But she was obliged to return to Rome; and with a small retinue, and without heralds preceding her, she started, and in the morning arrived at the Porta Collina. Then Eboracus, coming to the side of the litter, said:—
“Lady, there is a great crowd, and the street is full to choking. What is your good pleasure? shall we announce who you are, and command a passage?”
“Nay,” answered the princess, “my good Eboracus, let us draw aside, and the swarm will pass, then we can go our way unconcerned. I am in no precipitate haste, and, in faith, every minute I am outside Rome, the better satisfied am I.”
“But, madam, it is an ill spot, we are opposite the Accursed Field.”
“That matters not. It is but for a brief while. Go forward, Eboracus, and inquire what this crowd signifies. Methinks the people are marvellously still. I hear no shout, not even a murmur.”
“There be priests leading the way.”
“It is some religious rite. Run forward, Eboracus, and make inquiries. That boy bears an inverted torch.”
The sight was extraordinary. A procession of priests was advancing in silence, and an enormous crowd followed through the gate, pouring forth like water from a sluice, yet without a word spoken. The only sound was that of the tramp of feet.
The place where Domitia had halted was just outside the Collina gateway, where was the wall of Servius Tullius and in its moat, thirty feet deep, but dry, out of which rose the wall of massive blocks to another thirty above the level of the ground.
This ditch was a pestilential refuse place into which the carcasses of beasts, foul rags, sometimes even the bodies of men, and all the unmentionable filth of a great city were cast. So foul was the spot, so unwholesome the exhalations that no habitations were near it, and the wide open space before the wall went by the designation of the Accursed Field.