ON the fifteenth of that same August, not long after noon, Brinnaria was much surprised by a call from Flexinna.

“The most amazing weather that ever was,” Flexinna stated. “I never heard of such, everybody says nobody ever heard of the like. Even Nemestronia says she never saw or heard of anything to compare to it. The densest imaginable fog, as white as milk. You c-c-can’t see across a street, you c-c-can hardly see the bearers in front of your litter.”

“I noticed it in the courtyard,” Brinnaria replied, “and it is thicker than usual. But we often have morning fogs and I have seen several almost as dense as this.”

“Nothing unusual in a fog d-d-down hereabouts and along the river,” Flexinna admitted. “B-B-But this fog is most unusual. It is all over the whole city. I have lived on the Esquiline ever since I was b-b-born and I never saw a fog up there except p-p-perhaps a whiff just about sunrise and then only in wisps. This fog is high up on the Esquiline, as d-d-dense as along the river. I know the fog is all over the city b-b-because I sent two slaves to the P-P-Pincian and two to the Aventine, and they reported that it is just as b-b-bad everywhere as here and at home. And I met Satronius Satro, just b-b-back from B-B-Baiae. He slept at B-B-Bovillae last night and he says the fog is just as b-b-bad all the way from B-B-Bovillae. He says it is heavy over the whole c-c-country for miles. It amounts to a portent.”

“Flexinna,” said Brinnaria, “you never came here and at this time of day, to talk about the weather.”

“I d-d-didn’t know how to b-b-begin,” Flexinna admitted.

“What has Almo done now?” Brinnaria queried.

“He left Velitrae day before yesterday,” said Flexinna, “and went to Aricia. Yesterday he challenged the K-K-King of the G-G-Grove.”

“Just as Celsianus conjectured,” Brinnaria groaned. “Some unthinkable method of suicide. Is he dead?”

“No,” Flexinna replied. “He’s very much alive.”

“Then he is the King of the Grove!” Brinnaria cried.

“They haven’t fought yet,” Flexinna informed her.

“Impossible!” Brinnaria exclaimed. “Or there is something wrong with your information. There is only one way to challenge the King of the Grove and that is to enter the Grove with a weapon. Almost as many men as women go to worship at the Temple of Diana in the Grove by the Lake; the King of the Grove never notices any unarmed man. But let a man with a weapon of any kind, spear, sword, or what not, even a club, step over the boundary line of the Grove and that act of entrance there with a weapon constitutes a challenge to the King of the Grove; at sight of an armed man the King or the Grove attacks him. They fight then and there till one is killed. The survivor is the King of the Grove.

“The challenger is supposed to pluck a twig from the sacred oak-tree and the act of picking the branch is supposed to be the challenge. But, in practice, the King of the Grove watches the sacred oak so carefully, that nobody remembers any challenger who succeeded in pulling a twig unless he won the fight.

“That is the only way to challenge the King of the Grove. Everybody knows that.”

“That is just what I always thought,” Flexinna confessed, “b-b-but, it seems we are b-b-both mistaken. There is another way to challenge the K-K-King of the G-G-Grove; that is to go to the Dictator of Aricia and enter formal challenge. In that c-c-case, the Dictator notifies the K-K-King of the G-G-Grove that he must face the challenger at midnight next d-d-day. Meanwhile, the challenger is entertained in the t-t-town-hall of Aricia. He is b-b-bathed, p-p-provided with fresh c-c-clothing, g-g-given whatever food he asks for and accommodated with a c-c-comfortable b-b-bed for the night after his challenge. Then, when he has had a g-g-good chance to sleep all night and has had at least four g-g-good meals, he is c-c-conducted by the aldermen to the G-G-Grove just b-b-before midnight. The aldermen t-t-take with them two ancient shields, p-p-precisely alike, and two ancient Amazonian b-b-battle-axes, also p-p-precisely alike, which are k-k-kept among the t-t-treasures in the strong room of the t-t-town hall at Aricia. The challenger plucks a t-t-twig from the sacred oak. Then he and the K-K-King of the G-G-Grove face each other in the open space b-b-before it. A shield and a b-b-battle-axe are handed to each. Then they wait for the word of the Dictator of Aricia. At the word they fight.

“That is the other way to challenge the K-K-King of the G-G-Grove.”

Flexinna, as generally happened, had been shown at once up to Brinnaria’s private apartment and had walked straight into Brinnaria’s bedroom. In that small room they sat facing each other.

“Then they fight at midnight to-night,” Brinnaria deduced.

“Yes,” Flexinna corroborated.

“How did you come here?” her friend queried.

“In Nemestronia’s litter,” the visitor answered. “I b-b-borrowed it.”

“With her Cappadocian bearers?” queried Brinnaria.

“Eighteen, of them,” said Flexinna; “two extras.”

“How on earth did you come to do that?” Brinnaria wondered.

“I had a notion,” Flexinna explained, “of trying to get to the G-G-Grove by the Lake b-b-before the fight. I thought p-p-perhaps Almo would listen to me if I c-c-could see him in t-t-time.”

“Did you tell Quintus?” Brinnaria demanded.

“Of c-c-course,” said Flexinna. “He wanted to go alone, b-b-but I said Almo would not listen to him, so I p-p-persuaded him to let me t-t-try. I c-c-couldn’t think of riding, of c-c-course, as I am. He wouldn’t even hear of my d-d-driving, said I might as well hang myself and be d-d-done with it as risk the jar of a t-t-travelling c-c-carriage. I said I’d use my litter. He said our b-b-bearers c-c-could never g-g-get there in t-t-time for me to hope to d-d-do any g-g-good. I said I’d b-b-borrow Nemestronia’s fastest gang. He said he c-c-could g-g-go and c-c-come b-b-back on a horse quicker than any litter c-c-could reach the G-G-Grove. I repeated that Almo would certainly p-p-pay no attention to him, b-b-but might listen to me. So I b-b-borrowed Nemestronia’s litter. Shall I g-g-go? Shall I start at once?”

“No!” Brinnaria cut her off. “Let me think. Sixteen miles? They could do it in a little over five hours, if everything went just right. They’d take at least eight hours for the return journey. You wouldn’t be back at the Appian gate before sunrise. It would be a hungry job.”

“I thought of that,” Flexinna informed her. “I’m always ravenous when I’m this way* and c-c-can never g-g-go from one meal to the next. I had a k-k-kid-skin of wine p-p-put in the litter and b-b-bread and cheese and fruit.”

*In other words, she’s pregnant. —PG ed.

“You did!” cried Brinnaria. “Where is Vocco?”

“On horseback b-b-beside the litter,” said Flexinna, “waiting for your d-d-decision.”

“I’ve made it,” Brinnaria proclaimed.

“Shall I g-g-go t-t-try?” enquired Flexinna.

“No!” Brinnaria fairly shouted, pulling off her headdress.

“What shall I d-d-do then?” Flexinna queried.

“Undress,” Brinnaria ordered, “undress quick!” Flexinna stared at her, horrified.

“What for?” she quavered.

“Undress first and ask afterwards,” Brinnaria commanded. “Undress, woman, undress!” She was tearing off her clothes as she talked.

“Can’t you see, you fool!” she hissed. “The gods have made it all easy. The densest fog Rome ever saw and all over the country-side, a curtained litter with the fastest bearers alive right at my door, my best friend on horseback beside it, drink and food enough and to spare, me off duty till to-morrow noon and you here to change clothes with me. I put on your clothes and go save Almo.”

“You’ll be outside Rome all night,” Flexinna objected. “That’s sacrilege.”

“Not a bit of it,” Brinnaria retorted. “I know a regulation from a taboo. When the Gauls captured Rome the Flamen of Jupiter went up into the Capitol with the garrison. He might not leave Rome, it would have been impious. But the other flamens nd the Vestals left Rome, the Vestals were months at Caere. It is not impiety for a Vestal to be outside the city walls over night, it is merely forbidden by the rules. I’m going.”

“You might as well g-g-go b-b-bury yourself alive and b-b-be d-d-done with it,” Flexinna protested. “You’re certain to b-b-be found out. It’s sure d-d-death for you.”

“Hang the risk!” Brinnaria snarled. “I never realized how much I loved Almo till you brought this news. I don’t care whether I live or die or what death I die, if I can only save him.

“And the risk is too small to think of. All you have to do is to stay abed and keep still. Utta will never tell and she won’t let anyone in. Numisia will not suspect anything: any Vestal has the right to twenty-four hours abed and no questions asked, Meffia spent one day out of ten in bed. Manlia takes a day’s rest a dozen times a year. Even I have done it several times, when I was sore all over with jolting too long at full gallop over our so-called perfect roads. I was abed all day about a month ago, and certainly I rove hard enough and long enough yesterday and I was in the Temple half the night. I’ll be back here long before noon to-morrow.

“Don’t you see how easy it is? Flexinna has called on Brinnaria to-day, as usual, except the hour. And Flexinna often calls on Brinnaria at odd hours. Flexinna makes a short call and goes out to her litter. Flexinna makes an excursion into the country in a litter with drawn curtains, her husband riding by it. Nobody can take any notice of that. Flexinna returns from her outing, calls at once on Brinnaria, pays a brief call, goes out, gets into her litter and goes home. Brinnaria, refreshed by twenty-four hours abed, goes about her duties. The plan simply can’t fail.” She had on all Flexinna’s clothes by the end of her explanation and was adjusting er two veils, one over her face, the other tied over the broad-brimmed travelling-hat, so that the edges of the brim, drawn down on either side, almost met under her chin and her face was lost in it.

Flexinna continued to protest feebly, but Brinnaria made her compose herself in the bed.

“You can have anything you want to eat,” she reminded her, “and as much as you want, any time.”

Utta came at the first signal.

“Now listen,” Brinnaria instructed her, “I am in that bed and I am going to stay there until the lady who has just called on me comes back. That will be tomorrow morning. I am tired and need rest, the same as I did the day after the axle broke and I barked my knee in the gravel. I am not going out now; oh, no the lady going out is the lady who called on me. Do you understand?”

Utta understood.

Flexinna, quaking in the bed, prayed under her breath.

“For Castor’s sake,” was her farewell, “d-d-don’t forget to s-s-stutter.” In a fashionable costume of brilliant pink silk with pearly gray trimmings, feeling horribly conspicuous, but unaccosted and, as far as she could judge, unnoticed, Brinnaria descended the stairs, traversed the courtyard and passed the portal. Just outside, in the nook left by the angle of the wall enclosing the Temple, she found the litter set down clear of the throng that surged and jostled ceaselessly up and down the Holy Street. The bearers stood about it, one holding Vocco’s horse; all, like the street-crowd, vague and unreal in the fog. Through the fog Vocco strode towards her and checked, amazed. She put her fingers to the folds of the veil over her lips.

“C-C-Careful,” she warned him, laboriously stuttering. “I am Flexinna come back. Now for Aricia, as fast as the b-b-bearers can hoof it.”

Vocco, dazed, helped her into the litter, gave the order and mounted his horse.

Composed in her litter, Brinnaria’s sensations were all of the strangeness of the outlook; fog blurring the outlines of familiar buildings; fog hiding the landmarks she looked for, fog wrapping her round till she could hardly see the front pair of carriers tramping ahead or even Vocco beside her on his horse; fog concealing all the wide prospect of the levels south of Rome, fog so thick that they positively groped their way through the towns along the road, fog so dense that she could not discern the gradations by which afternoon melted into evening and dusk into darkness.

When they were clear of the city Vocco ranged his horse alongside the litter and expostulated with Brinnaria, talking Greek that the bearers might not understand.

“The best thing you can do,” he said, “is to give up this harebrained adventure and merely swing round through the suburbs for some hours and return to the Atrium by some other gate.”

“Not I,” she replied in her hardest tone.

“How do you expect to succeed in speaking to Almo?” he asked.

“I leave that to you,” she said; “you must manage to see the Dictator of Aricia and tell him that you have with you a lady in a litter who must speak to the challenger before the fight.”

“I’ll attempt the commission,” said Vocco, “and I’ll do my utmost, but I hold it impossible.”

“In any case,” spoke Brinnaria, “I keep on even if I have to expose myself and be recognized in Aricia.”

Vocco gave up the effort to influence her.

The roads joining the Appian Way were paved with similar blocks of the same sort of stone. In the fog they went wrong three several times where side-roads branched off at a thin angle. In each case they failed to discover their mistake until they had gone on for some distance; in each case they had to retrace their steps for fear of getting wholly lost if they tried a cross-road; in each case they wasted much time.

Twice the leading bearers were all but trampled on by the recklessly driven horses of careless drivers. Both times the mix-up delayed them.

Just beyond Bovillae they had a third collision, in which one pole of the litter was snapped and two of the bearers injured. It barely missed resulting in a free-fight. All of Vocco’s tact was needed to allay the feelings on both sides. By great good luck he succeeded in getting a substitute litter-pole from a near-by inn without too much publicity.

The delays caused by missing the road and by collisions had cut down the margin of time they had hoped for at Aricia. This last misfortune delayed them so much that it seemed unlikely that they could reach the Grove until midnight.

In fact, before they reached Aricia, the road was alive with parties of celebrants, men and women, but no children, every man carrying a lighted torch, nearly every man accompanied by a slave with an armful or a back-load of spare torches, all moving in the same direction with them.

With torch-bearing crowds the streets of Aricia were jammed. From gate to gate of the town they crawled, wading slowly through the press of revellers. Along the road to the Grove they were as a chip floated along on a tide of torchbearers, for the parties of worshippers converging to their great local yearly festival from Tusculum, Tibur, Cora, Pometia, Lanuvium and Ardea formed a continuous procession, their pulsing torch-flames looking strange and blurred through the fog.

When they reached the top of the ridge enclosing the Lake, Vocco dismounted and trusted his roan to one of Nemestronia’s extra bearers, as horses were not allowed within the Grove or its precincts.

Not much before midnight the bearers swung sharply at the brink of the cliff and plunged down the steep narrow road cut along its face. Brinnaria felt the dampness of the lake air on her cheek.

By the Lake the fog was, if possible, more impenetrable than elsewhere. The Grove, the lodging for the cripples and invalids who thronged the place to be cured, the vast halls about the temple, the temple itself, all were doubly whelmed in the darkness and the mist.

Brinnaria made out only the six channelled vermilion columns of the temple portico and the black boughs of the sacred oak. These, to right and left of the temple area, showed vaguely in the light of thousands of torches in the hands of the throng packed about it.

Respect for a closed litter with sixteen bearers accompanied by a gentleman in a Senator’s robes won them a way through the crowd, the torches surging in waves of flame as they ploughed through.

When they reached the margin of the open space, Brinnaria, choking with the realization that she had arrived too late, peered between the drawn curtains of her litter and saw the pavement of the temple-area bright under the splendor of the torch-rays; saw a dozen young women, dressed in gowns of a startling deep orange, standing in a row clear of the torch-bearing crowd; saw the five aldermen of Aricia in their official robes, grouped about the square marble altar; saw before the altar a circular space of clipped turf midway of the area pavement, saw standing on it to the right of the altar the King of the Grove, clad in his barbaric smock of dingy undyed black wool, his three-stranded necklace of raw turquoises broad on his bosom, the fox-tails of his fox-skin cap trailing by his ears; saw facing him Almo, bare-kneed, his hunting-boots of soft leather like chamois-skin coming half way up to his calves, his leek-green tunic covering him only to mid-thigh, his head bare, his right hand waving an oak bough.

After she recognized Almo and glimpsed the bough in his hand she hardly looked at him. She stared, fascinated, at the white marble altar on which, as an offering to Diana of the Underworld, the victor of the fight would lay the corpse of his victim.

The Dictator of Aricia, chief of the Aldermen, raised his hand. From somewhere in the darkness behind the dozen simpering wenches appeared two slaves, each carrying a small round shield and a double-headed battle-axe. The shields had painted on each a horse, the battle-axes were of the pattern always seen in pictures of the legendary Amazons. The blade of each axe-head was shaped like a crescent moon. From the inner side projected a flat, thick shank, by which the blade was fastened to the helve. The curve of each blade made almost a half circle, the tips of the crescents almost touched the haft between them, so that their outer cutting-edges made a nearly complete circle of razor-sharp steel, from which protruded the keen spear-head tipping the shaft.

Two of the aldermen received these accoutrements from the slaves. Brinnaria noticed that one of the other aldermen held the broad, gold-mounted, jeweled scabbard containing the great scimitar with which the King of the Grove kept girt, waking or sleeping. She even noted how its belt trailed from his hands and the shine of its gloss-leather in the torch-rays.

The two aldermen handed a shield and an axe to each contestant. One took from Almo the oak-bough and passed it to the Dictator.

The two champions fitted the shields on their arms, balanced them, and hefted their battle-axes. Each assumed the posture that suited him best, his feet well under him. So they stood facing each other, waiting for the signal.

The King of the Grove was a stocky, solidly-built ruffian of medium height and weight. Almo seemed much taller and very much slenderer and lighter. His delicate features and thin nose contrasted strangely to the high cheek-bones, small, close-set eyes, and wide, flat nostrils of his antagonist.

The Dictator waved the oak-bough and shouted.

The two champions warily approached each other.

Each kept his left foot forward; each crouched, as it were, inside the shield tight against his shoulder; each held his axe aloft.

Each struck, each dodged, Almo awkwardly, his axe trailing behind him after it missed.

The stocky man thought he saw his chance and whirled his weapon, bringing it down in a terrible sweep. Craftily Almo caught it against his shield, just below the upper rim, horribly it grated against the bronze plating of the shield, with the full weight of the mighty swing it buried itself in the sod.

The force of his blow carried the assailant with it so that he almost fell face forward on the sward.

Before he could recover himself Almo’s ready axe swung.

Brinnaria saw it flash in the air. Then she saw the fox-skin cap in two halves, a horrid red void between.

“Oh Vocco,” she called, “t-t-take me home, t-t-take me home.” At that volcanic instant, at the bitterest moment of her life, what kept back her tears was her tendency to laugh at the fact, that, ill the midst of her agony, she did not forget to stutter.