Vestal Virgin: Suspense in Ancient Rome

by Suzanne Tyrpak

  “Do I?” She turned from him and, clutching her bundle of rags, walked along the garden path.

  He followed her.

  They paused at the statue of Venus. “Remember when I found you crying all those years ago?”

  “You kissed me.” She raised her face to his, her eyes filled with tears. “I live outside life, more witness than participant.”

  He wanted to comfort her, to hold her in his arms, but he stopped himself. “Violence leads to violence,” he said. “Take a higher road Elissa.”

  “All roads in Rome lead to the gutter,” she said.

  “Not mine.”

  He headed down the path, and she followed him.

  CHAPTER XIII

  Flavia fell onto her sleeping couch. Claiming to have stomach cramps, she’d refused the midday meal and remained in her room. Elissa had ruined everything. Luckily she hadn’t found the new green stola—the one Flavia planned to wear tonight. Oh yes, she would attend the feast, no matter what Elissa said.

  Her stomach growled.

  Sunlight stole through the shutters, and fell in lines along the walls, painting bars across the floor. Despite the afternoon’s brilliance the ceiling’s painted clouds seemed ominous. Thanks to Elissa a servant stood outside the door preventing Flavia’s escape. At least within her chamber she had privacy.

  She listened to the silence of the house. No laughter. No music. No Marcus. If Marcus were alive, the house would be bustling with preparations for a Meditrinalia celebration. If Marcus were alive, servants would be arranging banquet tables in the courtyard. Cooks would be preparing roasted meats and honeyed fruits, delicious smells seeping through the walls from the kitchen. When night fell there would be music and dancing. His death had ruined everything. And now, instead of feasting at the palace, another evening would be wasted spinning flax.

  She crushed a cushion against her chest, but couldn’t ease the ache. Why had Marcus spoken out against Nero? Why had he made himself a traitor? He should have considered his family. Considered her.

  He’d once told her a story about a Persian princess who spent her life locked within a tower. Each night her father bolted the door, and each night the princess pushed aside her bed to descend a secret stairway that led to an enchanted world. There, she danced till dawn. But no magic stairway lay beneath Flavia’s sleeping couch.

  She threw the cushion at the wall.

  Startled, the doves flew up in their cage. She’d forgotten to feed them.

  “I’m hungry too,” she said.

  She opened the cage door and scattered a handful of seeds. Remus pecked her fingers, but Romulus allowed her to hold him in her palm. She felt the down of his feathers, the quick pulse of his tiny heart. It would take little effort to wrench his neck and end his life. To Romulus she held the power of a god.

  The bird cooed.

  She returned him to his cage.

  Hearing voices, she went to the window. She unlatched the shutters and, leaning her elbows on the sill, peered down at the courtyard. Through a fig tree’s cluster of leaves she saw linen sheets fluttering on the line. Her father’s toga lay stretched on a rack, bleaching in the sun.

  Servants carried a copper vat of steaming water from the baths while Constantina supervised. Her face, usually unblemished, was blotched from boiling potash. She might have been a household slave of the lowest order.

  In my domus, Flavia thought, laundry will be sent out to a fullery, bread sent in from a bakery, and slaves will spin the flax. She picked at a callus, the result of last night’s spinning. Her father was ailing, her brother dead, and today was a holiday, yet her mother insisted dirty linen must be washed, floors had to be swept, and tiles scrubbed. You’d think she was a farmer’s wife, not a senator’s.

  A servant threw an armload of linen into the vat of boiling water, then added an amphora of urine for whitening. A smudge-pot of burning sulfur enhanced the stench. Another servant mixed together potash, carbonate of soda, and fuller’s earth before dumping the resulting mess into the vat. Scalding water splashed the servant’s face and she cried out. Blindness, scars, and injury without glory of battle.

  Flavia sighed. Housework bored her.

  She wandered to her vanity, picked up a sandalwood comb and ran it through her hair. Yanking at a knot, she clenched her teeth and ripped it out. She rolled the hair between her thumb and forefinger, curious to see how tight she could make the ball. Losing interest she flicked it to the floor. The wad landed next to a pile of dirty underclothes. The maid would sweep it up.

  Yawning, not from exhaustion but tedium, she removed the key she wore around her neck and unlocked the box in which she kept her treasures. Fishing through earrings, bracelets and pendants, she found her mirror. She stared into the polished silver at her reflection—skin pale as ivory without the use of lead or arsenic, rosy cheeks without benefit of red ochre. People called her beautiful, but she wished for raven curls thick as Elissa’s. She bared her teeth. No particles of food, but Elissa’s were whiter. Her mother had suggested rinsing her mouth with urine to bleach them.

  Flavia stuck out her tongue.

  She opened her cedar chest and found her new robe. Holding it against her body, she smoothed the silk over her hips and imagined how she would look. The color accentuated her green eyes and set off her hair to perfection. She pursed her lips in imitation of an actress she had seen. In pantomimes women played any role they wanted: whores, queens, goddesses. Even men.

  She let the robe slide to the floor.

  What use was beauty if she was locked away in her parents’ domus?

  Angry voices summoned her back to the window.

  Below in the courtyard Constantina shook her fist at a crow perched on the laundry line. “Get away from my clean clothes!”

  The bird spread its wings, flapped several times, and flew into the fig tree. If Flavia reached out her hand, her fingers might have grazed his blue-black feathers. He cawed and more crows appeared, swooping through the courtyard, alighting in the tree. The racket made the women furious. Led by Constantina they waved their arms and yelled.

  Flavia found it funny to see her mother, usually so staid and proper, clapping her hands, even cursing at the birds.

  The women gathered round the tree and tried to shake the trunk, but the tree proved too stout. They pelted the crows with bits of soap. A screeching cloud ascended from the branches, flew skyward and disappeared over the roof.

  Still sputtering obscenities, Constantina and the servants returned to their work.

  Flavia laughed so hard tears rolled down her cheeks. The crows, her mother, and the laundry struck her as ridiculous. What difference did it make if wash was done today, tomorrow or never? As soon as the linens were folded and neatly put away they would pile up again. Surely there was more to life than endless laundry.

  Her tears fell faster and her laughter became sobs. She would spend her days locked in her parents’ domus until they married her to some dull senator.

  Worse yet, stupid Egnatius.

  If she had wings she’d sail away, escape her destiny. If she had wings, she’d soar to Olympus where the gods were said to dwell. Then she’d look down on the world and choose a fate that suited her.

  But she was not a bird.

  Wiping moisture from her eyes she leaned over the windowsill.

  The washing was done, and her mother had retreated to the house. Servants poured the vat of steaming water onto the courtyard’s paving stones.

  Flavia studied the fig tree’s twisting branches. Reaching out her hand, her fingertips brushed the smooth bark of a sturdy limb. The tree stood taller than the two-story house. How difficult could it be to grab hold of a branch and scale the roof? Escape to Nero’s feast.

  She couldn’t fly, but she could climb.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Elissa stayed close to Justinus, clutching her bundle of clothes, as they pushed through Meditrinalia revelers. On every corner there was drinking, gambling, music. They tur
ned down one street and another, traveling deep into the Subura’s maze. The stola she’d borrowed from Flavia was ruined, the hem caked with mud, and her white slippers were filthy from the gutter. She drew the ragged palla close. At least, in her forlorn state, she wouldn’t be recognized. A squeak came from a pile of garbage and she almost screamed. A cat shot out of nowhere in pursuit of a rat.

  Justinus smiled at her, oblivious of any drama.

  “Are we almost there?” she asked.

  “I promise you this will be worth it.”

  They came to a row of shops, closed due to the holiday. Justinus stopped in front of a four-story tenement, an insula housing a number of small apartments. Once lemon yellow, soot had darkened it to mustard. Most of the ground floor served as a tavern where apartment dwellers, lacking a kitchen, might purchase a hot meal. A phallus, spewing beads of red, had been painted on the wall and scrawled beneath it: Tigellinus squeezes blood from stones. Beside the tavern stood a cobbler’s shop. A closed sign hung on the door.

  Justinus tried the latch, but it was locked.

  “Your friend lives here?”

  “Not here, in the Hebrew Quarter. He’s a tentmaker by trade and lives above his shop, but he preaches where he can.”

  “Preaches what?”

  Justinus knocked three times.

  The cobbler’s door cracked open. A man wearing a leather apron stood in the doorway, his face as tan as ox-hide.

  “Peace be with you,” he said. Eying Elissa, he added, “What brings you here?”

  “The gathering,” Justinus replied. “She won’t cause any trouble.”

  The cobbler hesitated, then opened the door wider. “No one saw you?”

  “And no one knows we’ve come,” Justinus said.

  The cobbler looked up and down the street before allowing them inside. They walked through a workshop, passing a table piled with scraps of leather, shelves crammed with boots and saddlebags. Fox pelts hung from the rafters. Elissa recognized the hide of an ox, and a deerskin dangled from the ceiling. Tools for scraping, stretching, cutting, were arranged on hooks along the walls. An acrid smell permeated the room. She peered into a vat where a lamb wallowed in brine.

  She stared at the lamb with horror and fascination. The men continued talking, and she caught snippets of their conversation.

  “Many will die?” Justinus asked.

  “...crucifixions and worse...”

  Elissa gripped the vat and hung onto the rim, sickness rising to her mouth, transfixed by the lamb’s dead eyes. The shape morphed into something human. A baby. It was breathing, bubbles rising to the surface, tiny hands reaching toward her from the brine, the small mouth open in a wail.

  The child she might have borne.

  “Elissa?”

  She blinked, attempting to bring Justinus into focus.

  “Come,” he said. His voice, calm and reassuring, drew her.

  At the rear of the shop, they passed through a door and into a courtyard—if you could call it that—a shaft between buildings littered with discarded furniture and slops. The cobbler pointed toward a stairway. “Fourth floor,” he said. “Today’s watchword is Jerusalem.”

  They climbed the steps, half-rotten and encrusted with pigeon droppings. Bypassing apartments on the lower floors, where residents might hope for running water, they reached the fifth floor and walked along a hallway. Justinus stopped at a door inscribed with a dove and an olive branch. He knocked three times.

  “Why so secretive?” Elissa asked.

  “Informants.”

  “Whose?”

  “Agents of Tigellinus.”

  “Why should he care about your friend?”

  “Since the time of Claudius, Jews are not permitted to gather due to infighting in the synagogues.”

  “This is a gathering of Jews?” Elissa felt faintly sick.

  “Not Jews, really, followers of Jesus. Tigellinus will use the slimmest excuse to make them scapegoats for any trouble.”

  Elissa’s heart began to pound. “Do they really drink blood?” she asked, watching Justinus intently. She had known him all her life, considered him a brother, but perhaps war had changed him. “I’ve heard they devour human flesh.”

  Justinus chuckled.

  The peephole slid open.

  “Jerusalem,” Justinus said.

  A soldier stood in the doorway. Now, Elissa thought, we’ll be arrested, hauled off to jail for attending this forbidden meeting. But the soldier merely nodded. “Peace be with you,” he said, admitting them into a one room apartment.

  “And with you, brother,” Justinus replied. Lowering his voice, he said to Elissa, “Tigellinus sends soldiers to hold Paul prisoner, but they soon become his followers.”

  Paul of Tarsus. Elissa had heard of him. Her heart beat faster.

  The room might have held ten comfortably, but at least thirty men and women stood pressed against the mud-brick walls and sat huddled on the sagging floor. Many wore the simple garb of plebs and slaves, and some wore the felt caps of freedmen. Several wore fine robes. Elissa felt certain she recognized a senator. Someone bumped into her, and she turned to see a small, bald man with a grey beard. He smiled at her, and she couldn’t help smiling back. His eyes glowed with warmth, and instantly she felt she knew him. A beaklike nose overwhelmed his face and his eyebrows joined in the middle, but his smile was beautiful. He nodded at Elissa and continued through the crowded room.

  “Who is he?” she asked Justinus.

  “The prophet Paul.”

  Elissa had expected the notorious prophet to be tall, his face haunted like a fugitive’s, not this crooked little man. Paul appeared serene, incapable of hurting anyone. “Why is he held a prisoner?” she asked.

  “His preaching caused a riot in Jerusalem. Soldiers rescued him from an angry mob, and when he claimed to be a Roman citizen King Agrippa sent him here.”

  “He’s not a citizen?”

  “He was shipwrecked, and his papers lost at sea. We Romans don’t know what to do with him, so he’s kept under guard and when he ventures out he’s chained. But Paul is a respected scholar. Even Seneca reveres his writings.”

  Elissa nodded toward two men dressed in white robes. “Who are they?”

  “The younger is Timothy, the older Luke. They accompanied Paul from Antioch.”

  Luke, a stocky man with the swarthy complexion of a Greek, scrutinized the crowd as if expecting trouble. Timothy, clean-shaven and open-faced, smiled beatifically.

  Paul joined them. Luke nodded, and Paul said, “Friends.” His gentle voice was difficult to hear above the chatter.

  “Silence,” Luke bellowed. “The prophet speaks.”

  “Shalom,” Paul said, and the crowd grew quiet. “Shalom, my friends, and peace be with you.” A calm descended on the crowd, peace so profound it was palpable.

  Elissa sank into the feeling.

  Paul spoke in a soothing voice, “I bring a message from the Lord.”

  What lord, she wondered.

  “Not our lord and master, Nero,” a young man called out.

  Elissa glanced at the soldier, expecting him to pounce. But he was laughing, as were others.

  “There is but one true Lord,” Paul said. A murmur ran through the crowd, a collective sigh of relief. Paul spoke as if he were a messenger from a world beyond this one. “There is but one God, almighty and all powerful.”

  One god instead of many? The idea seemed unfathomable. But many people claimed their god to be most powerful. Elissa listened for a name, expecting to hear Jupiter, god of thunderbolts and war, or maybe Zeus, Jupiter’s Greek counterpart. She would not have been surprised if the prophet named a foreign god: The Babylonian’s, Shamash, rising from the mountain, rays of light pouring from his shoulders, or the Egyptian sun-god, Re.

  Paul looked around the room. His eyes met Elissa’s, flooding her with peace. “The one true God is love,” he said, as if speaking only to her.

  Love.

  The wor
d left her stunned. Love, the most dreaded of conditions, a sickness she wrestled with in secret. How could this odd, little man call that madness highest of all gods? Love was treacherous. Love brought grief and led to disaster. Better to worship hate. Malice proved a wiser god.

  “Do you think I don’t know hate?” Paul said, as if in answer to her thoughts. “Before I knew the Lord, I believed myself to be a righteous man. A Pharisee. I followed every law set down by the temple priests, detested those who broke the rules. Hatred ruled my heart. Hatred seeped into my blood like poison, seeped into my bones and weakened me until I stood before the gates of Hell. But my Lord Jesus provides the antidote: Love your enemies.”

  Elissa nearly laughed. Love your enemies, the idea was ridiculous. She thought of Nero. Instead of attending this meeting, she should be plotting his annihilation.

  Paul’s eyes locked on hers. “In the name of righteousness,” he said, “I even committed murder.”

  She inhaled sharply. Did the prophet read her thoughts?

  “Before I knew the Lord, these hands—” he held his hands before his face, his expression mortified, “—these hands held Stephen down as he was stoned to death.”

  Elissa stood dumbstruck, soaking up Paul’s words.

  “In the name of righteousness,” he spoke softly, but his voice rumbled through her soul, “I made my heart a stone.”

  Her chest ached, and she found it difficult to breathe.

  “Elissa, what’s wrong?”

  She heard Justinus, knew he spoke, but she couldn’t answer. Sorrow poured out of her heart, bursting through her eyes. Through tears, she stared at him.

  And then Paul stood in front of her, gently touching her face. “God loves you,” he said. “Let God in, and you will heal.”

  The concept of a loving god, a god that cared about mere mortals, was inconceivable. Gods were fickle. They looked down on the world and used humans for their amusement.

  “My words sound strange to you,” Paul said, sorrow apparent in his eyes. “Rome gained an empire by use of ruthless power, but God’s Kingdom can be won only with compassion. If I speak the tongue of angels, but speak without love, my words mean no more than clanging cymbals.” His voice crashed over her like waves, drawing her into his depths. “If I am gifted with prophetic powers, if I comprehend life’s deepest mysteries, if I possess the faith to move mountains, but lack the ability to love—my vision is clouded, my understanding false—”