“I am a patrician—by blood if not by birth! Titus Potitius was my great-grandfather. Don’t you see, Pinaria, the child inside you isn’t the offspring of a nobody, a slave who came from nowhere, who has no ancestors worthy of remembrance. The child inside you carries the blood of the first settlers of Roma, from both his mother and his father. Whatever others may say, and whatever the law may call me, you need not be ashamed of the child. You can be proud, even if you must be proud in secret!”
“Pennatus! I feel no shame for what we’ve done, or what’s resulted from it. Perhaps it’s not even sinful. If Vesta is truly gone, and all the gods have left their temples here on the Capitoline, it may be that your god Fascinus holds sway in Roma, all alone, as he once did long ago, and you and I are doing his bidding, and everything is proper. Who can say, in a world where everything can change in the blink of an eye? No, Pennatus, I’m not ashamed. But I am fearful, for you, and for me, and for the child.” She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to tell you. Some impulse came over me and made me speak. I had thought to keep it to myself, until I was sure, or else…”
She bit her tongue and said no more. Why tell Pennatus where her thoughts had led whenever she considered the child that might be growing inside her? There were ways to rid a woman’s womb of an unwanted baby. Pinaria had a vague notion that there were potions that could be drunk, some of them dangerously poisonous, or that a slender wand, perhaps made of supple willow, might be inserted into her body to bring about the desired expulsion. But Pinaria had no sure knowledge of such matters, and there was no one she could ask for advice or assistance, and there was no way to obtain such a potion. There was not a single willow tree on the Capitoline! And now that she had told Pennatus about the child, and he had responded by sharing his deepest secret with her, and had shown an almost fierce pride in the act of giving her a child…
She shook her head. The voice of the holy Vestal that still dwelled inside her whispered, What a thing, that a slave should be proud of his offspring! What a world, where a Vestal could delude herself into thinking that her pregnancy might please a god!
Suddenly, in the quiet stillness of the night, one of Juno’s sacred geese let out a loud, blaring honk. The unexpected noise broke the tension between them. Pennatus laughed. Pinaria managed a crooked smile.
The goose honked again, and then again.
“If that keeps up, a certain goose is likely to get plucked, sacred to Juno or not,” muttered Pennatus. He brought his lips to hers. They kissed. He moved to embrace her, then drew back. The single goose had been joined by others making the same abrupt, braying racket. “A good thing we’re not trying to sleep!”
“It’s the sentry’s fault, waking them up by calling the all-clear,” said Pinaria.
“But that was a long time ago. Long enough for the geese to fall asleep again.” Pennatus frowned. “Maybe long enough for the sentry to fall asleep…”
The honking of the geese continued.
“Stay here,” whispered Pennatus. “Lock the door after I leave. There’ll be others up, awakened by the geese. I may not be able to return tonight without being seen. Kiss me, Pinaria!”
Pennatus tore himself from her arms, reached for his sword—Dorso had insisted on arming him, despite his status—and slipped out the door. He waited until he heard her drop the lock into place, then hurried toward the sentry post beyond the goose pen.
The rocky face of the Capitoline was very steep at that point—indeed, it was the very place where Pontius Cominius had made his impossible ascent. But of course, the ascent of Pontius Cominius had not been impossible; if he could do it, so could others. On a moonlit night, might a company of Gauls be able to find the footholds and handholds by which Pontius Cominius had reached the top of the Capitoline?
It seemed impossible. And surely, in the stillness of the night, a sentry would hear anyone making such an ascent, and peer over the side to see them long before they reached the top. Unless…
The geese continued to honk.
Pennatus saw the sentry, standing at his post at the cliff’s edge—then realized that the figure dimly lit by the moon was not the sentry, but a Gaul! While Pennatus watched, two other Gauls appeared, clambering over the ledge and standing upright.
His blood froze. He tightened his grip on the sword. He had never actually used such a weapon, except in practice with Dorso. He gripped the image of Fascinus and did something he had never done before: He whispered a prayer for courage and strength.
“Out of my way, slave!” An armor-clad figure knocked him aside and rushed past him. Pennatus recognized Marcus Manlius, a friend of Dorso’s and a former consul. The grizzled veteran rushed headlong toward the Gauls. Giving a great shout, he struck the foremost with his shield. The man staggered back and fell screaming from the cliff, taking the other two with him.
More Gauls scrambled over the edge. Manlius struck with his shield and stabbed with his sword. Pennatus gave a cry and ran to join him.
His sword struck metal with a deafening clang. He lunged again and struck flesh. The sickening impact seemed to travel into his arm and all through his body. Pennatus had scarcely ever caused another man to bleed, much less killed a man. Under moonlight, the blood on the paving stones was glistening and black.
He heard a shout, turned, and saw Dorso. The warrior slashed his sword against the exposed neck of a Gaul with such force that he nearly decapitated the man. A fountain of blood erupted from the wound. The look on Dorso’s face was ferocious and frightening, filled with utter hatred. The Gauls had destroyed his city, driven away his gods, ruined his world. Now, at last, Dorso had a chance to bring death and suffering on at least a few of the Gauls in return.
What had the Gauls done to Pennatus? Their invasion had brought him unexpected freedom, a friendship he could never have known before, and a love he would never have dared to imagine. He feared the Gauls, but he could never hate them as Dorso did. Then he thought of Pinaria. If the Capitoline was taken, all would be lost. Pinaria, the most exquisite and perfect thing in all the world—what might they do to Pinaria?
Miraculously, the Gaul who had been struck by Dorso was still alive, staggering this way and that. With a great cry, Pennatus ran toward him, raised his blade, and finished what Dorso had started. The Gaul’s head went flying through space. It disappeared beyond the precipice, where yet more Gauls were climbing over the edge.
The geese cackled madly. Men shouted and screamed. Suddenly there were many more Gauls and just as many Romans. What started as a skirmish abruptly became a battle, with clanging swords all around and blood everywhere. The moonlit battle seemed incredibly intense and yet utterly unreal to Pennatus, like a strange dream; yet it was no stranger—and no more dangerous—than the waking dream in which Pennatus had become the secret lover of a fallen Vestal.
The Gauls were repulsed. For being the first to rush to the Romans’ defense, Marcus Manlius was declared a hero, and rewarded with extra rations of bread and wine. A full ration of grain was also restored to the sacred geese, whose honking had alerted the defenders.
As for the sentries on duty that night, the military commanders at first declared that all would be put to death for negligence. So would the dogs who kept vigil with them. It was presumed they had all fallen asleep at their posts, including the dogs, since not a single dog barked. The geese had proven to be better sentinels!
Dorso argued against the mass punishment, pointing out that the Romans could ill afford to lose so many men, and among the common soldiers there was a great outcry. It was decided that only the sentry responsible for the area where the assault took place would be punished.
The man denied that he had fallen asleep. In the stillness of the night, he said, he had heard a man and a woman talking. Distracted and bored, he wandered from his post, toward the Temple of Jupiter, trying to figure out where the voices came from. His excuse gained him no sympathy. He was hurled to his death from the ledge where the Gauls had staged their attack. As a token punishment, a single guard dog was also thrown from the cliff.
The Romans increased their vigilance. So did the Gauls, who were determined that no more messengers should reach the Capitoline from the outside world.
Throughout the winter, the occupation and the siege continued. Rain brought fresh drinking water to the Romans, but food grew scarcer.
“If only it would rain fish,” said Pennatus one day, watching a downpour from beneath the pediment of the Temple of Jupiter.
“Or honey cakes!” said Dorso.
“Or bits of dried beef!” said Marcus Manlius, who had a fondness for military rations.
The situation atop the Capitoline grew more and more desperate, but so did the circumstances of the Gauls. Having never dwelled in a city, they understood nothing about sanitation and the disposal of their own wastes. They made a pigsty of Roma, and a plague broke out among them. So many died so quickly that the survivors gave up on burying the bodies separately, but instead piled the corpses in heaps and set fire to them.
Once again, as earlier in the siege, flames and columns of smoke surrounded the Capitoline. The sight of the flaming pyres was ghastly. The smoke and the stench from the burning bodies was stifling. As Pennatus wryly commented to Dorso, “These Gauls have a madness for burning. Having torched all the houses, now they set fire to each other!”
The Gauls also grew hungry. Early in the siege, they carelessly burned several warehouses full of grain. They sorely missed that grain now. Though the Romans on the Capitoline could not know it, the forces of Camillus had taken control of much of the countryside, and the Gauls could no longer go raiding at will to replenish their stores. The city which they had claimed as a prize was becoming a trap and a tomb.
Publicly, Pinaria joined in the daily prayers that Camillus would soon arrive and rescue them. Privately, she lived in constant fear. She did everything she could to hide the visible evidence of her pregnancy. She had so far succeeded, perhaps because the child growing inside her was small and undernourished. But what would happen when she gave birth? Even if she could hide in her room and deliver the child in secret, how could she conceal a crying baby? Could she bear to kill the child immediately after it was born? Babies were allowed to die every day, especially if they were imperfect, but even the most unfeeling mother did not kill an unwanted baby with her own hands; it was taken from her and left in an open place to die from exposure to the elements or wild beasts. The quickest and easiest way to dispose of the child would be to throw it from the Capitoline, but even that might prove impossible, because such a close watch was kept at all points of the perimeter. Would Pennatus do it, if she asked him? What a terrible thing, to ask a father to murder his own child!
And yet, if the child were born and allowed to live, it would surely be discovered—the proof of their crime—and they would all three be put to death. Many times, Pinaria woke from nightmares in which she saw Pennatus beaten to death, and then was sealed in a chamber underground, without light or air. The baby was buried along with her, and in the utter darkness of the crypt its wailing was the last sound she could hear.
In dark moments, she allowed herself to imagine that the baby would be born dead. That would end the fear and dread—but what a thing for a mother to wish for, to give birth to a dead child! Perhaps it would be better for Pinaria to jump from the precipice herself, and to do so soon, before the child inside her grew any larger. Let the Gauls find her broken body and burn it on a pyre. Men would honor her memory, then; they would say she had offered herself, a pure Vestal, as a sacrifice to the gods. The unborn child would die with her, and Pennatus’s guilt would never be known. Slave or not, such a clever fellow surely had a life worth living ahead of him. He would soon forget her and the child that had resulted from their crime. It would be as if Pinaria had never lived…
The one outcome that she would not allow herself to imagine—because it was impossible, and thus too painful—was that the baby would be born healthy and whole, and that she would be able to look upon its face, and proudly show it off, and cherish it with all the devotion and affection of any normal mother. Such a thing could never happen.
These desperate thoughts consumed her. She grew distant from Pennatus. They ceased to make love. The act that had given her such delight she now saw to be a treacherous thing, a trap into which she had foolishly fallen. For a while, they still met in secret, and instead of making love, they conversed—but what was there to talk about except the suffering inflicted on them by the siege, and the even greater suffering that awaited them? Eventually she forbade Pennatus to come to her private chamber again, saying she did so for his own safety, when in fact she simply could not bear to be alone with him.
She grew closer to Dorso, who treated her always with deference and respect. Pennatus, as Dorso’s friend, was often present in their company, but he knew better than to treat her with too much familiarity. He hid his pain and confusion by making wry comments and bitter jokes, and no one noticed that his behavior was any different than before. People did notice a change in Pinaria, and commented on it. Men called her the melancholy Vestal, but they thought her suffering was for their sake and they honored her sadness as a sign of her piety.
For seven months the Gauls occupied Roma, from midsummer to midwinter. It was on the Ides of Februarius that Pinaria, crossing the Capitoline, her head clouded by dark thoughts, was given the news by Dorso.
He ran up to her. He said something. She was so distracted that she did not hear his words, but from his animated expression she realized that something of great importance had happened. From the corner of her eye she perceived movement. She looked around and saw that all of the Capitoline was in a great commotion. People hurried this way and that, gripped one another, spoke in whispers and shouts, laughed, wept.
“What’s happening, Dorso?”
“A messenger has come—a Roman! The Gauls allowed him to pass. He came right up the pathway.”