, left alone, did all she could to make the ashes on the Altar look like the remains of a fire that had died out of itself, to efface all signs of her efforts to find live coals under the ashes. She judged that she had succeeded pretty well.
Then she composed herself on the floor and was asleep in ten breaths.
There Manlia found her when the daylight was already strong.
When wakened Brinnaria merely remarked:
“It can’t be helped. I always did sleep too sound.” That day was a gloomy day in Rome. The report was noised abroad that the holy fire had gone out and a chill of horror spread through all classes of the population, from the richest to the poorest.
The Romans were very far from being what they are represented to have been by unsympathetic modern writers on them. Practically all modern writers have been unsympathetic with the Romans, for the Romans were Pagans and all modern writers on them have been more or less Christians, chiefly interested in Pagans because most Pagans were in the later centuries converted to Christianity. With that fact in the foreground of their thoughts and with the utterances of Roman skeptics and dilettantes well in view, most modern writers assert what they sincerely believe, that the Romans had only the vaguest and most lukewarm religious faith, and no vivid devout convictions at all.
The facts were entirely the other way. There were agnostics among the cultured leisure classes, there were unbelievers of various degrees everywhere in the towns and cities. But the mass of the population, not only universally, all over the countryside, but collectively in the urban centers, believed in their gods as implicitly as they believed in heat and cold, birth and death, fire and water, pleasure and pain. Government, from the Roman point of view, was a partnership between the Roman people, as represented by their senate, and the gods. Under the Republic every election had appeared to the Romans who participated in it to be a rite for ascertaining what man would be most pleasing to the gods to fill the position in question. Under the Empire the selection of a new Emperor, whether a confirmation by the senate of the previous Emperor’s accredited heir, or an acclamation by the army of the soldiers’ favorite, appeared to the Romans as the determination of the gods’ preference for a particular individual as their chief partner.
The choice of war or peace, of battle or maneuvering for delay, seemed to the Romans the taking of the advice of the gods, who manifested their injunctions by various signs, by the appearance of the liver, heart, lungs and kidneys of the cattle and sheep sacrificed, by the flight of birds, by the shape of the flames of altar-fires, all regarded as definite answers to explicit questions; who also made suggestions or gave warnings by means of earthquakes, floods, conflagrations, pestilences, eclipses, by the aurora borealis, by any sort of strange happening.
The extinction of the sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta was looked upon as a categorical warning that the behavior of the Romans or of some part of them or the conduct of the government was so displeasing to the gods that the Empire would come to a sudden end unless matters were at once corrected. All Romans believed that as implicitly as they believed that food would keep them alive or that steel could kill them.
Therefore the days after Meffia let the fire go out were gloomy days in Rome. The report of a great defeat for their army, with a terrible slaughter of their best soldiers would not have depressed the crowds more.
The people were as dazed, numb and silent as after the first news of a terrific disaster. Every kind of public amusement or diversion was postponed, merry-making ceased everywhere, the wildest and most reckless felt no inclination towards frivolity, even the games of children were checked and repressed, gravity and solemnity enveloped the entire city and its vast suburbs. The men talked soberly, as if at a funeral; while for women of every degree, but especially for the matrons of the upper classes, the three ensuing days were days of prayer and fasting.
For the Pontiffs they were anxious and busy days.
Both Emperors were away from Rome, Lucius Verus in Greece, on his way home from Antioch and the great victories of his three years’ campaign against the Parthians, Marcus Aurelius in Germany hastening from point to point along the headwaters of the Rhine and Danube, desperately resisting the pertinacious attacks of the Marcomanni. The Pontiffs were without their chief and acted under the leadership of Faltonius Bambilio, Pontifex of Vesta, the busiest and most anxious of them all. In consultation with the august College of Pontiffs, hastily assembled at the Regia, a splendid building occupying the site of Numa’s rustic palace, near the great Forum and close to the Temple of Vesta, he arranged for the necessary ceremonial of expiation and atonement.
Besides the fasting of the women all over the city, besides their day-long and night-long prayers, besides the sacrifices which each matron must personally offer in her own house, besides the sacrifices which must be offered for the matrons in the Temple of Castor and in the less popular women’s temples in every quarter of the city, there must he public sacrifices of cattle, sheep and swine, there must be solemn and gorgeous processions; every sort of ceremonial traditionally supposed to mitigate the wrath of the gods, to placate them, to win their favor, must be carried out with every detail of care, with the utmost magnificence.
Meanwhile, and above all, the negligent Vestal must be punished; and at once the sacred fire must be ritually rekindled.
The ritual rekindling worried and exhausted Bambilio not a little.
The procedure was traditional and rigidly prescribed in every detail. The sacred fire might not be rekindled by anything so modern as a flint and steel, far less by anything so much more modern as a burning glass.
The primitive fire drill must be used and the fresh fire produced by the friction of wood on wood.
The ritual prescribed that a plank of apple wood, about two inches thick, about two feet wide and about three feet long, should be placed on a firm support, upon which it would rest solidly without any tendency to joggle. At its middle was bored a small circular depression, about the size of a man’s thumb-nail and shallow. Into this was thrust the tapered end of a round rod of maple wood about as thick as a large man’s thumb. The upper end of the rod fitted freely into a socket in a ball of maple wood of suitable size to be held in the left hand and pressed down so as to press the lower end of the rod into the hole in the apple wood plank. Round the middle of the rod was looped a bow-string kept taut by a strong bow. By grasping the bow in his right hand and sawing it back and forth, the operator caused the rod to whirl round, first one way and then the other, with great velocity. The friction of its lower end soon heated up the hole in the apple-wood plank, and round that were piled chips of dry apple-wood, which, if the operator was strong and skilled, soon burst into flame.
Bambilio was fat and clumsy. Before he had succeeded he was dripping with perspiration, limp with weariness and ready to faint. But succeed he did. The quart or more of apple-wood chips burst into flame at last; Causidiena, standing ready with the prescribed copper sieve, caught the blazing chips as they were tilted off the plank, conveyed them to the Altar, placed maple splinters on them, and soon had the sacred fire burning properly.
The punishment of the guilty Vestal was even more a matter of concern, of trepidation. She must be scourged that very night, and, as in respect to the rekindling of the fire, every detail of what must be done was prescribed by immemorial tradition, long since committed to writing, among the statutes of the order.
The scourging must be done by the Pontiff himself.
The scourge must be one with a maple-wood handle and three thongs of leather made from the hide of a roan heifer. In each thong were knotted the tiny, horny half-hoofs of a newborn white lamb, eight to a thong, twenty-four in all. These bits of horny hoof tore and cut terribly the bare back of the victim. It was prescribed that the scourge must be laid on vigorously, not lightly.
The Vestal scourged must be entirely nude. As it would have been sacrilege unspeakable for a man to see the ankle or shoulder of a Vestal, let alone her entire body, it was enjoined that the scourging take place at midnight, in a shut room, and that a woolen curtain should hang between the Pontifex and his victim.
Bambilio was terribly wrought up at the prospect of the perplexing and delicate duty before him. He was fat and short-winded and would suffer from the effort of laying on the blows. He was as pious as possible and quaked inwardly with the dread that, in spite of the dark room and the curtain, he might catch a glimpse of his victim and bring down the wrath of the gods on himself and on Rome. And, apart from all else, he was shame-faced and hot and cold at the idea of being in the same room, even in a darkened room screened by a curtain, with a naked Vestal. He blushed and shuddered. To be sure, it was prescribed that one other Vestal was to be in the room, on the same side of the curtain as the victim, to say when the scourging had continued long enough and the negligent Vestal had been sufficiently punished. But this comforted Bambilio very little.
He wished the ordeal over.
At midnight he stood in the dark, close to the curtain. The darkness was not as dark as he should have liked. Some ghost of a glimmer of starshine filtered into the room and he could make out the shape of the curtain. He waited, scourge in hand.
Presently Numisia spoke, told him that Brinnaria was prepared for her beating, took his left hand and guided it in the dark. He felt the curtain’s edge against his wrist, felt a warm soft elbow, grasped it, and at once gained a notion of the direction in which he was to lay on his blows.
He struck round the other side of the curtain and felt that the scourge met its mark, but slantingly and draggingly. He tried again and seemed to do better.
For the third blow he made the scourge whistle through the air.
“Hit harder, you old fool,” spoke Brinnaria, “you’re barely tapping me!” That made him angry and Brinnaria experienced as severe a scourging as any fat old gentleman could have compassed.
She did not shriek, sob or whimper: not a sound escaped her. She suffered, suffered acutely, particularly when one of the lamb hoofs struck a second time on a bleeding gash in her back or on a swollen weal. But her physical pain was drowned in a rising tide of anger and wrath. She felt the long repressed, half-forgotten tomboy, hoyden Brinnaria surging up in her and gaining mastery. She fairly boiled with rage, she blazed and flamed inwardly with a conflagration of resentment. It was all she could do not to tear down the curtain, spring on Bambilio, wrench his scourge from his hand and lay it on him. She kept still and silent, but she felt her inward tornado of emotion gaining strength.
When Numisia spoke Bambilio let go Brinnaria’s arm and stepped back a pace. “My daughter,” he said, “you have been punished enough. Your punishment is accomplished. This is sufficient.”
Then Brinnaria spoke, in a voice tense, not with pain, but with fury:
“You won’t hit me again?”
“No, my daughter,” said Bambilio, “no more.”
“You have quite done beating me?” she demanded.
“Quite done,” he replied.
Then, unexpectedly to herself, Brinnaria’s wrath boiled over.
“Then,” she fairly yelled at him, “I’m going to begin beating you. Shut your eyes. I’m going to pull down the curtain!”
Numisia made a horrified grab at Brinnaria and missed her. Brinnaria gave her a push; Numisia slipped, fell her length on the floor, struck her head and either fainted or was stunned.
Bambilio, his eyes tight shut, the instant after Numisia’s head cracked the floor, heard snap the string supporting the curtain.
He shut his eyes tighter.
He felt the scourge wrenched from his limp fingers, felt the back of his neck grasped by a muscular young hand, felt the impact of the twenty-four sheep-hoofs on his back.
Through his clothing they stung and smarted.
There came another blow and another. Bambilio tried to get away, but he dreaded unseemly contact with a naked Vestal and did not succeed in his efforts.
The blows fell thick and fast. He was an old man exhausted by a long day of excitement and by his exertions while scourging Brinnaria.
His knees knocked together, he gasped, he snorted: the pain of the blows made him feel faint; he collapsed on the floor.
Then Brinnaria did beat him, till the blood ran from his back almost as from hers, beat him till the old man fainted dead away.
When her arm was tired she gave him a kick, threw the scourge on him and groped for Numisia.
Numisia had sat up.
“My child,” she said, “why did you do it?”
“I don’t know,” snarled Brinnaria. “I was furious. I did it before I thought. Are you hurt?”
“No,” said Numisia. “Don’t tell anyone you pushed me. I’ll never tell. I don’t blame you, dear.” She fainted again.
Causidiena, waiting under the colonnade of the courtyard, was appalled to descry in the gloom a totally naked Brinnaria, a mass of clothing hanging over her arm.
“My child,” she protested, “why did you not put on your clothes?”
“I don’t care who sees me!” Brinnaria retorted. “I’m boiling hot; I’m all over sweat and blood and my back’s cut to ribbons.”
“What are you going to do?” Causidiena queried.
“I’m going to bed,” Brinnaria replied. “Please send Utta to me and tell her to bring the turpentine jug and the salt box.”
“My dear,” Causidiena objected, “you’ll never endure the pain!”
“Yes, I shall,” Brinnaria maintained. “I’ll set my teeth and stand the smart. I don’t mean to have a festered back. I’ll have Utta rub me with salt and turpentine from neck to hips; I’ll be asleep before she’s done rubbing.”
“I’ll come and see she does it properly,” Causidiena said.
“Better not,” said Brinnaria. “Numisia and Bambilio need you worse than I do.”
“Why?” queried Causidiena.
“After Bambilio was done beating me,” Brinnaria explained calmly, “I beat him. Numisia tried to stop me and somehow fell on the floor and was stunned. She came to after I was done with Bambilio, but she fainted again. I beat him till he is just a lump of raw meat, eleven-twelfths dead, wallowing in his blood like a sausage in a plate of gravy.”
“My child!” Causidiena cried, “this is sacrilege!”
“Not a bit of it!” Brinnaria maintained, a tall, white shape in the star-shine, waving her armful of clothing.
“I have pored over the statutes of the order. It was incumbent on me to keep still and silent all through my licking. But I defy you or any other Vestal or any Pontiff or Flamen or either of the Emperors to show me a word on the statutes of the order or in any other sacred writing that forbids a Vestal, after her thrashing, to beat the Pontifex to red pulp. I have. You’d better go help him; he might die. And poor Numisia needs reviving. I’m all right; send me Utta and the salt and turpentine, and I’ll be fit for duty in a day or two.”
“You terrible child!” said Causidiena.
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