THE darkness of the night, the impenetrability of the fog and the weariness of the bearers all contributed to impede their return journey. While on her way and buoyed up by her wild purpose, Brinnaria had been able to rest herself by dozing along the roadway and had remembered to keep up her strength with food and wine. After they had turned back she could not have swallowed anything, if she had thought to try, and the nearest she came to sleep was an uneasy drowse which seemed a long nightmare. The Cappadocians, famous for their strength, endurance and indifference to wakefulness, exertion, hunger or thirst, were also astute foragers. On their way from Rome the reliefs had invaded every inn they passed and, lavishly provided with small coins by Vocco, had provisioned themselves abundantly. These supplies they handed over to their fellows when they took up the litter. All the way back the spare carriers, plodding behind, munched their provender and conversed in undertones. The bearers, necessarily flagging, trudged leadenly.

Through it all Brinnaria was haunted by her memory of two pictures.

One was of the row of saffron-clad hussies watching the fight.

The King of the Grove was the only legal polygamist in Italy. Concomitant with the barbarous and savage conditions determining his tenure of the office as High Priest in the Grove by the Lake of Diana of the Underworld, congruent with his outlandish attire and ornaments, he had the right to have twelve wives at once. Seldom had a King of the Grove failed to avail himself of the privilege; and, indeed, to have twelve wives was regarded as incumbent upon him, as necessary to his proper sanctity and as indispensable to maintain the curative potencies of the locality, which restored to health each year an army of sufferers.

He had the power to repudiate any wife at any time, to dismiss her and expel her from the Grove. Any former wife of his, when expelled or after leaving the Grove of her own accord, became a free woman with all the privileges of a liberated slave. Most of his ex-wives, however, elected to remain in the Grove and formed a sort of corps of official nurses for the sick who flocked there to be cured. In practice the King of the Grove usually repudiated any wife who lost her youthful charms.

His wives were commonly, like himself, truant slaves.

Fugitive male slaves were an ever-present feature of country life in all parts of the ancient world, as tramps are in modern times. A female runaway, however, was a distinct rarity. But the sanctuary afforded them by the Grove encouraged them about Aricia and many fled to it. If young and comely they became wives of its King. Also slave-girls were constantly being presented to him by grateful convalescents, who had come to the Grove as invalids or cripples and had left it hale and sound. Thus the twelve wives of the King were always as vital and buxom a convocation of wenches as could be found anywhere.

The spectacle they had made haunted Brinnaria.

They had been so utterly callous, so completely indifferent, so merely curious to see which contestant was to be their future master, so vacant-mindedly giggling and nudging each other. The impression they had made on her nauseated her, while the memory of their red cheeks, full contours, youthfulness and undeniable animal charm enraged her.

The other picture which had branded itself on her memory was the sight of Almo, straightening up after stooping over his butchered predecessor, clasping the triple turquoise necklace about his throat.

Almo was King of the Grove.

At that thought and at the recollection of the dozen jades wriggling and smirking, her blood boiled.

By the margin of the cliff Vocco had had much ado finding his horse. On the road back to Aricia they passed through many parties of belated worshippers. As the torch festival kept up until dawn that town was open all night. Unquestioned they passed in at a wide-open gate, through torch-lit, but almost deserted streets, out at another wide-set gate.

In the Roman world travelling by night was almost unexistent. Only imperial couriers and civilians driven by some dire stress kept on their way after sunset. In general travellers halted for the night at some convenient inn or town, or camped by the road if darkness overtook them far from any hostelry. But on the night of the yearly festival of Diana, many parties were abroad. Between Aricia and Bovillae they met several convoys, and about half-way they were overtaken and passed by a rapidly driven carriage, and somewhat tater by a troop of horsemen, trotting restrainedly, one of them on a white horse which showed rather distinctly, even in the fog and darkness.

Near Bovillae they overtook the same band of horsemen, halted about the wreck of two travelling carriages which had crashed together in the fog. Two of the horses lay dead on the stones, killed to put them out of their misery. From curb to curb the pavement was cluttered with pieces of wreckage and the carcasses of the horses. The roadway was completely blocked and the bearers, at first, could find no way around the obstacle.

Some women were wailing over a little boy whose leg had been crushed and who was uttering frightful shrieks. The child screamed so terribly that Brinnaria impulsively leaned half-way out of her litter, carried away by her sympathies. Close beside her she saw the white horse and astride of it, vague in the mist, but unmistakable in his lop-sided, bony leanness, outlined against the glare of the torches behind him, she recognized Calvaster.

Instantly she shrank behind her litter curtains.

Almost at once a relief bearer who had gone to scout reported a free path through the fields by the road.

They continued on their way.

Bovillae, not being one of the towns participating in the Festival of Diana, was closed for the night, its gates shut fast, its walls dark. Going round it was a trying detour over rough cross-roads.

After they were again on the Appian Road they were for a second time overtaken by the same band of horsemen. When their hoof-beats had grown faint in the distance ahead, Vocco ranged his horse alongside the litter and asked:

“Did you notice the man on the white horse?”

“I recognized him,” said Brinnaria briefly.

The fog held all the way to the Appian Gate, which they reached as some watery sun-rays struggled through the mist, held until they reached the Atrium.

Out of her litter tumbled Brinnaria in Flexinna’s rumpled finery, feeling unescapably recognizable, even inside her double veil and under her broad-brimmed, tied-down travelling hat.

But the heavy-built, sinewy slave-woman who guarded the portal of the Atrium passed her in without remark. She met no one on her way up to her suite, where she found Utta squatted outside her bedroom door.

Flexinna was incredulously delighted, pathetically overjoyed to see her.

“You have a wonderful larder here,” she said. “Every single thing I asked for was b-b-brought me at once. I d-d-didn’t have any appetite, b-b-but I had to have food. And I g-g-got it.”

Promptly she put on her own clothing and was gone.

In a trice Brinnaria was flat on her back in bed with Utta massaging her vigorously and methodically. After one comprehensive rubbing she went off for hot milk, hot wine, honey, barley-meal and spices. The posset she brewed she compelled her mistress to swallow. Then she gently massaged her until she was asleep. Thanks to these attentions Brinnaria, after some four hours abed, was able to reappear in the Temple looking not much unlike a Vestal who had enjoyed twenty-four hours of unbroken repose.

Numisia appeared to suspect nothing. Certainly she remonstrated with her and begged her not to exhaust herself so by hard riding.

After that first sleep, induced by fatigue and by Utta’s ministrations, Brinnaria slept little. She tossed and turned. Before her eyes was continually the recollection of that row of saffron-clad minxes, of their exuberant health, heartiness and rollicking vivacity.

The memory of them suffocated her. In the Atrium she had to conceal her inward convulsions of rage, had to appear calm, placid and collected.

The effort made her the more explosive when she was at Flexinna’s and could speak out. She stormed.

Flexinna let her talk herself hoarse. But no amount of talking relieved her. Whatever she said, no matter how often she had said it, she wound up the same way:

“Here I am, packed in ice, so to speak, for thirty years and there he is, King of the Grove, with twelve wives, twelve wives, twelve wives!”

Jealousy, in its most furious form, is not a mild malady, even in our days, and in women of northern ancestry and cold blood. Brinnaria was a hot-blooded Latin and the pulses of her heart were earthquakes of fire. The Romans were a ferocious and sanguinary stock. Even among the most delicately nurtured women love turned quickly into hate and solicitude might in a brief time give place to the thirst for vengeance.

Brinnaria struggled with herself for some days.

Then she bade her coachman drive her to the Fagutal. Her appearance among her tenants caused general trepidation, as usual.

When the clustering drabs and brats discovered that she felt no present interest in women and children, but that she demanded speech with the men, the elder men, their dismay deepened into acute consternation.

Since she would take no denial some dotards and striplings were routed out and the patriarch of the clan was thrust forward. He looked senile from his slippered feet to the shine on his bald-pate, he was blear-eyed and hard of hearing, but he understood plain Latin when he heard it, he knew of old the signs he read in the flash of her eyes, the set of her jaw and every feature as she stood or moved. Also no dog ever had a keener scent for game than he for business.

He shouted in the slang of his caste.

The women and children vanished.

Promptly a chair was brought, carefully dusted and she was invited to seat herself. Before her cringed, in attitudes of obsequious deference, a group of as hulking, truculent, ruthless villains as could have been found anywhere on earth. Just out of earshot of a low-voiced conversation, stood younger men, sentinels, to keep all others at a distance.

The patriarch’s son, recognized chief of the brotherhood, an appallingly inhuman brute, acted as spokesman.

At the first word their wary expression altered to one of brotherly comprehension. There was a man to be killed. Pride in their vocation shone all over them. Yes, they knew of the King of the Grove, who did not? and they especially, since the patriarch’s grandfather, great-grandfather to the spokesman, had at an advanced age ended his life in the Grove, after years as its priest, having become King late in life, the last of a long series of challengers whom the Emperor Caligula had suborned against an insufferable and all but invincible hierophant.

Could they find a swashbuckler willing to assail the present incumbent?

Of a surety and what was more able to vanquish anybody.

Could it be arranged secretly?

No human being would ever suspect that she knew anything about the matter; what was more, the most inquisitive would never divine that they themselves had any hand in the change of priests at Aricia.

How could this be accomplished?

In countless ways. One might find a discontented slave, mighty and skilled with weapons, and reveal to him a means of bettering his condition, or one might bribe the owner of a capable slave to wink at his running away, or if no fit slave could be found, a suitable freeman might be induced to become a slave under a master also in the plot. It was easy, merely a matter of money.

How much money would be needed?

That would depend. If they could cajole a slave the job would call only for cash for the instigator’s expenses, for journey-money and for a good sabre for the challenger, and at the last a bonus for all concerned. If a slave-owner had to be bribed, more cash and more money for bonuses would be required. If a freeman had to be employed the enterprise would be still more expensive. It was all a matter of money, above all, of cash.

Cash was forthcoming.

Brinnaria returned to the Atrium by a circuitous drive out the Tiber Gate, round through the suburbs and in at the River Gate. She needed fresh air. All the way, all the afternoon, all the wakeful night, she was in an eery state of icy, numb exaltation. It was all over—Almo was a dead man, she had avenged herself, she had vindicated the proprieties, her wrath was righteous, her vengeance laudable. This tense condition of her nerves lasted for some days.

According to stipulation the messenger from the tenements on the Fagutal was a decently clad woman of inconspicuously respectable appearance. She came after an interval of about ten days. She was apologetic. Their first champion had perished.

Twice more she brought the same message. Then Brinnaria ventured a second visit to the unsavory locality. She was sarcastic. The chief was abashed.

This, he said, was evidently a task unexpectedly difficult. The more certain was it that they would measure up to the requirements. They felt that their time-honored reputation was at stake.

There followed for Brinnaria an exciting, a wearing autumn and winter. For some months messages came to her at about nine-day intervals, all of the same tenure. Towards mid-winter, on a mild fair day, she risked a third expostulation with her hirelings. On an apologetic and humiliated rabble she poured her scorn.

Thereafter the messages came thicker, about one every four days, but monotonously unwelcome. Brinnaria set her teeth and sent all the money asked for.

Meanwhile her wrath, her jealousy, her thirst for vengeance steadily waned and their place was largely taken by admiration for Almo’s incredible skill and by a sort of pride in him.

But again and again the vision of the twelve baggages returned to her and she steeled her heart. One warm June morning she lost patience and burst in on her gang of cut-throats.

Inundated by a cascade of vitriolic denunciations and stinging sneers they hung their heads, too limp to utter a protest. The patriarch was weeping openly.

Turned from anger to curiosity she found the rookery was in mourning. Their chief, the apple of their eye, aghast at the failures of his minions, had himself undertaken to redeem their honor. For him they grieved. They owned themselves beaten. They had scoured Italy, had sent against Almo every promising bully in the fifteen districts. Their best young men had gone, lastly their adored leader. They could do no more; Almo was invincible.

Brinnaria, reflecting that, after all, she was to blame for their dejection and woe, that, after all, they had done their best, distributed what cash she had with her and promised them a lavish apportionment of gold.

As she went she realized, as they realized, that the place would never see her again.

Next morning she sent for Guntello. That faithful Goth, still huge, mighty and terrific, came, mild as a pet bulldog.

“Go kill him!” she commanded.

“Certainly, Little Mistress,” he acquiesced, “but whom am I to kill?”

She explained.

Guntello, always parsimonious, asked a moderate sum for the purchase of a sabre and for road-money. She gave him ten times as much.

When he was gone, she felt, as at first, a painful numbness of exaltation. Almo was now certainly a dead man.

This mood suddenly inverted itself into an uncontrollable passion f solicitude. Off she posted to Flexinna and confessed everything to Vocco. In a frenzy she demanded they again borrow Nemestronia’s litter and that Vocco again accompany her to Aricia. To their expostulations she retorted that go she would, if not escorted by Vocco, then alone, if not disguised and in a borrowed litter, then in her own and openly, or openly in her carriage or afoot if need be; but go she would!

Flexinna succeeded in getting her to listen long enough to urge that there was no need for her to go personally, as Guntello would obey Vocco at sight of her signet ring, moreover that Guntello now had a long start and that only a swift horseman might hope to intervene in time. To these representations she yielded.

Vocco returned amazed and manifestly relieved. He had arrived too late. Guntello was dead.

That night Brinnaria wept long and bitterly.

“The poor, brave, harmless, faithful fellow,” she moaned. “Out of the malignity of my heart, in my pride and callousness, I sent him to an undeserved death! Oh, I am a wicked woman!” Strangely enough Guntello’s death seemed to divert her mind entirely from the idea of avenging herself on Almo. From hating him, she came to realize that she had really loved him all the while, that she loved him unalterably. From thinking that she desired his death she came to dread acutely that, exhausted in body by more than a hundred fights in ten months and worn by the strain of ceaseless anxiety and vigilance, Almo might succumb to even a chance-brought adversary.

In this new mood she confided in Lutorius.

The good man was horrified.

“And I never suspected anything wrong!” he exclaimed. “At least you have been outwardly collected. Nobody has suspected anything. But this is terrible. A Vestal should menace no man’s life, should not desire any man’s death. Far from it, her heart should be clean of hate, malice or envy.”

“Never mind what I have been,” said Brinnaria.

“No disasters have befallen Rome. There is no sign of any wrathfulness of the gods, or of their displeasure, and I am no longer as I was. That is all over, I am chastened. I desire harm to no one. Quite the reverse. What fills my mind now is the thought that, sooner or later, Alma must perish at the hand of some challenger. I long to save him. I would move earth and sea to save him. Must a King of the Grove live and die King of the Grove? Is there no way to rescue him?”

“Consult the Emperor,” said Lutorius. “He is Chief Pontiff of Rome.”