Empire (57 page)

She laughed, but the laughter caught in her throat. She stared at the fire. Watching flames was a familiar occupation for her.

“Does the flame remind you of Vesta’s eternal hearthfire?” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“What of your faith, Cornelia?”

She took a long time to answer. “I remain steadfast in my devotion to Vesta—despite what’s happened.”

They had finally arrived at the subject they had come to talk about. Lucius moved a few steps closer to her and joined her in gazing at the fire. “What happened to Varronilla and the Oculata sisters was unspeakable,” he said.

Cornelia drew a deep breath. “People say Domitian was merciful. The punishments could have been worse. Much, much worse.”

Her hollow, emotionless voice seemed to be that of another woman, a stranger. He knelt beside her and took her hand. Her fingers were frigid.

“Cornelia, we don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, I want to talk. I want to tell you everything. Oh, Lucius, how I longed to speak to you every day, while it was happening—but you were the one man I couldn’t possibly talk to.” She spoke at last in a normal voice, full of sorrow and pain; the sound of it broke his heart. For the first time, he felt that the woman in the room with him was Cornelia, his Cornelia, the woman he had loved so long and so devotedly.

She wept. He put his arm around her. She fought back her tears.

“It all happened so suddenly. In the middle of the night, armed men appeared at the entrance of the House of the Vestals. They blocked the exits—as if we were criminals and might try to flee. They were led by a man named Catullus, one of the emperor’s oldest friends. Remember his name, Lucius! A tall, thin man with pale, mottled skin and a gaunt face. Everything about Catullus is as cold as ice, except his eyes. The way he looked at me, I felt I was made of straw. I thought his gaze would set me on fire.”

She shuddered. Lucius held her and said nothing, letting her speak at her own pace.

“They assembled the household slaves and took them into custody, dressed in their nightclothes. I’m not sure where they took them, but we later learned they were tortured—all of them, from the youngest to the oldest, from the accountant who kept records for the Virgo Maxima to the half-witted slave who emptied chamber pots. ‘You never know which slaves will yield the most damning evidence’—so Catullus said at the trial. And by law, the testimony of any slave must be obtained by torture, even the slaves of a religious order like the Vestals. Some of the slaves died from the torture; they were too old to endure it. Others were maimed for life.

“Four of us were accused of breaking our vows of chastity: Varronilla,
the Oculatae, and myself. I’m not sure why I was accused. They had no evidence against me, as it turned out. But I didn’t know that at the time. I racked my brain, trying to imagine what they knew and how they found out. We were always so careful, you and I! Or had they simply invented something, and intended to make their case using false evidence, against which I could offer no possible defense? We were taken to the Regia, the ancient house of the Pontifex Maximus in the Forum, and confined to a small room. I didn’t dare say anything to the others for fear that Catullus or one of his henchman was listening from some place of concealment.

“The trial took place in the Regia. Domitian presided, not in his role as censor but as Pontifex Maximus. All the Vestals and a great many priests were there. Catullus presented the evidence.

“Poor Varronilla! There was no question of her guilt. She had been very careless, confiding in one of the slaves, even telling the woman the name of her lover. The Oculata sisters were even more flagrant. They shared the same lover, at the same time, and were seen coming and going outside his house. The lovers of Varronilla and the Oculatae had already confessed, but they were made to appear before the court and repeat their testimony.

“Before Domitian rendered his judgment against those three, the Virgo Maxima begged him to be lenient. He told her she should be ashamed of herself, that she was running the House of the Vestals as if it were a brothel. But he offered conditional clemency: if the accused Vestals would admit their guilt, he would forgo the traditional punishment—being buried alive—and allow them to choose their own form of death. Varronilla and the Oculatae agreed. They confessed before the court, with Catullus asking questions. He forced them not only to name their lovers but to recount each of the occasions on which they broke their vows and to describe the specific acts in which they engaged, no matter how intimate or embarrassing—which parts of their bodies had been touched and penetrated, and in what positions, and what acts they had performed to please their lovers.

“After Catullus had wrung every humiliating detail from Varronilla and the Oculatae, he allowed them to step down. During all this time, no one had questioned me or even mentioned my name, except in the initial reading of the charges. I almost thought they had forgotten me. But they were saving me for last.

“No witnesses were called against me. How could there be witnesses, when not a single slave in the House of the Vestals knew anything of our affair, and no slave of yours had ever seen me in this house? Catullus called on me to name my lover and confess. If I did so, he said, I would be spared like the others from being buried alive and be allowed choose my own form of death.

“I told him I had nothing to say. Domitian rose from his chair and stood before me. ‘If you confess now, at this moment, you will be spared the traditional punishment. But this is your last chance. If subsequent evidence goes against you, and you are pronounced guilty, you will be buried alive. What do you say, Vestal?’

“Still I said nothing. But I thought: they must have Lucius; they must be holding him just outside this room. If I fail to confess, Catullus will parade Lucius before me, and my lover will tell them everything, and I shall be buried alive. How close I came to confessing! I was terrified. The suspense was unbearable. I could have ended it by telling Domitian what he wanted to hear. I had only to utter a few words, and it would be over.

“But I held fast. I said nothing. Catullus took Domitian aside and whispered in his hear. Domitian announced that I was to be taken to a private chamber, stripped, and examined to determine whether or not I was a virgin. He himself, in his role as Pontifex Maximus, would conduct the investigation, with the Virgo Maxima as witness.”

Lucius felt physically ill, imagining the scene. He shuddered.

“No, Lucius, it didn’t happen. The Virgo Maxima stood up to him. She said that such a procedure, carried out against a Vestal who maintained her innocence and against whom there was no evidence of wrongdoing, would be an offense against Vesta. The priests agreed. As timid as they are, almost all of them stepped forward to object. Even Domitian could see he had gone too far. He backed down. But he was furious. So was Catullus. Every time that man looked at me, I felt naked.

“Domitian dropped the charges against me. The Virgo Maxima counted that as a small victory. I still don’t know why I was accused, since they could produce no evidence against me. I think someone must have accused me anonymously, someone who may have suspected me without knowing enough to testify. Perhaps they thought I might confess simply from fear. I very nearly did.”

Lucius nodded slowly. “I think this Catullus was your accuser. Had you ever seen him before?”

“I must have, as part of the emperor’s entourage. I never took any notice of him.”

“But I’ll wager he noticed you. A man like that, lusting after a woman he can’t have, will use whatever influence he has to get her under his control.”

“He very nearly drove me to my death.”

“You’re a Vestal, Cornelia. Beautiful, aloof, unobtainable. There are men who would take perverse pleasure from destroying a woman like you. That may be exactly what Catullus wanted, to see you stripped naked and humiliated.”

“He failed, then. But he did manage to destroy Varronilla and the Oculata sisters. They were returned to their cell. The Virgo Maxima obtained a fast-acting poison for them. They died before sundown.”

“And their lovers?”

“Because they freely confessed, Domitian was lenient. Instead of being hung on crosses and being beaten to death with rods, they were stripped of their property and citizenship and sent into exile—a punishment no more severe than those Domitian hands out to slanderers and adulterers. But, Lucius, what of you? When you heard about the arrests, you must have been terrified.”

“My suffering was nothing compared to yours, Cornelia.”

“Even so—”

“It isn’t worth speaking of.”

In fact, the days and nights immediately after he learned of the accusations against the Vestals had been the longest of his life. At every moment he had expected a knock at his door. The punishment for a despoiler of a Vestal haunted his nightmares; sleep became impossible. He considered fleeing to one of his country estates, or even taking an outbound ship from Ostia, heading for the Euxine Sea and land of the Dacians to join Dio, but the futility of such an enterprise stopped him; if Domitian wanted to arrest him, there would be no escape, and sudden flight would be as good as a confession. Nor could he abandon Cornelia. If he should be arrested, he would refuse to testify, even if he was tortured—so he told himself—and if he was executed, he would die with the knowledge that he had not betrayed Cornelia.

He talked to no one about the arrests and upcoming trial, not even Epaphroditus. If he was being watched and followed, anyone with whom he had contact might fall under suspicion.

The date for the trial of the Vestals arrived, and still Lucius was a free man. All that day, he expected soldiers to come and arrest him. As he did every day, he dispatched his freedman Hilarion to go down to the Forum to deliver messages and bring back the day’s news. Late that afternoon, Hilarion finally returned. He quoted the latest price for grain from Alexandria. He also mentioned that another play had been added to the censor’s list, though he could not remember the title.

“Oh, and what else?” said Hilarion, scratching his head. “Oh yes, the Pontifex Maximus has rendered his judgment of the accused Vestals.”

“Yes?” Lucius tried to control the quaver in his voice.

“All were pronounced guilty—except one.”

“Is that right?” Lucius could hardly breathe. “Which Vestal was that?”

Hilarion thought for a moment. “Cornelia Cossa is her name. She was acquitted.”

Lucius could hardly believe his ears. He was as stunned by the news as if Cornelia had been found guilty. He felt faint. Hilarion asked if he was alright.

“I could use a bit of wine. Would you fetch it yourself, Hilarion?”

As soon as Hilarion left the room, Lucius had burst into tears.

He had longed to contact her, but did not dare to. Then one day a message arrived, written on a scrap of parchment and carried by a street urchin. “Meet me tomorrow” was all it said, but Lucius knew who had sent it and what it meant. And so they were together again at last, after so many months apart.

Lucius shook his head. “If Catullus was responsible for your arrest, he won’t give up. He’ll be watching and waiting for another chance to ruin you. He may be watching even now. He may have seen you come here. It was madness for us to meet again.”

“I had to see you, Lucius.”

“And I had to see you, Cornelia.”

He touched her face. He kissed her.

Both of them had arrived expecting their tryst to be chaste, a meeting to talk and share their suffering, to acknowledge the terrible danger they
had escaped and to say a final farewell; but the strain of their ordeal culminated in a physical desire beyond anything they had experienced before. Their union was more than a simple coupling of bodies; it was an affirmation that they were still alive. Lucius was shaken to the core of his being. He experienced a blissful release such as he had never imagined. He knew this would not be the last time they met.

Much later, as he was walking home alone and the haze of lust began to lift and he could think clearly again, the irony of the situation struck him so forcefully that he laughed out loud. Domitian’s relentless campaign for public morals had driven him back into the arms of a Vestal virgin.

It was the fifth day before the Ides of Junius, the twentieth anniversary of the death of Titus Pinarius.

As he did every year on this date, Lucius conducted a simple ritual of remembrance before the wax effigy of his father that occupied a niche in the vestibule of his house on the Palatine. He was attended only by the freedman Hilarion, who had been his father’s favorite and who cherished the memory of his old master. In the years since he had been manumitted, Hilarion had married and started his own family, and in many ways was a more devout Roman than Lucius, observing all the holidays and the customary rituals for the benefit of his children. Lucius, since he had little interest in religion and had created no family of his own, observed few ceremonies throughout the year, but he never neglected to note the day of his father’s death.

As happened every year, he felt a little guilty as he honored the memory of his father. At the age of forty, Lucius had not produced an heir; after he died, who would continue to honor the memory of his father and all his other ancestors? Two of Lucius’s three sisters had children, but they were not Pinarii.

It was also the twentieth anniversary of the death of Nero.

That anniversary was not especially significant for Lucius, except as it related to his own father’s death, but it meant a great deal to Epaphroditus.
To observe the occasion, he had asked Lucius to join him at the tomb of Nero on the Hill of Gardens.

It was a mild, clear day. Lucius decided to walk rather than be carried in a sedan. He told Hilarion to spend the rest of the day with his family if he wished, and set out alone.

Leaving his house, Lucius gazed up at the massive new wings that had recently been added to the imperial palace. Domitian had so enlarged the complex that it now occupied not just the whole southern portion of the Palatine but much of the rest of the hill. He had also given the complex a name; as Nero had called his palace the Golden House, so Domitian called his palace the House of the Flavians. The public rooms were said to be enormous, with soaring vaulted ceilings, while the rooms and gardens where the emperor actually resided were said to be surprisingly small and to lie deep within the palace, accessible only by secret doorways and hidden passages.