“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.