The Unwilling Vestal Part 16

"I need not describe to you the feelings of my colleagues, nor my own. To hint them is perhaps too much; to particularize them would be unseemly. I may say, however, that just as street-boys acclaim you by shouting:

"'That's the girl that saved the dog;' just as all over the Empire you are talked of as the lady who rescued the retiarius; so at any festival or ceremonial in which the Vestals take part, many a dignitary is likely to nudge his neighbor, indicate you and whisper:

"'That's the priestess who walloped Bambilio!' You are not infamous, you are famous.

"As for myself I am the more inclined to feel indulgent towards you because I understand how you felt. You were boiling with rage at being struck by any one, as any n.o.ble girl would be. Yet you would have controlled your fury but for the fact that you knew that you yourself had done nothing to deserve chastis.e.m.e.nt, that you were suffering for another's fault."

"What!" cried Brinnaria.

"Oh, yes," Aurelius continued, easily. "Causidiena and I are quite agreed on that point. Neither she nor I have questioned Meffia, and we do not mean to; partly because we are sure enough, without any admission from her; partly because the matter is best left as it is, without any further notice. But, with the exception of Meffia, it is quite certain that, from the Vestals themselves down to the last slave-girl, every resident of the Atrium believes that not you but Meffia let the fire go out, and that you took the blame due her. And we can all conjecture your motives, as we all applaud them.

"Meffia might never have survived a scourging, might have been ailing for months. Rome wants no sick Vestals nor dead Vestals. Causidiena is grateful to you, all the Atrium is grateful, I am grateful."

"But," said Brinnaria, wide-eyed, "I had supposed that, if Meffia was suspected, there would be an inquisition and testimony under oath and that it would be obligatory that the Vestal actually at fault must be scourged."

"For once," the Emperor smiled, "you have failed to read accurately the statutes of the order. It is positively refreshing. I was beginning to feel that you were altogether too accurate. In fact the scourging of a delinquent Vestal is a mere disciplinary regulation, designed to a.s.sure the maintenance of the fire. It is not in the nature of a mandatory atonement. It has nothing in common with an act of expiation. It has nothing to do with placating or propitiating the G.o.ddess. It has no likeness whatever to the punishment of a guilty Vestal."

"That reminds me," said Brinnaria, "of what I came for. I'm as grateful as possible for what you have said to me, surprised that Causidiena and you so easily saw through my deception, delighted that you take it as you have, more than delighted to find you so kindly disposed towards me.

I need all the kindness you can feel towards me. I want to come to the point, to the reason why I am here. I want you to answer me this question:'Suppose I were accused of the worst possible misconduct, formally accused before you, what then?"

"Then," said Aurelius, "you would have a fair trial."

"I believe I should," said Brinnaria. "You would be perfectly fair and entirely just. And a fair trial would be a novelty. Almost never has an accused Vestal had a fair trial."

"Not even if acquitted?" the Emperor suggested slyly.

"No," Brinnaria retorted vigorously. "Even most of those absolved were not tried fairly. Postumia was, if the records from so long ago are to be trusted. The first trial of the third Licinia was perfectly fair, the minutes are very full and there is no shade of bias in the discussion of her many interviews with Cra.s.sus, while the court was plainly genuinely amused at his greed for desirable real-estate and at his artifices to induce her to sell cheap. Fabia, in the same year, was justly treated.

But most of the other acquittals were quite as bad as most of the convictions to my mind. I can discover almost no trial where both sides had a full hearing, where the judges tried to get at the facts and kept their attention on the evidence, where the finding as the expression of the opinions rather than of the partiality of the Pontiffs. Almost every verdict on record, it seems to me, was dictated by favoritism or influence or prejudice or wrath."

"You seem to think you know a great deal about the subject of trials of Vestals," Aurelius remarked.

"I feel justified in thinking so," Brinnaria maintained. "Where the minutes of the court have perished, as, of course, in the case of all the trials before the capture and burning of the city by the Gauls, I have read what records remain. Where the court records are extant I have pored over every word of the minutes of the proceedings and of every doc.u.ment attached."

"That is more than ever I found time to do," Aurelius meditated. "Your conclusions ought to be of interest. What are they?"

Brinnaria drew a deep breath and went on. "I am convinced," she said, "that sometimes the accused received what she deserved, but generally by accident. The judges were swayed by politics or expediency or clan-feeling or popular clamor or self-interest, not by reason.

"n.o.body could form any judgment, at this distance of time, about the guilt or innocence of Oppia or Opimia or Popilia or Porphilia or Orbilia or Orbinia or whatever her real name was, it all happened so long ago.

But Minucia and s.e.xtilia and Floronia and the rest were just victims of judicial ferocity, as far as I can make out."

"You are then of the opinion," the Emperor asked, "that there never was a guilty Vestal?"

"No," Brinnaria replied judicially, "I don't go as far as that.

Varonilla was probably depraved and with her the two Oculatas. I don't think their suicides prove anything against them, for a woman is just as likely to hang herself because she despairs of a fair hearing as because she is conscious of guilt. What weighs with me is that they were brought up in the dissolute times of Messalina and Nero and that their relatives were leaders of the most profligate set in Rome, cronies of Vitellius and his coterie. But although Cornelia was bred and raised in the same social atmosphere, I am quite as sure of her innocence as all the world was the day she was buried and as everybody has been ever since.

Domitian just murdered her without a trial, for political reasons and for moral effect. So likewise Marcia and the second Licinia were judicially murdered by that fierce old Ca.s.sius Longinus Ravilla. He was elected to convict them, not to try them, and he conducted the trial not to arrive at a fair verdict, but to force a conviction. He had some excuse, for their acquittal on their former trial had been brought about by idiotic bribing and family influence. On the face of the evidence at both trials they were clearly blameless. What ruined them was their trying to shield Aurelia, surely the worst Vestal on record, for she had everything in her favor, ancestry, upbringing and surroundings; she was beyond doubt innately vicious. She was the only Vestal ever justly convicted and justly punished, in my opinion. All the others were irreproachable women, doomed to a frightful fate by prejudiced judges.

In general, an accused Vestal is as good as condemned, the whole population so dreads the results of acquitting an unclean priestess. And it is the easiest thing in the world for a Vestal to be accused. Refuse to sell a farm for half its value, snub a bore, order a slave flogged for some unbearable blunder, and the result is the same; false accusation with perjured witnesses and a quick conviction most likely to follow."

"The subject seems to have occupied your mind a great deal," Aurelius ruminated.

"Do you wonder?" Brinnaria flamed at him. "What in all the tragic, dramatic history of Rome is half so dramatic or a tenth so tragic as the burial of a Vestal? In all our centuries of ferocity, what seems half so cruel?

"I know that cruelty played no part in the invention of burial alive as a punishment for a convicted Vestal. I know that no caitiff could be found so vile as to dare to lay hands on a Vestal, no ruffian so reckless as to venture to end her life by sword or axe, by strangling or drowning. The most impious miscreant has too much fear of the G.o.ds to injure a consecrated priestess. The only way to dispose of a delinquent Vestal is to bury her alive. But the cruelty of it makes me choke. I think of the last hours of each of those who were punished, of their thoughts as the time drew near, of their feelings alone in the dark waiting for death to release them from their sufferings.

"I think of these underground cells as they are now, out there under that awful unkempt, ragged waste lot by the Colline Gate. I think of the skeletons mouldering on the mouldering cots, of the bones, the fragments of crumbling bones, the dust of crumbled bones on the stone floors, as they have been for hundreds of years, as they will be for thousands of years to come. The cot cannot yet have decayed from under what is left of poor Cornelia; her bones must still be entire and in order on the webbing; Aurelia's bones must be whole yet and Licinia's and Marcia's; of Floronia there can hardly be left a trace by now, where Minucia died there can be only an empty stone cell. Do you wonder that the subject haunts me?"

"I do and I do not," Aurelius replied. "I've let you relieve your mind by talking yourself tired. Now listen to me. I think I understand you perfectly. When you came to me before the novel responsibilities of your office had worn on your nerves and you were quivering with dread for fear you might be an unworthy priestess. Now the perils of your situation are wearing on your nerves and you are brooding over the possibility of accusation, trial, conviction and burial alive.

"I sympathize with you. As an Emperor I am exposed to the perpetual danger of a.s.sa.s.sination. You would be amazed if I detailed to you my various narrow escapes from death at the hands of disappointed seekers after preferment, of incompetent officials, of knaves with grievances of every conceivable and inconceivable variety and of fools with no grievance at all. You would be astonished if I merely reckoned the occasions on which I have just missed being killed. It gets on my nerves, more or less, of course. But I strive to bear up and remain calm and I succeed more or less. I keep before me the fact that as an Emperor I am obnoxious to countless hatreds from fancied slights and to uncountable schemes of revenge. I reflect that the danger is inseparable from the state of my being an Emperor. I try to be philosophical about it.

"So you must attempt to remain placid under the strain of the knowledge that you are exposed to perpetual danger of a horrible death from conviction on false accusation. It is part of the condition of being a Vestal. If anything goes wrong in the way of earthquake, flood, famine, pestilence, conflagrations or defeats, the populace are likely to cry out that some Vestal is unclean and bringing down on the Empire the wrath of the G.o.ds. That nothing of the kind has occurred during our recent afflictions has been clearly due to the holiness of Dossonia and Causidiena and to their reputation for strict discipline. But the danger of popular outcry is always real. Then there is the fact that far too large a proportion of our population are dissolute and that, among the dissolute-minded, all Vestals are under suspicion because they are the only women among our n.o.bility who remain unmarried long after they have reached marriageable years. You must learn to take all this as a matter of course and to go sedately about your duties.

"Of course, I lessen my danger by keeping about me many trusty guards.

It is right that you should appeal to me in your anxiety. I shall do what I can to lessen your danger. I believe in you. If you were accused before me it would take notably plain and convincing evidence to make me believe anything against you. I shall put my opinion of you on record among my papers of instructions to my successor. I shall declare it to all the Chief Pontiffs. I shall verbally and in writing make it clear to all concerned that you seem to me all you should be, that you are in an unusually difficult and delicate position and that in case of accusation all presumption should be in favor of your innocence and against the sincerity of your accusers.

"And now I think that ought to satisfy you and cover all the general considerations. Let us come to the special consideration that interests me chiefly. You have never come to me because you became gradually unnerved by brooding which had no specific origin or cause:

"Tell me plainly and outspokenly what has happened to you lately to fill your mind with thoughts of buried Vestals, trials, accusations and terrors?"

Brinnaria thereupon related her encounter with Calvaster and her conversation with Flexinna.

The Emperor stroked his beard and reflected.

"I have never liked Calvaster," he said, "and if I had been in the city to consider recommendations for appointments he would, a.s.suredly, never have become a member of Rome's hierarchy. I deem him gravely unsuited for even the most minor grade of Pontiff. He appears to me to be mean-spirited, narrow-minded and base. I am inclined to believe of him all that you impute. But, even to such as Calvaster, we should be just.

You complained, a while ago, that the judges of the Vestals had ignored both the facts and the evidence. Let us weigh the evidence and stick to the facts. The only fact you present is that you caught Calvaster lurking in your house. You confess that you were completely puzzled as to what motive brought him there. Your friend surmises an explanation which disgusts, insults and alarms you. You instantly credit it completely, think and act as if it were unquestionably true. I am prejudiced against Calvaster, as I have told you, yet I am by no means ready to admit that your beliefs about him are evidence against him, more particularly as they rest solely on Flexinna's ingenious conjectures. The notion is plausible and it is entirely congruent with Calvaster's character as I imagine it. Yet it is, after all, merely a plausible surmise. I am just as inclined to accept Calvaster's own explanation; he is an inquisitive busybody.

"My verdict is that you need feel no alarm."

"But I do," Brinnaria maintained; "I do not feel safe with Calvaster anywhere about."

The Emperor reflected.

"The peace of mind of a Vestal," he said, "is a matter of such importance to the state that I should not hesitate about ordering Calvaster banished to some comfortable and healthy island and there detained permanently, were it not that the fellow has made himself almost indispensable. The pestilence has carried off practically all the adepts at interpretation of the sacred writings, the prophetic books, the rubrics and rituals of the various temples, the statutes of the brotherhoods and other orders of the hierarchy. Only Numerius Ap.r.o.niarius remains of the older experts, and he is afflicted by an incurable and loathsome disease which he cannot long survive. Of the younger men only Calvaster has displayed any apt.i.tude for learning this delicate and complex art, only he has attained any reputation. He is, in the circ.u.mstances, indispensable, I cannot banish him merely to please you. You will have to endure Calvaster."

Brinnaria pulled a wry face, as in her mutinous girlhood. She felt entirely at ease with Aurelius.

"I perceive that I must endure him," she said, "but if you cannot banish Calvaster, perhaps you'll oblige me by banishing Almo."

"Almo!" the Emperor exclaimed, "what can you have against that gallant lad? Have you turned against him? I thought you were unshakably resolved to marry him, thought you loved him unalterably!"

"I shall marry him, if we both live," Brinnaria replied, "and most unalterably love him. But I love life and daylight and fresh air and my full meals even more. I have a splendid appet.i.te, I loath stuffy places, I hate the dark. The idea of being shut in an underground cell to suffocate slowly or starve to death even more slowly goes against my gorge. I see myself in my mind's eye climbing down that ladder, like poor Cornelia, I see myself stretched out on my cot, watching the ladder being pulled up by the executioner, watching the workmen fitting in the last stone of the vault. I imagine myself staring at the wick of the lamp and wondering how long the oil will last and debating whether it would be better to blow out the light and save the oil to drink and so live longer in the dark, or to let the lamp burn out and have the discomfort of the light a little longer. I fancy myself conning over the trifle of bread, milk, fruit and wine left on the stone slab, and speculating as to how long they'll keep me alive.

"Bah!

"No burial alive for me.

"Acquittal on a trial is a poor way for a Vestal to escape the worst possible fate, a last resort, at best, and an unchancy reliance, even as a last resort. A far better way is never to be tried, and the best way never to be tried is never to be accused. You've been good enough to tell me that if I were accused you'd be predisposed to favor me in all possible ways and that you'll give instructions as to your opinion of me. Any directions of yours would be respected by any heir of yours. But you yourself have just remarked how slender is an Emperor's hold on life or on power. I may survive both yourself and your son. I might be tried before men we should never think of now. I must arrange so that I shall never be tried at all, I must live so that I shall never be accused.

"Now I am unlikely ever to be accused in relation to any man except Almo. Everybody knows I mean to marry Almo when my service is at an end, everybody knows he means to marry me, everybody knows we are in love with each other. That puts me in the most delicate position any Vestal ever was placed in. I have been extremely careful. I have never spoken to Almo since I was taken for a Vestal, have never met him except by accident, have never set eyes on him except against my will; have never even written a letter to him or received one from him. I have been, I think, wise, judicious and controlled. But Almo has not behaved well towards me."