Fire and Sacrifice

by Victoria Collins

  He looked at me that shiny way of a beloved. ‘Use that in court. That’s good. But remember the College of Priests who will try you need only three votes for their word to pass.’ He let the words sink in. ‘You don’t have a miracle up your sleeve, by chance?’

  ‘We’ve nothing hidden up our sleeves right now, as you see,’ said Terentia, making him blush. ‘Three miracles for three priestesses is more than has ever been asked.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Lucius.’ It was as though my words were not my own but spoken through me. Eerily soft and calm.

  ‘That’s not –’ Lucius began.

  ‘We know,’ I said.

  ‘I will not take responsibility for the tactics of other men.’

  ‘Then we are of like mind, Dalmaticus,’ Terentia said.

  ‘I can’t stop this. The populace has it now and they are entitled to their fears if they lay their protection in our hands. You have seen the mobs. Rome cannot prosper in the chaos of fear.’

  ‘Fear and rage calculated and fed by those who would see us broken!’ Terentia arced up. She dropped our hands to swat away her hair and with it Laynie’s design. ‘You would condone killing us to save the many, is this what you mean to say?’

  How can any of this be worth killing for?

  He saw the question crease my face. ‘You know I don’t. But this is Rome. Power in Rome is power over the greatest dominion in the world, and one that grows by the day. That, for many, is worth killing for.’

  ‘I will not have my girls suffer for the endless pissing match between boys clinging to their fathers’ skirts. These girls were brought here as children. Divorced from their fathers on being taken into the temple. They are brides of the fire alone. They don’t give a fig who their granddaddies screwed over.’

  The muscles in Lucius’s scarred cheeks twitched as he clenched his jaw, but amusement shone again in his eyes. I don’t think he’d heard Terentia talk that way, ever. ‘I will serve the law, not the treaties of desperate men. The gods have weighed in, Terentia. There has been an omen.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I can promise to preside over as fair a hearing as possible. That is the best I can do.’

  Lucius took in our barely-dressed band one more time and turned to leave.

  ‘What if the omen has been misinterpreted?’ Terentia would not give up. ‘What if these airhead augurs have it wrong? If you want to read the skies you ask an Etruscan.’

  He turned. ‘And what does your Etruscan say?’

  Laynie stepped up. ‘I say the omen means an innocent virgin will be struck down for no apparent reason. Let’s not forget the girl was still a virgin at her death.’

  He thought on this a moment. Nodded to himself at some private decision. ‘You have Licinius Crassus,’ he said, and left.

  I let out a shaky breath and grabbed Aemilia for fear I might faint. ‘Oh my.’

  Terentia and Laynie ushered the girls back to the braiding.

  ‘We should have a braiding day, huh?’ Terentia shouldered Laynie. ‘You cunning old cow.’

  Laynie laughed, smug with herself. ‘You brilliant old bitch.’

  Terentia lay her cheek on Laynie’s shoulder as we walked, and grinned a sad grin.

  FIRE

  Ember

  December 114 BC

  We had to bolt back round to the house before they walked in. They knew, of course, that we’d have snuck round the back to listen from the garden but we had to pretend. We pretended too that Tristan had not met us there and also listened, squeezing my hand as he did in a way that made me think he’d also heard what I said to Dalmaticus.

  ‘I think you got away with it,’ Tristan whispered. Much to my mortification, apparently Cor heard me scold Dalmaticus.

  ‘He never even reprimanded me. He did nothing.’ I said it bitterly. Did I want to be reprimanded? No, I wanted to know I’d been heard. ‘I think he feels sorry for me.’

  ‘Not true,’ Cor whispered behind us. He was quiet for a big man. ‘Sounds like Terentia’s giving him as much a beating as you did.’ He roughed up my hair. ‘He likes you. Not because he feels sorry for you. Because if you’re on a battlefield half cut open and alone, surrounded by enemy, you want that man who would be the one to turn around and come back for his friend. You showed him you’re that man.’

  I think that was about the best thing anyone had said to me, after ‘you are touched by Vesta’ and giving me my name.

  He answered my surprised look with a shrug and a grin. ‘How else does a Gaul become a slave but captured in battle, with a helluva fight?’

  The braiding was finished mostly in silence.

  At some point, to break the mood, it was suggested my hair get done too.

  Aemilia got Helvi to wash my hair first, and then rinse it with vinegar to help with the knots and the long-term dirt. The little girl was so very gentle I could sometimes barely feel her touch. It was so tender I almost cried. She was useless trying to dry my big mess of hair, so I did that bit myself, then Aemilia came with two cushions and a brush and I burst into a ridiculous smile I felt stupid in, but it made Aemilia grin back at me in a way I would remember the rest of my days.

  I didn’t care that my feet went to sleep and my knees ached, I’d have sat there for eternity. I got Helvi to bring me a bowl of almonds that needed peeling so I could work while they worked on me.

  Aemilia gave me three braids, halfway there to hers, and wrapped them round my head just the same as the priestesses.

  And now I have hair like a real priestess.

  ‘Stop touching it, Ember, or you’ll make it greasy already!’ Pompeia laughed. But I couldn’t help it.

  ***

  I tried to pray for her, to do like the priestesses and talk to the goddess, invoke her into my space with some wisdom she could not ignore, but the only word that came was ‘please’.

  WATER

  Pompeia

  December 114 BC

  I feared if Ember pounded my rug anymore there would be nothing left of it. She was crawling up the walls with helplessness, our poor fire girl. She scrubbed every pot to fingernail thin, moved her pot plants three times, tilled the vegetable garden three seasons’ worth. She swept the square several times a day.

  I knew how she felt. Not even the lump in my stomach from a whole loaf of bread with oil and salt plus a whole ladle of honey stolen from Ember’s jar had settled me.

  I went to her.

  ‘I thought perhaps you and I could create a servitor together, to help Aemilia.’

  ‘A what?’ (Wallop on the rug.)

  ‘A feeling-form, in other words. From the fire. Our own little bit of magic.’

  ‘Me?’

  I shrugged, trying to make it seem easy. ‘Anyone can, with the elementals. And you are a child of Vesta, are you not?’

  She looked at me incredulously but I could see those amber eyes heating up. I motioned for her to follow me from my poor beaten rug, back to her hearth fire and sat us down. ‘With the elementals, you can summon a sort of piece of them, a servitor, and send it off on a little mission.’

  She grinned, hatching plans already.

  ‘Alright!’

  It was going to be a challenge to ground her so we went to the sacred oak in the planter behind the temple and laid our hands on the trunk. I walked her through imagining the roots stretching deep into the earth, imagining then that she too had roots extending down her legs and feet, deep into the soil. I had to bite on a giggle when I caught her opening one eye for a peek at me, to see that I was doing the same. I talked her through the rest of the tree, then, reaching into the sky and into the earth at the same time. A conduit.

  She was a natural. I gave our tree a mental hug, lovely thing. Gods knew I needed you, today, my beautiful. I walked Ember back to sit before the fire.

  Stare into the flame, I said. ‘Pick a single flame and stare at it until nothing else exists.’

  I did it with her. In time, as I knew would happen, we saw that the flame was encircle
d by its own blue transparent aura and the centre of it was clear, a dancing figure, a silhouette of our selves. She started to sway a tiny bit with the flame and I knew I had her. Good girl.

  Now feel the heat and light of the flame spread through you, I said. Feel it fill you so much it spills out of you, at your palms and feet, between your legs and the crown of your head. Your heart is that transparent dancing centre, same as the flame.

  I showed her how to hold her palms to each other, a little way apart, as though holding an invisible round of dough. Then how to feel that fire spirit that spilled out of her, gathering into a ball between her palms until she could almost see the ball of light rolled round in her hands. Hers came so strong and quick it gave me the heebies. I could see it.

  Now tell it what you want it to do, I said. Repeat after me, ‘I hereby create a servitor of Vesta . . .’

  ‘I hereby create a servitor of Vesta.’

  ‘Seek out and purify by consuming all evil and rotted spirit that has attached itself to those who would speak of the accusations against our sisters.’

  She repeated. Bit by bit, frowning with concentration – and I suspect a little disappointment that I did not task our helper with complete annihilation.

  ‘Let our two spirits be as one, your strength be mine, my purpose be yours. Let this servitor seek and destroy the malice and return here to the flame of making that the servitor itself may also be purified and returned to its element.’

  Now blow it to the sky and send it on its way, I said.

  ‘How long?’ she asked, immediately.

  ‘I don’t know. Once it’s sent you must let it go and not think on it or you will hold it to you.’

  She nodded, frowning again as her mind ticked over.

  ‘You did well. I’m quite sure I could actually see the ball of light in your hands! Could you feel it?’

  She nodded, wide-eyed.

  ‘And it always works?’

  ‘Not always. You can’t make someone do something they don’t want to, or change their thoughts. But if this thing has taken on a life of its own then we can target that. And you ought to be sure it’s the right thing. You have to be sure that even the thing that seems evil or unpleasant is still not the right thing. Even rain and ice have their benefits.’

  ‘How do you know it’s the right thing?’

  I shrugged. ‘What do you think we do for a ten-year apprenticeship? It doesn’t take that long to learn to tend fire and made the sacred salt-bread,’ I said.

  ‘Could I learn? I mean, as much as I can, without being a priestess?’

  You are a priestess, a voice within me said. It was so sure and clear it spooked me. I nodded to Ember and left, feeling a little like my earth just tilted.

  Chapter 9

  AIR

  Tristan

  December 114 BC

  ‘What’s the whisper, Laynie?’ I asked.

  She smiled that smile she does when she knows something, or is talking to someone no one else can see. ‘Ah, the whisper comes from new voices today, my handsome young man. Beautiful new voices that were hidden for so long.’

  Ember shot me a look, half amused and wholly intrigued. We moved closer and settled in for a story.

  Laynie was in her glory, but she kept at poking the cooking fire as she talked, pretending as she liked to do that the weirdest of things she said was ordinary as anything.

  ‘We each create an outside self.’ She rolled a coal. ‘A beautiful illusion self that meets with the world on our behalf and appeases it, and which we repay by trusting it and believing in it. Until comes a time when we want to touch the world with our own hands, and realise something is in our way. The more convincing the illusion, the more we believe it, the more devastating the remembering of truth.’

  She pulled out her stick with its tip red hot and pointed at Ember.

  ‘And when it is done, we weep over it as though over our own grave. Until we see that the person left is enough on their own.’

  She looked into Ember with eyes alight, in such a way that gave me the heebies.

  ‘“What will become of me, haruspex? I don’t know yet, my girl. But you will only have to do it once.”’ Ember quoted Laynie’s conversation with Aemilia, which I’d heard all about.

  Laynie smiled approval but it seemed to me she meant to say it wasn’t only Aemilia she was talking about.

  FIRE

  Ember

  December 114 BC

  ‘It will all be over by this time tomorrow.’ Pompeia squeezed out a smile that heated the apples of her cheeks. ‘And then once they have cleared Aemilia they will have no choice but to clear Marcia and Licinia and we will all be free of this.’

  Terentia asked me to plan something celebratory for the following evening’s meal. I remembered Laynie’s request for avoiding meat and got to work planning a pretty platter of vegetables with edible flowers: parsnips fried in crispy rosemary salted barley crumb; malt vinegar poached eggs (eggs for new beginnings); pears poached in wine with raspberries; and fish fingerlings (also new life) in lemon pepper oil.

  I stayed up late after the evening meal, planning and preparing what I could, setting the raspberries to marinate in the wine, and crushing barley grains for the crumb.

  She came to me at my work.

  ‘I want you to go.’ She took both my hands in hers, ignoring the oily barley crumb all over them. ‘I want you to choose. Anything you want, anywhere. I have money for you, and a place.’

  I think I just stared at her, horrified.

  ‘Ember, I want one of us to be able to choose.’

  ***

  15 December 114 BC

  Elian crouched in the shadow of the stable, behind the black stallion, stiff and awkward with his wounds, but silent. I reflected only later how curious it was Damascus was not a bit bothered by Elian being there.

  Elian waited until Aemilia laid her cheek on Corsica’s snout and wrapped her arms round the horse’s neck, then he emerged, silent, and wrapped himself round her from behind, covering her hands with his.

  She burst into tears. Gods I loved him in that moment.

  ‘You stayed,’ she said, turning to him.

  ‘My love. Of course!’ His hands were in her hair. Her hands were on his chest. His kisses were in her tears. He pulled her to his chest, and Tristan and me turned away and left them to privacy.

  We kept guard.

  Tristan and Cor had helped him in, of course; through the market and hidden by the cart round the back of the stable in the dark.

  I didn’t hear everything they said, didn’t want to. Tristan and Cor kept talking, trying to make noise to cover, trying to sound like we had a real reason to be standing there outside the stable looking awkward.

  ‘Oughta build a wider through-way here,’ said Cor, pointing to the little path before us. ‘Horses feel safer when they can see all round them.’

  ‘Could fix that crack in the bricks while we’re at it,’ Tristan nodded, all seriousness, pointing away from the stables. ‘Knock off the corner, extend the wall.’

  ‘Need to pick a dry week. Might get rain tomorrow.’

  Helvi ran up to us, sensing a happening, but Cor scooped her into his arms and up onto his shoulder in one swift move that sent her giggling perfectly loudly. He deftly carried her off up the street and away from our secret.

  I heard Aemilia say, ‘I don’t care anymore, I don’t! Why should I? I have lived my life for them, I have done everything I was told and now look.’

  Then Elian: ‘No, you will go to trial pure and you will work to the end of your service, but then: marry me. Promise you will.’

  ‘I won’t make you a widow.’

  ‘I know it.’ I could hear in his voice that he held her tight, maybe shook her gently. ‘And you will come with me to Petra.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Tristan blushed and scuffed at the dirt with his toe.

  There were more muffled sounds from the stable and I imagined them in each o
ther’s arms.

  I imagined that she stroked his cheek, above the stubble, and withdrew herself, him kissing her hand as he would a queen. She emerged alone from the stable and glanced at us, showing only the simple smile of a girl who’s merely been grooming her favourite horse.

  That night was the last I ever saw them together.

  EARTH

  Fragments

  Leonhard Schmitz in William Smith (ed.), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, p. 41.

  The meetings of the college of pontiffs, to which in some instances the flamines and the rex sacrorum were summoned (Cic. De Harusp. Resp. 6), were held in the curia regia on the Via Sacra, to which was attached the residence of the pontifex maximus and of the rex sacrorum . . . The pontifex maximus was the president of the college and acted in its name, whence he alone is frequently mentioned in cases in which he must be considered only as the organ of the college.

  Michael Charles Alexander, Trials in the Late Roman Republic, 149 BC to 50 BC, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1990, pp. 19–20.

  Date: 114, condemned on XV Kal. Ian*

  charge: incestum, apud pontifices

  defendant: Aemilia

  informer: slave (perhaps named Manius of T Betucius Barrus (Betitius 1))

  outcome: condemned

  * 15 days inclusive before the Kalends (the first) of Ianuarius (January), or 16 December (the ancient December having only 29 days)

  WATER

  Pompeia

  16 December 114 BC

  Oh gods, those dark watery eyes! Pet emerged from the Regia, protected from the crowds by Dalmaticus’s rows of lictors across the narrow street, and took one look at me before she ran. I fell deep into the ocean of her, right to the bottom where she hid the screams of her deepest heart, where no one else can hear.