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.”