Part 34 (2/2)

”That suits me,” said Commodus.

”And the hour?” Numisia queried.

”Noon,” said the Emperor.

Accordingly it was settled that Brinnaria was to face her ordeal at midday on August fifteenth of the nine hundred and thirty-seventh year after the founding of Rome, 184 of our era.

That night Numisia, conferring with Brinnaria, concluded by saying:

”Truttidius enjoined me to remind you to be very careful not to touch the web of the sieve with your fingers. Also he says that, if anybody's finger touches the web of the sieve as it is being handed to you, you are to decline to accept it and to demand another.”

”I understand that already,” said Brinnaria.

The Marble Quay was that part of the embankment along the left bank of the Tiber which was used by the Emperors of Rome for embarking on their state barges and for landing from them whenever they took part in one of the gorgeous river processions. Also it was used by all members of the Imperial household for starting on excursions by water or when returning from them. It was situated below the north corner of the Aventine Hill, not far from the square end of the Circus Maximus, close to the round Temple of Hercules and near the meat market. Every trace of it has long since vanished, its precious marbles having offered most tempting plunder for builders of every century since the fall of Rome.

In its glory it was a s.p.a.ce about two hundred feet long and nearly a hundred feet wide, bounded by a gentle hollow curve along the river, and enclosed on the other three sides by magnificent colonnaded porticoes.

The shafts of the columns were of black Lucullean marble and fully forty feet high. Their capitals and bases were of green porphyry, the entablature they carried of red porphyry and the wall behind them of yellow Numidian marble. The area was paved with slabs of pinkish and light greenish marble while the copings of the Quay and the steps leading down to the water were of coral red marble, a building material extremely rare and very costly.

At noon on the fifteenth of August the area, lined all round just before the colonnade by a double rank of Pretorian guards, gorgeous in their trappings of red gloss leather, gilded metal and scarlet cloth, was thronged with Senators, Pontiffs and officials of the Imperial Court, to the number of nearly a thousand.

Midway of the crowd, near the head of the middle water-stair, a part of the pavement, ringed about by the lucky dignitaries in the front row of spectators, was left free. In it, by the water-steps, were grouped a selection of Pontiffs, all the Flamens, four Vestals and the Emperor.

The yellow river was almost free of craft; along the other bank some barges were being warped up-stream; nearby only patrol boats were visible.

Brinnaria, standing alert and springily erect, her white habit dazzlingly fresh, fresh as the white flowers clasped at her bosom by her big pearl brooch, looked like a care-free young matron who had had a long night's sleep and a good breakfast. Commodus, looking her up nd down, mentally contrasted her easy pose and the rosiness of her smiling face with the tense statuesqueness and austere, almost grim countenances of her three colleagues. He noticed that her three-strand pearl necklace seemed to become her more than theirs became the other three and that she wore her square, white headdress with an indefinable difference, that there was a difference in the very hang of her headband and in the way its ta.s.sels lay on her bosom. He noted two unusual adjuncts to her attire; a long, rough towel through her girdle and a gold sacrificial dipper thrust in beside it.

”Are you ready?” he asked her.

She looked him full in the face and slowly raised her left arm, stiffly straight, hand extended, palm down, until her finger-tips were almost level with his face and not a foot from it. Holding it so at full stretch she asked:

”What do you think of that? Am I ready?”

Commodus regarded her finger-tips, her face, and again her finger-tips:

”Hercules be good to me!” he exclaimed. ”Not a tremble, not a waver, not a quiver. You are mighty cool. You've plenty of confidence. I take it you are ready.”

”I am,” said Brinnaria. ”Where is that sieve?”

From behind her spoke Calvaster. ”I have a sieve here.”

Commodus rounded on him like an angry mastiff.

”Who authorized you to speak?” he demanded. ”You act as if you were Emperor. You are merely a minor Pontiff. Remember that and speak when you are spoken to.”

Calvaster, abashed but persistent, stammered:

”I merely offered a sieve.”

<script>