Fire and Sacrifice Page 4

  H86. Pitcher (AV 91.60); rim fragment. Bucchero. Lustrous black surface. Rim diam. 0.07m.

  FIRE

  Secunda

  October 114 BC

  I had not been allowed to cook the first night. I had to watch Urgulania and get to know things and clean up with Helvi, but I was fairly bursting to get in there and show what I could do. It was the only thing I had to offer. I stood and watched Urgulania gut the fish, while she entertained herself throwing baffling wisdoms at me. Helvi watched my every move.

  The Vestals shared their slaves, and so really me and Urgulania too, with the high priest and so we cooked for Dalmaticus on the nights he stayed in the Regia, which was most, and Tristan and Cor were often over there attending to his fire and whatever else. He seemed to be around that night, keeping an eye on me and what I did to the place, I imagined. I noticed Urgulania had Tristan take his meal across instead of me.

  ‘You’ve come on a full moon,’ Urgulania said, pointing at me with her knife, which dripped a string of fish guts. Some people talk with their hands; Urgulania talked with her knife. ‘The best time for beginnings,’ she smiled warmly. ‘Time when things that have been kept in darkness are let into the light.’ She smiled in a way that made me feel like she meant me, though I wasn’t quite following.

  An owl flew in and settled on the wall above us, in the dark.

  Urgulania was forever gutting fish. She did it while she waddled about, talking, the fish in one hand, knife in the other. She’d make one swift slice down the belly, then tuck the knife in the crook of her thumb and rip the guts out with her fingers, flinging them into the fire or stuffing them into her apron pocket if she’d wandered away. She kept some of the guts to ferment into fish sauce, setting a new pot every couple of months.

  My new kitchen had fat bunches of herbs drying on hooks above the oven, which was set along the back wall where it could heat the wall behind it, which joined the house, and be clearly seen from the gate by passers-by. It was the hearth of the house of the priestesses of Vesta. It had a hearth fire inset at ground level, for the heavy pots and the little clay oven for slow cooking, and a tray top that I could fill with hot coals to sit pans on.

  Next to the herbs hung a ball of goat cheese maturing in linen, which I planned to roll in the finest of sifted ash, perfect for a Vestal. Against the opposite wall was a little wood table with a fat, tapped honey pot and shelves above with every shape of pot and pan and jug. It was a place for doing, making, serving.

  ‘That one was Minucia’s’, Terentia had said with a warning in her voice, nodding toward a curvy black-glazed jug on the top shelf. It was a completely ordinary thing but Terentia admired it with open piety. ‘Minucia was a priestess here more than two hundred years ago. That was hers.’

  Next, Terentia pointed at an old cup painted with a bird in flight. ‘That was Aemilia’s favourite.’

  The name yanked at me, begged me take down the bowl and love it in all its modesty.

  ‘Not our Aemilia. Another, around three hundred years ago now. She wanted it to be used.’

  I decided I never could.

  The sacred square was a place more ancient that I had comprehended. The Vestals had been handed a torch six or seven hundred years old, a living flame that must never be allowed to go out, and the sharing of such a responsibility seeped into everything they did and had.

  Opimia’s Pot was a little stone rose that twisted apart and encased hardening beeswax, of which the smallest fingertip was enough to train flyaway hairs back into braids. Floronia’s Oil was a lovely little glass bottle, swirled with Egyptian blue, that the priestesses would forever refill with the sacred oils for anointing themselves before a public ritual.

  In the dining room, which was really the only shared room and therefore also the lounge, the far wall was lined with sandstone sheets in which was carved the name of every Vestal from the first, Rhea Silvia, lit by tall candelabras in each corner so they were shrouded in gentle smoke as they were in life, and the shadows of the letters shifted and flickered like souls remembered.

  There cut off from public sight in the dining room was an earthen candlestick in the shape of a lily and glazed in soft white that I was told had belonged to a priestess called Sextilia. It was so erotically perfect in its lines and fleshy whiteness I skirted around it from that day on, convinced it was the body of the priestess herself. When I could leave the dust on it no longer I wrapped it in a white pillowcase and held it under the ever-running water of the sacred spring without ever touching my skin to it.

  In the kitchen, Urgulania had her own collection of jars of shrivelled things and acrid potions and poultices that were far less frightening but that I also didn’t touch. In her private quarters round the side of the temple square, she had a little collection of incense and an ancient-looking challis.

  For all its tidiness its age showed, too, like the lines on a grandmother’s face that you wouldn’t change for anything. Arcs of ingrained soot framed the hearths and cheeky little violets and moss were allowed to stay snuggled in cracks in the corners.

  My mother would have liked it here. At House Peducaeus she’d go out in the fresh air as often as she could and come back with little sprigs of green that she’d keep until long after they wilted. When she died they laid her out the back on the grass, covered by an old blanket. I looked under it. I thought about her, there in the sacred square.

  ‘So, how does stepping into the light feel, darlin’?’ Urgulania asked me when we’d done clearing away.

  I had no idea what to say to that except, dumbly, ‘It’s good.’

  She harrumphed at me. ‘Yes, yes, alright,’ she muttered, as if some invisible person nagged her. ‘I won’t push.’ She looked up at the night sky in that way that makes people follow your gaze. ‘See that? Clear patch of sky in the southeast. See? Everything else cloud – solid blanket of cloud – then suddenly clear.’ She looked to see if I was following. ‘The gods are showing us where to look: southeast. That’s the realm of Apollo, do you know?’

  ‘Apollo who slew Python at Delphi and took the role for himself.’ I was grateful to show I knew something, finally.

  ‘People think it’s about Apollo wanting the oracle’s power for himself, but they’re missing the point. It’s about Snake . . . Snake is for healing. You are here to heal. Hmmm,’ she nodded to herself. ‘Best get rest.’

  I didn’t answer that one, either. I was beyond healing – and eternally grateful that the old woman finally wandered off to bed, taking Helvi with her to the slave quarters on the other side of the wall, near the orchard, and I had the kitchen to myself.

  I stayed up until nearly midnight pitting dates and shelling almonds to go in the morning’s bread, to be baked before sunrise in my little clay oven. It would be the best bread the priestesses had ever had at breakfast, and they would see.

  See what?

  Just see.

  I was never afraid of the fire . . . after. Mother saw to that, I suppose. We had to keep working the kitchen, the household must still be fed, so she plonked me right back there in front of it and said ‘stay!’ and went back to work. Oddly, the heat didn’t flare my burns. It was as if the burning sore bits relaxed in the presence of kin, and the rest of my body warmed up to a comfortable balance. Away from the fire, and at night when the fire died down, that’s when everything screamed and I went for the frost.

  In the sacred square, I was allowed to sleep in the corner of the kitchen, under the stone workbench along the side wall. I was longer than the bench so my feet stuck out the end but I could press my toes against the warm stone of the end of the oven.

  I was to keep that bench clear and clean between cooks. The street end was sculpted with garlands of fruits and vines, and I was to keep my stone mill on that corner with the urn of grain beside it in a little picture of all things Vestal for anyone who passed by.

  I asked to sleep in the kitchen rather than the slave quarters. From the dark under the table I could bare
ly be seen. Terentia inspected every morning to be sure my bedroll was cleared out of sight before the light came. Among the first nights I found a pouch the size of a child’s palm, stuffed deep between bricks where the mortar had fallen away: a little square of linen with frayed edges, glued together by dirt and damp and time, and spotted with mould. Wrapped inside I found a pouch of pink brushed silk with a hardened drawstring, and inside a tiny brooch of a gold dragonfly with lapis lazuli and turquoise beads on its wings and belly. It was a little forbidden thing a new apprentice had refused to part with, a secret memento from a father to a daughter, perhaps.

  ‘Claudia’ was all Terentia said when I showed it to her. She caressed the little thing and smiled to herself. It was revealed through other sources that Claudia had died of sickness very young, soon after joining the temple. Terentia was also but a girl at the time, hence the little treasure was never moved but likely retrieved by Claudia on a nightly basis, loved and returned to its hiding place.

  ‘Let’s put it back for her,’ Terentia said, to my astonishment entrusting me with the treasure. She followed me to the spot, got right down on her knees to see it, and patted the bricks where we redeposited the pouch.

  Terentia came just on sunrise every day from that first, stopped in the yard to check the smoke coming from the temple – long enough to be sure it was still there – then came to the kitchen to take some bread and make an offering to Vesta. Every morning she looked my space over and turned the stone mill just so, to be sure that whatever tiny variation in the quartz or the wood of the handle that most appealed to her sensitivities was fronted to the public view.

  From my bedroll I could crane my neck and see round the corner into the sacred square. I lay there watching, listening to Urgulania snoring on the other side of the wall, and Helvi’s giggles when the old woman farted.

  At midnight Marcia and Licinia came silently from the temple and across the courtyard into the house, leaving behind them an orange glow from the open temple doors. Within a moment, the master priestesses Aemilia and Pompeia emerged from their rooms and made their way to take over, silent but for the light scuff of slippers on stone.

  They blew a kiss to the moon and were swiftly gone into the temple.

  I watched that door for a long time.

  FIRE

  Secunda

  October 114 BC

  The priestesses were the only ones who lived in the forum – and me and Urgulania and Helvi, I suppose. Tristan and Cor seemed to sleep wherever they worked, which sometimes took them into the hills or who knew where. In the earliest morning the forum was all mine, and I set to work under the silvery sky. I hurried my bedroll out of sight and set to kneading my bread.

  First, baby rays of sun stole across the tips of the facades of the temples, silver then pinky-red then gold. Then the traders began to arrive along the street and I would be at their stalls for first pick of the finest freshest fruit and veg that had no bruises or bumps. A priestess should eat only the most pure of nature’s offerings. She should eat the reddest of berries that will stain her lips ever so slightly ruby. She should eat the herbs picked at the hour before dawn when the infant sun’s rays bring out the sweetest of oils. She should eat living foods: greens, nuts, fruits, mussels from the very edge of the tide. Their bread should be fresh every day, warm and ready just as Aemilia and Pompeia opened the temple doors to the eastern sun.

  I lit a fire.

  Three pieces of bread for Vesta.

  My cooking had kept me alive in the master’s house. Now it would be my gift to the Vestals. This was the thing I could do.

  I lit a fire.

  EARTH

  Fragments

  The Fasti, Tristia, Pontic Epistles, Ibis, and Halieuticon of Ovid, literally translated into English prose, with copious notes, by Henry T. Riley, H.G. Bohn, London, 1851, p. 224.

  And consider Vesta nothing else than the living flame; you see that no bodies are produced by flame. In truth she is a virgin, who neither yields nor receives the principles of conception, and who has like companions of her virgin state. Long did I, in my simplicity, imagine that there were statues of Vesta, but I afterwards ascertained that there were none under her concave dome. The fire that has never been extinguished lies hidden in that temple. Neither Vesta nor the fire has any likeness. By its own strength does the earth rest: from standing by her own strength is she named Vesta . . .

  WATER

  Pompeia

  October 114 BC

  Marcus Aemilius Scaurus ruled Rome with a nod of his head, we used to say.

  Whenever he came to us he checked for the smoke from the temple, then the state of our own hearth in the open kitchen and, gods willing, nodded approval, which was always to no one in particular. Scaurus was the kind of man who slithered into a room without affecting it so he could observe and take the measure of its weaknesses.

  That morning, Tristan had run into the square to warn us that Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, head of the senate, was on his way up the street to our temple.

  I peeked out the gate to see his lictors leading this way, always looking grim and apologetic as though they rarely expected a visit to be a pleasant affair.

  Marcus Aemilius did not feel the world around him: the world experienced Marcus Aemilius while he simply glided through it, pushing it aside like water before the bow of his ship.

  He was a pointed man with a thinker’s hunch, and the sunken cheeks of a man with more important things to do than linger over meals.

  I felt Aemilia scatter at the name.

  ‘I’m not ready!’ She grabbed my arm.

  ‘The stables,’ I told her, pushing her toward the gate. I waved madly for Secunda to catch up. She pulled her cup away from the honey tap and let the honey drip onto the ground, the lovely stuff oozing too slow in the early morning cold.

  ‘Secunda hasn’t seen the stables yet. Go, show her. Now!’

  FIRE

  Secunda

  October 114 BC

  Marcia was already in the stable, petting a black stallion. ‘That one is Damascus,’ Aemilia said, doing her best to pretend to be at ease. ‘And this is Cyprus,’ she pointed to the white one.

  At the stables there were raised stepping stones for the priestesses to keep the mud and dung from their white hems. Marcia leaned cheek to cheek to Damascus like they would gallop away and become lovers like they do in the myths.

  She had a smock over her robes to protect them from the grime of the stables. Cor handed one to Aemilia as we approached. He nodded hello to me.

  Aemilia was all for Cyprus. She rubbed its snout and laid her head on the beast’s neck.

  I stayed back, watching the priestesses on tiptoe on those stepping stones in their smocks, looking like little girls and goddesses all at once.

  Cyprus leaned in and nuzzled Aemilia, its eyes half closed with bliss while she tidied its fringe. She took a brush from the crossbeam in the stable wall and brushed the horse’s neck and thigh with the brusque hardness that an animal that size would appreciate.

  ‘You’re my beautiful boy, yes you are.’ She watched me close. ‘Do you like him?’ She wanted me to love Cyprus. No, she wanted to see if I would love him. What would a person love if a person had choices?

  He smelled like a mouldy blanket and blew hot breath on me. Think of something useful. ‘I love his blond eyelashes. They’re as long as my finger!’

  ‘I wanted a black one,’ Marcia said. ‘We bought them from my cousin, or my cousin’s husband, really. They have a stud near Ostia.’ She talked without looking at either me or Aemilia, off in that private world of hers somewhere between here and the gateway to the gods. ‘You never truly know an animal. You think you’re best of friends, then they turn on you suddenly for reasons you don’t understand.’

  Neither of us knew quite how to respond, so we drifted to the garden. There was a thicket of fruit trees and a large dark rectangle of turned earth – gods, I love that smell – all woven in with smells of warm hay a
nd old rugs in the stable, and wet leaves. I’ll bet that same place has been tilled and sowed and harvested and tilled since Jupiter walked the earth and kings named the first Vestals.

  More stepping stones provided access through the middle: carrots, cabbage, celery, parsnips – I would watch for the first frost to pick those. A fig spread itself across the fold of the hill. There was a clump of belladonna near it that brought a bubble to my throat, took me in an instant back to the villa and the master and the places I didn’t want to be.

  Belladonna. When I was old enough to know what happened when the Master Peducaeus took my mother to his room, and I was old enough to know that she made no protest because she was buying my life because I was otherwise an ugly burden that could not be used or sold, I began to squeeze the juice of belladonna berries into his wine. The colour was the same. The belladonna made him too sick to be interested in my mother. I’d sometimes use mandrake instead, to put him to sleep. Mixing it up made it harder for him to work it out. I’d have killed him with it, nearly did after Mother died, but then there would be the sons in charge.

  I pushed all that aside. A big pear tree on the temple side in the morning sun, all happy green and yellow.

  I went to pick an armful to poach for dessert and she followed me. It was so lovely, I think I made a noise.

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘It’s wonderful.’

  ‘Is it?’ It was a funny tone. Surprise, which she took back at the last second.

  Tristan cleared his throat behind us. ‘He’s leaving.’

  Aemilia nodded. She pointed at a dark heap in the shaded corner. ‘Your kitchen scraps go there. And bring your ash to scatter when you clean out your hearth. It’s good for the soil.’

  And with that she was gone. Even before she entered the temple I felt the loss of her as her mind answered some other call, gone into the wilds of her own heart as priestesses do and we can not follow.