This had the advantage of forcing her to stay there while she ate it.
To daintily manage a thick, layered pastry, oozing with honey and dropping chopped pistachios, which had been crudely dismantled by a man with strong hands, who was now watching her, took all her concentration. Lucilla had a good excuse to stay quiet.
It was a sunny day in early spring, warm enough to let a nonagenarian lie out on a daybed in a colonnade, with a rug over his scrawny legs and torso, while his two younger friends sat on fold-up stools.
‘Delightful young lady!’ the old man confided to Vinius, after he had wolfed down his cake. ‘I can never understand why you are not screwing her.’
Horrified silence struck both his companions. Lucilla quickly licked her fingers clean, preparing to flee. Gaius already knew Cretticus was a crude old bugger, though it looked as though Lucilla had previously thought him harmless. Cretticus might always have been uninhibited, or perhaps extreme age had removed his social graces.
It was not over. The lewd old boy went on, ‘I don’t suppose you can offer any kind of an explanation, soldier?’
‘I can, in fact.’
Both Cretticus and Lucilla sat up sharply.
Gaius spoke conversationally, as he sucked the last smears of honey off his lips. ‘It is because I am an idiot.’
‘Well then!’ cried Cretticus.
‘Exactly!’ said Gaius, aiming this at Lucilla.
He looked at her. She looked at him.
‘Why don’t you take her upstairs now?’ demanded the impertinent old fellow.
Lucilla jumped up, about to sweep off like an affronted goddess, vanishing in a rainbow trail.
Gaius swung himself upright too. ‘A grand idea,’ he told Cretticus as levelly as possible. He had risen too fast and was in danger of cake repeating on him. Lucilla waited to hear how he got out of this. ‘But she’s looking a bit inscrutable. Besides — ’ he indicated his formal dress — ‘sad as it is, my duty calls.’
Then he reported directly to Lucilla in a low voice, ‘I have a bad task. Assisting the college of pontiffs.’
The old man saw they were conversing without help from him, so closed his eyes and seditiously let them get on with it.
‘Cornelia?’ Lucilla had always been quick. ‘You have to…?’
Chewing a fingernail, Gaius shook his head. He thought about what it would have meant, if he and his comrades had been ordered by Domitian to conduct the cold-blooded execution with weapons of a middle-aged woman whose position in Rome they had all been brought up to revere.
‘No, no.’ He was as reassuring as he could be. ‘But some of us have to attend at the scene.’
‘Which entails?’
‘To stand on guard today, then afterwards, to ensure nobody interferes with the vault.’
‘Trying to release her?’ Lucilla knew him well enough to believe he was not looking forward to any of it. ‘You were at the trial?’ she demanded. Gaius nodded. ‘Did she do it?’
‘Probably.’
‘Or possibly not?’
Gaius assented again, ruefully. ‘Either Licinianus really was guilty and turned state’s evidence to save his arse, or he was innocent, but so shit-scared he lied to the court. The end result is, he has saved his skin and also saved a lot of his property — which you could call being paid for his evidence. We don’t approve of that, do we? Without any doubt, he grassed up the other lovers, and of course he condemned Cornelia. No one has heard her story. This is about as unedifying as it gets.’
Lucilla was pleased at the way he put the story; she thought he had told it the way he really saw it, not aiming to impress. ‘It’s a terrifying death. One would hope some sympathetic friend will find a way to slip the poor woman a vial of poison… Gaius, please don’t search her.’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘Will you have a choice?’
‘Ritually, I believe it is forbidden. Nobody will touch her.’
‘Are you in charge?’
‘The priests are in charge.’
Like him, Lucilla hated everything about this trial and punishment. Gaius only hoped she was satisfied that as the Chief Vestal went to her grim fate, he at least would feel compassion. ‘So you must see the tomb sealed and guard it. Then what?’
‘I suppose we’ll receive orders.’
Again, Lucilla was appalled on his behalf. ‘You mean — you may have to open up the chamber, to see if she is dead?’
‘I couldn’t find out from the old records whether anybody checks. I hope a priest will simply declare formally that it must be over. After, let us say, enough time passes… It will take — ’ Gaius paused fastidiously ‘- some days.’
Lucilla’s voice was low and intense. ‘Then will you come home?’
‘I will,’ promised Gaius, looking into her eyes like a man who could hardly bear to leave.
‘Good luck’ seemed inappropriate so Lucilla murmured, ‘You will be in my thoughts, soldier.’
Vinius Clodianus snapped to attention, kicking up dust with an expert heel-grind, as he gave her a full Praetorian salute.
Lucilla’s departure across the garden and through the exit gateway to the street allowed him a pleasant survey of her elegant rear view. Gaius rather thought old man Cretticus, who had opened his eyes again, was enjoying the same vision salaciously.
He stayed a few moments longer in the peristyle, as good manners.
‘When you do manage to bed her, leave the window open so I can hear.’ Cretticus was shameless. ‘Go on,’ he wheedled. ‘I’m ninety-one. I don’t get many thrills these days.’
26
The House of the Vestals lay towards the southern end of the Forum. Its enclosed precinct contained a large quiet garden among colonnades, with accommodation for the six Virgins, who lived there throughout their thirty years of service, only leaving if they were taken so ill they must be nursed by a respectable matron in her home. Some stayed even after they retired. No men were allowed in the Vestals’ house; the precinct was locked up at night as a precaution.
The small round Temple of Vesta stood just outside in its own enclosure. Across the Sacred Way, the odd-shaped triangular college of pontiffs completed the religious sanctum, buildings whose origins, perhaps as a palace in the days of the old Roman kings, were long lost. A delicate contrast to that jumbled group, the beautiful white marble temple had no cult statue. It did contain the sacred fire and the palladium, a venerated object of uncertain form which had supposedly come from Troy and which, like the flame, symbolised the health and survival of Rome. It was secret; nobody ever saw it. Clodianus thought that, given what the Greeks did to Troy after they got in with the Wooden Horse, the palladium’s efficiency as a form of protection might be questioned. He did not voice this outrage. Standing among a subdued crowd at the end of the Forum, his role was to prevent trouble, not cause a revolution.
This was a very ancient area. Rituals carried out by pontiffs and Vestals were the oldest, and occasionally the oddest, the Roman people still followed. The daily procedures of the Vestals went back deeply into history and myth: carrying water, tending fire, cleansing, and making ritual salt cakes. Today’s archaic punishment belonged with that tradition, a tradition rooted in darkness and retribution just as much as the Vestals’ life was central to survival and hope.
The Forum had long been the starting point of funerals for aristocrats. Here many a noble family would still bring a bier with the dead body of their loved one lying on a costly mattress among precious spices — a consul or general, or even a great lady who had married famously and endowed provincial temples. They would assemble their procession of mourners, with musicians, masks of their ancestors, irreverent clowns mocking the life and characteristics of the dead. Here they would hear a public eulogy, before wending their way by torchlight and amidst the sound of flutes to their chosen great necropolis on one of the major arteries out of Rome; there the corpse would be cremated and its ashes collected in a costly urn of porphyry or alabaster, to be kept forever in the family mausoleum and, at least in theory, regularly visited.