“They stripped him and tied him to a post in front of the Rostra. He was flogged more times than I could count. I saw a large mass of skin on his back peel away, like plaster coming off a wall. He called out his dead wife’s name, and then never made another sound. His murder was as revolting to the goddess as Licinia’s was.
“When Tullia and Flavia returned from the Campus Sceleratus, we were all still in the temple praying for Licinia. Flavia went to her bedchamber, but Tullia came into the sanctum. She stood by the fire”—Fabiana pointed her finger—“right there, by that chip in the hearth. I can still see her standing there. She said nothing, but she began to weep. We were all shocked. We had never seen the high priestess cry, not even when her sister had died earlier that year.
“She wept like a child. She was inconsolable. The more she cried, the more we knew that whatever she had seen at the Evil Field was beyond horror, beyond sorrow. A year passed before she could talk about it. She told us how Licinia had cried out to the goddess for protection, but how she had regained her dignity and climbed down into the black pit as bravely as Perseus had faced Medusa. She told us that she had sent the sacred flame down into the pit with her.”
Lucretia brushed tears from her face. “What of her accusers?”
“Ah, of course,” said Fabiana. “Those men—demonic larvae both. Carbo was no longer considered a disgraced general, but the savior of Rome. The tide of the war eventually turned in Rome’s favor, and many said it was Carbo’s discovery of the Vestal’s incestum that had saved the city and its people.
“Calidus also had reason to be pleased. Licinia’s properties were sold off, and he was able to acquire her villa on Capri for a song.” Fabiana snorted. “At the time of Licinia’s murder, there was a shipment of olive oil already on its way to the temple. Would you believe that demon tried to charge Rome for it, claiming it was his property?”
Fabiana sighed. Her shoulders dropped as if releasing some of the tension and bitterness she had been holding inside. “But Veritas always swims out of her dark well and into the light of day. You see, Rufus had a loving son. He did not believe the accusation against his father, and it wasn’t long before Rome realized what it had done. And the horror of the truth was even worse than the lie had been.
“The younger Rufus presented evidence that proved the innocence of his father and of the Vestal. It started with the discovery of several letters written by Calidus to Licinia in which he offered to buy her villa at Capri. He wanted to add her property onto his own. She declined the offer, but he kept sending letters, each one more aggressive than the last.
“And then there was the Greek priest who had presented the Sibylline prophecy. It turned out the man was not a priest after all but rather the Greek freedman of a true priest. The man knew just enough to sound believable. He cracked like a nut during his interrogation.
“But the spark that truly set fire to the men’s funeral pyre was the return to Rome of a man called Laenas. He was a respected centurion in Carbo’s legions. During the battle that had disgraced Carbo, Laenas was one of the few officers who had maintained his men’s respect. There were many accounts of his bravery and how he risked his life to save even the lowest of the men under his command. At the time the accusations were made, he was fighting with Sulla’s legions in Gaul.
“When word of what had happened reached him, Laenas returned to Rome like a thunderbolt thrown by Jupiter, furious and at lightning speed. What he said shook Rome. He said that he had once overheard a drunken Carbo telling a now-dead soldier that, if he lost the battle, he would blame it on the broken vows of a Vestal, even if he had to screw the priestess himself.
“So, for the second time in one year, I watched a man scourged in the Forum. Flavia chose to stay and tend the sacred flame in the temple, but Tullia insisted the rest of us go to witness it, even the youngest novices. I remember it vividly. Tullia set her chair an arm’s length away from the post they tied Carbo to. When they flogged him, the blood spattered her stola. She never took her eyes off him the whole time.
“When he was near dead, Tullia called out for the flogging to stop. For a moment we thought she would grant mercy. Instead, she ordered that he be taken to the top of the Tarpeian Rock and flung from the cliff to his death. It was done. So much for Carbo.
“But Calidus escaped the executioner’s lash. The man was as rich as Midas, and he bribed his way out of the Carcer, although he probably wished he hadn’t. The younger Rufus knew he would try it. He and some men followed Calidus into the countryside on horseback. They captured him and crucified him along the Via Appia. The story came back that it had taken two full days for Calidus to perish and that Rufus and his men drank and celebrated the entire time. They left his body hanging for the crows.
“For months, people came to kneel before the temple to beg forgiveness, not just of the goddess, but of the priestesses too. The Pontifex asked Tullia to make a public statement of forgiveness from the Rostra, but she refused.
“Flavia left the order less than a month after her thirty years of service were completed. She married an ex-consul about a year later, and if I remember right, they had a daughter who later married a young kin of Sulla. She bought a country house outside Pompeii and swore to never return to Rome, not even for her daughter’s wedding. Everyone had to go to Pompeii for the ceremony.”
Fabiana sighed heavily and put her hands on the arms of her chair. “Lucretia, help me up.”
“Yes, Fabiana.” The younger Vestal lifted Perseus off Fabiana’s lap and set the little dog on the floor as she helped Fabiana to her feet.
“I’m tired,” said the old priestess. “I leave the matter with you, Pomponia. But I will say this: the black pit in the Campus Sceleratus is filled with enough of our bones. And although we serve the goddess, you cannot rely on her intervention. Tuccia’s life depends on you.” Tapping her leg to call Perseus behind her, Fabiana shuffled out of the temple.
The Vestals sat in silence for a long time, the only sound the crackling of the sacred fire in the temple’s hearth. Finally, Pomponia spoke.
“Our beloved sister Tuccia has been disparaged by a scheming little shrew,” she said. “But Pluto will have to go through us to get to her. Let me think on this tonight. We will speak in the morning.”
She stood and took a handful of loose salted flour from a terracotta bowl, sprinkling it into the sacred fire in a V pattern. The flame surged upward as Vesta accepted the offering.
Leaving Nona and Caecilia behind to tend to the hearth, she led the other priestesses out of the temple and back to the House of the Vestals, where they each returned to the privacy of their own quarters and their own thoughts.
Only Pomponia did not return to her bedchamber. She continued along the peristyle and then slipped into the private walled garden space that was designated for the use of the Vestalis Maxima only. She did not use this space very often. To her, it still felt like Fabiana’s personal retreat.
An altar of red marble with thick white veins stood against one wall. On its surface, a firebowl burned with Vesta’s flame. Beside that were a number of earthenware bowls and some cereal grains, fresh laurel, fragrant pinecones, and several pieces of sweet fruit.
Pomponia selected a ripe apricot and placed it in a small earthenware bowl. She placed a pinecone next to it, sprinkled it with a handful of grain, and then arranged a blanket of laurel leaves on top. She sealed the bowl and then, a prayer to Vesta on her lips, placed it in the low flames of the bronze firebowl.
Once the earthenware bowl was charred, she wrapped it in her palla to protect her hands from the heat and carried it to the heavy wooden door opposite the altar. She unlocked the door and pushed it open to step directly outdoors into Vesta’s grove.
As her eyes again adjusted to the darkness of the night, she walked through the treed space until she reached one tree in particular. The tree under which Valeria had buri
ed the curse tablet. Pomponia knelt down and lifted up the old paving stone at the base of the tree. Not caring that the grass and dirt were staining her white tunica, she dug a hole in the soil with her bare hands, going deeper and deeper, until her fingertips were raw.
“I make this offering, Mother Vesta, so that you may forgive me for my desires. Do not let my sister Tuccia, your immaculate priestess, be a sacrifice for my faults. I make this offering so that you will remove the curse that another has put on your temple and your house.”
Pomponia lowered the earthenware bowl of burnt offerings into the hole and then refilled it with black dirt, placing the paving stone on top. She sat back on her heels and tried not to think about how much it resembled a tombstone.
She pushed herself to her feet and wandered back into the house. Exhausted but knowing there was no way she could fall asleep, she climbed the stairs to the second floor and continued to her office, slumping into the chair behind her desk. She brushed the black dirt off her hands, onto the floor.
Outside the open window of her office, she could hear the sweeping of a broom on the cobblestone as the street cleaners moved through the Forum, doing their work by torchlight in the still of night.
The sound always made her think of Quintus and the night before he had left for Egypt.
The night he had held his bloody palm to her cheek and sworn on the Altar of Mars that they would be together, and she had stood inside the Regia as he departed, listening to the sound of his receding footfalls and the scratching of brooms on the cobblestone.
The memory of it, and her longing to once again see his face, caught as a sob in her throat. She looked at the silver bowl of ashes on her desk, and then her eyes moved over some of the gifts he had sent her in the two years he had been gone: a small painting of the pyramids and the Sphinx, a shen ring, some gemstones, a jar of exotic plant extract used for temple magic.
And then Pomponia, holy priestess of Vesta, had a most unholy idea.
Chapter XVI
Mus Uni Non Fidit Antro
A mouse does not rely on just one hole.
—Plautus
rome, february–march, 31 bce
The next day
It was a clear, warm day for February, but Gallus Gratius Januarius had no way of knowing that. He sat hunched in the corner of a cold black hole in the stone-walled Carcer, twelve feet below the living world.
Gallus wasn’t a man who was accustomed to such soundless solitude. His world was a loud one, full of hooves thundering on sand, chariots roaring down the track, and the frenzied cheers of tens of thousands of spectators.
The soldiers had arrived at his house in the middle of the night. The pounding on the door had sounded like a battering ram. Gallus had quickly donned a tunica and stood in front of his wife, who held their infant son to her breast in fear as his house slave opened the door. He could still vividly see the look of shock on her face as the accusation was read: a charge of incestum committed with the Vestal Virgin Tuccia.
He covered his face with his hands. This can’t be happening, he thought. Despite the ghost stories of Vestals being buried alive, there had only been a handful of accusations of incestum throughout the long history of their order, and even those were surrounded in uncertainty.
Even if a Vestal were so inclined, she’d have a hard time finding a partner in crime. There were plenty of women to be had. No point losing the skin on your back and the head on your shoulders for one that Rome and the gods had deemed off-limits.
Gallus chewed at his fingers. Claudia Drusilla. Who in Hades was she? A woman he had wronged in some way? Perhaps a misguided or obsessive fan of a competing chariot team? Outside of the racing track, he had no enemies he knew of. He owed no debts.
He scratched anxiously at his head as a memory came to him. No . . . Could that be it? He picked at an insect that had attached itself to his scalp and cursed himself.
At the end of the last games, Priestess Tuccia had been asked to present the victory palm to the winning charioteer. That had been Gallus, of course. The Vestal’s love of the races and of a particular horse on his team—Ajax—was common knowledge, and she had even visited the stables on occasion to fawn over him.
As she had presented Gallus with the victory palm, he had surprised her with the gift of Ajax’s golden bridle. The crowd had gone wild. Now, Gallus wondered whether the innocent gesture had been seen by some as a sign of a greater guilt.
A scraping noise sounded above him, and he sensed that the barred grating at the hole’s entrance had been slid open. A moment later, a dark figure landed heavily at his feet and the grating scraped closed again.
The man groaned once and then fell silent. By the scarce light of the single torch that burned in the hole, Gallus could see a dark pool of blood spreading out from the man’s skull. A white bone protruded from one leg. Gallus pushed himself up and stepped away. He leaned against the stone wall and waited, like an animal locked in the pit of the arena, to see what his fate would be.
He had no way of knowing that the Fates were spinning their thread at that very moment.
* * *
The Forum Boarium ran along the banks of the Tiber. On any ordinary day, the forum’s cattle market was a bustling mass of people and stock animals. It was Rome’s main riverside hub of trading and commercial activity, where boats loaded and unloaded inventory, where blacksmiths noisily hammered at hipposandals, and where farriers broke their backs fastening shoes to the hooves of high-strung horses and muscular working oxen. Every day, wooden carts packed with hay, straw, feed, or manure rambled and rattled down the cobblestone and a dirty child could be seen running to catch an escaped goat, pig, or chicken.
But not today. Today, the Forum Boarium was closed for business. It was still packed with people, however—people who had come to witness one of the most inconceivable spectacles anyone could have imagined would happen during their lifetime. A Vestal Virgin, accused of incestum, was going to call upon the goddess to decide her fate by either proving her innocence or confirming her guilt.
The agitated crowd stood near a round temple beside the Tiber, their nervous excitement held at bay by a long line of no-nonsense soldiers whose polished armor reflected the light of the sun and whose hands rested menacingly on their swords.
The temple honored Hercules, who had driven cattle through the area during one of his labors. More importantly, it was also near the spot where the river god Tiberinus had gently guided the twins Romulus and Remus to shore to be found by the she-wolf.
Although the eternal flame did not burn within the temple, the Vestals still used its circular sanctum to consecrate water from the Tiber. As the god who had saved the twins—and rescued their priestess mother from captivity, later marrying her—Father Tiber was for good reason specially honored by the Vestals during the Tibernalia.
Considering what she had in mind, Pomponia hoped the river god would be as beneficent to the Vestal Tuccia as he had been to the Vestal Rhea Silvia. As the Vestals’ horse-drawn carriage entered the Forum Boarium, she moved the curtain aside to peer outside.
Standing closer to the temple was a throng of senators, various magistrates, and officials, all of whom looked visibly anxious. The city newsreader was also there with his secretary. The senators were speaking with the Flamines Maiores, the High Priests of Jupiter and Mars, as the augurs looked on with sober concern. The priests of Pluto were also present, their black robes and somber chants, which sounded like low music behind the din of conversation, adding an even greater sense of dread to the occasion.
When the Vestals’ horse-drawn carriage approached the round temple and stopped before it, the Pontifex Maximus Lepidus covered his head with his pontifical robe and raised his arms to quell the chatter and command attention.
An apprehensive silence descended over the Forum Boarium as High Priestess Pomponia stepped down from the carriage
, followed by the elder Priestess Nona and then Priestess Tuccia.
All three were dressed in the white stolas and veils of the Vestals. The black-haired novice Quintina, wearing a long, white tunica dress and simple veil, stepped down from the carriage after them and quickly dropped to her knees to straighten the bottoms of their stolas. She then reached back into the carriage, first pulling out a round wooden sieve, which she presented to the Vestalis Maxima, and then an earthenware amphora, which she gave to the Vestal Nona.
Pomponia faced the crowd, casting the same superior but indignant look to everyone, whether respected priest or state official, wealthy citizen or common slave. “We, the faithful priestesses of Vesta Mater,” she began, “who keep the eternal flame in the temple, who offer our youth to the goddess and to Rome, come before you today to answer a sacrilegious charge of obscene incestum against the virtuous Priestess Tuccia.”
After she was certain that all eyes were on her, Pomponia held out the sieve with extended arms. As she did, Nona poured the water from the amphora into it. The water ran straight through to create a large puddle on the ground.
Pomponia took two steps to stand beside Tuccia. “Only the goddess can judge the purity of her priestesses,” she said, and then passed the sieve to Tuccia.
Tuccia held the sieve above her head. “O holy Vesta,” she called out. “If I have always tended your sacred fire with pure hands, make it now so that with this sieve I shall be able to draw water from the Tiber and bring it to the temple. Let the water remain in the sieve as my vows remain unbroken.”
At that, Tuccia walked toward and then past the temple to where a few stone steps led to the banks of the Tiber. She walked down the steps as the Pontifex Maximus and the high priests of Jupiter and Mars followed her, everyone else jostling to see what they could.
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