“But I hesitate. I can’t make up my mind. All I need is a sign that you are as acceptable to Vesta as I believe you are. I have tried to satisfy myself, to elicit some sign of the Goddess’ will, but no sign has been vouchsafed me. I’ve had the Sibylline Books consulted, which is a trying matter with Calvaster left out of the consulting board; I have sent to every oracle within reach, have put questions to all the sibyls in all the caves of Italy, have called in a rabble of Etruscan soothsayers, every haruspex and auspex in Etruria, I believe. They all hedge. They are all vague. They are all indefinite. They give me no help!
“Now, I like you; I like Almo; I like both of you and I respect you; I believe in you. I’d hate to wake up and call for any breakfast I had a whim for and look at it and smell it and think of you, all alone in the dark in a vaulted cell six foot under the rubbish of that garbage-dump out by the Colline Gate. And I hate the thought of the bother and worry of a trial. I want to put my foot down and assert my will and be done with it all. But, as I’ve said a dozen times already, I hesitate. Chiefly I hesitate because I am resolute to do my duty to Rome according to my lights. I feel I am right, but I am not quite man enough to follow my feelings. If I could have some plain sign that Vesta understands and condones your past irregularities as I do, that Vesta approves of you and is pleased with you as I am, if I could feel Vesta corroborating my feelings, if I could evoke an unmistakable token of her will, I’d not hesitate. I’d scout the suggestion of a trial; I’d squelch Calvaster; I’d absolve you.”
Brinnaria looked straight into his goggling, bloodshot eyes.
“Would you consider it an unmistakable sign,” she said, “a plain token of my acceptability to my Goddess, of her esteem for me, if Vesta gave me power to carry water in a sieve?”
Commodus goggled his eyes at her even more than habitually.
“Carry water in a sieve,” he cried, “as Tuccia did?”
“There is a legend,” said Brinnaria sedately, “that some Vestal once proved her holiness by carrying water in a sieve. And the story is connected with Tuccia in popular tradition. But if it was ever done some other Vestal did it. Poor Tuccia was innocent, as far as I can judge from the minutes of her trial. But she was not absolved, by intervention of Vesta or of her judges. She was condemned and buried. You can read the verdict as well as the details of the proceedings in the records. And what is left of poor Tuccia is now in one of those tiny vaulted cells under the Wicked Field. You will find, along with the documents of her case, the bill for the wages of the mason who completed the vault after she had descended the ladder and the affidavits of the sentinels who patrolled the spot day and night for a month, according to custom.”
“Never mind who did it or didn’t do it, or whether it ever was done at all before,” said Commodus, “if I saw you carry water in a sieve I’d hold it a plain sign of Vesta’s particular favor to you, of your special acceptability to her, of the correctness of my intuitions about you and about this whole wretched business.
“Do I understand you to offer to demonstrate your innocence by carrying water in a sieve?”
“That is my offer!” said Brinnaria.