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.