The Unwilling Vestal

CHAPTER XIII - PERVERSITY

ABOUT three years after her farewell to Almo, on entering Vocco’s house one afternoon, Brinnaria had a presentiment of something wrong. The children were as vociferous and as whimsical as usual, but there was a nameless difference in Flexinna’s expression and bearing. As soon as they were alone in their bath, after she had had one good plunge in the pool, Brinnaria, treading water in the deepest part of the tank, shaking her head like a wet spaniel, demanded:

“What is the matter? There’s something wrong. You might as well tell me.”

But Flexinna put her off and laughed at her insistence.

To Brinnaria the laughter seemed forced and so did the talk at dinner. No sooner was the dinner over and the tray of figs, almonds and pomegranates and other fruit on the table, than she whispered to Flexinna:

“Tell the servants to stay out. I want to talk.” Flexinna signed to Vocco and they exchanged glances.

“Why did you keep up the farce so long?” Brinnaria sneered. “I saw through it from the first.”

“We were afraid,” Vocco apologized, “that what I have to tell you would spoil your appetite.”

“It would take something pretty bad to spoil my appetite,” Brinnaria reflected. “Is Almo dead?”

“Not so b-b-bad as that,” spoke Flexinna.

“Tell me, Quintus,” Brinnaria breathed.

Vocco fidgeted.

“It’s an amazing story,” he began.

“All his story, all my story, all our story,” Brinnaria cut in, “is amazing. Leave out the comments and tell the story.”

“While Almo was away on the expedition against the nomads of the plateau,” Vocco narrated, “Pennasius fell ill, was allowed to resign his governorship and Grittonius took his place. On Almo’s return Grittonius complimented him most highly and promised him any reward he asked for. Almo amazed him by asking for a full and honorable discharge from the army. Grittonius expostulated with him but Almo held him to his promise. In spite of the governor’s appeals to his pride and to his patriotism he insisted, and Grittonius gave him his full official discharge. At once Almo applied for permission to sell himself as a slave. This so astounded Grittonius that he made him repeat the application before witnesses and give his reasons. Almo explained that he had always been devoted to horseracing and that he wanted formally and regularly to article himself to one of the racing companies as a charioteer; that he had always craved that life and had longed for it more and more as his career as a soldier went on. He said there was no use in his continuing a life he detested, nor missing the happiness he anticipated as a charioteer.

“Grittonius had him examined by a committee of the most reputed physicians of the province. They reported Almo entirely sane. Grittonius wanted to hold the matter over until he had special permission from the Emperor. Almo craftily maintained that Grittonius had been made governor with the fullest powers on all lines specifically to save the Emperor from being bothered about such trifles. Grittonius yielded. The necessary papers were drawn up, all the depositions were made out in duplicate. Every formality was fulfilled and Almo was publicly sold as a slave in the market place of Hippo.”

“What company did he enter?” Brinnaria queried.

“Veppius did not state,” Vocco replied; “he merely said that Almo sailed the next day for Spain.”

“The fool!” Brinnaria cried. “The three fools; a fool of a Veppius to write so vaguely, a fool of a governor to be persuaded so easily and Almo the biggest fool of all!

“What a fool of a lover I have! Are all men like that? I’m as much in love with him as he with me and I can behave myself decently and keep outwardly calm and observe the conventions of life. Why can’t he be decent? How can it comfort a man in love to throw away a splendid career, abandon a great income and vanish from the ken of all who love him? What madness is this with which the gods afflict him? Oh, I could tear my hair with rage!”

To trace Almo everything was done that could be done. Vocco himself set out at once for Hippo. He found that Almo had been sold to a Greek slave-dealer named Olynthides, brother of the well-known dealer at Rome. He found Olynthides a small man with a club-foot. He said he remembered the matter, that he had been employed to buy Almo and resell him for cash, especially to conceal the real purchaser.

When Vocco expressed astonishment Olynthides said:

“There is nothing to be surprised at, the thing happens every day. It is a regular feature of slave-trading. There are all sorts of reasons why a man wants a slave without any past. Such sales are customary and habitual.”

When pressed further he retorted:

“Of course I did not ask the buyer’s name; equally of course, I did not take any note of him, it was my business to forget him. I didn’t notice him when he came into the courtyard, there are always knots of people coming in all day, looking over the slaves I offer for sale, and going out again. He came in like anybody else and looked over my stock. When he spoke to me he had a servant with him carrying a stout leather bag. He indicated Almo and asked his price. I named it.

“‘Cash sale,’ says he; ‘no papers except a bare sale certificate.’

“‘Done,’ says I.

“He counted out the cash from his servant’s bag and I gave him the customary certificate, with a description of Almo and the statement:

“‘Sold on this day and date for cash’ and my signature and seal. That was all there was to it.”

When Vocco was persistent, Olynthides averred that he had “heard” that the purchaser’s name was Jegius and that he came from Cadiz. Vocco could not discover anyone in Hippo who had ever heard of a slave-dealer named Jegius.

When Vocco returned to Rome with his report Brinnaria set in motion all the forces of her world which could be utilized under the circumstances. Aurelius was on the Rhine frontier, but Brinnaria had, by this time, a close acquaintance with all important court officers and was on terms of the utmost cordiality with the officials who governed Rome in the Emperor’s absence. They sympathized with her and put at her disposal all the machinery of the government secret service. They agreed with her that the matter must be kept quiet, there must be no proclamations, posters, no rewards offered by crier or placard, no publishing of descriptions. With emphatic injunctions of secrecy they sent warnings to every provincial governor, to every local magistrate, to the aldermen of every free city, to institute unobtrusive investigations and to keep unostentatious watch. Brinnaria insisted that these mandates should be sent all over the Empire, pointing out that no one could conjecture what port of the Mediterranean or of the Black Sea might be the destination of any nameless trading ship. But, with special care, full orders were distributed throughout Spain.

Towards Spain, likewise, Brinnaria directed the energies of those organizations of the ancient world which were analogous to our modern private detective bureaus, and upon Spain she focussed the energies of the managers of the racing companies.

These great corporations were among the most important money-making enterprises of the Roman world. They maintained luxurious headquarters in the most congested business districts of the capital. They had offices adjacent to each of the circuses, they possessed huge congeries of buildings utilized as stables for their crack racers and barracks for their charioteers, and provided with spacious courtyards for training their teams. Outside of Rome they had similar offices and training-stables in every city and in most towns of any size or wealth. Besides they owned countless stud-farms, estates and ranches in every province of the Empire and maintained an army of herdsmen, ostlers and drovers to convoy their horses by land and whole fleets of ships to transport them by sea.

They were joint-stock companies, and while many smaller ones existed in various parts of the Empire and a few even at Rome, the small concerns were insignificant and generally ignored. When one spoke of the racing-companies one meant the six great companies whose central organizations were domiciled at Rome and whose ramifications penetrated every district of the Empire. These were known, after the racing-colors of their jockeys, as the Greens, the Blues, the Reds, the Whites, the Crimsons and the Golds. The Reds and the Whites were the oldest companies, the Crimsons and the Golds were companies established in the heyday of the Empire by coteries of millionaires, the Blues and the Greens were the largest, the wealthiest and the most popular, especially the Greens. In the Greens, somewhere, Brinnaria expected to find Almo, as he had been enthusiastic about the Greens from boyhood. He had been wearing their leek-green colors the day she had sat in his lap in her father’s courtyard. He had haunted their training-stables during his brief sojourn at Rome before Aurelius sent him to Africa, he had inherited a big block of stock in the Greens. In the Greens, likewise, Brinnaria owned stock; and, having entered into inheritances from more than seventy different wealthy relatives who had died during the pestilence, she happened to own stock in every one of the six great companies. She had personal friends among the directors of each of the six. Therefore it was especially easy for her to enlist their help in her efforts to find Almo. It would have been easy, anyhow, since to be able to oblige a Vestal was a refreshing novelty for almost anyone at Rome and to find a Vestal seeking one’s influence and one’s help, equally novel and refreshing; generally the shoe was on the other foot—most persons in public life in Rome were used to attempting to enlist the help and the interests of the Vestals for their purposes and were generally utterly at a loss for any means of requital, if the interest of a Vestal was enlisted and her help obtained.

Consequently all that the racing-companies could do to find Almo was done as well as all that could be done by the private detective agencies and by government officials.

All that was done was utterly in vain. No trace of Almo could be discovered after he had sailed from Hippo with Jegius. No slave-dealer named Jegius could be found nor anyone who knew such a slave-dealer. No clue, no ghost of a clue came to light. The Greens, like the other companies, could find among their charioteers, their jockeys, their free employees, their slaves, no individual in the least answering to descriptions of Almo. All governmental efforts, all professional efforts, all private efforts, all Vocco’s efforts, all Brinnaria’s efforts, were completely baffled.

Almo had completely vanished.

When Aurelius, passing through Rome on his way from the Rhine frontier to Syria, was in his capital for a brief period, Brinnaria had an audience with him.

“Daughter!” he said, “it is all my fault. I should have given Grittonius explicit injunctions about the boy. But the assaults of the Marcomanni were particularly furious just at that time; I was feverishly hurrying from point to point along the frontier; I accepted the resignation of Pennasius; by letter. I appointed Grittonius by letter; I assumed that Grittonius would have sense; I assumed that Pennasius would impart to him his secret instructions. I erred by inadvertence; I should have set a special watch on the boy. But I never thought of it. He was doing so well and he seemed so interested in his work. He was wonderfully fitted for frontier duty along the desert. I was watching him with keen interest; each report of him gave me greater pleasure. I do not hesitate to tell you that I had him in my mind’s eye to command this very expedition which I must now command myself, as there is no other man in the Empire fit to take charge of it.

“Is it not a shame that a man whom the Empire needs, who had before him so splendid an opportunity, who was fitting himself for so brilliant a career, should throw it all away from mere perversity? Yet I am not wrathful against him; I see many reasons for sympathizing with him.

“Rigid and unflinching celibacy affects different individuals very differently. Some it does not affect at all, apparently. It does not seem to affect you. You are as plump and rosy, as healthy and alert, as happy and normal a young woman, to all appearance, as could be found among matrons of your age in all the Empire. Celibacy seems to agree with you.

“Manifestly it did not agree with Almo. It got on his nerves somehow. That is the most probable explanation of his eccentric vagary. Don’t be discouraged. He’ll turn up somewhere, after a while, safe and sound and none the worse for his experiences.”

Brinnaria, in fact, was not discouraged. She resolutely and unweariedly prosecuted her efforts to find Almo. Nor was she despondent. She scouted the suggestion that he might be dead. She kept up her spirits, did not mope or brood and never lost her hearty appetite. She was the life of the dinners she attended and as talkative and witty as ever.

But the strain affected her greatly. She was outwardly controlled, statuesque and dignified, but the inward turmoil of emotion that surged through her manifested itself in an unremitting activity. She slept well and soundly, but rose early and kept on the go. Besides her duties, her music and her participation in social gatherings, she must needs find other outlets for her energy, other means to pass her time and distract her thoughts.

In the course of her dealings with the racing companies she became interested in them not merely as means towards locating Almo, but for themselves. She became particularly interested in their stables, their jockeys and their horses. There was no bar of religious tradition or of social custom which hindered a Vestal from freely mingling with men visibly in the open daylight in public. Visiting the stables of the racing companies had long been a fad with Rome’s social leaders, men and women alike. Brinnaria availed herself of her freedom in this regard and followed her inclination. She haunted the training-stables of all six corporations, but mostly of the Greens, always in company with Manlia, or Flexinna, or Nemestronia or some other of her women friends; she visited the barracks almost daily, chatted with the charioteers, grooms and ostlers, watched the exercising of the teams, inspected the stalls, conned the racers.

She made herself an excellent judge of a jockey and a better judge of a horse.

She interested herself in the methods by which the companies obtained and selected their animals. She became an adept on the entire subject of horse-raising. It engrossed her thoughts.

Then she herself took over the management of several of her estates in the environs of Rome; of all, in fact, which were near enough for her to visit personally. She redistributed the force of slaves that managed them, sold some, bought others and fitted up the properties as stud-farms. Herself she selected the brood mares and stallions with which to stock these estates. She herself laid down the principles guiding their management and she herself dictated the methods of breeding them. She herself superintended the carrying out of her orders, visiting each estate frequently and inspecting everything carefully and intelligently.

Her first offering of two-year-olds sold at good prices. She was encouraged, felt herself completely an adept, and would take no one’s word about anything relating to horses, relying solely on her own judgment.

All this would have subjected her to much reprehension had Faltonius Bambilio survived. But he had died just about the time of Almo’s disappearance. His son, also named Faltonius Bambilio, had taken up a political rather than a priestly life and was not to be thought of as his successor. In his place Aurelius, on his way to Syria, had nominated Lutorius Rusco, a man who impressed everyone at first sight, and more and more the better anyone knew him, as the paragon of a Pontifex. He was not lacking in ecclesiastical unction, but did not wallow in it as had Bambilio. He was pious, but did not think it necessary to advertise it day and night unremittingly. He was not lax in religious matters, but he was no stickler for minute trifles. He inspired confidence by every characteristic of his appearance and behavior. He was a man somewhat over medium height, well built, neither heavy nor large, with an unusually dignified bearing and carriage, not a hint of self-assertion and with a genially comprehending smile. It was impossible not to confide in him and unthinkable that confiding in him should ever be regretted. Brinnaria confided in him and never regretted it.

Of Almo’s disappearance she talked to him freely; freely also she talked of her feelings for Almo. He was as sympathetic and comprehending as the Emperor and Empress and he encouraged her to hope that Almo was yet alive, which she sometimes doubted.

Of her stock farms he said to her:

“I should certainly not have advised any woman to enter upon such an enterprise, least of all a Vestal. I know of no other member of our hierarchy who has any similar interests, except Calvaster, whose haunting of the gladiatorial schools and association with trainers of gladiators has given some scandal. Some people would call your horse-breeding unseemly for a Vestal. But I see no harm in it. I have talked with Causidiena and it is clear that you do not neglect or skimp your duties, that you give them full time and close attention. Your leisure is your own to do with as you please. And your immediate success appears an evidence that, to say the least, your undertakings give no offence to the gods.”

During the latter months of Bambilio’s oversight Brinnaria had felt restive and as if some inward force was forever driving her to feverish activities; under the care of Lutorius she became placid and thought less of her stock-raising, journeys to and fro to her estates, talks with grooms and such like activitie and devoted herself with more cool ardor to her duties.