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, !"

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 instigators!" 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, stil 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.

"But, without that, even having learnt of your prank from yourself, I should have thought it necessary to lay the facts before the College of Pontiffs and ask their opinion. It looks fishy, stravaging all over the landscape after dark with a cavalier beside your litter all night long. I comprehend, I condone, I judge that you have not impaired your qualifications for your high office. I have no qualms. But it is well for you that Father instructed me. Go on, tell me the rest." Over the fight he rubbed his hands and chirruped with delight, and, when she spoke of the King's harem, he burst into roars of laughter, rolling himself on his throne, slapping his thighs, holding his ribs.

"Oh you women," he gurgled, "you are all alike, you Vestals as much as the rest! The fire of womanhood smoulders under your icy composure like the fires of Etna under her mantle of snow.

"You more than most Vestals, of course. You are a real human being, you are! So you went out to save him, even if you lost your life trying, even if you were buried alive for it, and you came back hot, red hot, to have him killed, and the sooner the better, it couldn't be too soon for you.

"Oh, I'm glad you came. I haven't been entertained like this since I was made Emperor. Go on!" When she uttered the word Fagutal and told of her visit to the rookery he had another fit of laughter and exhausted himself with mirth.

When she narrated the repeated failures of the champions she had suborned and Almo's uniform success, Commodus was in ecstasy.

"He's the boy for my money," he cried. "He's worth all the trouble you've had with him. You'll get a husband worth waiting for. He's one in a million. One hundred and five bouts in ten months and victor in all of them! He's a jewel, a pearl I I'd do anything for you, as I told you, I'd keep myself on the rack day and night for you and him. You are a pair! There's not on earth the match for the two of you!"

At the end of her story he said:

"You have not gone to all this trouble and taken up so much of my time and confided to me all the secrets of your heart merely to ease your mind. There's something you want me to do, some help you expect to gain from me. You have given me no inkling of what it is. What is it? Speak out!"

"He is certain to be killed sooner or later," she said, wringing her hands. "I want you to help me to save him."

"Save him!" Commodus echoed. "Isn't he competent to save himself? Hasn't he convinced you of his ability to protect himself—Sooner or later? Much later, very much later. And he's more likely to be killed by old age than by any weapon in the hands of any man.

"I'll never understand women. No man can, I suppose. You're bent, bound and resolved that he must die. You pour out gold like water to compass his death. You have Italy ransacked for dexterous cutthroats. He never turns a hair. It's easy for him as for a Molossian dog to kill wolves. He enjoys it; disposes of every man who dare face him. You can't find another bravo to take the risk, not for any money! Then, when he has proved himself the best fighter in Italy, you face about and all of a sudden you are in a wax for fear some one may kill him!

"Nobody will ever kill him. You and I saw him dispose of more than a dozen expert gladiators, one after the other; you saw how daintily and adroitly he did, it. You have just described his fight with his predecessor. It was over almost before it was begun. The incumbent was a dead man from the moment he faced Almo. Both knew it, too, and, since then he has done for the pick of the blackguards from all Italy. If Ravax and his gang could find no one to face him, there is none; if no man of that crew could best him, not Ravax himself, no man can best him. Don't you see?"

"No, I don't," she said. "It will be just like his fights in the arena. No matter how often he wins, he is bound to lose at last."

"Don't you believe it," Commodus argued. "I remember him well. I was wild over him just after Father's triumph and saw a good deal of him before he set out for Britain. I was then no such all-round expert at weapon-play as I have become since, but I was good for my age. I fenced with him repeatedly and I know his quality. I had all the best swordsmen in the capital pitted against him and not one of them was his match. Murmex Lucro did not come to Rome till after Father's death. So I never saw Murmex and Almo fence. But let me tell you this: Murmex is the only man alive who can fence with me for points and make anything like my score. And Almo is the only man alive, except me, who is fit to face Murmex on equal terms. There are only two men on earth who could kill Almo in a fight with any kind of weapons—Murmex is one and I am the other.

"Why, Almo is as safe in the Grove as I am in the Palace. Don't you worry about him. Nobody will kill him; take it from me, I know."

Brinnaria, with a sharp intake of her breath, gazed about the room and collected herself to resume her argument and make her next point.

"Do you concede," she queried, "that I have the right to be solicitous about Almo's life?"

"Father said so," Commodus replied, "and I never knew him to be wrong. I took that opinion from him and I see no reason to change it."

"Do you concede," she pressed him, "that I have the right to looking forward to marrying him at the end of my service?"

"Like Father, I do," he admitted.

"How can I ever marry him," she demanded, "if he remains King of the Grove?"

The young Emperor laughed merrily.

"Don't you worry about that, either," he said. "I told you I'd do anything for you and I meant it. I told you I'd do anything for Almo, and I meant that too. But, as things are, doing what you want and what is good for him will be doing just what I most want myself. I have a frightfully poor memory. Barely seven years ago my Father triumphed after what was thought a complete, decisive and crushing victory over Avidius Cassius and a huge confederation of nomadic tribes. Cassius was certainly abolished; he was buried. But after scarcely five years the desert nomads were as active as ever and they have grown so pertinacious and cocky that something must be done. I don't want to go myself, and I feel no confidence in my ability to accomplish anything if I went. I have been on the rack to decide whom to send. I can't afford to send some bungler who'd mismanage and let the sand-hills devour a half a dozen of my best legions.

"My councillors and I have found no promising candidate. All the while I have been cudgelling my brains trying to remember something Father told me. I distinctly recalled that he said that he had in view the very paragon of a commander to dispatch against Avidius, but that some occurrence made it impossible to send him and he had to go himself. I couldn't for the life of me recollect what had happened to hinder the man going or what the man's name was. Since it was a verbal communication from Father I had no memorandum and no one else had ever known it.

"Now I remember that Almo was the man and that his infatuation with the life of a gladiator was what prevented.

"Do you see what I mean? I shall not have to go to Syria and I'll send the very best man for that job who can be found on earth. If anybody knows what I'm doing they'll say that Almo is a lunatic and I am another to send him. But nobody will ever know and if everybody knows, what do I care. Father knew a good man when he saw one. I'll take his word for it that Almo proved himself the greatest genius for desert fighting that the Republic has produced in a hundred years. And I'll follow my own intuition that a swashbuckler whose own thoughts prompted him to challenge the King of the Grove as a cure for tedium, who had the nerve to carry out the idea and the skill to win a hundred and six fights in ten months must be a good all-round man and a real man clear through. I take it that being put in supreme command of a great expedition will brush the cobwebs from Almo's brain and restore him to himself. Do you follow my idea?"

"I cannot conjecture," Brinnaria replied, "how you expect to carry it out."

"Simple enough," said Commodus. "I'm not the man my Father was, not by a great deal. I am a natural all-round athlete, but I was never born to be an Emperor. All the same, when I buckle down to my job, I'm not such a bad hand at it. If I have a talk with Almo I'll swing him my way without half trying."

"But," Brinnaria interposed, "even you, even as Emperor and Chief Pontiff, cannot free a man who has become King of the Grove. There is no record of any form of exauguration for a Priest of Diana of the Underworld. There would be an outcry. Once King of the Grove a man must live out his life as King of the Grove."

Commodus grinned a school-boy grin.

"My dear," he said, "there are more ways of killing a dog besides choking him to death on fresh curds."

Brinnaria stared.

"You talk," he said, "as if you had gone over all the records. Don't you recall two cases where a King of the Grove died without being killed?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"Well," he continued, "what was done?"

"Two challengers were brought forward," she said, "and they fought each other."

"Just so," said he, "and don't you recall one case where a King of the Grove disappeared and was believed to have run away, but was never found, nor any trace of him?"

"I remember that, too," she agreed.

"Well," he pressed her, "what was done in that case?"

"Two challengers fought each other that time also," she allowed.

"Well," he summed up, "that's what we'll have done now. Almo will vanish. He's good at it, he's had practice. Two challengers can be found easily enough."

"But," she cavilled, wide-eyed, "there's all the difference in the world between egging on two challengers after the post is vacant and arranging to vacate the post. What you propose would be sacrilege, impiety."

"Don't you worry about that!" he soothed her. "The priesthood at Aricia is no part of our hierarchy; the safety of Rome in no way depends on its sanctity. It is important enough for the nine towns that share the cult, but it concerns no others. It's an alien cult, anyhow. Whether Orestes brought it to Aricia or Hippolytus or who else makes no difference, nor the tradition that it is four hundred years older than Rome. It's a disgrace to Italy and it exists on sufferance. Father told me that Grandfather and he were both in half a mind to have it suppressed as the Bacchanals were suppressed. The curative repute of the Grove stood in the way. As for me, if it were not for the sporting character of the King's tenure, I'd see to it that Almo would be the last King. I feel free to do as I please in any matter that concerns it."

Brinnaria said nothing.

He resumed:

"Leave it all to me. I'll go to Aricia myself; I'll expostulate with Almo; I'll appeal to his manhood, to his pride, to his patriotism. Ten to one he's disillusioned by this time, sick of his job and ready to listen to reason. He'll promise to obey me and he'll obey me.

"The rest will be managed by men who will make no mistakes. They'll find two challengers each much like Almo in build and appearance. One dark night Almo will slip off in charge of the men I delegate for that duty; the two challengers will be guided so that each thinks he is fighting the King of the Grove. Whichever survives will be rigged up in the customary toggery. There will be a corpse properly offered on the altar. Nobody will suspect anything."

About a month later Lutorius conveyed to her a hint from the Emperor. She at once applied for an audience.

Commodus was as expansive as a boy who has had a good day's fishing.

"It's all over," he said, "and everything went off just as I foresaw and planned. Almo was disgusted and tractable. We found two desperadoes of suitable make. While we steered them at each other Almo slipped out. Besides you, your two friends, your agents, Lutorius and myself, no one knows that Almo was ever King of the Grove. I had him brought to the Palace and Lucro and I had no end of good fun fencing with him. I had the Senate pass a decree relieving him of all and sundry legal consequences of having been sold as a slave in Britain. I had him choose a full staff of the best possible aides, orderlies and such. He is off to Syria. I did not send for you until I had word that he had not only sailed from Brundisium but had actually landed at Dyrrhachium. I anticipate that the job I have sent him on will take all of six years. Just about when your service is drawing to an end he will return to Rome covered with glory and loaded with loot. The nomads have been plundering our cities and have accumulated in their strongholds immense amounts of treasure. He'll get it back. Meantime your mind should be at peace."

Brinnaria was properly grateful and expressed her feelings fervently.

"And now," said Commodus, "since I have done what you wanted and you are pleased, may I ask a favor of you? You can do something for me that no one else can and if you promise it will set my mind at rest to some extent."

Brinnaria earnestly promised to do her best.

"I am troubled," said the Emperor, "very much troubled. You know how rumors get about among people, starting no one knows where; and how, when such a notion is abroad, nothing on earth can counteract it.

"Well, there's a story going about of an oracle, an oracle which says that the Republic reached its acme under Trajan, that the Empire kept up its prosperity under Hadrian and my Grandfather and Father, but that the glory of Rome is fated to fade and wane and that its decline will date from my taking over the Principiate.

"I am worried about it. I have sent to Delphi and Dodona and every other oracle from Olisipo to Pattala, but I can find no record of any such oracle having been uttered. The people, however, credit it as if it came from Delphi.

"I've had a hundred oracles consulted about the matter, Delphi too. They all hedge; not one is clear. But they all speak of an impending disaster that may be averted by watchfulness. And they all hint darkly at some danger to the Palladium; they all mention it somehow; most of them allude unmistakably to the Temple of Vesta; some of them manifestly refer to the Atrium; all of them speak of fire.

"Now I know that the sacred fire will be cared for by you and Manlia and Gargilia and Numisia as well as ever it was since Numa. Causidiena is too old to count and Terentia is too young, but in the four of you I have complete confidence as far as the fire is concerned.

"About the Palladium I don't feel so sure. The six terra-cotta chests are so exactly alike and the five counterfeits are so like the real statue that I am afraid the precautions taken to baffle an intruding thief might confuse you Vestals in a crisis.

"Do you know the real Palladium from the five dummies?"

"I do," said Brinnaria; "we all do. When I had been a Vestal five years Causidiena showed me the Palladium. No Vestal is ever shown it until she is over fifteen. Like all other young Vestals I was made to spend hours in the inner storeroom, blindfolded, learning to recognize the real Palladium by touch.

"The differences between the original and the copies are very small, mostly in the carving of the folds of the gown. But every young Vestal is drilled until she can recognize the genuine relic by touch, one hundred times out of one hundred times, and until she can similarly discriminate the terra-cotta chest that contains it from the other five chests. I could tell the Palladium from the imitations instantly any time."

"You relieve me," said Commodus. "I've wanted to talk about this to all you Vestals, but I've been ashamed to broach the subject. Since you confided in me I feel no hesitation about confiding in you."

"I promise you," said Brinnaria, "that the Palladium will never be stolen, lost, or come to any harm if I can prevent it, and I believe I can. I pledge you my word."

"I feel better," said Commodus.

"And I want to say," Brinnaria added, "that I have always felt a special interest in the Palladium. Ever since I was old enough to share all the duties and all the responsibilities of a Vestal, my feelings have been particularly engaged with the Palladium. There is something tremendous and crushing in the thought of being in charge of four of the seven objects on the safety of which depends the safety of Rome and the prosperity of the Republic. Whenever Causidiena has shown them to us younger Vestals I have felt the strongest emotions at the sight of the jar containing the ashes of Orestes, of the antique gold canister which protects the plain, gold-mounted ivory sceptre of Priam, of the lapis-lazuli casket which enshrines the tatters remaining of Ilione's veil; but more than at sight of them I have trembled with awe to look at that little statuette, no longer than my forearm, and to think that if it were destroyed the Empire would crumble and Rome would perish. You maybe sure I shall do all I can to keep safe the precious treasure committed to my charge."

"I feel sure you will," said Commodus.



BOOK IV



THE REVULSION OF DELIGHT



CHAPTER XX - ACCUSATION



AFTER Almo's redemption and his departure for Syria Brinnaria calmed down. Her feverish activity abated and vanished. She ceased to take any interest in the speed of her litter-bearers or of her carriage-teams. She took her outings for their own sake, not merely to feel herself transported rapidly from somewhere to anywhere. She kept an oversight of her stock-farms, but she left the management of them almost entirely to her bailiffs. On music she spent more of her time and in it she took an intenser delight.

Life in the Atrium altered chiefly through the growing up of Terentia, whose fifteenth birthday was celebrated soon after Almo left Italy, and by the steady waning of Causidiena's eyesight. She could still recognize familiar persons when between her and the strong light of a door or window in the daytime; she could still place pieces of wood on the fire, if it was burning well. But she was plainly verging on total blindness. Except in so far as it was modified by pride in Terentia and solicitude for Causidiena, life in the Atrium flowed on as it had for centuries.

Reports from Almo were uniformly good. From the first he displayed all the qualifications requisite for a commander in chief. For him everything promised well.

Under these conditions Brinnaria throve. Her natural vigor had always been such that she never had showed any outward signs of the strain to which she had been subjected. Uniformly she had looked handsome and healthy. But now, if anything, she looked healthier and handsomer than ever. She was then thirty-two years old. At ten years of age she had looked eighteen, at eighteen she had looked twenty-four. At thirty-two she still looked no more than twenty-five. Her hair was abundant and glossy, her eyes bright, her cheeks rosy; she was neither slender nor plump, but a well-muscled, graceful woman, decidedly young-looking, and altogether statuesque in build and carriage, but very much alive in her springy suppleness.

About a year after Almo's departure for Syria Lutorius came to see her one morning, his face grave.

He indicated that they had best confer alone. In her tiny sanctum he came straight to the point.

"Daughter," he said, "my news is as bad as possible. You are formally accused of the worst misconduct."

"Why look so gloomy?" said Brinnaria. "That is comic, not tragic. Who's the fool accuser?"

"Calvaster, as you might conjecture," he answered; "and grieve to have to inform you," he added, "that this is no laughing matter."

"Pooh!" said Brinnaria. "I'm not a bit afraid of Calvaster. Aurelius gave Commodus emphatic injunctions about me. And he went into details. Commodus can't have forgotten his reprimand to Calvaster nor his categorical threat."

"I fear," said Lutorius, "that his father's instructions on that particular point are not well to the front of the Emperor's mind."

"Well, anyhow," said Brinnaria, "everybody knows my preoccupation with Almo and everybody saw my behavior in the Amphitheatre. I feel pretty safe in respect to my general reputation. As to particulars, I've been vigilantly careful to keep away from Almo. Except twice, in the presence of Aurelius, I haven't been within speaking distance of him in twenty-two years. Between the fact that no one can prove that I have had anything to do with him and the improbability that anyone would suspect me of interest in any other man, let alone misconduct with any other man, I feel entirely secure."

Lutorius wagged his head.

"You are accused of misconduct with another man," he said.

"Absurd!" said Brinnaria, "easy to confute. Who is the man?"

"Not so easy to confute, I fear," said Lutorius. "The man named is Quintus Istorius Vocco."

"Whew!" cried Brinnaria, springing to her feet and snapping her fingers. "That is ingenious! That will give me trouble! I didn't credit Calvaster with that much sense. I never thought of anyone looking askance at my relations with Quintus. I've never taken any precautions as to when I was with him or how long or where. I've treated him as an honorary brother, seeing I have no brothers of my own left alive. Flexinna has been such a sister to me, that we have disregarded Quintus almost as if he were a slave or a statue or a picture on the wall or another woman. Whew!"

"You perceive," said Lutorius, "that the situation, in general, is very serious?"

"I do, indeed!" admitted Brinnaria.

"Serious as it is in general," he went on, "it is still more serious in particular. Your excursion to Aricia was by no means as much a secret as you have all along supposed. I, for instance, knew of it before you confessed it to me."

"How was that?" Brinnaria inquired.

"Numisia," he explained, "saw you go out in Flexinna's clothes and recognized you. She entered your room and talked with Flexinna. She summoned me and we conferred. We both loved you and we both believed in you. We were solicitous for the cult, but we were nearly as much solicitous for you. We agreed that we were almost fully warranted in assuming your entire innocence of heart and that your impulsive behavior would not alienate the good will of the Goddess. We decided to take it upon ourselves to judge you blameless and to shield you. Utta was instructed never to let you know that Numisia had seen Flexinna; Flexinna, of course, fell in with our plans. Numisia made every arrangement that would prevent any more from learning the secret and would make your return easy.

"After you came back safe our decision seemed justified. I talked with Vocco and learned that nothing had occurred to render your exposure likely, except your encounter with Calvaster. As we heard nothing from Calvaster we felt entirely successful. It turns out that he was only biding his time. He has formally accused you before the College of Pontiffs, alleging in general your long-continued familiarity with Vocco, and, in particular, your having been outside of Rome after midnight in Vocco's company."

"Whew," Brinnaria exclaimed, "this is indeed serious! I feel myself strangling or starving in a vaulted cell. What am I to do?"

"See Commodus first of all," said Lutorius.

In the short interval since her former audience, those traits of which he had previously shown the merest traces had rapidly developed in Commodus into fixed characteristics. He had become what he remained until his end, an odd mingling of loutish, peevish school-boy, easy-going, self-indulgent athlete and superstitious, suspicious despot.

"To begin with," he said, "I want you to understand that I like you, that I haven't forgotten that you rescued the retiarius, whopped Bambilio and behaved like a trump when Father tested you. I'm for you. Your colts are the cream of Italian stud-farms. You are a wonderful woman, all round. But, as a Vestal, you have your weak points. I remember Father's instructions about you and I have all that in mind. Besides, I know that I, as Chief Pontiff, have the right to make my own decision about any such matter and to brush aside anybody else's opinion and anybody else's interpretation of the evidence. Also my impulse is to make use of my prerogative, dismiss the accusation against you, reiterate Father's warning to Calvaster and get the whole thing off my mind. I don't like Calvaster and I don't value him an atom. They say he's indispensable, but if he irritates me ever so little more I'll dispense with him and I'll wager the Republic will get on without him. You see that I am strong on your side and almost on the point of deciding in your favor.

"But I hesitate. This case of yours worries me more than anything that has come up since I took over the Principiate. I cannot make up my mind.

"I'm not the man I was a year ago. I'm shaken. Father told me that the most wearing feature of his being Emperor was his recurring escapes from assassination. I had my first escape just after your audience with me. It jarred me horribly. The fool barely missed finishing me. The experience made me take precautions and so no other miscreant has come so near to doing for me. But the repetitions have grown monotonous. I always thought highly of your lad, and I've often wondered how he managed to get any sleep or swallow any food while he was King of the Grove, but I think immeasurably more of him since I've been through something faintly similar. He deserves the best of life and I hope he'll get his heart's desire and marry you at the end of your service.

"You see how enthusiastically I am on your side.

"But there is much to be considered.

"If this were a question of judging a two-year-old filly I'd need no man's advice and I'd listen to no man's opinion. I'm better fitted to judge a horse than any man alive. It would be the same if it were a question of refereeing a sword-bout or a boxing-mill or a wrestling-match or anything of the kind. I know all about such things and I know that I am a judge superior to anybody on earth. I'm a born all-round athlete and everybody knows it and recognizes me as a past master.

"But as an Emperor, as Chief Pontiff, such is not at all the case. I feel a fumbler, a bungler. I grope. I suspect that the judgment of my advisers is better than mine. What is worse, I know that they think so. I am surrounded by men pre-eminent in their specialties, who look on me as a green boy placed by mere chance in a position which I fail to fill adequately. They watch me like hawks, they expect to see me blunder, they raise eyebrows at each other, they exchange glances. It rattles me. I wish I had Alexander's nerve. He was as young as I am and he brooked no opposition, but rammed his opinions down his councillors' throats from the hour when he became King. But I haven't his nerve, not by a long shot. I had as good teachers as he had, too. But, Hercules be good to me, I never could learn anything out of a book.

"As a charioteer, or a swordsman I'm as confident as a lion. As an Emperor I'm as cowardly as a jackal. It's the effect of the prophecies and auguries and oracles and such. They all hint at my impairing the prosperity of the Republic or diminishing the power of the Empire. It gallies me when I see two old bald heads wink at each other; I know they are thinking:

"'What did I tell you! Here's this young fool ruining Rome, just as the oracle prophesies.' "It gets on my nerves.

"I daren't decide the matter on my own judgment.

"Besides, there's the danger of assassination hanging over me. All the men who have tried so far have been highly educated magnates of lofty principles. They seem to feel I am an unworthy Prince and that to kill me would be a service to the state. It galls me to think of it, and me doing my best for the Republic and the Empire, denying myself hours of pleasure daily, missing races and all kinds of contests and toiling over documents and estimates and statistics. But it is true. If I decide this case of yours, ten to one any number of self-righteous nobles will say to themselves:

"'Here is this lout on the way to destroy the foundations of Rome's greatness. Rome must be saved from him. My duty is clear. He must be put out of the way.' "Nice situation for me. I dare not let loose any such possible fanaticism for my own destruction.

"And apart from any qualms about my qualifications to judge, apart from any dread of the consequences to myself, of absolving you, there is my sense of duty to Rome. Here are these cursed ambiguous oracles hinting some harm to Rome, mentioning fire and the Temple of Vesta and the Palladium. Perhaps what they mean is just the possible wrath of Vesta at an unworthy priestess. How can I tell?

"You see why I hesitate?"

Brinnaria nodded. She judged it no time to speak, and, had she wished to speak she could hardly have done so.

"I might not have hesitated," Commodus resumed, "if Calvaster had come to me. But he pops up in a full meeting of the College of Pontiffs and says he saw you, after midnight and before dawn, on the Appian Road, between Aricia and Bovillae, in a litter that didn't belong to you and with Vocco on horseback beside it. That puts all the Pontiffs in possession of the facts and on the watch to see how I'll decide, if I do decide. Calvaster made sure of proving those facts, for he had two highly respectable and respected nobles to swear that they were with him and saw Vocco and the litter and knew the litter for Nemestronia's. That he had any number of witnesses to swear to the frequency of your visits to Vocco's house, your habit of dining there and the freedom with which you treated him.

"My impulse was to tell Calvaster I disbelieved any story he fathered, that I had my Father's instructions discrediting him, that I knew all about your intimacy with Flexinna and her husband, that I knew all about your excursion to Aricia and why you went and that I approved and that was the end of it. I have told you why I hesitated.

"But I was inclined that way. I have talked with Lutorius and Causidiena and Numisia. They feel towards you as my Father felt. They believe in you and in your worthiness as a priestess, and they minimize your irregularities. I sent for Flexinna and talked with her. She deserves consideration, if only because she is the mother of the largest family to be found among our nobility, even among our gentry. She hoots at the idea of anything improper between you and Vocco, in act or thought. She evidently tells the truth. It is plain that she and Vocco are a devoted pair, that you and he never did anything wrong or thought of anything wrong. I sent for Vocco and talked with him. I am all but clear what I should do, but I am not quite clear.

"Now, there are only two ways to settle this: one is for me to settle it myself and out of hand. The other is to have a formal trial of you before the College of Pontiffs.

"If you are tried you'll be condemned. All you can say of the innocence of your intimacy with Vocco, all you can say of the innocence of your regard for Almo, all I can say of my Father's high esteem of you, of his injunctions regarding you, will not avail to save you. The Pontiffs will not heed the considerations which were so plain to Father and are so plain to me and Lutorius and Numisia. They will say it makes no difference whether you went to Aricia because of solicitude for Almo or on account of an intrigue with Vocco. They will hold that such a manifestation of interest in Almo proves you almost as unfit to be a Vestal as if it were certain that you were philandering with Vocco.

"In particular they will hold that there might be room to absolve you had you openly gone to save Almo in your full regalia and in your own carriage, or your own litter, with your lictor before you; but that while the fact of your being out of Rome all night in a litter is damning enough, the appearance of duplicity and underhanded secrecy given to the proceeding by your being disguised in another woman's clothing and carried in a borrowed litter makes terribly against you.

"Of course I could impose my will on the Pontiffs, but I should hesitate to override their decision, even more than I hesitate to decide the case myself, and for the reasons I have given.

"Yet I must say I could forget my dread of assassination and ignore any opinionated contempt I might evoke, if I could be sure in my own heart that I am doing what is best for Rome; I should be as arrogant an Emperor as ever Domitian was if only I felt confident that my instincts are right. My instincts all urge me to act as an Emperor and a Pontifex Maximus and settle this matter out of hand, once and for all.

"But I hesitate. I can't make up my mind. All I need is a sign that you are as acceptable to Vesta as I believe you are. I have tried to satisfy myself, to elicit some sign of the Goddess' will, but no sign has been vouchsafed me. I've had the Sibylline Books consulted, which is a trying matter with Calvaster left out of the consulting board; I have sent to every oracle within reach, have put questions to all the sibyls in all the caves of Italy, have called in a rabble of Etruscan soothsayers, every haruspex and auspex in Etruria, I believe. They all hedge. They are all vague. They are all indefinite. They give me no help!

"Now, I like you; I like Almo; I like both of you and I respect you; I believe in you. I'd hate to wake up and call for any breakfast I had a whim for and look at it and smell it and think of you, all alone in the dark in a vaulted cell six foot under the rubbish of that garbage-dump out by the Colline Gate. And I hate the thought of the bother and worry of a trial. I want to put my foot down and assert my will and be done with it all. But, as I've said a dozen times already, I hesitate. Chiefly I hesitate because I am resolute to do my duty to Rome according to my lights. I feel I am right, but I am not quite man enough to follow my feelings. If I could have some plain sign that Vesta understands and condones your past irregularities as I do, that Vesta approves of you and is pleased with you as I am, if I could feel Vesta corroborating my feelings, if I could evoke an unmistakable token of her will, I'd not hesitate. I'd scout the suggestion of a trial; I'd squelch Calvaster; I'd absolve you."

Brinnaria looked straight into his goggling, bloodshot eyes.

"Would you consider it an unmistakable sign," she said, "a plain token of my acceptability to my Goddess, of her esteem for me, if Vesta gave me power to carry water in a sieve?"

Commodus goggled his eyes at her even more than habitually.

"Carry water in a sieve," he cried, "as Tuccia did?"

"There is a legend," said Brinnaria. sedately, "that some Vestal once proved her holiness by carrying water in a sieve. And the story is connected with Tuccia in popular tradition. But if it was ever done some other Vestal did it. Poor Tuccia was innocent, as far as I can judge from the minutes of her trial. But she was not absolved, by intervention of Vesta or of her judges. She was condemned and buried. You can read the verdict as well as the details of the proceedings in the records. And what is left of poor Tuccia is now in one of those tiny vaulted cells under the Wicked Field. You will find, along with the documents of her case, the bill for the wages of the mason who completed the vault after she had descended the ladder and the affidavits of the sentinels who patrolled the spot day and night for a month, according to custom."

"Never mind who did it or didn't do it, or whether it ever was done at all before," said Commodus, "if I saw you carry water in a sieve I'd hold it a plain sign of Vesta's particular favor to you, of your special acceptability to her, of the correctness of my intuitions about you and about this whole wretched business.

"Do I understand you to offer to demonstrate your innocence by carrying water in a sieve?"

"That is my offer!" said Brinnaria.

"But," he protested, "the thing can't be done. It's impossible! Better stand your chance of a trial."

"I am sure," said Brinnaria, "that my Goddess will not desert me. I know I am innocent and acceptable to her. She knows me and will give me the power to prove my worthiness. She will no fail me. I know I can do it."

"Do I understand you to offer to do it in broad daylight before me and the whole College of Pontiffs, Calvaster and all?"

"In sight of all Rome," said Brinnaria, "if all Rome could crowd near enough to see."

"Do I understand you," said the Emperor, "to stake your life on the venture, and, just as you would expect full absolution if you succeed, so to expect a rigid and severely stern trial before me and the College of Pontiffs, with your failure counting against you, if you fail in the attempt?"

"That is my understanding," said Brinnaria, unflinching, her clear eyes on his face, her cheeks neither flushed nor blanched, her expression calm, her pose easy, her voice unfaltering.

"Hercules be good to me!" cried Commodus. "That is a first class game sporting offer! I like you, girl! I like the idea. I see my way to a decision. I glimpse a method of banishing my hesitation. I'll take you. If you agree, clasp hands, like a man."

Brinnaria stood up and put out her hand.

"For life or death," said the Emperor.

They clasped hands.

"Done!' said Commodus.

CHAPTER XXI - ORDEAL



THE next day Commodus, officially, in his full regalia as Emperor and Pontifex Maximus, convoyed by a magnificent retinue of gorgeously apparelled gentlemen-in-waiting, equerries, aides, orderlies and pages, and of gaudily uniformed guards, paid a formal visit to the Atrium.

He was received by Lutorius, Causidiena. and Numisia, who had been in close conference most of the previous afternoon and until late at night and again most of the morning from dawn. Causidiena, on account of her failing sight, was escorted by Manlia and Gargilia.

After the exchange of ceremonious greetings Commodus asked:

"Where is Brinnaria? Why isn't she here?"

"We thought best," Causidiena replied, "that she should not be present at our conference."

"As to part of it I quite agree," said the Emperor. "Fairness to her requires that much of what we have to say should be said in her absence, as she must be free from any suspicion of participation in some of our arrangements. But part of what we have to say she must hear and some details I must talk over with her. Send for her, and meanwhile, sit down, all of you, sit down, I say."

Manlia and Gargilia departed to summon Brinnaria.

When she came and had seated herself the Emperor said:

"I've been thinking over this matter ever since you left me. Precious little else did I do yesterday and mighty little sleep did I get last night. I'm not clear yet altogether, but I see daylight on several points.

"What you propose is more or less like interpreting the significance of the appearances seen in the victim's intestines after a sacrifice for a specific object; it amounts to asking a definite question of your Goddess and getting a yes or no answer.

"That is one way to regard it and seems to me correct from the religious point of view.

"But there is another point of view and another way to regard it, not less correct, it seems to me.

"This is a sort of a sporting proposal, like a dicing contest, or any kind of match or wager.

"Now in such matters, it is important, it is of the utmost importance, that there should be no differences of opinion between the principals or among the backers or lookers-on after the contest or during its progress; particularly that no unexpected differences of opinion should crop up after starting the set of actions which determine the decision. To avoid all such untoward possibilities, every detail must be settled in advance before the matter comes to a test.

"Now, treating your appeal to Vesta not only as a solemn invocation of the Goddess, but also as a sporting chance, I intend to have a definite, unquestionable understanding beforehand on every debatable point.

"You see what I mean?

"Some of the points we others will settle without you, but we shall begin with those which you must settle or share in settling.

"I and Lutorius, Causidiena and Numisia are to be the witnesses to the stipulations and our agreement on any point is to prove that point. I propose to make it impossible for there to be any misunderstanding or disagreement among the four of us, to make it certain that we four think, speak and act unanimously on all points whatever. Nothing must be assumed, everything must be explicit.

"To begin with, is this a fair statement of your proposal?

"You maintain that you are a worthy priestess of Vesta and wholly acceptable to her. You propose to demonstrate this by asking of her the power to carry water in a sieve in the sight of the whole College of Pontiffs and of such other persons as I may see fit to have present at the test. If you fail you will expect to be tried for misconduct. If you succeed you will expect to be then and there absolved from all accusations and imputations connected with your deportment or behavior.

"Is that a fair statement of your proposal?"

"It is," Brinnaria replied.

"What kind of water do you propose to carry?" Commodus asked. "Spring water, rain-water from a tank, aqueduct-water, or what?"

"I assumed," said Brinnaria, "that I would carry water from the river, in accordance with the legend of my predecessor: Father Tiber being himself one of our gods, one of the sternest to evildoers, yet to the righteous most kindly and helpful."

"Excellent!" said the Emperor. "My notion precisely. That is settled. I accordingly appoint as the place of your test the Marble Quay, since the porticoes flanking it shut out the mob and protect the Quay from intruding eyes, and since the space enclosed by them is ample for the assemblage of the College of Pontiffs, the Senate and the Court officials. Are you satisfied with that place?"

"I am," said Brinnaria.

"In what kind of a sieve do you propose to carry water?" came the next question.

"A sieve," said Brinnaria, "is a sieve."

"Not at all," Commodus objected. "There are sieves and sieves."

"Well, of course," Brinnaria reflected, "I do not mean a broken, worn-out or imperfect sieve, nor one incompetently made."

"Just so," the Emperor amplified. "You propose to carry water in a sieve with a circular rim, without any hole, crevice or crack in it and with a web stretched taut on the rim, evenly woven and of the finest mesh."

"That expresses my unformed idea," said Brinnaria.

"Did you mean a linen sieve," the Emperor asked, "or a horse-hair sieve, or a metal sieve?"

"That," said Brinnaria, "can make no difference, if it fulfills the conditions you have just specified. I leave the choice of material to you."

"That is the correct attitude for you," said Commodus, "and does you credit.

"And now I think we four will settle the other details without you. Do you agree to that?"

"No!" Brinnaria objected. "I think I should be a party to the settling of several other details."

"What are they?" Commodus queried.

"In the first place," said Brinnaria, "there should be the clearest understanding as to how much water I must carry."

"What do you mean?" the Emperor asked.

"Well," Brinnaria expounded, "a drop of water the size of my thumb-nail would not be enough, I presume. That would not be considered as demonstrating my innocence. You would expect me to carry more water than that. On the other hand, to exact that I carry a sieve full of water to the top of the rim, as if it were a pan, would be unfair to me."

"I see," said Commodus. "I should lay down the condition that the water must cover the web of the sieve entirely and touch the rim all round, and that it should be a finger-breadth deep. Deeper than that it need not be, that depth would prove the favor of your Goddess as plainly as if you carried all Tiber. Is that all? If not, what next?"

"Next," she said, "it ought to be definitely agreed how far I must carry the sieve with the water in it."

"You do not need to carry it at all," said Commodus. "If you stand up and hold the sieve of water as high as your chin, you will have proved the favor of your Goddess for you."

Lutorius, tactful and bland, here spoke up.

"Your Majesty," he said, "I doubt whether that will confute Brinnaria's enemies or even convince the majority of the Pontiffs."

"What does it signify?" the Emperor demanded, "whether anybody else is convinced, if I am satisfied?"

"Nothing whatever, your Majesty," said Lutorius, "if you take that view of the matter."

"Perhaps," Commodus admitted, "there may be something in your suggestion. Suppose we make the stipulation that she must carry the sieve of water from the brink of the river to the top of the steps."

"The number of steps," Lutorius reminded him, "varies at different points along the Marble Quay."

"True," the Emperor admitted. "Let us specify the middle stair, which has seven steps, if I mistake not. Do you agree to that?" he asked Brinnaria.

"I agree," she concluded.

After Brinnaria had gone, Commodus resumed:

"Now we must decide," he said, "what kind of a sieve she is to use."

Causidiena spoke up, her all but sightless eyes strained towards the Emperor.

"Lutorius and Numisia and I have talked over that question," she said. "It seems to me that it would be unfair to her for us to decide on a metal sieve. They are always coarse and the apertures between the wires are comparatively large. It seems to us that no one could carry water in a copper sieve, not even by a miracle.

"The meshes of linen sieves are the smallest of any made, but the linen does not seem to have much sustaining power. We feel that with a linen sieve not only Brinnaria would be, as Lutorius expressed it, severely handicapped for water-carrying, but that, as he also said, I fear irreverently, that Vesta herself would be too much handicapped in respect to miracle-working."

"A mighty sensible remark," Commodus cut in, "and one with which I concur. You are more of a sport than I thought you, Lutorius."

"Considering only the construction of sieves," Causidiena continued, "we were of the opinion that a horsehair sieve would be the fairest. The hairs are coarser than linen threads and finer than copper wires and the apertures between are similarly of medium size, as sieves go.

"Besides, we have ascertained that horse-hair sieves are by far the most usual kind. We are told that in most sieve-shops in Rome all the linen sieves and copper sieves sold do not amount to one-third the horsehair sieves."

"That ought to settle that point," said Commodus. "No one can cavil if we use the commonest kind of sieve, of medium fineness and of normal make.

"As to the question of procuring one we must arrange that Brinnaria may feel wholly secure that it has not been tampered with by some enemy of hers, and, on the other hand, that all persons whatever, to whomsoever hostile or friendly, or wholly indifferent, may be at once and forever certain that neither Brinnaria nor any partisan of hers has had any access to it before the test. Have you any suggestions to make?"

"Yes," Causidiena replied. "Lutorius and Numisia and I have debated that point and have come to a conclusion which we think you might approve. The best sieve-maker in Rome is Caius Truttidius Falcifer, a tenant of one of our shops on the Holy Street. Not only are his wares reputed the best-made sieves produced in Rome, but he sells more than anyone else and carries a larger stock than can be found in the possession of any other dealer. He is sieve-maker to the Atrium, like his father before him. His horse-hair sieves are the closest and finest of their kind. We use them to sift the flour for our ceremonial cakes. I had some brought to show you. Where are they, Numisia?"

Numisia rose and took from an onyx console a flattish dish-like basket of gilt wicker, containing a number of square cakes. In size and on account of the ridges on them, each looked much like the joined four fingers of a man's hand.

Commodus took one, broke it and munched a piece.

"Very good," he said. "If the excellence of the pastry demonstrates the virtue of the sieve let us consider it proved. I do not see, however, what the cakes have to do with it. But I am entirely willing to agree that Brinnaria is to use a horse-hair sieve made by Truttidius.

"Now, how are we to select the particular sieve so as to convince all concerned that it is a normal sieve chosen at random and not one doctored for the occasion ?"

"Our idea," said Lutorius, "was to arrange that Truttidius be present with a number of horse-hair sieves, practically with his whole stock of his best, and that one of those be chosen before the whole College of Pontiffs, perhaps by your Majesty, perhaps by some one of the altar-boys, blindfolded, if you like that idea, or in any other manner which seems good to you."

"That," said the Emperor, "is an excellent suggestion. But would not there be some difficulty in carrying to the Marble Quay so large a number of sieves at once, particularly just when it will be crowded with notables and the neighboring squares and streets choked, even jammed, with their equipages? We should not want to present a numerous gang of sieve-carrying slaves. But if more than two sieves are trusted to each slave, there will be danger of the sieves being damaged in transit. We might find it difficult to select one sufficiently perfect."

"We have thought of that," said Lutorius, "and have devised a solution which we think you might accept. I have arranged to have Truttidius convey some eighty horse-hair sieves to the water-front of the Marble Quay in a flat-bottomed row-boat, such as are used for bringing vegetables to the quays of the Forum Olitorium. The oarsmen can keep the boat nearly stationary off any point of the Quay indicated, and the selection can be made in sight of the official assemblage of all the Senators and Pontiffs."

"That," said Commodus, "is an excellent suggestion. Have it carried out and see to it that only we four know of it and that no one but the sieve-maker and his assistants have anything to do with conveying the sieves from his shop to the boat and that only the boatmen, the sieve-maker and his assistants are in the boat, that no one else has been in the boat. I'll detail any number of men you ask for to escort the sieve-maker and his convoy.

"I'll have the river policed and all possible traffic suspended. Any craft that are let through the cordons of police-boats will be made to follow the other side of the river. We'll have nothing off the Marble Quay except the boat-load of sieves and the patrol-boats." He sighed.

"I believe," he said, "that that is all except fixing the day and the hour."

"I suggest," said Lutorius, "the day after to-morrow, the eighteenth day before the Kalends of September, the twenty-third anniversary of Brinnaria's entrance into the order of Vestals, and, I regret to say, the second anniversary of her night expedition to Aricia."

"That suits me," said Commodus.

"And the hour?" Numisia queried.

"Noon," said the Emperor.

Accordingly it was settled that Brinnaria was to face her ordeal at midday on August fifteenth of the nine hundred and thirty-seventh year after the founding of Rome, 184 of our era.

That night Numisia, conferring with Brinnaria, concluded by saying:

"Truttidius enjoined me to remind you to be very careful not to touch the web of the sieve with your fingers. Also he says that, if anybody's finger touches the web of the sieve as it is being handed to you, you are to decline to accept it and to demand another."

"I understand that already," said Brinnaria.

The Marble Quay was that part of the embankment along the left bank of the Tiber which was used by the Emperors of Rome for embarking on their state barges and for landing from them whenever they took part in one of the gorgeous river processions. Also it was used by all members of the Imperial household for starting on excursions by water or when returning from them. It was situated below the north corner of the Aventine Hill, not far from the square end of the Circus Maximus, close to the round Temple of Hercules and near the meat market. Every trace of it has long since vanished, its precious marbles having offered most tempting plunder for builders of every century since the fall of Rome.

In its glory it was a space about two hundred feet long and nearly a hundred feet wide, bounded by a gentle hollow curve along the river, and enclosed on the other three sides by magnificent colonnaded porticoes.

The shafts of the columns were of black Lucullean marble and fully forty feet high. Their capitals and bases were of green porphyry, the entablature they carried of red porphyry and the wall behind them of yellow Numidian marble. The area was paved with slabs of pinkish and light greenish marble while the copings of the Quay and the steps leading down to the water were of coral red marble, a building material extremely rare and very costly.

At noon on the fifteenth of August the area, lined all round just before the colonnade by a double rank of Pretorian guards, gorgeous in their trappings of red gloss leather, gilded metal and scarlet cloth, was thronged with Senators, Pontiffs and officials of the Imperial Court, to the number of nearly a thousand.

Midway of the crowd, near the head of the middle water-stair, a part of the pavement, ringed about by the lucky dignitaries in the front row of spectators, was left free. In it, by the water-steps, were grouped a selection of Pontiffs, all the Flamens, four Vestals and the Emperor. The yellow river was almost free of craft; along the other bank some barges were being warped up-stream; nearby only patrol boats were visible.

Brinnaria, standing alert and springily erect, her white habit dazzlingly fresh, fresh as the white flowers clasped at her bosom by her big pearl brooch, looked like a care-free young matron who had had a long night's sleep and a good breakfast. Commodus, looking her up nd down, mentally contrasted her easy pose and the rosiness of her smiling face with the tense statuesqueness and austere, almost grim countenances of her three colleagues. He noticed that her three-strand pearl necklace seemed to become her more than theirs became the other three and that she wore her square, white headdress with an indefinable difference, that there was a difference in the very hang of her headband and in the way its tassels lay on her bosom. He noted two unusual adjuncts to her attire; a long, rough towel through her girdle and a gold sacrificial dipper thrust in beside it.

"Are you ready?" he asked her.

She looked him full in the face and slowly raised her left arm, stiffly straight, hand extended, palm down, until her finger-tips were almost level with his face and not a foot from it. Holding it so at full stretch she asked:

"What do you think of that? Am I ready?"

Commodus regarded her finger-tips, her face, and again her finger-tips:

"Hercules be good to me !" he exclaimed. "Not a tremble, not a waver, not a quiver. You are mighty cool. You've plenty of confidence. I take it you are ready."

"I am," said Brinnaria. "Where is that sieve?"

>From behind her spoke Calvaster. "I have a sieve here."

Commodus rounded on him like an angry mastiff.

"Who authorized you to speak?" he demanded. "You act as if you were Emperor. You are merely a minor Pontiff. Remember that and speak when you are spoken to."

Calvaster, abashed but persistent, stammered:

"I merely offered a sieve."

"None of your concern to offer a sieve," Commodus growled. "You insult all of us and me most of all. Do you take me to be so unfair as to subject this lady to her test with a sieve brought and offered by her accuser?"

Calvaster was dumb.

"Show me that sieve," the Emperor commanded.

Calvaster produced from under his robes a copper-hooped sieve strung with linen.

Commodus handed it to Brinnaria.

"What do you think of that sieve?" he inquired.

Brinnaria held it up to the light and looked through the web; held it level, upside down, and looked along the web.

"It is very irregularly woven," she pronounced; "some of the meshes are three times the size of others. It is very unevenly strung, it bags in two places." She held it up to her face a moment.

"Also," she concluded, "it has been scrubbed with wood-ashes and fuller's-earth. Vesta herself could not carry water in that sieve."

"Give it back to me!" the Emperor ordered.

He eyed it as she had, sniffed at it like a dog at a mouse-hole, and glared over it at Calvaster.

"You advertise yourself to all the world," he snarled, "as an unworthy Pontiff and a contemptible caitiff. You attempt to entrap me into the meanest unfairness! You pose as a public-spirited citizen solicitous about the sanctity of the worship of Vesta and I find you a pettifogging wretch actuated by spite and malice. You desire not a fair test, but the ruin of a woman you are low-minded enough to hate. Eugh!" With one of his excesses of unconventional energy he flung the sieve far out over the river. It sailed whirling through the air, splashed in the water and sank out of sight.

"For the price of one dried bean, I'd order you thrown after it," said Commodus to Calvaster.

He beckoned one of his aides.

"Signal that boat!" he commanded.

A broad blunt-ended cargo-boat, rather guided than propelled by its four heavy oars, came drifting down with the current. Its gunwale was hung with horsehair sieves. Up from the thwarts stood many poles, each with cross-pieces, every cross-piece hung with sieves. Its oarsmen edged it nearer and nearer to the Quay and slowed its motion until it was almost stationary opposite the stair, scarcely an arm's-length from the lowest step.

When it was close the Emperor spoke to Numisia:

"Choose any sieve you see."

Numisia indicated the sieve on the forward arm of the second cross-piece of the fourth pole from the bow.

Lutorius, at the Emperor's bidding, called the directions to Truttidius, who, bowed and bent with age until he looked almost like a clothed ape, wizened so that his leathery, wrinkled face was like a dried apple, was standing near the middle of the boat.

"Go down the steps," said Commodus to Brinnaria, "and yourself take the sieve from him." Brinnaria, on the lower step, reached over the water, and grasped the rim of the sieve which Truttidius held out to her. She held it up to the light. Its web was of black and white horse-hair, each thread alternately of a different color. It was made for bolting the finest flour and the tiny apertures between the hairs were all of a size and scarcely broader than the hairs themselves.

She scrutinized the sieve from several angles and then looked back at the Emperor.

"Are you satisfied with that sieve?" he queried.

"I am satisfied with this sieve," spoke Brinnaria, loud and clear.

"I want to see close," said Commodus, coming down the steps.

Brinnaria, holding the sieve in both hands, lifted it towards the blue sky. "O Vesta!" she prayed aloud, "O my dear Goddess, manifest your divinity, succor your votary! To prove me pleasing and acceptable in your eyes, grant me the miraculous power to carry up these stairs water from this river in the sieve which I hold!" She lowered her arms and holding the sieve in her left hand knelt on one knee on the lowest step, spread her towel over the other knee and took from her belt the sacrificial dipper. With that she scooped up half a ladleful of Tiber water. On the towel spread over her knee she carefully dried the bottom of the dipper.

Holding it just outside the rim of the sieve she glanced up at Commodus.

"Go on," he said.

She smiled.

"If you want to see me fail," she said, "talk to me. If you want to see me carry water in this sieve, let me alone."

"I'm dumb*," said he.

*"Dumb" at this time meant unable to speak. —PG editor

She eyed the sieve to make sure that it was level and steady. Commodus, also eyeing it, judged it both steady and level.

She brought the ladle over the rim of the sieve and lowered it until it all but touched the middle of the web.

She tilted the ladle slowly, slowly she poured its contents over its lip.

She lifted it clear:

On the web of the sieve lay a silver disk, as it were, of water, round-edged and shining.

"Hercules be good to me!" cried Commodus.

"Keep quiet!" she admonished him. "You'll put me off." She dipped up a ladleful of water, flirted half the water out, wiped the bottom of the ladle on her knee and brought it cautiously over the sieve, cautiously she lowered it until it nearly touched the shining disk of water, cautiously she tilted it, cautiously she let its contents flow over its lip.

The disk of water spread. She repeated the process. The disk of water spread.

Again and again she repeated the process.

The disk of water became a film hiding nearly all the web of the sieve.

Commodus noticed that, as she dipped up each ladleful of water, she watched the dipper out of the corner of her eye, as it were, with a sort of partial, sidelong glance, but that all the while her gaze was intent on the sieve.

He noticed other details of her procedure.

"You never pour twice in the same place," he commented.

Rigid as a statue, the sieve in her hand as unmoving as if clamped in a vise, Brinnaria spoke:

"If I take my eyes off the sieve," she rebuked him, "it will tilt in my hand and the water will run through. If you make me look round you'll destroy me. You are not fair."

"I'm dumb," said Commodus again, apologetically.

As she poured in the next dipper-load, the film of water touched the rim of the sieve at one point.

Commodus heard a sharp intake of Brinnaria's breath.

The next half-ladleful she poured near the spot where the water touched the sieve-rim.

Round near the hoop she dribbled in half-ladleful after half-ladleful until the web of the sieve was entirely covered.

She had moved slowly from the first dip into the river. But now, since she could not see any part of the web of the sieve, she moved yet more slowly.

Commodus began to be impatient.

"That is plenty of water," he said.

"Do you, as Pontifex Maximus," she uttered, "certify that the water now in this sieve is as deep as you stipulated ?"

"I," said Commodus in a loud voice, "as Emperor and as Pontifex Maximus, here certify before all men that the water now supported by the web of that sieve is enough to demonstrate the favor of Vesta towards you and your impeccable integrity."

"Back away," said Brinnaria, "I'm going to stand up." She thrust the handle of the ladle through her belt, brushed the towel from her knee and with her right hand also she grasped the sieve. Holding it now in both hands, her eyes on it, she very slowly, inch by inch, rose to her feet. When she was erect, she very slowly drew back her left foot until her two feet were close together.

"Back away," she repeated. "I'm going to turn round." Slowly she pivoted on her firm feet until she was standing with her back to the river.

Commodus at the top of the steps stared down at her.

"Back away," she reiterated, "I'm coming up the steps." Up the steps she came, very slowly. Planted on her right foot she would almost imperceptibly raise and advance her left foot. When it was firm on the step, she would gradually shift her weight to that foot, would very deliberately straighten up and very carefully draw up her right foot until both feet were together. So standing she would breathe several times before she repeated the process.

When she was standing firm on the top step on the level of the Quay platform, she raised both hands until the sieve was level with her chin.

"You have won," Commodus exclaimed. "You have demonstrated your Goddess's favor. The test is over."

An arm's length away stood Calvaster.

"It's a trick!" he cried. "That is not water."

"Not water!" cried Brinnaria.

All the forgotten tomboy of her childish girlhood surged up within her. The obsolete hoydenishness inside her exploded.

"Not water!" she cried, and smashed the sieve over his head.

The rim on his shoulders, his head protruding from the torn eb, frayed ends of broken horse-hair sticking up round his neck, the water trickling down his clothing and dripping from his thin locks, from his big flaring ears, from the end of his long nose, his face rueful and stultified, he presented a sufficiently absurd appearance.

Commodus, like the overgrown boy he was, burst into roars of laughter. The Pontiffs laughed, the Senators laughed, even Manlia and Gargilia laughed.