It might be that the vestal was innocent, or it might be that youth and fire in the blood and some untoward nearness and temptation had dragged her into that pit. Either way, she was to perish, seeing that certainly the people had been made to believe her guilty. Believing her so, there was no force to hold them from throwing her to the law which of old the Roman men had made. As though the two heard it with their ears, they heard the outcry of the thousands against sacrilege and broken law! They heard the outcry for Flavia’s death by the old, terrible way!
In the night-time, life came back to Valeria’s veins. The broken will rose and mended itself. Reason said no doing now would help, but something beyond reason yet resisted, because resistance must not be lost. She rose, she left Valerian sleeping, heavy with sorrow; she woke Ina and took from her a coarse dark mantle; she clad and sandalled herself, and silently passed from the house, and crossing the terrace, went down through the almond trees and the vineyard to the road. She had put a brown stain upon her face; stooping, in the slave’s mantle, she seemed an old woman. What throbbed in her brain was the intent to reach Cæsar, at least to cry to him of the wrath of the gods.
In an hour there overtook her a cart from the hills, bearing grapes and melons to market. She begged a lift, and the boy driving let her seat herself upon the cart floor among the baskets. When he asked she told him that she was a fortune-teller, come out to the hills to search for a certain herb.—No, she had not found it. Perhaps it did not grow anywhere any longer.—“What is its name?”—“Justice.”
She passed with the boy through the gates at dawn. Leaving him and his cart she stole afoot through the grey streets to the Palatine. There she found the stairway, cut in the rock, leading to the summit and the palace where dwelt Cæsar, and here at the foot in a broad space where were always beggars and petitioners she sat down, drew her mantle yet farther over her brow, and extended her hand as if for begging. When the day was here, surely at some hour, Cæsar would come by!
Much after sunrise, a portly, good-natured-looking personage approached, passed, and passing tossed her a small coin. She put out her hand and clasped his mantle and asked if Cæsar would that day leave the palace, come this way. “It is probable—it is probable!” said the good-natured personage and went on to climb the hill.
Noon came and afternoon. A stream went up the stair, a stream came down the stair, but never Cæsar.
When the sun was westering fast Valeria crossed to a legless man under an ilex tree. “Is Cæsar never coming down to throw us money?”
“Have you feet,” said the legless man, “and see not all that happens in the world?—Cæsar is not in the palace. He is at his villa on the Appian Way. He went there yesterday and with him a troop of those of the wilder sort—not sober children like you and me!”
It was twilight when she went by the House of the Vestals, and going, raised her arms to the darkening sky. Flavia was not in that house. She was away from the mercies of Vesta. She was in prison, and out by the gate of the Sabine road they opened the earth....
Valeria’s senses swam. To give her strength she bought bread with the coin yet in her hand, and ate it as she walked. It was now night, and the ways no longer crowded. She was moving toward the Appian Gate. Carts rumbled by, then passed horse-litters or palanquins borne by slaves; there were people afoot, revellers and tavern-haunters, Romans on graver business, freedmen, slaves, beggars, men and old women, women of the streets and those who accompanied them. Dogs prowled, there came strains of music, flashes from swinging lanterns, stretches of vacancy and darkness. She passed a shop with a painted rose for sign and entered one of those spaces of what seemed dark emptiness. Seemed, for presently she heard before her stumbling feet and sobbing breath, and overtook a woman, going also toward the Appian Gate.