Full darkness had fallen, but for once that part of the Via Sacra which meandered through the Forum Romanum was illuminated by torches; what seemed an endless parade of litters and lackeys converged on the main doors of the Domus Publica from all directions, and the smoky pall of light caught flashes of wondrously hued robes, sparks from fabulous jewelry, glimpses of eager faces. Cries of greeting, giggles, little snatches of conversation floated on the air as the women alighted and passed into the vestibule of the Domus Publica, shaking their trailing garments out, patting their hair, adjusting a brooch or an earring. Many a headache and many a temper tantrum had gone into the business of planning what to wear, for this was the best opportunity of the year to show one’s peers how fashionably one could dress, how expensive the treasures in the jewel box were. Men never noticed! Women always did.
The guest list was unusually large because the premises were so spacious; Caesar had tented over the main peristyle garden to exclude prying eyes on the Via Nova, which meant the women could congregate there as well as in the atrium temple, the Pontifex Maximus’s vast dining room, and his reception room. Lamps glimmered everywhere, tables were loaded with the most sumptuous and tasty food, the honeypots of milk were bottomless and the milk itself was a superb vintage. Coveys of women musicians sat or walked about playing pipes and flutes and lyres, little drums, castanets, tambourines, silvery rattles; servants passed constantly from one cluster of guests to another with plates of delicacies, more milk.
Before the solemn mysteries began the mood had to be correct, which meant the party had to have passed beyond its food, milk and chatty stage. No one was in a hurry; there was too much catching up to do as faces long unseen were recognized and hailed, and warm friends clumped to exchange the latest gossip.
Reptilian snakes had no part in putting the Bona Dea to sleep; her winter soporific was the snakelike whip, a wicked thing ending in a cluster of Medusa-like thongs which would curl as lovingly about a woman’s flesh as any reptile. But the flagellation would be later, after Bona Dea’s winter altar was lit and enough milk had been drunk to dull the pain, raise it instead to a special kind of ecstasy. Bona Dea was a hard mistress.
Aurelia had insisted that Pompeia Sulla stand alongside Fabia to do door duty and welcome the guests, profoundly glad that the ladies of the Clodius Club were among the last to arrive. Well, of course they would be! It must have taken hours for middle-aged tarts like Sempronia Tuditani and Palla to paint that many layers on their faces—though a mere sliver of time to insert their stringy bodies into so little! The Clodias, she had to admit, were both exquisite: lovely dresses, exactly the right jewelry (and not too much of it), touches only of stibium and carmine. Fulvia as always was a law unto herself, from her flame-colored gown to several ropes of blackish pearls; there was a son about two years old, but Fulvia’s figure had certainly not suffered.
“Yes, yes, you can go now!” her mother-in-law said to Pompeia after Fulvia had gushed her greetings, and smiled sourly to herself as Caesar’s flighty wife skipped off arm in arm with her friend, chattering happily.
Not long afterward Aurelia decided everyone was present and left the vestibule. Her anxiety to make sure things were going well would not let her rest, so she moved constantly from place to place and room to room, eyes darting hither and thither, counting servants, assessing the volume of food, cataloguing the guests and whereabouts they had settled. Even in the midst of such a controlled chaos her abacus of a mind told off this and that, facts clicking into place. Yet something kept nagging at her—what was it? Who was missing? Someone was missing!
Two musicians strolled past her, refreshing themselves between numbers. Their pipes were threaded round their wrists, leaving their hands to cope with milk and honey-cakes.
“Chryse, this is the best Bona Dea ever,” said the taller one.
“Isn’t it just?” agreed the other, mumbling through a full mouth. “I wish all our engagements were half as good, Doris.”
Doris! Doris! That’s who was missing, Pompeia’s maid Doris! The last time Aurelia had seen her was an hour ago. Where was she? What was she up to? Was she smuggling milk on the sly to the kitchen staff, or had she guzzled so much milk herself that she was somewhere in a corner sleeping or sicking up?
Off went Aurelia, oblivious to the greetings and invitations to join various groups, nose down on a trail only she could follow.
Not in the dining room, no. Nor anywhere in the peristyle. Definitely not in the atrium or the vestibule. Which left the reception room to search before starting into other territory.
Perhaps because Caesar’s saffron tent above the peristyle was such a novelty, most of the guests had decided to gather there, and those who remained were ensconced in the dining room or the atrium, both opening directly onto the garden. Which meant that the reception room, enormous and difficult to light because of its shape, was quite deserted. The Domus Publica had proved once more that two hundred visitors and a hundred servants couldn’t crowd it.
Aha! There was Doris! Standing at the Pontifex Maximus’s front door in the act of admitting a woman musician. But what a musician! An outlandish creature clad in the most expensive gold-threaded silk from Cos, fabulous jewels around her neck and woven through her startling yellow hair. Tucked into the crook of her left arm was a superb lyre of tortoiseshell inlaid with amber, its pegs made of gold. Did Rome own a female musician able to afford a dress or jewels or an instrument like this woman’s? Surely not, else she would have been famous!
Something was wrong with Doris too. The girl was posturing and simpering, covering her mouth with her hand and rolling her eyes at the musician, in an agony of conspiratorial glee. Making no sound, Aurelia inched her way toward the pair with her back to the wall where the shadows were thickest. And when she heard the musician speak in a man’s voice, she pounced.
The intruder was a slight fellow of no more than medium height, but he had a man’s strength and a young man’s agility; shrugging off an elderly woman like Caesar’s mother would be no difficulty. The old cunnus! This would teach her and Fabia to torment him! But this wasn’t an elderly woman! This was Proteus! No matter how he twisted and turned, Aurelia hung on.
Her mouth was open and she was shouting: “Help, help! We are defiled! Help, help! The mysteries are profaned! Help, help!”
Women came running from everywhere, automatically moving to obey Caesar’s mother as people had snapped to obey her all of her life. The musician’s lyre fell jangling to the floor, both the musician’s arms were pinioned, and sheer numbers defeated him. At which moment Aurelia let go, turned to face her audience.
“This,” she said harshly, “is a man.”
By now most of the guests were assembled to stand horror-struck as Aurelia pulled off the golden wig, ripped the flimsy and costly gown away to reveal a man’s hairy chest. Publius Clodius.
Someone began to scream sacrilege. Wails and cries and shrieks swelled to such a pitch that the entire Via Nova was soon craning from every window; women fled in all directions howling that the rites of Bona Dea were polluted and profaned while the slaves bolted to their quarters, the musicians prostrated themselves tearing out hair and scratching breasts, and the three adult Vestal Virgins flung their veils over their devastated faces to keen their grief and terror away from all eyes save those belonging to Bona Dea.
By now Aurelia was scrubbing at Clodius’s insanely laughing face with a part of her robe, smearing black and white and red into a streaky muddy brown.
“Witness this!” she roared in a voice she had never possessed. “I call upon all of you to bear witness that this male creature who violates the mysteries of Bona Dea is Publius Clodius!”
And suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. Clodius stopped his cackling, stared at the stony and beautiful face so close to his own, and knew a terrible fear. He was back inside that anonymous room in Antioch, only this time it wasn’t his testicles he was afraid of losing; this time it was his life. Sacrilege was s
till punishable by death the old way, and not even an Olympus of every great advocate Rome had ever produced would get him off. Light broke on him in a paroxysm of horror: Aurelia was the Bona Dea!
He marshaled every vestige of strength he owned, tore free of the imprisoning arms, then bolted for the passageway which led between the Pontifex Maximus’s suite of rooms and the triclinium. Beyond lay the private peristyle garden, freedom beckoning from the far side of a high brick wall. Like a cat he leaped for its top, scrabbled and clawed his way up, twisted his body to follow his arms, and fell over the wall onto the vacant ground below.
“Bring me Pompeia Sulla, Fulvia, Clodia and Clodilla!” snapped Aurelia. “They are suspect, and I will see them!” She bundled up the gold-tissue dress and the wig and handed them to Polyxena. “Put those away safely, they’re evidence.”
The gigantic Gallic freedwoman Cardixa stood silently waiting for orders, and was instructed to see the ladies off the premises as expeditiously as possible. The rites could not continue, and Rome was plunged into a religious crisis more serious than any in living memory.
“Where is Fabia?”
Terentia appeared, wearing a look Publius Clodius would not have cared to see. “Fabia is gathering her wits, she’ll be better soon. Oh, Aurelia, Aurelia, this is shocking! What can we do?”
“We try to repair the damage, if not for our own sakes, for the sake of every Roman woman. Fabia is the Chief Vestal, the Good Goddess is in her hand. Kindly tell her to go to the Books and discover what we can do to avert disaster. How can we bury Bona Dea unless we expiate this sacrilege? And if Bona Dea is not buried, she will not rise again in May. The healing herbs will not come up, no babies will be born free of blemish, every snake creature will move away or die, the seed will perish, and black dogs will eat corpses in the gutters of this accursed city!”
This time the audience didn’t scream. Moans and sighs rose and whispered away into the blacknesses behind pillars, inside corners, within every heart. The city was accursed.
A hundred hands pushed Pompeia, Fulvia, Clodia and Clodilla to the front of the dwindling crowd, where they stood weeping and staring about in confusion; none of them had been anywhere near when Clodius was discovered, they knew only that Bona Dea had been violated by a man.
The mother of the Pontifex Maximus looked them over, as just as she was merciless. Had they been a part of the conspiracy? But every pair of eyes was wide, frightened, utterly bewildered. No, Aurelia decided, they had not been in on it. No woman above a silly Greek slave like Doris would consent to something so monstrous, so inconceivable. And what had Clodius promised that idiotic girl of Pompeia’s to obtain her co-operation?
Doris stood between Servilia and Cornelia Sulla, weeping so hard that nose and mouth ran faster than eyes, Her turn in a moment, but first the guests.
“Ladies, all of you except the four front rows please go outside. This house is unholy, your presence here unlucky. Wait in the street for your conveyances, or walk home in groups. Those at the front I need to bear witness, for if this girl is not put to the test now, she will have to wait to be questioned by men, and men are foolish when they question young women.”
Doris’s turn came.
“Wipe your face, girl!” barked Aurelia. “Go on, wipe your face and compose yourself! If you do not, I’ll have you whipped right here!”
The girl’s homespun gown came into play, the command obeyed because Aurelia’s word was absolute law.
“Who put you up to this, Doris?”
“He promised me a bag of gold and my freedom, domina!’’
“Publius Clodius?”
“Yes.”
“Was it only Publius Clodius, or was someone else involved?”
What could she say to lessen the coming punishment? How could she shrug off at least a part of the blame? Doris thought with the speed and cunning of one who had been sold into slavery after pirates had raided her Lycian fishing village; she had been twelve years old, ripe for rape and suitable for sale. Between that time and Pompeia Sulla she had endured two other mistresses, older and colder than the wife of the Pontifex Maximus. Life in service to Pompeia had turned out to be an Elysian Field, and the little chest beneath Doris’s cot in her very own bedroom within Pompeia’s quarters was full of presents; Pompeia was as generous as she was careless. But now nothing mattered to Doris except the prospect of the lash. If her skin was flayed off her, Astyanax would never look at her again! If men looked, they would shudder.
“There was one other, domina,” she whispered.
“Speak up so you can be heard, girl! Who else is involved?’’
“My mistress, domina. The lady Pompeia Sulla.”
“In what way?’’ asked Aurelia, ignoring a gasp from Pompeia and a huge murmur from the witnesses.
“If there are men present, domina, you never let the lady Pompeia out of Polyxena’s sight. I was to let Publius Clodius in and take him upstairs, where they could be alone together.”
“It’s not true!” wailed Pompeia. “Aurelia, I swear by all our Gods that it isn’t true! I swear it by Bona Dea! I swear it, I swear it, I swear it!”
But the slave girl clung stubbornly to her story of assignation; she would not be budged.
An hour later Aurelia gave up. “The witnesses may go home. Wife and sisters of Publius Clodius, you too may go. Be prepared to answer questions tomorrow when one of us will see you. This is a women’s affair; you will be dealt with by women.”
Pompeia Sulla had collapsed to the ground long since, where she lay sobbing.
“Polyxena, take the wife of the Pontifex Maximus to her own rooms and do not leave her side for one instant.”
“Mama!” cried Pompeia to Cornelia Sulla as Polyxena helped her to her feet. “Mama, help me! Please help me!”
Another beautiful but stony face. “No one can help you save Bona Dea. Go with Polyxena, Pompeia.”
Cardixa had returned from her duty at the great bronze doors; she had let the tearful guests out, their creased and wilting robes whipping about their bodies in a bitter wind, unable to walk from shock yet doomed to wait a long time for vanished litters and escorts certain they wouldn’t be needed until dawn. So they sat down on the verge of the Via Sacra and huddled together to keep out the cold, gazing through horrified eyes at a city accursed.
“Cardixa, lock Doris up.”
“What will happen to me?’’ the girl cried as she was marched away. “Domina, what will happen to me?”
“You will answer to Bona Dea.”
The hours of the night wore down toward the thin misery of cock-crow; there were left Aurelia, Servilia and Cornelia Sulla.
“Come to Caesar’s office and sit. We’ll drink some wine”—a sad laugh—”but we won’t call it milk.”
The wine, from Caesar’s stock on a console table, helped a little; Aurelia passed a trembling hand across her eyes, pulled her shoulders back and looked at Cornelia Sulla.
“What do you think, avia?” Pompeia’s mother asked.
“I think the girl Doris was lying.”
“So do I,” said Servilia.
“I’ve always known my poor daughter was very stupid, but I have never known her to be malicious or destructive. She just wouldn’t have the courage to assist a man to violate the Bona Dea, she really wouldn’t.”
“But that’s not what Rome is going to think,” said Servilia.
“You’re right, Rome will believe in assignations during a most holy ceremony, and gossip. Oh, it is a nightmare! Poor Caesar, poor Caesar! To have this happen in his house, with his wife! Ye gods, what a feast for his enemies!” cried Aurelia.
“The beast has two heads. The sacrilege is more terrifying, but the scandal may well prove more memorable,” from Servilia.
“I agree.” Cornelia Sulla shuddered. “Can you imagine what’s being said along the Via Nova this moment, between the uproar which went on here and the servants all dying to spread the tale as they hunt for litter bearers throu
gh the taverns? Aurelia, how can we show the Good Goddess that we love her?”
“I hope Fabia and Terentia—what an excellent and sensible woman she is!—are busy finding that out right now.”
“And Caesar? Does he know yet?” asked Servilia, whose mind never strayed far from Caesar.
“Cardixa has gone to tell him. They speak Arvernian Gallic together if there’s anyone else present.”
Cornelia Sulla rose to her feet, lifting her brows to Servilia in a signal that it was time to go. “Aurelia, you look so tired. There’s nothing more we can do. I’m going home to bed, and I hope you intend to do the same.”
*
Very correctly, Caesar did not return to the Domus Publica before dawn. He went instead first to the Regia, where he prayed and sacrificed upon the altar and lit a fire in the sacred hearth. After that he set himself up in the official domain of the Pontifex Maximus just behind the Regia, lit all the lamps, sent for the Regia priestlings, and made sure there were enough chairs for the pontifices at present in Rome. Then he summoned Aurelia, knowing – she would be waiting for that summons.
She looked old! His mother, old?
“Oh, Mater, I am so sorry,” he said, helping her into the most comfortable chair.
“Don’t be sorry for me, Caesar. Be sorry for Rome. It is a terrible curse.”
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