Fire and Sacrifice

by Victoria Collins

  ‘Awful? Never. And in winter very cold in the desert. At night, like here but . . . different. In these apartments the cold is worse – damp cold and clotted air like yoghurt cheese. In the desert is just as cold as here, but it is cold like a silk scarf draped over the night. These apartments they are four straight walls of brick, there is no interest, no thought into them.’ He emphasised these words, grabbing at the air like he’d strangle something. ‘It is much better on the roof.’ Waving his hands now. ‘I am not allowed open fire inside. Do you see the stars, my lady, from the fire in your temple?’

  The fire. A Roman would have been far more proper – Vesta’s fire, the Temple of Vesta, the Sacred Flame. It dawned on me that he will have different gods. He is one person who does not lay on Aemilia the responsibility of the wellbeing of an entire republic, does not attach to her his own idea of what she ought to be. He is freedom to her.

  Aemilia shook her head, looking ashamed to disappoint him.

  ‘A very small bit, if you look straight up. Where is your apartment?’ I asked.

  ‘Across the river. A place of slippery people with polished stories. There is a bristled woman in the apartment beside, with an ill child like wax. On the other side though is a wonderful old lady with a face like a raisin’ – he pulls his face in on itself, making us laugh again – ‘a magnificent face, full of stories!’ Wild hands again. ‘The old woman she brings me bread. It is unfortunate she cannot get onto my roof – she would be a good one to sit and poke fire with. I cannot sit at a fire and not poke it. It is one thing in this world I cannot touch, so I cannot resist it!’ He caught himself, thinking the thing we were all thinking about what else he couldn’t touch. With her back to him, Aemilia looked sideways at me, doing her best not to giggle again. Secunda’s mill made a stalling noise.

  He discreetly finished work on the folds of fabric over the clay bottom and made his way rather urgently away from it, round to work in silence on the hip and the lower arm that hung across it. He flitted about his work an agonisingly long time until I couldn’t feel my cushion under me anymore.

  Finally he came close, startling us a little, stepping in behind, his chest nestled behind her shoulder just outside a touch. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I need to . . . Your hand. Like this.’ He showed her how he wanted her to hold her arms by mimicking the gesture. He held his own arm and hand under hers, close enough to sense, and moved it up and out so that she would follow him, mirroring his movement, moving as one, an inch from each other’s skin, bending at the elbow, relaxing the hand, reading and responding.

  When she was in place he twisted round her a little closer on the side away from me, reaching to her wanting but holding back, fingers hovering above her hand. He whispered something in her ear that made her brows quiver and she twisted her neck to look upon that toffee face and the big cow eyes, so deliciously close, those burnished-rose lips so close and soft, how could anyone know if they touched. I felt the pull, unable to touch, unable to not.

  Just a tiny, tiny brush against . . .

  ‘Oh! I, um, figlets!’ I yelled, and jumped up and stamped my foot, utterly ridiculous, but all I could think to snap the moment I had to stop. Gods, if she broke her vow now, so close to the end – I couldn’t let it, couldn’t. It would be death for them both.

  He rushed back to his sculpture and she stood trembling, and I could feel the abandonment in her, leaving every morsel of her reaching, bewildered.

  I mouthed, ‘I’m sorry,’ devastated for her.

  ‘Pompeia,’ she said. ‘Thank you, yes, we should – lunch. Secunda?’

  The girl had jumped to her feet looking utterly lost, dropping her millstone twice as she fumbled to gather her things. We had to get all away, we knew. Run. Every one of us had wanted that kiss yet knew the danger. We had gone too close to the fire and no one could ever, ever know.

  Oh Vesta, forgive us, is it inchastity just to think a thing? She is pure of body and she can clear her head. The heart? I needed to get her to the spring; we needed a clearing ritual, straight away.

  In the corner of my eye I saw Elian scoop his gear into a messy heap and rush for the door, but then suddenly he was in front of us, straight and strong with those big cow eyes darkened with the depths he meant to show. ‘I am sorry, my lady, I should not have. I would never. Your vows, they are the pain of my every day, but I would do anything for your protection. I must go. I must finish alone.’

  ‘No. Please . . . It’s only eight weeks until-’ (Aemilia.)

  Elian smiled wryly, already knowing the answer to his question. ‘Until?’

  Aemilia: ‘Until . . .’ And then she saw it, the thing inside her she would for weeks not let herself properly look at had jumped up and surprised her. ‘Oh!’

  There was a moment then when the rest of us disappeared. I mean not just that Aemilia and Elian were lost in each other but that we disappeared even to ourselves. We are all watching them, with them, as the silent pact was made, the things unsaid said by the heart and shown in the eyes.

  Elian said, ‘We still come too close today. I dishonour you today.’

  ‘Careful how loud you confess, my friend.’ Dalmaticus. Behind us. Booming voice meant to flummox us. We all jumped. I think I actually whimpered. Aemilia grabbed my hand.

  ‘This is Rome. Gods walk here. And their hearing is better than mine.’

  Dalmaticus stepped within a dagger’s reach of Elian. I thought Elian might slink for the door but he squared himself to Dalmaticus. Oh, good man!

  ‘Know what it’s like to have a god on your arse, son?’ His voice sent a chill through us. ‘Out there on the front I’ve got five thousand men sleeping in snow sludge while demon creatures of the night steal their food, marching into sleeting caverns that appear on no map while ten thousand enemy slaughter them from above; back here I’ve got crops decimated by hail, lightning razes the wheat, sheep keel over with sickness and four thousand devastated fathers and starving widows bray for blood.’

  He stepped a tiny bit closer.

  ‘Worst of all, an army of unprofessional soldiers cannot run at their enemy if they do not feel their gods are with them.’

  Closer.

  ‘Good men die when those priestesses and I don’t do our jobs.’ His right hand stroked at his belt and I realised it felt for the ghost of his sword hilt. ‘If I have a god on my arse because of you, I will not hesitate to feed you to it.’

  ‘I understand,’ Elian said. ‘It is a punishment I accept if I have earned it, but there was nothing. And there will be nothing. The priestess is pure. You have my word. You know a Nabatean’s word is his life.’

  No one moved.

  ‘I am sure Rome’s gods have more to distract them than the likes of me.’ Elian said.

  Dalmaticus gave away nothing. ‘Aemilia, a word. Now.’ Then to Elian. ‘You, leave.’

  Secunda and I scurried behind him.

  ‘Go!’ I said to Elian outside the gate, sensing he would wait for Pet. ‘You’ll do more harm than good. Go!’

  FIRE

  Secunda

  November 114 BC

  I’d have crawled inside the wood of that door if I could. I pressed myself flat to listen, had to stand with my back to the door, craning to reach my ear back round to it, trying to not be too obvious to passers-by. I didn’t hear it all, but I remember every word I heard as if the next would sign her death warrant.

  Dalmaticus: ‘The Arab huh? Really? Shit.’

  Aemilia, near the door: ‘My vows are intact, Pontifex Maximus. I swear on my life. Please don’t hurt him.’

  Quiet. Awful, terrifying quiet.

  Dalmaticus, further away: ‘In my house, Aemilia!’

  Dalmaticus, voice lowered to a scuff in the gravel: ‘The people trust us.’

  A swish of robes. Aemilia: ‘This is none of the people’s concern.’

  Dalmaticus: ‘You don’t have to pick a fight to justify leaving. You’ve done your service. It’s yours. Right now you’re
on the way to screwing up every option you have.’

  ‘No wrong has been done. It was a singular moment of confusion. I’m just-’

  ‘Confused? No you’re not. You made your decision months ago, there’s just less guilt if you convince yourself it was a tough call.’

  For a moment silence is all there is. Aemilia’s insides had just been pulled out and presented to her. I could imagine her staring at him, her eyes shiny black river pebbles. He’d be staring right back.

  ‘You can say with conviction that the heavens will not judge your treaty polluted?’

  Aemilia, mousy: ‘My goddess is part of me, she can have no doubt of my love for her.’

  Oh my darling. Of course not. Vesta is not like the other gods. Vesta was here long before the temples and rules of old priests and shaky kings. What better honour for the goddess of the hearth than to sit and poke fire with Elian and make a happy home.

  He turned away from her, because his voice was suddenly right at the door. He must have leaned, rested his forehead against it, his lips almost on the wood. I don’t know if he knew I was there, but if I moved as much as an eyelid he would know for certain.

  He’d softened. ‘Then don’t let fear of change make you stupid, sweetheart. You’re a survivor.’ The voice moved away again. ‘I don’t know how you’ve done it for thirty years but you have. Just give me two more months. Just do your job.’

  I hoped in the quiet she had rushed to him and thrown her arms round his neck as I wished I could do myself.

  Aemilia: ‘You will have to tell Terentia.’

  Dalmaticus: ‘I am Pontifex Maximus; I’ll decide who needs to know what. You do your job.’

  Suddenly the door was pulled from my ear. I didn’t even hear her footsteps, but in a moment she swept through the doorway and passed us with just the cock of an eyebrow, floating serene on newfound purpose.

  EARTH

  Fragments

  The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, with an English translation by Earnest Cary on the basis of the version of Edward Spelman, Book II, pp. 508–509.

  . . . Many high honours have been granted [the Vestals] by the commonwealth, as a result of which they feel no desire either for marriage or for children; and severe penalties have been established for their misdeeds. It is the pontiffs who by law both inquire into and punish these offenses; those Vestals who are guilty of lesser misdemeanors they scourge with rods, but those who have suffered defilement they deliver up to the most shameful and the most miserable death. For while they are not yet alive they are carried upon a bier with all the formality of a funeral, with their friends and relations attending them with lamentations, and after being brought as far as the Colline Gate, they are placed in an underground cell prepared within the walls, clad in their funeral attire; but they are not given a monument or funeral rites or any other customary solemnities.

  WATER

  Pompeia

  November 114 BC

  Lightning cracked open the morning with a sound that I was sure must also have cracked open the ground. A sound to demand our attention.

  While we all looked, another splay of lightning shot itself into the ground as though to deposit some devastating message from the heavens, seeding it across the countryside as it came, quick as a rumour. But no thunder followed the lightning. I had a sudden urge to run from that spooky unnatural quiet, which might swallow me.

  I ran to Urgulania. ‘What do you see?’

  ‘Same as you.’ There was a too-quiet pause and Laynie nodded at something no one had said. ‘It’s not right. See? The sky is half blue and clear, half pink and orange cloud – but none of it dark. Yet there is lightning.’ She nodded at another silent splay of lightning. ‘There again. This is not the voice of the earth. That is the gods. There’s a message.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I can’t tell the future!’ Urgulania laughed a loud clap at her own humour and waddled away, but a weight followed her.

  Chapter 7

  WATER

  Pompeia

  November 114 BC

  Rumour of the omen sped from the countryside on the barbed tail of the storm. I felt it coming, hurtled along rocky highways by knights who witnessed the horror, from them to commanders to messengers who sprinted for the city and, keen to be rid of it, thrust it into the arms of farmers’ daughters and innkeeps along the way, from whence it scrambled across fields, through thickets of shadow and across brambled creeks, oiling up the rising damp in the city walls, and draining into the basin that is the forum.

  It met us there, through Urgulania in the marketplace, almost the same time it was meeting me on the Sacred Way, where Lucius’s words bit into me like a shard of glass underfoot.

  Laynie appeared at our gate a moment after me, and we grabbed Terentia’s elbow and pulled her across the courtyard and out of sight. ‘Inside. Now.’

  One nod at the girls and they scrambled after us.

  ‘Who’s in the temple? Get them here . . . No, have them stay. Flavia, fix your hair,’ I snapped.

  ‘Pompeia! What?’

  Laynie spoke for me. ‘There’s an omen. And a rumour on the wind that will burn you and yours.’

  I must have been shaking, which is not like me, because next I remember I was on the lounge with a mug of warm mint water, them all looking at me expectantly. ‘The storm. A knight’s daughter, they say, found dead by the roadside into the city, struck by lightning right next to her father, flung from her horse, poor thing, skirts all up around her waist laid bare in the dirt.’ I ran out of breath.

  ‘Nonsense from the hills,’ Terentia huffed. ‘Entertainment for the idle in winter. Struck by lightning,’ she harrumphed. ‘This is not like you, Urgulania.’

  ‘True enough. Which says something in itself, don’t you think? They have a name.’

  ‘Then the poor girl is clearly molested by soldiers on the road – who now look to hide themselves. This nonsense will not get her justice!’

  ‘Remember what is around us, friend. The Dis-ease will go into frenzy over this; it’s exactly what it’s been looking for. Already the people whisper that the knight’s daughter’s death is a portent. It will be with the augurs already, no doubt, and whether or not any of it is true the augurs will make it so. Some say about a knight and a virgin, some say a virgin exposed, some say the centurions failure to protect their own, you get the idea. Regardless, it’s always a virgin and it’s always bad and our lot are the most visible virgins Rome knows. This is coming our way, my friend. Fast.’

  ‘What? Us?’ Licinia snapped.

  ‘No!’ cried Flavia. ‘But we haven’t done anything! If they think we . . . they’ll . . .’

  ‘No one questions your purity,’ Terentia steeled. ‘Go back to your chores. They wouldn’t dare. Out! Everyone.’

  We followed the girls to be sure they went back to chores and didn’t huddle to talk, suddenly even more aware of eyes on us from the streets.

  Terentia drew us to a pause, her pillar-straight back pulling at her slender rib cage and perfectly tucked breasts, forever so upright compared to my own great sacks. She asked Laynie in a whisper, ‘What do your powers tell you?’

  ‘You don’t need a haruspex to tell you a storm’s coming, my friend.’

  After a silence I ventured, ‘How is Aemilia?’

  A commotion out on the street sent Terentia to her feet and she was gone from us in a wisp of white, as though there was no weight to our conversation at all.

  ***

  I told Aemilia I thought Elian was scrumptious. Blow it, she was so happy. Dalmaticus had stopped thundering.

  We were bare feet in the grass. ‘This was our favourite spot,’ I said. As if she didn’t remember – of course she’d remember from our very first day here together, but I needed reassurance of my own, needed to hold onto simpler days for a moment.

  She picked a violet from the grass and twisted it into a ring for me like she used to when we were little ones.
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  ‘You never got green streaks on your bum like me, you little shit,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll ask Elian to paint a green streak on my statue, just for you.’ (Her, laughing.)

  I decided I would do that for myself anyway, after she’s gone. Take a wad of wet grass and smear it on the back of that perfect statue bum where Terentia won’t see it.

  She said, ‘I don’t want to lose you.’

  Cow made me cry again. ‘It’s in the rules that you can go, Aemilia. Your time is done, and done well. I don’t want to lose you either.’

  Even as I said it I could feel the omen bubble in my guts like a pot threatening to boil. Maybe I spoke to spite it.

  Poor Pet. Her eyes watered but she forced them dry. It’s too untidy to go all runny and red.

  ‘Your time is nearly done too. You’ve only a small few years.’

  Me: ‘I’m too old to have my babies. There’s nothing more out there for me. Here I have Helvi, and when you go I can have a new child apprentice to replace you.’

  ‘Glad to be of service.’

  ‘I like him; he’s cuddly, I can tell,’ I said of Elian. ‘I’d never be tempted, mind, but what a delicious thought to bury one’s tears in that blanket of a chest. Oh my! I bet he smells of spices.’

  She said, ‘Then I should smell of something sweet . . . Sweet almond?’

  ‘Violet and rose.’

  ‘Chestnut and honey . . . Nutmeg!’

  ‘And cream! Ooh, I could go for years on the idea of a nutmeg-and-cream-flavoured man!’

  ‘Pompeia!’ But she giggled. ‘I smell like smoke,’ she said, suddenly concerned. ‘Do I smell like smoke?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s perfect: you’re untouchable.’

  FIRE

  Secunda

  November 114 BC

  She came to me at the end of her shift in the temple. Clutching a white wool wrap against the cool of the night, she perched on an upended log at my fire and looked longingly at the charred pork scraps in my pan. ‘May I?’ she asked. I indicated ‘of course’ and she fidgeted her feet as she ate. I used to do that in Mother’s kitchen.