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.
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.
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.”