Fire and Sacrifice

by Victoria Collins

  Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless and omnipotent . . . Men feared, adored and obeyed the matriarch, the hearth which she tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centre.

  FIRE

  Secunda

  October 114 BC

  There’s a little alley that runs behind the Temple of Vesta and past the house of the Vestals. It’s a dead end except for a door into the Vestals’ house because it hits the hill, but next to the alley are stairs that run up the hill to the street above.

  From the stairs you can see right over the walls that enclose the temple in the sacred square. But if you sit on a certain stair you can watch through the canopy of the sacred oak, planted next to the temple, and not be seen from below. I watched from there.

  No sound came from the square as the Vestals went about their work. They moved with such grace as to make no scuffing or thumping, and they spoke in small huddles or not at all.

  The sacred square was full of morning sun and the priestesses’ whites glowed as though they were born of it.

  It was the prettiest little temple, just a circle round a fire that had sat here long ago, when Rome was only huts and campfires, and stayed to warm the people and light their fire sticks and bake their bread, and listen. They built a temple round her to protect her, and keep her knowing.

  The temple was a simple, feminine thing that all at once begged me come sit and eat and warm my hands, yet threatened to be too beautiful, too close to the dark mysterious heart of I don’t know what – the goddess, everything – to go near.

  No one else entered the square.

  My guts turned. Don’t you go in there. You’ll mess it.

  I wanted desperately for a priestess to see me and call out. I wanted desperately to call out to them but my scratchy voice would never do. There was no yelling in this place.

  And I was hiding anyway. At the same time as dying to be seen, I had worked to make myself as unnoticeable as possible. I knew from a lifetime in this skin how to crawl in behind my scars. I’ve mastered how to take on a blackness that makes people look away before they take in enough of me to remember.

  Just to move for fear of becoming obvious, I climbed the stairs, did a circuit of the hilltop and back down again along the Sacred Way on a pretend errand that would take me past the front gate of the sacred square for just a moment.

  I’d already done so twice that morning. I couldn’t stop myself.

  There’s a row of shops just before the temple: a barber, a woman with fabrics and baskets, a man with saucepans and cooking utensils of all shapes and sizes that I had my eye on for some future fantasy of cooking again, goodness knows where or for who. The lady in the shop with the medicine gave me a look that seemed to know my mind.

  My guts turned again and I scurried away.

  EARTH

  Fragments

  Russell T. Scott (ed.), Excavations in the Area Sacra of Vesta (1987–1996), The American Academy in Rome in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma, University of Michigan Press, Michigan, 2009, p. jacket, 162.

  Dedicated to Vesta, the goddess of the hearth, the temple of Vesta was one of the most ancient sanctuaries in the Roman Forum. The priestesses of Vesta, known as the Vestal Virgins . . . lived in the Atrium Vestae at the eastern edge of the Roman Forum, between the Regia (originally the residence of the kings of Rome) and the Palatine Hill. Together the Atrium Vestae, temple of Vesta, and the Regia formed the religious center of the Roman state until a fire destroyed much of Rome and largely burned all three buildings to the ground in 64CE.

  . . . Once the Regia, the Temple of Vesta, and the forerunner of what is called the ‘Domus Publica’ were all in place, our area became one of the key nodes in the formation of the early city and its history – both in terms of events and of monumental architecture – would continue to unfold over the course of the next ten centuries.

  FIRE

  Secunda

  October 114 BC

  Aemilia came in the night, tiptoeing inside the deepest of shadows cast by the oak trees in the grove.

  Round the side of the hill from the Temple of Vesta, or if you go down the main street and turn left just before the Temple of Castor and Pollux, is the sacred grove of Vesta. There’s the natural pool that the twins Castor and Pollux stopped at for their horses to drink, and deep in the corner in the fold of the hill is the sacred spring.

  Aemilia stood for the longest time, with her hand on the trunk of an oak as though to steady herself, or to ask it something. Her white robes brought the gentlest light to the night like a spirit. And then she was gone again, back into the sacred square.

  I slept with my back against that tree, hoping if nothing else that it might manage to tell me in my dreams what she had asked.

  ***

  Someone else watched her too. There was a dark man behind me, the next day. In every way dark. Not a black man; a dark olive-skinned man with dark eyes and a heavy brow and dark hair and black robes. A Shadow Man.

  I was back on those stairs up the hill. Shadow Man was behind me across the way, on the landing of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, leaning against the base of a column, wrapped right over it as though it was all that stopped him clambering to her. His hands traced the grooves in the stone in a way I did not like.

  Definitely watching Aemilia. He shuffled when she came toward us, before she disappeared into the temple. Good, my lady, get out of his sight.

  I glared at the side of his dark head until he must surely feel the burn of me and turn my way. My guts turned again, and bitter wet filled my mouth like just before you eat something you know is going to be bad.

  When he finally turned, all I could do was glare harder. He ought to have been able to work it out. Don’t you be slinking in the shadows round the priestesses, dark man. Or round me.

  He smirked, and saluted me.

  EARTH

  Fragments

  The Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius, with an English translation by John C. Rolfe, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1946, p. 1.12.75.

  Those who have written about ‘taking’ a Vestal virgin, of whom the most painstaking is Antistius Labeo, have stated that it is unlawful for a girl to be chosen who is less than six, or more than ten years old; she must also have both father and mother living; she must be free too from any impediment in her speech, must not have impaired hearing, or be marked by any other bodily defect.

  She must not herself have been freed from paternal control, or her father before her, even if her father is still living and she is under the control of her grandfather; neither one nor both of her parents may have been slaves or engaged in mean occupations.

  FIRE

  Secunda

  October 114 BC

  I whirled round, furious with Shadow Man. I was almost at the bottom of the stairs when a familiar face stopped me dead: Dalmaticus. Talking with some Toga, right at the bottom of the steps.

  He hadn’t seen me yet.

  I whirled back the other way and a worse sight hit me: Peducaeus and Son, coming down from the street above.

  I had nowhere to go. Jumping into the alley would only draw attention and make an idiot of myself in front of the sacred square, or did I gamble on Dalmaticus letting me go again?

  In the moment it took me to decide, big hands grabbed me round the waist and lifted me down into the alley. Something about the feel of them stopped the screech I was about to let fly. It was so swift and strong, yet such a gentle, light touch that I couldn’t decipher it.

  As he put me down, a blond boy thrust two pieces of firewood into my arms, picked up two for himself, and strode off.

  ‘Pretend you are with me,’ he said quickly. ‘Come.’

  I obeyed dumbly and before I had a thing to do or say about it, we’d walked right across the sacred square to a woodpile against the far wall, next to an outdoor kitchen. In my panic, the priestesses were nothing but white swirls caught in
the sunlight in the corner of my eye.

  I was deep into the sacred square.

  I wheeled around. I couldn’t see Aemilia.

  Like a lady spider responding to a tug on her web, each priestess moved in without a word.

  The oldest priestess rushed to the front gate after a glance at the blond boy, who mouthed ‘Peducaeus’.

  A priestess with black wavy hair tamed into her braids bounced up too close and looked me fully up and down, grinning wryly. On her way she had pulled another priestess from her spinning work.

  ‘What?’ An elbow to the ribs and nod toward me. ‘Oh!’’

  This one was an unearthly beauty, with ash-blond hair, creamy skin and grey-blue eyes, soft and even in every way as though she walked inside a veil of the sacred smoke.

  Women of fire.

  A much younger priestess with a boyish shape and big eyes scurried in and pressed behind her sisters as though I might pounce.

  The bouncy one circled me. ‘She has the most unusual amber eyes.’

  At the gate the old priestess said theatrically, ‘Master Peducaeus! An honour.’

  I couldn’t hear Peducaeus respond. The old priestess stood in the doorway so that any man with manners could not step past her and into the square.

  Movement at the temple door caught my eye, past the gate. The old priestess made a ‘halt’ sign with her hand, out of Peducaeus’s view, and I saw a flash of white and toes as a priestess jumped back inside the temple.

  ‘Where are you from, Amber Eyes?’ Bouncy continued to study me.

  ‘Peducaeus’s kitchen,’ I said, one eye on the gate. I had the firewood still in my arms.

  The old priestess at the gate swept an arm back, indicating through to me. ‘Your generous gift serves us well, as you see.’

  Peducaeus looked murderous. He didn’t look right at me, never did, ever, but he checked I was there. His face twitched with his effort to be polite. The priestesses gave a little bow.

  The old priestess turned back, blocking him again. ‘We will pray to the goddess that your house receive its deserved fortune, as do all those within it.’

  My old master seemed to shuffle off at this. The blond boy winked at me.

  With Peducaeus gone, another silver-haired woman came from the kitchen and stood beside me as though to claim me. She looked me up and down with a knowing grin, though I have no idea what she thought she knew, and winked her approval.

  This was Urgulania, I came to know: late forties, fine features and long unkempt hair in a big loose knot. She did not bother to strap her breasts and was happy in a slave’s sack with no adornment but for a single amulet at her neck, of a little bronze cage holding a crystal rock which she changed each day depending on the support or protection that day required. Urgulania wore the peace of a person privy to a perspective far greater than most mortals, and she smiled at the sacred in the smallest things, like dirt on carrots and bugs in the barley, which she talked to.

  Bouncy leaned into my ear and whispered loudly, ‘Well, you must stay now. Shame Terentia and the depths of the earth will open up.’ I took no notice because Terentia, the old priestess, arrived before me in a wall of frankincense and linen. If these women were of the fire then Terentia was the cooling forge, a square-jawed beauty with ash hair and just a hint of warmth in her. Eyes like droplets of molten metal that reflected the light and did not let you see in.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I rasped.

  ‘It’s good you’ve come back,’ Terentia said, with little expression. ‘This is Licinia,’ she gestured to Bouncy. Then to Marcia, the youngest was Flavia, then the boy. ‘Tristan,’ the old woman indicated to the boy, ‘was instructed to bring you if he saw you.’

  Oh gods, that’s twice they’ve saved me now. What must they think of me? I wanted to shrink into something little and pretty like a puppy, that might be worth keeping.

  I’m tall, you see. So it’s not like I can hide myself or reduce the effect of the sight of me. Monsters are always big and tall, have you noticed? Pretty things are small. I see the story move across people’s faces when they look up at me: first the shock, then the fear, then the guilt (she’s not a monster, don’t stare), then the pity and the want to help and the realisation they can’t, then relief, because they had no idea after all what to do and so back to the easy thing, the reason to turn away: monster.

  I flashed a look at the boy. ‘I didn’t mean to –’ My voice crackled.

  ‘Huh,’ Licinia said to herself. ‘Even her voice sounds like fire and smoke. I think Aemilia might be onto something.’

  No one ever described my voice like that before. I bit down on a silly smile. ‘Thank you,’ I said uselessly.

  And then there she was again, emerging from the temple. A sixth priestess followed behind her. They all fell silent, and parted the circle for Aemilia.

  Chapter 2

  FIRE

  Secunda

  October 114 BC

  Aemilia smiled at me, easy as sunrise. Her skin was lightly bronzed by the sun and she had little freckles, and fine lines at the corners of her eyes.

  I was sure she was going to wrap her arms round me but I flinched – I hated myself, but it’s what I do, I’m not used to being touched – and she stopped herself. I think she would have stopped anyway, I hope so, – I mean, I just hope it wasn’t my fault. I don’t think she’s used to being touched either.

  I squeezed the logs in my arms.

  She smelled of smoke again. She wiped her palms on her robes and there was a faint streak of soot.

  ‘I’m glad to see you are safe.’ She smiled wryly and cocked an eyebrow. ‘And free.’

  Tristan plucked the logs from me and disappeared.

  I couldn’t think of anything useful to say so I dropped into a sweeping bow. ‘Thank you. So much,’ I said, smoothing my voice as best I could so it didn’t frighten her. I don’t know if bowing was right. I’d have fallen at her feet it if wouldn’t have looked so untidy.

  ‘I thought you might have gone with the boats,’ she said, ‘and been far away by now.’

  I shook my head. I hadn’t even thought of it.

  ‘Where did you go that you were not recognised?’

  Terentia fidgeted like we’d gotten close to something she did not like.

  The priestess who came out of the temple with Aemelia slid her arm inside Aemilia’s, supportive and protective at the same time. This one was about the same age as Aemilia, a big pear-shaped lady, all curves, utterly feminine like a cat. She looked at me like I was a lost child.

  ‘There’s a cave. Overlooking the river.’ My voice had shrunk to a whisper.

  ‘Well, I think you are very brave.’

  Terentia cut in. ‘Aemilia negotiated for your freedom if you come into our employ. You will be part of the temple, cook every day and whatever Urgulania needs of you.’ She indicated that Urgulania was the Etruscan with the necklace. ‘I expect you agree?’

  ‘We’ve been without a dedicated cook for some time and they say you were a renowned cook at Peducaeus’s house,’ blurted Flavia, all enthusiasm. ‘Everyone thinks it. Will you stay?’

  I shot a look at Aemilia. ‘If you want me to. Of course.’ Oh please oh please oh please!

  ‘Do you have a name?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ I said it too sharp. I hate it when I do that but it just comes out. My voice cracks at the wrong moment or I just arc up at some things, too quick. I hate my name. ‘It’s not a proper name,’ I tried to redeem myself. ‘Just a number, mostly: Secunda.’

  ‘Well then,’ Aemilia continued, ‘I think Secunda should do what she wants to do. Your freedom is yours. You should not be bound.’

  Terentia shuffled again.

  ‘But I am bound,’ I said, happily. Of course I want to stay, more than anything else. You are what I choose. Don’t you want me?

  Disappointment flashed across Aemilia’s face and was gone, pushed down with a deep breath and covered over with a little smile. Something in her
bucked at this place like a mare on the scent of a storm.

  Terentia cleared her throat unnaturally. ‘We have clustered too long. We’ve begun to raise query,’ she said. We followed the dart of her eyes to the street above us, where some shopkeeps openly pointed and talked. Another man descended the stairs, deliberately slow. A stone dropped in my guts as I caught a glimpse of Shadow Man stepping between the shops. Watch and weep, Shadow Man. I’m in here and you are not.

  ‘A quick count will tell them how many priestesses are out here, and how many tending the fire. Flavia,’ Terentia spoke to the youngest priestess, with a tight smile, ‘if you’d be so kind as to take duty in the temple.’

  Flavia scowled. ‘Why is it always me?’

  ‘I’ll go.’ As Marcia turned she jeered over her shoulder, ‘The House Marcii breeds true priestesses.’

  Flavia stuck out her tongue at Marcia’s back, almost too quick for anyone to see.

  ‘Flavia, fetch the things for Secunda please,’ said the curvy one. She cut off another of Flavia’s scowls. ‘We need to move.’

  ‘The river,’ said Urgulania with a decisive nod, as though she’d just had a conversation with someone we couldn’t see. ‘The river would do the girl good. The green bank. It’s a bit out of the way,’ she reassured Terentia.

  Oh gods, she wants me to wash. I’m filthy!

  ‘Perfect. Aemilia needs the river too,’ said the curvy one.

  ‘I do, do I?’

  ‘Come on, darlin’.’ Urgulania gestured for me to follow her to the kitchen, grunted and waddled off, talking to no one in particular. ‘Get some almonds and olives for your pocket . . . might have some bread . . .’

  ‘Oooh, yes please, bread,’ said the curvy one, following with Aemilia still linked in her arm.

  I followed blindly, panicked. I couldn’t just tag along all the way to the river with the priestesses! And do what? Say what?