The House of the Vestals rsr-6

by Steven Saylor

  She flicked her fingers, and I felt drops of water on my face. "Be purified," she whispered. "Do you swear by the goddess of the hearth that you enter this house with no evil intent, and at the request of the mistress of this house, who is the Virgo Maxima, the highest priestess of Vesta?"

  "I do," said Rufus. I followed his example.

  The Vestal led us across the courtyard. As we passed the pool I heard a soft splash. I stiffened at the noise but saw only a gentle ripple traverse the black surface, causing the reflected starlight to glimmer and wink. I leaned close to Rufus's ear and whispered: "A frog?"

  "But surely not a male one!" he whispered back, then gestured for me to be quiet.

  We stepped beneath the colonnade, into deep shadow, and stopped before a door that was invisible except for the faint bar of light that escaped beneath its bottom edge. The Vestal knocked very gently and whispered something I couldn't hear, then left us and disappeared into the shadows. A moment later the door opened inward. A face appeared-frightened, beautiful, and quite young. She, too, wore the diadem of a Vestal.

  She pulled the door open to allow us to enter. The room was dimly lit by a single lamp, beneath which another Vestal sat holding an open scroll. She was older than her companion, of middle age. Her short hair was touched with silver at the ternples. As we approached, she kept her eyes on the scroll and began to read aloud in Greek. Her voice was soft and mellow:

  "Evening star, gatherer of all The bright daybreak parted: You gather the sheep, the goat; You gather the child safe to its mother."

  She laid the scroll aside and looked up, first at Rufus, then at me. She sighed. "In times of distress, the poetess comforts me. Ate you familiar with Sappho?"

  "A little," I said.

  She laid the scroll aside. "I am Licinia."

  I looked at her more closely. Was this the woman for whom the richest man in Rome had endangered his life? The Virgo Maxima seemed in no way extraordinary, at least not to my eye; on the other hand, what sort of woman could sit calmly and read Sappho in the midst of what even staid Cicero had decreed a catastrophe?

  "You are Gordianus, called the Finder?" she said.

  I nodded.

  "Cicero sent word by Rufus that you would come. Ah, what would we have done tonight without Cicero to help us?"

  " 'Like is he to a god immortal,' " said Rufus, quoting another line from Sappho.

  There followed an uneasy silence. The girl who had opened the door remained in the shadows.

  "Let's get on with it, then," said Licinia. "You must know already that I have been indicted for conduct forbidden to a Vestal; they accuse me of a dalliance with my kinsman Marcus Crassus."

  "So I've heard."

  "I'm far past my youth, and have no interest in men. The charge is absurd! It is true that Crassus seeks out my company in the Forum and the theater and pesters me constantly-but if our accusers only knew what he talks about when we're alone! Believe me, it has nothing to do with matters of the heart. Crassus is as legendary for his greed as are the Vestals for their chastity-but I will not elaborate. Crassus has his defense and I have mine, and in three days the courts will hear our cases and decide. There are no witnesses and no evidence of any act contrary to my vow; the suit is nothing more than a nuisance intended to embarrass Crassus and to undermine the people's faith in the Vestals. No reasonable panel of judges could possibly find us guilty; and yet, after the events of this evening, things could go very badly for us both."

  She looked into the darkness and frowned, and caressed the scroll in her lap, as if the conversation had grown distasteful to her and she longed to escape again into the soothing rhythms of the Lesbian poet. When she spoke again, her voice was languid and dreamy.

  "I was consecrated to Vesta at the age of eight; all Vestals are chosen at an early age, between six and ten. We serve for no less than thirty years. For the first ten years, we are novices, students of the mysteries like Fabia here." She gestured to the girl in the shadows. "In the second ten years we perform the sacred duties-purify the shrine and make offerings of salt, watch over the eternal flame, consecrate temples, attend the holy festivals, guard the sacred relics. In the third ten years, we become teachers and instruct the novices, passing on the mysteries. At the end of thirty years we are permitted to leave the consecrated life, but the few who choose to do so almost always end in misery." She sighed. "Within the House of the Vestals a woman acquires certain habits and expectations, falls into rhythms of life incompatible with the world outside. Most Vestals die as they have lived, in chaste service to the goddess and her everlasting hearth.

  "Sometimes…" Her voice quavered. "Sometimes, especially in the early years, one can be tempted to stray from the vow of chastity. The consequence of that is death, and not a simple, merciful death, but a fate quite horrible to contemplate.

  "The last such scandal occurred forty years ago. The virgin daughter of a good family was struck by lightning and killed. Her clothing was rent and her nakedness exposed; soothsayers interpreted this to mean that the Vestals had violated their vows. Three Vestals were accused of impurity, along with their alleged lovers, and tried before the college of pontiffs. One was found guilty. The others were absolved. But the people were not satisfied. They raged and rioted until a special commission was set up. The case was retired. All three Vestals were condemned."

  Licinia's face grew long. Her eyes glinted in the lamplight. "Do you know the punishment, Gordianus? The lover is publicly scourged to death; a gruesome matter, but simple and quick. Not so with the Vestal. She is stripped of her diadem and linen mantle. She is whipped by the Pontifex Maximus. She is dressed like a corpse, laid in a closed litter and carried through the Forum attended by her weeping kindred, forced to live through the misery of her own funeral. She is carried to a place just inside the Colline Gate, where a small vault is prepared underground, containing a couch, a lamp, and a table with a little food. A common executioner guides her down the ladder into the cell, but he does not harm her. You see, her person is still sacred to Vesta; no man may kill her. The ladder is drawn up, the vault sealed, the ground leveled. It is left to the goddess to take the Vestal's life…"

  "Buried alive!" Fabia whispered hoarsely. The girl remained in the shadows, her hands now nervously touching her lips.

  "Yes, buried alive." Licinia's voice was steady, but cold as death. After a long moment, she glanced down at her lap, where the scroll of Sappho lay crushed in her hand.

  "I think it is time now to explain to Gordianus why he was called here." She put aside the scroll and stood. "An intruder entered this house, earlier tonight. More precisely, two intruders, and possibly a third. A man came to visit Fabia after dark, on her invitation, he claims-"

  "Never!" said the girl.

  Licinia silenced her with a withering look. "He was discovered in her room. But worse than that-you shall see for yourself, Gordianus."

  She picked up the lamp and led us through a short passageway to another room. It was a simpler and more private chamber than the one in which she had greeted us. Ornamental curtains draped the walls, their color a rich, dark red that seemed to swallow the light of the brazier in one corner. There were only two pieces of furniture, a backless chair and a sleeping couch. The couch, I noticed, looked freshly made up, its pillows fluffed and straightened, its coverlets neatly spread. The man who sat in the chair looked up as we entered. Contrary to the prevailing fashion, he was not clean-shaven but wore a neat little beard. It seemed to me that he smiled, very faintly.

  He appeared to be a few years younger than myself-about thirty-five, I guessed, close to Cicero's age. Unlike Cicero, he was quite remarkably attractive. Which is not to say that he was particularly handsome; if I conjure up his face in my mind's eye, I can only remark that his hair and beard were dark, his eyes a piercing blue, his features regular. But in his actual presence there was something indefinably appealing, and a contagious playfulness in his eyes that seemed to dance like sparkling points of flam
e.

  "Lucius Sergius Catilina," he said, standing and introducing himself.

  The patrician clan of the Sergu went back to the days of Aeneas; there was no more respectable name in the Republic.

  Catilina himself I knew by his reputation. Some called him a charmer, others a rogue. All agreed that he was clever, but some said too clever.

  He gave me an odd half smile that suggested he was inwardly laughing at something-but at what? He cocked his head. "Tell me, Gordianus: what do five of the people in this room have in common?"

  Puzzled, I glanced at Rufus, who scowled.

  "They are still breathing," said Catalina, "while the sixth… is not!" He stepped toward the curtain hung across the far wall and pulled it back to reveal another passageway. Upon the floor, contorted in a most unnatural way, lay the body of a man who was surely dead.

  Rufus and Licinia looked sternly disapproving of Catilina's theatricality, while Fabia was close to tears, but none of them betrayed surprise. I drew in a breath, then knelt and studied the crumpled body for a long moment.

  I drew back and sat in the chair, feeling slightly ill. The sight of a man with his throat cut is never pleasant.

  "This is why you called me here, Licinia? This is the disaster Cicero spoke of?"

  "A murder in the House of the Vestals," she whispered, "Unheard-of sacrilege!"

  I fought back my queasiness. Rufus had produced a cup of wine, which he pressed into my hand. I gratefully drank it down.

  "I think we had best begin at the beginning," I said. "What in Jupiter's name are you doing here, Catilina?"

  He cleared his throat and swallowed; a smile flickered or his lips and vanished, as if it were only a nervous tick. "Fabia summoned me; or at least that's what I thought."

  "How so?"

  "I received this, earlier tonight." He produced a scrap of folded parchment:

  COME AT ONCE TO MY ROOM IN THE HOUSE OF THE VESTALS. IGNORE THE DANGER, I BEG YOU.

  MY HONOR IS AT STAKE AND I DARE NOT CONFIDE IN ANYONE ELSE.

  ONLY YOU CAN HELP ME. DESTROY THIS NOTE AFTER YOU HAVE READ IT.

  FABIA

  I pondered it for a while. "Did you send this note, Fabia?"

  "Never!"

  "How was it delivered to you, Catilina?"

  "A messenger came to my house on the Palatine, a hired boy from the streets."

  "Are you in the habit of receiving messages from Vestals?"

  "Not at all."

  "Yet you believed this message to be genuine. Were you not surprised to receive such an intimate communication from a Vestal?"

  He smiled indulgently. "The Vestals live a chaste life, Gordianus, not a secluded one. It shouldn't surprise you that I know Fabia. We're both from old families. We've met at the theater, in the Forum, at private dinners. I have even, though rarely, and always in daylight and in the presence of chaperones, visited her here in the House of the Vestals; we share an interest in Greek poets and Arretine vases. Our behavior in public has always been above reproach. Yes, I was surprised to receive her message, but only because it was so alarming."

  "Yet you chose to do as it requested-to come here in the middle of the night, to flout the laws of men and gods?"

  He laughed softly. The blackness of his beard made his smile all the more dazzling. "Really, Gordianus, what better excuse to break those laws could a man ever hope for, than to come to the rescue of a Vestal in distress? Of course I came!" His face grew sober. "I realize now that I probably did not come alone."

  "You were followed?"

  "At the time, I wasn't sure; walking alone in Rome at night, one always tends to imagine lurkers in the shadows. But yes, I think I may have been followed."

  "By one man, or many?"

  He shrugged.

  "By this man?" I indicated the corpse.

  Catilina shrugged again. "I've never seen him before."

  "He's certainly dressed for stalking-a black cloak with a black hood to cover his head. Where is the weapon that killed him."

  "Did you not see it?" He pushed back the curtains again and indicated a dagger that lay in a pool of blood farther down the passage. I fetched a lamp and examined it.

  "A very nasty-looking blade-as long as a man's hand and half as wide, so sharp that even through the blood the edge glitters. Your knife, Catilina?"

  "Of course not! I didn't kill him."

  "Then who did?"

  "If we knew that, you wouldn't be here!" He rolled his eyes and then smiled, as sweetly as a child. At that moment it was hard to imagine him slitting another man's throat.

  "If this dagger doesn't belong to you, Catilina, then where is your knife?"

  "I have no knife."

  "What? You went walking across Rome on a moonless night and carried no weapon?"

  He nodded.

  "Catilina, how am I to believe you?"

  "Believe me or not. The House of the Vestals is only a short walk from my house, through what is, after all, one of the better neighborhoods in the city. I don't like to carry a knife. I'm always cutting my fingers." The half smile flickered on his lips again.

  "Perhaps you should continue with your story of the night's events. A fabricated note summoned you here. You arrived at the entrance-"

  "— to find the doors open wide, as usual. I must admit, it took some courage to step across the threshold, but all was quiet and so far as,I could tell no one saw me. I have some knowledge of the layout of this place, from visiting it in daylight; I came directly to this room and found Fabia sitting in her chair, reading. She seemed surprised to see me, I must admit."

  "You must believe him," said Fabia, speaking chiefly to Licinia. "I would never have sent such a note. I had no idea he was coming."

  "And then what happened?" I said.

  Catilina shrugged. "We shared a quiet laugh together."

  "You found the situation funny?"

  "Why not? I'm always playing jokes on my friends, and they on me. I assumed that one of them had tricked me into coming here, of all places. You must agree it's rich!"

  "Except that I see a dead body on the floor."

  "Yes, that," he said, wrinkling his nose. "I was preparing to go-oh yes, I lingered for a few moments, savoring the delicious danger of the situation; what man would not? — and then there came a terrible cry from behind that curtain. The sort of sound a man makes, I suppose, when he's having his throat cut. I pulled back the curtain, and there he was, writhing on the floor."

  "You saw no sign of the murderer?"

  "Only the knife on the floor, still spinning about in that pool of blood."

  "You didn't pursue the killer?"

  "I confess that I was paralyzed with shock. A few moments later, of course, the Vestals began arriving."

  "The cry was heard all over the house," said Licinia. "I arrived first. The others came soon after."

  "And what did you see?"

  "The body, of course; and Fabia and Catilina huddled together…"

  "Can you be more precise?"

  "I don't understand."

  "Licinia, you force me to be crude. How were they dressed?"

  "Why, exactly as they are now! Catilina in his tunic, Fabia in her vestments."

  "And the bed-"

  "— was just as you see it: unslept-in. If you are insinuating-"

  "I insinuate nothing, Licinia; I only wish to see the event exactly as it occurred."

  "And quite a sight it was," said Catilina, his eyelids droopy. "A bloody corpse, a dagger, six Vestals swooning all around- what an extraordinary moment, when you think of it! How many men can claim to have been at the center of such an wild and sensual tableau?"

  "Catilina, you are absurd!" said Rufus, with disgust.

  "No one saw the killer escaping? Neither you, Licinia, nor any of the others?"

  "No. To be sure, the courtyard was dark, as it is now. But I lost no time in sending one of the slave girls to close and bar the door."

  "Then it's possible that you tra
pped the villain here in the house?"

  "So I hoped. But we've searched the premises already and found no one."

  "Then he escaped; unless, of course, Catilina invented him altogether…"

  "No!" cried Fabia. "Catilina speaks the truth. It happened just as he says."

  Catilina turned up his palms and raised his eyebrows. "There you have it, Gordianus. Would a Vestal lie?"

  "Catilina, this is not a joke. You must realize how the circumstances appear. Who else but you had cause to murder this intruder?"

  To this he had no reply.

  "I'm no expert in religious law," I said, "but it's hard to imagine a more serious offense than committing murder in the House of the Vestals. Even if you can somehow explain away your presence here tonight-and few judges would find a forged note or a practical joke an adequate excuse-the fact of the corpse remains. In an ordinary murder case, a Roman citizen has the option of fleeing to some foreign land rather than face trial and punishment; but when desecration is involved, the authorities have no option for leniency. Unless of course you flee the city tonight…"

  He fixed me with a steady gaze. His eyes seemed impossibly blue, as if blue flames danced behind them. "Though I may joke and make riddles, Gordianus, never doubt that I understand the circumstance in which I find myself. No, I will not flee Rome like a frightened cur and leave a young Vestal to face a change of iniquity alone."

  Fabia began to weep.

  Catilina bit his lip. "If this was more than a practical joke- and the corpse is proof of that-then I think I might know who is behind it."

  "That would be a start. Who?"

  "The same man who is behind the prosecution against Licinia and Crassus. His name is Publius Clodius. Do you know him?"

  "I know of him, certainly. A rabble-rouser, troublemaker-"

  "And a personal enemy of mine. A constant schemer. A man of such low moral character that he would have no qualms about involving the Vestal Virgins in a plot to bring down his enemies."

  "So you suspect Publius Clodius of luring you here with a forged message, and of having you followed. But why would he send his man in after you? Why not have him raise the alarm from outside the house, trapping you inside? We still have no motive for this man's murder."