They were almost as statuesque as their two elders, who reclined at table in attitudes scarcely less majestic than those of the Fates on the Parthenon pediment. Meffia sprawled uncouthly and was forever spreading her knees apart, generally with one up in the air. Her postures were so disgusting that Brinnaria was hot all over with determination not to be like Meffia.
She succeeded.
Great was her exultation when she perceived that it was no longer Brinnaria and Meffia who gave cause for concern to Causidiena, but Meffia and Brinnaria, great her triumph when she made sure that Causidiena had ceased worrying about her, or worried only at long intervals, but was perpetually solicitous concerning Meffia.
Meffia was indeed a cause of solicitude. She was stupid, slow and idle about her lessons, tearful on the slightest provocation, inert at all times and generally ailing, though never actually ill. She never looked clean, no matter how faithfully her maid toiled over her; she could somehow reduce, in an amazingly short time, the neatest attire to the semblance of mussed and rumpled rags; she slouched and shambled rather than walked, she lolled rather than sat.
Her hands were feeble and ineffective, her writing remained a childish scrawl, no matter how much she was made to practice, she dropped things continually and frequently spilt her food at meal-time. Most of all was her awkwardness manifest in the temple.
The temple was circular, its roof supported by eighteen splendid marble columns, the intervals between which were walled up to the height of not much more than five feet, the space from the top of the low wall to the roof being filled in with magnificent lattices of heavy cast bronze; so that the temple was a pleasant, breezy place on warm days, but very draughty in chilly weather and bitterly cold in winter. It contained no statue, nor any other object of worship, except in the center of its floor the circular altar on which burned the sacred fire, solemnly extinguished and ceremonially rekindled on each first of March, the New Year’s day of the primitive Roman Calendar, but which must never at any other time be permitted to go out, upon whose continual burning depended the prosperity of Rome, according to the belief implicitly held by all Romans from the earliest days until Brinnaria’s time, and for centuries after. The extinction of the perpetual fire, whether by accident or by neglect, was looked upon as a presage of frightful disaster to the nation, as an omen of impending horrors, almost as the probable cause of national misfortunes. Without qualification or doubt the people of Brinnaria’s world believed that, as long as Vesta’s holy fire burned steadily and brightly, Rome was assured the favor and protection of her gods; that, should it die out, their wrath was certain to be manifested in terrible afflictions involving the entire population.
The care of the fire was the chief duty of Brinnaria and her five associates, as it had been of their predecessors for more than nine hundred years. As maple was the sacred wood in the Roman ritual, maple only was used for the holy fire. The size of the pieces used and their shape was also a matter of immemorial ordinance. Each piece was about a cubit long, about the length of the forearm of an average adult, measured from elbow to finger-tips. Each piece must be wedge-shaped, with the bark on the rounded side and the other two sides meeting at a sharp edge where had been the heart of the trunk or branch from which it had been cut. Each piece must have been clean cleft with a strong sweep of the axe. The pieces varied from sections of stout trunks to mere slivers from slender boughs. All were of dry, well-seasoned wood, carefully prepared.
The placing of these on the fire was a matter of ritual and might be done no otherwise than as prescribed. It was quite a delicate art to lay the necessary piece in just the right place and at just the right angle; it required more than a little good sense and discretion to know just when a piece was required, for the fire must not burn violently nor must it smoulder, it must be steady but not strong. This discretion, this good sense, Meffia was slow to acquire. The art of laying the wood properly she acquired very imperfectly. She did it well enough under direction; but, even with Causidiena watching her, she was likely to drop the piece of wood on the floor, or, what was worse, to drop it on the fire instead of laying it on. The scattering of ashes on the floor of the temple was held unseemly, that live coals should fall from the Altar was considered almost sacrilegious. Meffia, more than once, perpetrated such appalling blunders. Very tardily did she learn her duties; only after four years could she be trusted to take her regular turn in care of the fire and to stand her watch of half a night each time her turn came between sunset and sunrise.
During these four years she had grown into a not unpersonable young woman, for Roman girls were generally young women at fourteen years of age. She was never ruddy or robust, always pale, delicate-looking and fragile-seeming, never actually ill, but usually ailing, peevish, limp and querulous. Life in the Atrium largely consisted in the effort to keep Meffia well, to make sure that she was not overtired, to foresee and forestall opportunities for her to blunder, to repair the consequences of her mistakes, generally to protect and guide her.
In the same four years Brinnaria had developed into a muscular girl, tall, amply fleshed, robust, rosy, full of healthy vigor, lithe and strong. She was radiantly handsome, knew it, and was proud of it. Her duties she knew to the last, least detail, and Causidiena trusted her quite as much as Manlia or Gargilia.