Fanina, Child of Rome

by Pierre Sabbagh

  Fanina let herself fall back, overcome by all she had gone through. Was it the Supreme Vestal yet again who had taken the ultimate precaution of placing a corpse in the grave that was to have been hers? Vibidia could not do everything. In a confused way, Fanina realized that apart from the tender protection of the Supreme Vestal, she must also be under the guard of some other power that frightened her because she could not understand its purposes. The dwarf in the russet leather cloak was one of the minions of that power, one who showed himself both beneficent and malevolent, capable of saving her or equally of crushing her pitilessly.

  Meanwhile Cornelius continued:

  ‘I had to intervene personally to prevent the two men being charged with sacrilege. You see, their testimony is too precious. You are dead, well and truly dead, but that does not mean that you are safe from the machinations of Calvinus or Brazen-beard. Those two don’t believe in ghosts, and once he has sobered up, Domitius will certainly seek an explanation of the vision he had. If they never find any trace of you, they cannot take any legal action against you, but they could perfectly easily kidnap you or have you killed with impunity, since one would be hard put to find a judge who would accuse them of kidnapping or murdering a woman who, in the eyes of the law, no longer exists. So you must leave Rome as soon as possible ...’

  ‘I shall leave Rome as soon as possible,’ Fanina repeated submissively.

  And she would never come back. She would go far, far away, into the depths of the wild forests of Gaul, where she would endeavour to forget the past and find in Vindex’s company the comfort that only he could bring her. Comfort, tenderness and happiness. There was nothing now to prevent her marrying the man she loved, for he was alive, well and truly alive. It was impossible for her to doubt the fact: the gods could not have taken from her her last reason for going on living.

  ‘I shall go to Gaul,’ she said with determination.

  Then her elation suddenly evaporated. As she had uttered these words, the Flamen and his wife had grown sombre, and Paulla . had gently come over and sat beside her on the bed and drawn her to her ample bosom.

  ‘Were you hoping to join Senator Vindex’s son there, the young man whose help you called for so often in your delirium?’ she said softly.

  Fanina’s throat grew tight and she nodded her assent.

  ‘My poor darling!’ said Cornelius.

  Fanina wrenched herself free from Paulla’s arms.

  ‘He’s dead! He too!’ she cried.

  ‘He is dead to you,’ Paulla corrected in a low voice.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She stared at them both with wild eyes and panting breath.

  ‘I was dreading this,’ said Cornelius. ‘Fanina, you must be brave.’

  He fumbled for words to soften the blow.

  ‘Tell me, Cornelius,’ Fanina begged him, beside herself with anxiety. ‘Tell me the truth! I can bear it! I shall be brave!’

  Cornelius spoke gravely, gazing straight at her, anxiously watching her reactions, with one hand held forward as if to hold her back:

  ‘Senator Vindex’s son is to marry Calpurnia, the daughter of the Prefect of the City.’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  She shrieked out the words with all her strength, her fists pressed to her throat.

  ‘You must be mistaken, revered Cornelius,’ she went on more calmly, her voice trembling. ‘It’s impossible! It can’t be true! You don’t know Caius....’

  She could not bear to see Caius’s love for her fall under a cloud of suspicion. She must persuade Cornelius and Paulla of what she herself never doubted for a moment, little realizing how monstrous the words she was uttering must have seemed to these two devoted servants of the Master of the gods, for whom a vestal virgin who had broken her vows, and loudly proclaimed her love for her accomplice, could have been nothing other than an object of horror and disdain.

  She talked on and on, drunk with words, happy to give rein to the happiness she had felt, amidst so many tribulations, in giving herself to Caius. They remained silent still, and looked at her. Their faces did not relax, but showed their boundless pity which, little by little began to disturb her, and to sap the infinite confidence she had in her lover, more than any proof they might have offered. She grew giddy and fell silent at last.

  Then, placing her hands on Fanina’s shoulders, looking her straight in the eyes, Paulla said with deliberation, clearly enunciating each syllable:

  ‘Everyone in Rome knows now that the young Caius Julius Vindex, who was taken prisoner in the Forum by a patrol of the Praetorian Guard, was claimed and taken in by the father of his fiancee, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, the Prefect of the City, and that he is going to marry the fair Calpurnia as soon as the Emperor has granted him the pardon his future father-in-law has asked for on his behalf.’

  Then Cornelius stood up.

  ‘Paulla and I have told you the truth, Fanina,’ he said solemnly. ‘You know that I am not allowed to swear an oath and that everywhere my word is regarded as sufficient. But I shall not take shelter behind that interdict. Whatever it may cost me, I ask Jupiter the Thunder, Master of the Gods and Sovereign Judge, to bear witness for me.’

  Then, with arms upraised, he said in a loud voice:

  ‘If Paulla and I have lied, may everyone on earth know peace to enjoy their homelands, their laws, their property, their household goods, and their tombs, and may we alone be immediately struck dead!’

  Chapter Six

  Jolting over the cobbles of the Aurelian Way, the wagon skirted the sea, which was dark green and covered with small, foam-crested, angry-looking waves. A bitter wind blew in squalls, and it was cold and damp. Whisps of steam rose from the glistening coats of the two mules drawing the cart. Seagulls circled overhead in a leaden sky.

  Enveloped in the folds of a vast reddish cloak, slumping rather than sitting on the bench beside the slave who was driving the little covered cart, Fanina, head nodding and terribly shaken, abandoned herself to her thoughts of despair.

  Her companion’s name was Xychus. He was of indeterminate age; his hair was dull and colourless, his beard thin, and he wore a permanently vague expression. He had brought up Cornelius and was devoted to him body and soul.

  The previous day at nightfall, the Flamen of Jupiter had come down to the archive room where Fanina, drugged by the soporifics that Paulla systematically put in her food, was dozing heavy-headed and weary of limb.

  ‘The time has come for you to leave the city,’ Cornelius had announced.

  Fanina straightened up painfully, lacking all resilience.

  ‘One of my friends has agreed to take you at her place in Etruria,’ the Flamen went on. ‘I have every confidence in her. She will not ask you any questions.’

  Paulla wept. When Fanina had crossed the atrium of the huge, sleeping house and approached the monumental door with its laurel decorations, the Flaminica clasped her to her motherly bosom and said falteringly:

  ‘My poor darling! We had begun to think of you as our own daughter. We should have liked to have you stay with us always, but that is forbidden to us. We love you so!’

  Fanina had felt a surge of irrational anger rise within her, and it had been all she could do to prevent herself from pushing the good woman away. So people loved her! They loved her! She would have liked to see that word deleted from the language since the one person whose love meant anything to her had so odiously betrayed her, since those whose tender affection had brought warmth into her early years had vanished from her life. Her father, her mother, Hemonia, Catia and the vestals. Now they were gone; no one could love her any more. She was alone, all alone.

  The cart had begun to jolt and rattle over the cobblestones. Fanina and Xychus had travelled all night; then at dawn they had changed horses at a lonely farmstead, and continued on their way, still in silence.

  About two hours after they had passed the port of Alsium Xychus murmured : ‘A patrol!’

  Muffled to the eyes in
huge, coarse woollen cloaks, about twenty armed cavalrymen emerged from a lane and began to move towards them at a walk. Xychus hurriedly pushed Fanina down into the bottom of the cart, beneath a heap of empty sacks.

  What then followed was exactly like a short-lived nightmare; it was so swift, so unexpected, that Fanina had no time to react.

  First she heard the sound of galloping hooves. One soldier, and one only, must have left his companions, and in less time than it takes to tell he had come up with them. He spoke with a strong German accent and said in guttural tones:

  ‘Halt! Let me examine your cart!’

  Huddled instinctively against one of the side-rails, Fanina glimpsed a large hand which slid under the sacks that covered her and felt about deliberately around her. Her muscles contracted as she felt the hand rest flat on her hip, and follow its curve round till it rested at the top of her thigh ...

  He must surely be about to pull the sacks off roughly, to call out and summon the other soldiers.

  But he did nothing of the sort. Slowly, interminably, his rough, ice-cold fingers followed her leg down her bare calves right to her feet....

  ‘All right. Off you go!’

  The cart rattled off on its way again. Panting for breath, her heart pounding fit to burst, Fanina climbed back on to the seat beside Xychus as they reached the top of the next rise. Drawing the folds of her cloak convulsively about her legs, she turned and gazed back over the way that they had come. The soldiers had dismounted, and two of them had already pitched a small low tent beside the road facing the sea. Others were cutting brushwood in a leisurely manner to light a fire, while others again, having stopped a heavy cart coming from the direction of Rome, and obliged the driver to unload it, were engaged in examining the load with maddening thoroughness.

  Fanina looked at Xychus.

  Staring vacantly before him, never uttering a word, the slave was not urging his beasts on. He seemed in no way dismayed by the sudden appearance of the patrol, as if he had known it would be there, that the cart would be searched, and that, once Fanina’s presence had been checked, the road would be blocked, doubtless with the intention of stopping any possible pursuers.

  The realization was enough to reawaken in Fanina the feeling of anxiety that came over her whenever she felt herself taken over and directed by an outside force, however beneficent, that she could not control, and in whose hands she was but a plaything, a being enslaved.

  She was awakening rudely from the thick mist in which she had been kept by means of the drugs administered to her to dull her pain.

  Her flight had been too skilfully organized, its every twist and turn too well worked out, and the means adopted too strong. Suddenly the whole escape seemed absurd and pointless.

  Why was she running away? What was she running from? What was she going to do in Etruria? Was her rightful place not in Rome, where the bond had been formed and finally sundered in such a tragic way?

  But what of her enemies, Calvinus and Brazen-beard, and the abominable clique of pontiffs who had engineered her condemnation ? She no longer feared them, for she no longer had anything to lose. There was nothing left for anyone to take from her except her life, and her life was an intolerable burden to her now that her reason for living had vanished.

  Roughly jolted on the seat of the cart as it clattered on over the cobbles, sitting with her forehead resting on her burning hands, turned in on herself she began desperately to question her heart. Painfully she examined, weighed and dissected every action of her short, tragic existence.

  She had been spared nothing, not even the pangs of betrayal that rent her heart.

  Vindex’s face moved back and forth like a vision before her eyes, as hurtful as a persistent pain, casual, radiant, transfigured by passion, afire with desire, lined with fatigue, convulsed with anger, more frightening to behold than the terrible Mask of Mars the Avenger, his face as it had appeared to her at the sweetest moments of her life and in its cruellest hours.

  Why? Why had Vindex forsaken her? Why had he abandoned her at the very moment when she most needed his love? Why, at the very moment when the whole of Rome was flocking to her parents’ funeral, had he allowed the news to be published of his engagement to Calpurnia, the seductive daughter of the Prefect of the City?

  Feverishly, Fanina turned the knife round and round in the wound.

  The wildest imaginings crowded through her aching head. Her affair with the young Gaul had been brief; they had spent only a few short hours together, and she knew almost nothing of his earlier life, of his character and of his likes and dislikes.

  Had he out of ambition, taken this opportunity to woo Calpurnia, perhaps even to seduce her, in order to marry into the family of the powerful Prefect?

  Fanina clenched her fists. Perhaps he really loved Calpurnius’s daughter. Perhaps he was flighty, unstable, quick to tire of a woman.

  After his wild desire for her, perhaps he had been disappointed by their one and only experience of lovemaking. Perhaps he had found Calpurnia more skilled in the arts of love. Or perhaps, on the contrary, Calpurnia had been more reticent, more blushingly modest, and this had charmed him, compared with the abandoned passion with which Fanina had given herself to him.

  She kept on asking herself the same question. How had she displeased him? Had she been too cold or too ardent? The latter, no doubt. She had given herself to him impetuously, without restraint, like the women whose culpable shamelessness Vibidia, the Supreme Vestal, used to condemn.

  A bitter smile came to Fanina’s lips ...

  What could she have refused him? With joy in her heart she had anticipated his every wish, she had sacrificed everything to him, her life, her honour, and that of her family.

  But had he not sacrificed everything for her too? Had he not even acted sacrilegiously on her account? Had he not, for her, dared to enter the sacrosanct House of Vestals? To win her, had he not risked the cruellest of torments?

  Had he not snatched her from her tomb?

  Panting with emotion, her eyes brimming with tears, she thought she still heard his furious hammering from the narrow trench in which the earth was constantly collapsing around him, threatening at any moment to bury him alive. She saw him as he had been at the moment when, bathed in sweat and grimy with dust, trembling in every limb, light-headed with fatigue, clasping her close to him, he had come staggering into the tomb where she awaited her death.

  What had he not braved for her? For her, he had risked the most appalling dangers. For her, he had killed. For her he had taken on single-handed a patrol of seasoned soldiers, armed with swords and protected by iron breast-plates.

  Suddenly a great calm descended on Fanina. She no longer doubted, she could no longer doubt. Vindex really did love her. No other man could ever have given any other woman all that he had sacrificed for her. Nothing could keep them apart. They were indissolubly bound by too many shared sorrows, too many shared joys and too many mutual sacrifices; they were united for ever. . . .

  She had been told lies.

  Laying her hand on Xychus’s arm, Fanina ordered him to turn round.

  The slave looked at her placidly.

  ‘Let us go back to Rome, Xychus!’ she insisted.

  Her plan was already prepared. When she reached Rome, she would go to Calpurnius the Prefect’s house, since that was where Vindex had taken refuge. She would make her way there carefully, without running any unnecessary risks. All she would have to do would be to show herself and Vindex would run to her arms, all would be forgotten, everything would begin again. . . .

  Then Xychus whipped up the mules with a sweeping stroke and they started off again at a fast trot.

  Fanina’s lips tightened and her eyes flashed.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to return to Rome, Xychus?’ she expostulated.

  ‘My master ordered me to take you to Etruria,’ the slave replied calmly, ‘so I shall take you to Etruria.’

  Unable to control herself any longer, she burs
t out:

  ‘Your master lied to me! Pm sure of it now.’

  Xychus pulled sharply at the reins and stopped the wagon. He turned to face Fanina, and fixing her with his pale, colourless eyes, his lip curling derisively, he said in a low, even voice, that was devoid of anger:

  ‘Is the illustrious Fanina out of her mind? She who was once a vestal, whom the Goddess-Mother of the city has marked with her indelible stamp, how can she for a single instant doubt the word of my master, the most venerable Cornelius?’

  Fanina went pale. The terrible oath the Flamen Dialis had sworn still rang in her ears. It must have been a unique event in the annals of Rome; although he was in no way obliged to do so, Cornelius had sworn by the gods whose servant he was that Vindex was preparing to marry Calpurnia. Jupiter’s Flamen was always trusted by his word alone. That was an article of faith. For him to lie would be one of the most horrible sacrileges that any priest of the official religion could commit. But Cornelius had gone even further. So that Fanina could in no way doubt him, he had taken an oath. He had gone so far as to call Jupiter Thunder to bear witness for him, and to strike both him and his wife dead on the spot should they have uttered a false accusation.

  A painful sob choked Fanina. There could be no possible doubt: Vindex really must be going to marry Calpurnia. And Vindex was not the man to marry Calpurnia if he did not love her.

  Shattered, Fanina sank back on the seat of the wagon. She no longer understood.

  Xychus’s whip cracked sharply and the wagon set off again. Bitter tears streamed down Fanina’s cheeks. Her heart racked with grief, she said in a low voice:

  ‘I will go back to Rome!’

  The slave replied submissively:

  ‘If such be the will of the gods, illustrious Fanina.’

  ‘No one will stop me! I must know! I will know!’

  ‘In three days’ time we shall have reached our destination. There you will have peace and security. Then you can decide what is best, illustrious Fanina.’