“The Collegiate of Pontiffs, the vestal virgins, and the Pontifex Maximus have reached a verdict.” Sweat beaded on the Major Flamine’s brow. He ran a cloth over his forehead, small defense against July’s sweltering temperature.
Riveted by the prospect of a vestal virgin’s downfall, all of Rome anticipated Elissa’s trial as if it were a battle between gladiators. Nero seized the opportunity to serve cheap entertainment to the urban mob by opening the proceedings to the public. Court had been established in the forum and risers erected to accommodate the spectators. Men and women, even children, packed the stands until the floorboards groaned. The tribunal of priests and vestals looked down at Elissa from a dais set in the center of the small arena.
She sat on a stool before them, cradling her hand. The wound had healed, but left a scar. The stigmata served as a reminder of what Nero had done to her. Curling her fingers into a fist, she prepared to hear the verdict.
Someone laughed. A baby wailed.
Elissa caught a whiff of citron, the scent of pork and onions. It might have been a festival.
Guards stood at the exits, and Tigellinus, in full dress uniform, arms crossed over his chest, stood watching.
Elissa scanned the crowd, thankful that her parents were not in attendance. At her insistence, they had fled Rome for their country villa. To have them witness her disgrace would have been unbearable. Mother Amelia’s revelation had preyed on Elissa’s mind for the past month, but she had kept the secret close. If the name of her birthmother was made public, would it help her case or go against her? In any case, she lacked proof, and without proof who would believe her? One thing was certain—the revelation would destroy Constantina, humiliate Honoratus, and disgrace her family a hundredfold.
Her gaze moved over the spectators. They came from every stratosphere of Roman society. She didn’t blame Gallus Justinus for failing to appear. In fact, she prayed he’d remain absent. Flavia was missing. In her stead, the letters spoke—although they’d proved nothing. But who needed proof? Ultimately, Nero would decide the verdict. Angerona’s testimony had been most damning. Elissa tried to meet her eyes, but Angerona turned away.
“All rise for the verdict.” The Major Flamine wiped perspiration from his face. “The sentence will be pronounced by the Pontifex Maximus.”
Elissa stood. Her feet seemed miles away, and she felt disembodied. Struggling to retain her balance, she focused on the tribunal. Marcia and Cornelia had been crying. So had Mother Amelia, who now seemed bent on strangling a handkerchief. The priests’ stony faces held no sympathy. Angerona’s face presented a tragic countenance.
Nero sat in his curule chair while slaves fanned him with peacock feathers. He wore a robe of silk, rather than a toga. Upon his head he wore the crown of the Pontifex Maximus.
The Major Flamine handed him a scroll.
“The verdict—” Nero cleared his throat, “Guilty as charged.”
A murmur ran through the crowd.
Only determination prevented Elissa from fainting.
Nero raised a hand for silence. “Good citizens of Rome, the vestal virgin, Priestess Elissa Rubria Honoria, has broken her sacred vows and polluted the holy rites with infidelity. She has fornicated, which is deemed an act of treason against Rome. The court finds her guilty of incest. For indeed, an act of fornication by a vestal virgin, is named the lowest deviance.”
Shouts of protest were drowned by stamping feet and cheers of approval. No women were more revered than vestal virgins, none placed on a higher pedestal. Romans loved to raise their idols to ever greater heights, but even more, they loved to see those idols fall.
“Order in the court!” Nero pounded his scepter. “Has the prisoner anything to say? Words of repentance? An apology?”
“Yes,” Elissa’s voice shook. “I do.”
She faced the crowd, afraid her courage might fail. The spectators grew quiet as she gazed out at the blur of faces. Even now, she felt their respect, their wonder that she dared to speak. Perhaps they hoped that she, a vestal virgin selected by the gods, might convince fate to find her innocent.
The citizens of Rome deserved better than Nero.
They deserved the truth.
“Good citizens,” Elissa said, her voice clear and strong. “Respected priests, women, slaves—I am one of you. A Roman. The Pontifex Maximus asks, do I have regrets? I do. I regret that our beloved Rome has been corrupted by a kind of poison. The venom of greed and arrogance. I regret the Collegiate of Pontiffs swallows lies and finds me guilty.”
Murmurs rumbled through the crowd.
“The Pontifex Maximus claims I’ve committed not just adultery, but incest.”
“That is how the crime is viewed,” Nero said. He yawned, loudly. “Get on with it. You’re boring me.”
“And does my sister bore you too, the one whose innocence you took?”
Nero smoothed his robes and flicked away a bit of lint.
“Oh, yes, I forget myself,” Elissa said. “The Pontifex Maximus lives above the law.” The crowd leaned forward, hanging onto every word. “Meanwhile, I am to be entombed and left to starve—”
“As you know,” Nero said, his voice quavering with anger, “entombment is the punishment set down by law.”
“The laws of men?” Elissa asked.
“Of course, the laws of men. Who else? Women? Slaves? Perhaps a donkey?”
Laughter, led by Tigellinus, rocked the court.
Elissa’s voice rang out above the noise. “There are greater laws than laws of men. The law of truth. The law of justice.”
“The law of God,” someone shouted from the bleachers.
A pauper peered down from the highest tier, a filthy cloak drawn over his head. His eyes locked onto Elissa’s.
Justinus.
She wanted to climb the ropes, scramble up a wooden beam, and throw herself into his arms. His presence strengthened her resolve. She would speak the truth. Death came only once; even Nero couldn’t kill her twice.
“Incest,” she said, her voice commanding attention, “may also be defined as sexual union between close relations. For example, a daughter and father, a mother and a son. Or siblings.”
Despite the heat, Nero’s face grew pale. “That’s not what we’re discussing.”
“I think it is.”
Anticipation sparked the crowd.
“If I am guilty, so are you.” Recognition flashed between them. “After all, we are brother and sister—in the priestly sense, of course.”
For once, Nero seemed at a loss.
Pointing the finger of her wounded hand at him, Elissa addressed the crowd. “The Pontifex Maximus took me by force. In other words, he raped me. The act of incest at its worst.”
“She’s a liar,” Tigellinus shouted. “A liar and a whore.”
“Then all Romans are whores,” Elissa countered. “Like you, Tigellinus. Whores and slaves to Nero.”
Coming to his senses, Nero pounded his scepter. “Court is adjourned,” he shouted.
“Not before I have my say.” Mother Amelia stood, still twisting her handkerchief. A hush fell on the court as all heads turned to the Vestal Maxima. “By the gods I hold sacred, I bear witness to Elissa Rubria Honoria. Despite the evidence this court has brought against her, I know her to be true of heart, immaculate in every way. By my life, I swear she is innocent.”
The crowd went wild, screaming, shouting, climbing ropes and swinging from the balconies.
“Sit down!” Nero ordered, but no one listened. Brandishing his scepter, he bellowed, “The sentence stands!”
Elissa watched with amazement as men and women stormed the arena, declaring her innocence, calling for justice, yelling obscenities at Nero.
“Tigellinus!” Nero banged his scepter on the dais. “Do something!”
Tigellinus reached under his arm, withdrawing his sica.
Justinus shinnied down a rope and jumped into the arena. He landed in front of Tigellinus, surprising the prefect, and knocked the sica from his hand. Locked in a stranglehold, the two men tumbled over one another. Onlookers surrounded them, pelting the prefect with citrons, eggs, anything they had on hand, and cheering Justinus.
“Guards!” Nero shouted.
Praetorians descended on the chaos. But their efforts to control the seething crowd seemed half-hearted as if they too doubted Elissa’s guilt.
The mob scaled the dais, swarming Nero like angry bees.
Using his scepter, he attempted to beat them off, riling them into a frenzy. Stung by the crowd’s animosity, Nero leapt from the dais and fought his way through fists and curses, attempting to reach the exit. A child grabbed the hem of his silk robe and the fine fabric ripped as he fled the arena.
Tigellinus was not so easily deterred. Escaping Justinus, he pushed through the mob toward Elissa. He bound her wrists and dragged her from the court. She would be stripped of priestly vestments, beaten, paraded through the streets to the Colline Gate where she would be entombed and left to die.
And yet she felt victorious.
Darkness cannot prevail within the light of a happy soul.
Like all good Romans, she took pleasure in watching Nero tumble from his pedestal.
Flavia ran her tongue over her lips, cracked and dry from lack of water. No servants had come to her rescue.
She no longer felt pain.
Her arms, straining in their sockets, had long ago gone numb. The dying lantern emitted sickly light. She gazed up at her shackled hands, attempting to move her fingers.
She recalled a story Marcus had once told her, one of Aesop’s fables. A farmer sewed seeds of hemp in a field where a swallow and a flock of crows were feeding. “Don’t trust that farmer,” the swallow warned the crows. “Make sure you pick up every seed.” The crows paid no attention to the swallow and, after eating their fill of seeds, they flew away. Come spring, the remaining seeds grew into hemp, by midsummer the hemp was woven into cord, and from the cord the farmer made a net. In that net the crows were caught. But the swallow escaped.
Fog drifted through Flavia’s memory. The story’s moral evaded her.
Death crept toward her like the night, dark and inevitable.
Was she already dead?
She wasn’t certain.
With no gold coin to pay the oarsman, she would be forced to swim across the river Styx. Her shade would find no peace in the afterlife, and her soul would wander between worlds.
A lemur.
As she drifted toward darkness, the moral came back to her: Destroy the seed of evil or it will grow and become your ruin.
* * * * *
Twelve days before the Nones of August, as the Dog Star moved across the heavens, Justinus paced his room.
Elissa was going to die.
He could think of nothing else.
Although the Vestal Maxima had claimed her innocent, Nero pronounced her guilty. The sentence was unpopular, but the word of the Pontifex Maximus was final. Too cowardly to face the urban mob, Nero and Poppaea fled to their palace in Antium and left the task of entombing Elissa to Tigellinus.
Her funeral would be held today.
Justinus wiped his brow. Sweat poured down his back, soaking through his tunic. Even at this pre-dawn hour July’s heat felt oppressive. He opened the shutters, felt the stirring of a breeze. The Dog Days of summer promised no rain. No chance Elissa’s funeral might be postponed.
The clang of bells called out the fire brigade. Not unusual. It happened almost every day. The gods’ wrath, people whispered.
God’s wrath brought down by Nero
.
Justinus wished he had killed him when he’d had the chance. But hiding in this tenement, a fugitive, he had no opportunity. It’s not for us to judge our fellow man, Paul would have cautioned him. Paul didn’t understand the politics of Rome. Destroying evil as powerful as Nero required, not patience, but violence.
The Dog Star dipped toward the horizon. Soon it would be dawn, and the city would be waking. Scents from the perfumery, on the building’s first floor, drifted through the window making Justinus lightheaded. Jasmine, lotus, orange blossom from the Orient—scents too exotic for this tenement.
The perfumery marked the last of his tenants.
Justinus had always taken pride in maintaining his properties, but over the past months he’d done little to care for them—especially this one where he lived. Pipes, frozen last winter, had never been repaired. The roof leaked, and the ceiling spat bits of plaster. Lately even lack of running water didn’t bother him. In turn each of his tenants left. And now the building was condemned.
As was Elissa.
Dawn’s light revealed the Circus Maximus. Nero’s sordid playground loomed across the street, and from his window Justinus could see the gates Marcus had entered, but never left. There would be no games today. Today, Rome’s entertainment would be Elissa’s death.
His gaze fell on the cedar chest.
Paul had told him he was needed here in Rome.
An idea formed within his mind, and he could not let go of it. He paced the room, becoming excited as the idea bloomed into a plan. Finally, he understood his mission. He had been chosen by God, not to convert Nero to following The Way of Jesus—a task which proved impossible—but to rid the world of evil. To root it out by destroying what Nero best loved.
The Circus Maximus.
He opened the cedar chest. Flinging aside clothes, discarding a sandal missing its mate, he dug. He discovered a medallion from Britannia, his father’s knife, a forgotten figurine. At the bottom of the chest, he found what he needed. The jar of tung-oil Paul had given him.
Accelerant.
All he needed was a spark.
He ran downstairs to the perfumery in search of a flint. At this hour, before shops opened, the business was abandoned. Even in July the perfumer used heat to distill raw materials, and Justinus found embers still smoldering in the brazier.
Conducting an experiment, he poured a small portion of tung-oil on a rag and touched it to a glowing coal. The oil proved more potent than he’d expected, and the rag burst into flames. He dropped the burning cloth and stamped it with his foot, but only succeeded in dispersing the fire. He ran to the fountain where water should have flowed and found it dry—the result of his negligence.
Flames caught hold of a curtain, climbed the fabric, and leapt onto a nearby shelf. The wood ignited quickly and the shelf gave way. Amphorae filled with oil crashed to the floor spewing their precious contents. The air was redolent with clove, lemon, and sandalwood. The fire gobbled up the oil, then looked for more. Flames devoured shelf after shelf. Tumbling jars gushed precious fragrances, splattering the walls, coating every surface with oily fuel and transforming the perfumery into an inferno.
Justinus found a horse blanket and used it to bat the flames, but that only encouraged the fire. Choking on fumes, he bolted to the door and kicked it open. A fireball rushed after him, scalding his back, singeing his hair.
He raced across the street and watched in horror as a flash, more powerful than lightning, blasted through the building. Plaster and timber exploded in a shower of debris as the tenement burst into flames, spewing sooty cinders, painting the sky black, obliterating the rising sun.
He thanked Jesus—thanked the Almighty Father, Jupiter, Apollo, Zeus, any god he could summon—the building had been condemned and vacated of people.
But he hadn’t considered the wind.
It swept down from Caelian Hill, fanning flames, encouraging the fire to attack adjoining buildings. Sleepy tenants, roused from bed and still in their nightclothes, rushed from their apartments and out into the street.
Horses whinnied, kicking at their stalls. Chickens escaped their coops and ran squawking underfoot. The screams of women blotted out the wails of children.
Clanging bells announced the arrival of a fire brigade. The vigiles quickly formed a line leading to the Aqua Appia, the nearest aqueduct, and began passing leather buckets of water. Grabbing a bucket, Justinus joined them.
The inferno consumed everything in its path: a grocery, an apothecary, a forger’s smithy. The temperature increased until the heat became unbearable, hot enough to melt metal. The apothecary’s copper vats spit blue, green, and purple flames, as if conjured by a sorcerer. Choking on smoke and drenched in sweat, Justinus tossed buckets of water as fast as he could muster them, but before the water met the flames it evaporated.
Timbers came alive and fell on fleeing people. A frightened family ran from a collapsing building and faced a blazing wall of flames. The mother, clutching her newborn infant against her breast, narrowly escaped a burning beam.
A small boy stood in the middle of street, screaming, “Mama.”
Horses, manes on fire, stampeded toward him. The clomping hooves were deafening as the horses galloped past. Justinus dropped his water bucket and lunged for the child.
Too late.
The boy’s skull was crushed.
Sinking to his knees, Justinus cradled the trampled body.
“God forgive me.”
Wind carried flames across the street, igniting the Circus Maximus. Fire raged through the entryway, up the wooden steps, and through the spectator stalls.
And as the dawn grew darker, Justinus bowed his head over the boy and sobbed.