‘I suppose you are surprised to hear me talk a language like your own?’ Fanina asked.
A strange light in his eyes, the dwarf shook his head from side to side.
‘Do you mean that you knew I had studied the language of the German marches and yet you did not tell Atia?’
He nodded. Fanina looked at him in amazement, then, very softly, syllable by syllable, she went on:
‘Do you mean that at the moment you are not as ill-disposed towards me as you have been up to now?’
At this question, he gave a sly smile. Was he making fun of her? This disconcerting person was both terrifying and seductive in turn, and had given Fanina too many surprises already. She herself was ready for anything. Her tone hardened and she grew angry.
‘We must have no more of this!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have puzzled me enough already! You have been playing far too cruel a game with me, and the time has come for you to give me an explanation. I want to know who you are, and who it is that gives you your orders. I want to know everything! You must tell me!’
The dwarf’s face grew sombre and he turned away, as if unable to bear Fanina’s inquisitive stare. Then his lips parted and he laid a hesitant finger on them ...
Fanina gave a sudden start.
‘Do you mean that you are .. . dumb?’ she stammered.
Then, louder, she added:
‘They’ve torn out your tongue?’
At a loss to know what to say, she leant against the wall. Then the dwarf raised his head and signalled to her with his hand.
‘Do you want to write?’
Even assuming that everything went as well as possible, Fanina had still expected to have to battle with him, to have to argue long and hard. Knowing him to be dumb, she had expected him to shelter behind his infirmity and refuse to answer her.
But he wanted to write!
A few paces took her to the chest, where she seized hold of Atia’s ivory tablets and stylus, and returned swiftly to the gallery at the back of the cave.
With a trace of a smile playing about his lips, the dwarf watched her approach. Fanina hesitated slightly: was she not rushing headlong into a trap? Might not the dwarf take advantage of the opportunity she was giving him, to seize hold of her as she came within reach of nis fearsome hands? Just because his face was handsome, had she forgotten what an implacable instrument of death he was?
He seemed to have regained his liveliness. What resistance could she offer to him?
But it was too late to turn back now, and she courageously sat down beside him. He raised himself up on his arms and moved slightly to one side to make room for her. The blankets over him slipped and for a split second she saw his twisted, misshapen legs that seemed to have been crushed and put together again askew.
Promptly drawing the blanket back over them, he looked at Fanina with his big, clear eyes. She acted as if she had seen nothing, and her face wearing the lovely serious smile she had learned from Vibidia to wear on all occasions, she handed him the tablets and the stylus, which looked quite out of place in those enormous hands that she was unable to look at without a suppressed shudder.
With astonishing ease, he wrote in Latin:
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Your name, to start with,’ Fanina replied briefly.
He wrote on the wax:
Horo, who thanks you for saving his life by carrying him here.
He had not finished the sentence before Fanina, in spite of the fact that it augured well for her, overcome by the feelings that had never ceased to torment her ever since she had brought the dwarf back to the temple, asked:
‘Why have you never stopped following me since that day when I first left the House of Vestals unaccompanied by one of the older priestesses?’
Looking calmly at her as he wrote without lowering his eyes to I he tablet, he firmly etched the following words so deeply into the wax that the ivory appeared through it:
In order to protect you.
‘And who ever asked you, Horo, to protect me?’ she retorted harshly, with a surge of anger at the memory of the terrible moments of fear she had suffered because of the incessant surveillance of this man who knew everything there was to know about her. He had seen her, had heard her swooning in Vindex’s arms, and furthermore, something she could not forgive him, seen her yield to Tertius’s odious caresses.
The tone in which she had spoken these last words did not appear to move Horo. A full head taller than Fanina, his handsome lace reflecting perfect self-control, he calmly flattened the wax with the spatula on his stylus and, this time more slowly, wrote the word:
Tiberius.
Fanina gave a violent start.
‘Tiberius! Your master... is Tiberius?’
Looking her straight in the eyes, Horo nodded with impressive dignity.
Fanina could no longer contain herself.
‘Tiberius! ... Tiberius who sacrificed my life to his drunken whims, because he imagined I am the famous woman whose coming the soothsayers have been predicting for centuries! Tiberius who, with the complicity of Calvinus, shut me up among the vestals simply because he thinks I shall save “his” empire! Tiberius who has shattered my life, who let me be condemned, who would have let me die in my tomb under the Field of Evil-doers had not others saved my life! Nothing matters to Tiberius except the image of the woman sent by Providence that he sees in me, no matter what it may cost me, or what happens to me. If tomorrow Thrasyllos, his astrologer, were to read in the skies that, in order that Rome should continue to be subject to his tyranny, this woman should be sacrificed, Tiberius would coldly order you to kill me, and you, Horo, would lend him your arm....’
She gave a violent shudder. The dwarf’s powerful hand had come to rest on her shoulder. Horo brought his face closer to hers and looked at her for a long time. His eyes shone with a strange brilliance and his lips moved imperceptibly. His features were transfigured by some inexpressible emotion, while he slowly shook his head from side to side.
‘Do you mean that if Tiberius were to order you to strike me down you would not obey him?’ she exclaimed.
He clenched his fists in his impatience, for his infirmity prevented him from expressing himself freely. Seizing one of the tablets Fanina held out to him, he scratched violently in the wax:
Tiberius would never order me to do that. He is noble and just. No one understands him ...
She interrupted him:
‘Don’t try to persuade me of that, Horo! Tiberius also let Calvinus and Brazen-beard drive my parents to suicide! He terrorizes the whole Empire! He allows the wretched people of Vulci to die of poverty and illness! I should like to see him dead!’
The dwarf’s stylus ran over the tablet once more.
For the past year, Tiberius has been waging a battle of which you can have no conception against...
Fanina looked at him with such anger that he interrupted his sentence, wiped out what he had written and began again:
Tiberius saved my life. I owe everything to him, but I swear this to you, Fanina, that I would rather die than sacrifice you to him.
Snatching the tablet from him, Fanina read these lines, then reread them to make sure she had fully understood. Then she looked up at Horo.
Her anger had evaporated, and, for the first time in a long, long while, without understanding why, she felt a great calm descend on her. For the very first time in her life, someone, the very person who knew all there was to know about her, was looking at her without judging her, without heaping advice on her head, without expecting anything of her. Someone who had vowed his whole-hearted fidelity without even asking her to love him, who had done so for her and her alone. That was what Fanina read in Horo’s eyes.
‘But why?’ she stammered.
With a heavy, hesitant hand, he scratched a few words which he immediately wiped out. But Fanina had had time to read:
You are the living image of the woman who meant everything to me.
With his
head bowed on his chest, Horo was no longer looking .it her. He had withdrawn into himself, and his face expressed such distress and sorrow that Fanina, overcome with emotion, laid her hand on his arm.
‘Horo,’ she murmured.
He turned towards her. A wan smile lighted his face, then, taking Fanina’s hand in his, he carried it to his lips.
They sat thus for a long time, wrapped in their own thoughts. Then Horo took up the tablet again, and wrote:
Atia may wake up soon. What more do you want to know?
Fanina straightened up with a jerk.
‘Anything you can tell me! Anything that might enlighten me!’
She paused a while, then, very red, her eyes shining with hope, she added:
‘And Vindex, Horo? I want to know what has happened to Vindex!’
It seemed to Fanina that Horo’s expression suddenly stiffened as his stylus went scratching over the wax:
I don't know! It is to you that I am attached!
Drawing her scarlet face close to his, she cried in a broken voice:
‘You don’t want to tell me what you know! You don’t want to tell me he is at Calpurnius Piso’s and that he’s going to marry Piso’s daughter, Calpurnia?’
Horo shook his head as he vigorously underlined the sentence he had just written. He was repeating that he did not know and that it was to her that he was attached, not to Vindex. . . .
Suddenly the whole wonderful edifice of questions Fanina had planned to ask him fell to the ground. The unexpected victory she liad just won had lost all its meaning. Although he was willing to reveal all to her, Horo was nevertheless unable to throw any light on the mystery of Vindex’s proposed marriage to Calpurnia.
She spoke softly:
‘If you cannot give me any news of Vindex, what can you tell me?’
He wrote:
Everything else.
Horo’s hand was already sweeping over the first tablet. When it was full, he handed it to Fanina who read it mechanically. Horo handed her the second tablet. In spite of herself, Fanina asked him a question, then another. Bit by bit a strange dialogue began.
Now Horo was writing without stopping, while Fanina, kneeling beside him with her shoulder against the herculean shoulder of the dwarf, plied him with questions, asked for clarifications on this point or that to which he replied with a brief nod, as he went on covering tablet after tablet with broken phrases in a kind of shorthand, which he used as skilfully as the most highly cultured Romans of his day.
Bit by bit, Fanina began to get another view of all she had lived through.
Why did it have to be that many centuries before, the ‘divine’ Mastarna Marcius Faninus, Fanina’s ancestor, should foretell the coming of a woman of Providence who was to save Rome several times over from grave peril?
Why had this same prophecy had to be discovered in the Sibylline Books, which were consulted every time the city was passing through difficult days?
On several occasions they had thought they had discovered this woman of Providence had been born, until the day Cassia the Vestal died. And each time they had been mistaken. Each time the soothsayers had lifted their voices in chorus against the woman thought to be the chosen one of the gods.
Then, on the day Cassia died, Senator Faninus, standing before the Conscript Fathers, had denounced in violent terms the black crimes that no one had hitherto had the courage to lay at Brazen-beard’s door.
That same day the Emperor found himself in the invidious situation of having to draw up the list of the twenty prettiest little girls in Rome, from whom, according to ancient custom, would be chosen by lot the deceased Cassia’s successor. Tiberius had insisted that Fanina’s name should be removed from the list, for she was Senator Faninus’s only daughter and he did not want to see the Faninus family die out. It was then that Senator Vitellius had intervened. In order to avenge his friend Brazen-beard, he drew so enticing a picture of the girl for the Emperor that to settle matters he consulted his astrologer Thrasyllos.
The scene was set for the tragedy. Less than an hour later Thrasyllos returned in amazement; he had found that Fanina’s horoscope was identical in every detail with that of the woman whose coming was foretold by Mastarna and the Sibylline Books.
In Tiberius’s eyes, the interests of the State must take precedence over all others. For the old Emperor, smitten by his belief in astrology, Fanina had become a pawn in his game, possibly the most precious pawn he possessed in the hour of danger. The ideal way of keeping her at his disposal was to shut her up among the vestals, and with Calvinus’s eager complicity, he did not hesitate to fake the results of the drawing of lots that placed Fanina in the service of the Goddess.
Not knowing precisely what part Fanina would play in the course of history the Emperor had ordered Vibidia to give her the very latest education possible, so that she would be equipped to cope with any situation that might arise.
Not a week went by without the Supreme Vestal sending a long report on everything you did, Horo wrote on his tablet.
In spite of all the cares of office, Tiberius constantly consulted the stars in order to know how he should act towards Fanina, and e very time he did so, Thrasyllos told him not to interfere but simply to make sure she stayed alive.
That was why, when Fanina reached the age of sixteen and the lime came for her to enter public life, Tiberius had entrusted Horo with the task of protecting her, specifying that he was only to take action ‘if the young priestess was in danger of death’.
Fanina listened all agog to Horo’s tale. So, when the dwarf had struck Vindex in the Via Triumphalis, it had been to protect her, as he had protected her by striking down with a cast of his sling, Calvinus’s son, Dailochos, when the latter had posted himself in the Area Palatina to spy on her.
When events had begun to gather momentum, when Vindex and his father had been hauled before the Senate, Horo, realizing, as Vibidia had realized, what Fanina’s reaction would be, had written to the Emperor asking him to call off the trial. But Tiberius had immediately replied that he was to keep to his role of bodyguard. The Emperor reserved the right to act when and where he chose. And in any case, he added in his letter, the stars indicated categorically that whatever ensued as a result of the trial, the Supreme Vestal alone could save Fanina, for she would infallibly ward off every attack by Calvinus and Brazen-beard.
‘It would have been so easy for Tiberius to render Calvinus and Brazen-beard incapable of doing any more damage!’ Fanina protested, beside herself at the thought of the tragic hours she had lived through:
Horo shook his head ruefully and wrote:
The Emperor did not want to run the risk of making enemies of the very powerful faction led by Calvinus and Brazen-beard.
The hours passed. Fanina was by now reliving the frantic struggle Vibidia had put up in order to save her from herself, to minimize the effects of each of her imprudent actions. She followed the dwarf’s path through a Rome shocked by the senseless wave of trials and executions that had cut their bloody trail across the city.
But with no other authority than that of bodyguard, Horo could do no more than stick desperately to her wherever she went. He was forbidden to take the offensive, and yet he knew that Calvinus had given orders for Fanina’s grave to be dug. He had seen the job carried out, and had seen Araxea, Vibidia’s foster-sister, begin to dig a tunnel towards it once the site had been chosen.
Fanina remembered the words Araxea had whispered to Vibidia on the Forum:
‘The other one is also prowling around. It’s impossible to tell what he’s up to....’
‘The other one’ was Horo, and the Supreme Vestal and Araxea knew full well that he belonged to the Emperor’s household.
During those terrible days Horo had been everywhere at once. He had followed Fanina when she had rushed off to the Tullianum prison to rescue Vindex.
‘It was when I left the House of Vestals that my nurse, Hemonia, disappeared!’ Fanina interrupted. ‘Do you
know what has become of her?’
Horo wrote in longhand:
Since Brazen-beard’s thugs abducted your nurse, I have no further news of her. I repeat: I am attached to you and you alone!
Melixo had not lied: Hemonia had indeed fallen into the hands of the loathsome redhead. For ten long years, Brazen-beard had waited for a favourable opportunity to strike, and he had taken his revenge on Hemonia, who had so cruelly humiliated him, just as he had taken his revenge on Vibius, the butcher, and on Senator Faninus.
But Horo was continuing his story. He had been in the crowd when the Supreme Priestess and the urban cohorts had taken action, just as he had been in the Via Nova when Calvinus had arrested the young priestess. He had been there too when the tomb had been closed over her head after the trial.
Shaking his head sadly, Horo looked at Fanina and wrote:
The Supreme Vestal had thought of everything. I could not intervene without running the risk of thwarting her plans. The only thing I could do was to bribe Cadmus the executioner to hide some extra provisions in your bed: it seemed to me the only thing I could do that did not risk getting in the way of the Supreme Virgin’s plans.
‘Did you see Vindex when he reached the Field of Evil-doers and entered the hut where Araxea was piling up the rubble from the tunnel?’ Fanina asked him.
I saw him, but I thought the Supreme Vestal had sent him to help Araxea.
And after that? Horo had followed Fanina and Vindex throughout the city.
‘You have no idea how you terrified me with that sinister leather cloak,’ Fanina murmured. ‘I wondered whether you had not been sent from Hades.’
The dwarf laid his hand gently on Fanina’s arm and squeezed it.
‘I’m sure I shall never be able to thank you enough for all you have done for me, and above all for going beyond Tiberius’s orders,’ Fanina went on, ‘but why, why did you attack the Praetorian Guard in Janus Street?’
Fanina, Child of Rome Page 12