Your colts are the cream of Italian stud-farms. You are a wonderful woman, all round. But, as a Vestal, you have your weak points. I remember Father's instructions about you and I have all that in mind.

Besides, I know that I, as Chief Pontiff, have the right to make my own decision about any such matter and to brush aside anybody else's opinion and anybody else's interpretation of the evidence. Also my impulse is to make use of my prerogative, dismiss the accusation against you, reiterate Father's warning to Calvaster and get the whole thing off my mind. I don't like Calvaster and I don't value him an atom. They say he's indispensable, but if he irritates me ever so little more I'll dispense with him and I'll wager the Republic will get on without him. You see that I am strong on your side and almost on the point of deciding in your favor.

"But I hesitate. This case of yours worries me more than anything that has come up since I took over the Principiate. I cannot make up my mind.

"I'm not the man I was a year ago. I'm shaken. Father told me that the most wearing feature of his being Emperor was his recurring escapes from a.s.sa.s.sination. I had my first escape just after your audience with me. It jarred me horribly. The fool barely missed finishing me. The experience made me take precautions and so no other miscreant has come so near to doing for me. But the repet.i.tions have grown monotonous.

I always thought highly of your lad, and I've often wondered how he managed to get any sleep or swallow any food while he was King of the Grove, but I think immeasurably more of him since I've been through something faintly similar. He deserves the best of life and I hope he'll get his heart's desire and marry you at the end of your service.

"You see how enthusiastically I am on your side.

"But there is much to be considered.

"If this were a question of judging a two-year-old filly I'd need no man's advice and I'd listen to no man's opinion. I'm better fitted to judge a horse than any man alive. It would be the same if it were a question of refereeing a sword-bout or a boxing-mill or a wrestling-match or anything of the kind. I know all about such things and I know that I am a judge superior to anybody on earth. I'm a born all-round athlete and everybody knows it and recognizes me as a past master.

"But as an Emperor, as Chief Pontiff, such is not at all the case. I feel a fumbler, a bungler. I grope. I suspect that the judgment of my advisers is better than mine. What is worse, I know that they think so.

I am surrounded by men pre-eminent in their specialties, who look on me as a green boy placed by mere chance in a position which I fail to fill adequately. They watch me like hawks, they expect to see me blunder, they raise eyebrows at each other, they exchange glances. It rattles me.

I wish I had Alexander's nerve. He was as young as I am and he brooked no opposition, but rammed his opinions down his councillors' throats from the hour when he became King. But I haven't his nerve, not by a long shot. I had as good teachers as he had, too. But, Hercules be good to me, I never could learn anything out of a book.

"As a charioteer, or a swordsman I'm as confident as a lion. As an Emperor I'm as cowardly as a jackal. It's the effect of the prophecies and auguries and oracles and such. They all hint at my impairing the prosperity of the Republic or diminishing the power of the Empire. It gallies me when I see two old bald heads wink at each other; I know they are thinking:

"'What did I tell you! Here's this young fool ruining Rome, just as the oracle prophesies.' It gets on my nerves.

"I daren't decide the matter on my own judgment.

"Besides, there's the danger of a.s.sa.s.sination hanging over me. All the men who have tried so far have been highly educated magnates of lofty principles. They seem to feel I am an unworthy Prince and that to kill me would be a service to the state. It galls me to think of it, and me doing my best for the Republic and the Empire, denying myself hours of pleasure daily, missing races and all kinds of contests and toiling over doc.u.ments and estimates and statistics. But it is true. If I decide this case of yours, ten to one any number of self-righteous n.o.bles will say to themselves:

"'Here is this lout on the way to destroy the foundations of Rome's greatness. Rome must be saved from him. My duty is clear. He must be put out of the way.' Nice situation for me. I dare not let loose any such possible fanaticism for my own destruction.

"And apart from any qualms about my qualifications to judge, apart from any dread of the consequences to myself, of absolving you, there is my sense of duty to Rome. Here are these cursed ambiguous oracles hinting some harm to Rome, mentioning fire and the Temple of Vesta and the Palladium. Perhaps what they mean is just the possible wrath of Vesta at an unworthy priestess. How can I tell?

"You see why I hesitate?"

Brinnaria nodded. She judged it no time to speak, and, had she wished to speak she could hardly have done so.

"I might not have hesitated," Commodus resumed, "if Calvaster had come to me. But he pops up in a full meeting of the College of Pontiffs and says he saw you, after midnight and before dawn, on the Appian Road, between Aricia and Bovillae, in a litter that didn't belong to you and with Vocco on horseback beside it. That puts all the Pontiffs in possession of the facts and on the watch to see how I'll decide, if I do decide. Calvaster made sure of proving those facts, for he had two highly respectable and respected n.o.bles to swear that they were with him and saw Vocco and the litter and knew the litter for Nemestronia's. That he had any number of witnesses to swear to the frequency of your visits to Vocco's house, your habit of dining there and the freedom with which you treated him.

"My impulse was to tell Calvaster I disbelieved any story he fathered, that I had my Father's instructions discrediting him, that I knew all about your intimacy with Flexinna and her husband, that I knew all about your excursion to Aricia and why you went and that I approved and that was the end of it. I have told you why I hesitated.

"But I was inclined that way. I have talked with Lutorius and Causidiena and Numisia. They feel towards you as my Father felt. They believe in you and in your worthiness as a priestess, and they minimize your irregularities. I sent for Flexinna and talked with her. She deserves consideration, if only because she is the mother of the largest family to be found among our n.o.bility, even among our gentry. She hoots at the idea of anything improper between you and Vocco, in act or thought. She evidently tells the truth. It is plain that she and Vocco are a devoted pair, that you and he never did anything wrong or thought of anything wrong. I sent for Vocco and talked with him. I am all but clear what I should do, but I am not quite clear.

"Now, there are only two ways to settle this: one is for me to settle it myself and out of hand. The other is to have a formal trial of you before the College of Pontiffs.

"If you are tried you'll be condemned. All you can say of the innocence of your intimacy with Vocco, all you can say of the innocence of your regard for Almo, all I can say of my Father's high esteem of you, of his injunctions regarding you, will not avail to save you. The Pontiffs will not heed the considerations which were so plain to Father and are so plain to me and Lutorius and Numisia. They will say it makes no difference whether you went to Aricia because of solicitude for Almo or on account of an intrigue with Vocco. They will hold that such a manifestation of interest in Almo proves you almost as unfit to be a Vestal as if it were certain that you were philandering with Vocco.

"In particular they will hold that there might be room to absolve you had you openly gone to save Almo in your full regalia and in your own carriage, or your own litter, with your lictor before you; but that while the fact of your being out of Rome all night in a litter is d.a.m.ning enough, the appearance of duplicity and underhanded secrecy given to the proceeding by your being disguised in another woman's clothing and carried in a borrowed litter makes terribly against you.

"Of course I could impose my will on the Pontiffs, but I should hesitate to override their decision, even more than I hesitate to decide the case myself, and for the reasons I have given.

"Yet I must say I could forget my dread of a.s.sa.s.sination and ignore any opinionated contempt I might evoke, if I could be sure in my own heart that I am doing what is best for Rome; I should be as arrogant an Emperor as ever Domitian was if only I felt confident that my instincts are right. My instincts all urge me to act as an Emperor and a Pontifex Maximus and settle this matter out of hand, once and for all.

"But I hesitate. I can't make up my mind. All I need is a sign that you are as acceptable to Vesta as I believe you are. I have tried to satisfy myself, to elicit some sign of the G.o.ddess' will, but no sign has been vouchsafed me. I've had the Sibylline Books consulted, which is a trying matter with Calvaster left out of the consulting board; I have sent to every oracle within reach, have put questions to all the sibyls in all the caves of Italy, have called in a rabble of Etruscan soothsayers, every haruspex and auspex in Etruria, I believe. They all hedge. They are all vague. They are all indefinite. They give me no help!

"Now, I like you; I like Almo; I like both of you and I respect you; I believe in you. I'd hate to wake up and call for any breakfast I had a whim for and look at it and smell it and think of you, all alone in the dark in a vaulted cell six foot under the rubbish of that garbage-dump out by the Colline Gate. And I hate the thought of the bother and worry of a trial. I want to put my foot down and a.s.sert my will and be done with it all. But, as I've said a dozen times already, I hesitate.

Chiefly I hesitate because I am resolute to do my duty to Rome according to my lights. I feel I am right, but I am not quite man enough to follow my feelings. If I could have some plain sign that Vesta understands and condones your past irregularities as I do, that Vesta approves of you and is pleased with you as I am, if I could feel Vesta corroborating my feelings, if I could evoke an unmistakable token of her will, I'd not hesitate. I'd scout the suggestion of a trial; I'd squelch Calvaster; I'd absolve you."

Brinnaria looked straight into his goggling, bloodshot eyes.

"Would you consider it an unmistakable sign," she said, "a plain token of my acceptability to my G.o.ddess, of her esteem for me, if Vesta gave me power to carry water in a sieve?"

Commodus goggled his eyes at her even more than habitually.

"Carry water in a sieve," he cried, "as Tuccia did?"

"There is a legend," said Brinnaria sedately, "that some Vestal once proved her holiness by carrying water in a sieve. And the story is connected with Tuccia in popular tradition. But if it was ever done some other Vestal did it. Poor Tuccia was innocent, as far as I can judge from the minutes of her trial. But she was not absolved, by intervention of Vesta or of her judges. She was condemned and buried. You can read the verdict as well as the details of the proceedings in the records.

And what is left of poor Tuccia is now in one of those tiny vaulted cells under the Wicked Field. You will find, along with the doc.u.ments of her case, the bill for the wages of the mason who completed the vault after she had descended the ladder and the affidavits of the sentinels who patrolled the spot day and night for a month, according to custom."

"Never mind who did it or didn't do it, or whether it ever was done at all before," said Commodus, "if I saw you carry water in a sieve I'd hold it a plain sign of Vesta's particular favor to you, of your special acceptability to her, of the correctness of my intuitions about you and about this whole wretched business.

"Do I understand you to offer to demonstrate your innocence by carrying water in a sieve?"

"That is my offer!" said Brinnaria.

"But," he protested, "the thing can't be done. It's impossible! Better stand your chance of a trial."

"I am sure," said Brinnaria, "that my G.o.ddess will not desert me. I know I am innocent and acceptable to her. She knows me and will give me the power to prove my worthiness. She will no fail me. I know I can do it."

"Do I understand you to offer to do it in broad daylight before me and the whole College of Pontiffs, Calvaster and all?"

"In sight of all Rome," said Brinnaria, "if all Rome could crowd near enough to see."

"Do I understand you," said the Emperor, "to stake your life on the venture, and, just as you would expect full absolution if you succeed, so to expect a rigid and severely stern trial before me and the College of Pontiffs, with your failure counting against you, if you fail in the attempt?"

"That is my understanding," said Brinnaria, unflinching, her clear eyes on his face, her cheeks neither flushed nor blanched, her expression calm, her pose easy, her voice unfaltering.

"Hercules be good to me!" cried Commodus. "That is a first cla.s.s game sporting offer! I like you, girl! I like the idea. I see my way to a decision. I glimpse a method of banishing my hesitation. I'll take you.

If you agree, clasp hands, like a man."

Brinnaria stood up and put out her hand.

"For life or death," said the Emperor.

They clasped hands.

"Done!" said Commodus.

CHAPTER XXI - ORDEAL