Roma.The novel of ancient Rome - Saylor Steven - Страница 70

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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.”

“A messenger? Who sent him?”

“Camillus, of course! Come, let’s hear what the man has to say.” He led her to the Temple of Jupiter, where a soldier, dressed in armor but carrying no weapons, stood on the top step to address the crowd. People shuffled aside to allow Pinaria to move to the front of the crowd.

Men were shouting questions at the messenger, who raised his hand. “Be patient!” he said. “Wait until everyone has gathered. Otherwise, I shall have to repeat myself a hundred times.”

“But look here!” shouted Marcus Manlius. “Gaius Fabius Dorso has arrived with the melancholy Vestal. That’s everyone who counts! Say what you have to say!”

People in the crowd laughed. The mood was cheerful, for everyone could see by the messenger’s face that he came with good news.

“Very well. Over the last few months, our armies have regrouped under the leadership of the dictator Marcus Furius Camillus-”

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