Part 37 (1/2)

As when younger, she dined out very often and regularly with Vocco and Flexinna. But since Calvaster's accusation, she never visited Flexinna alone, always in company with another Vestal, usually Terentia, so that her dinners at Flexinna's became restricted to evenings on which she and Terentia were both off duty. Terentia, who was pa.s.sionately fond of small children, revelled in her visits to Flexinna's house, where there were children of all ages in abundance, all ready to make friends, all diverting, all pleased at being petted, and, as Flexinna said:

”Not a stutterer among 'em.”

From Almo news came frequently through Flexinna.

His campaign, deliberately prepared and relentlessly carried out, progressed evenly and without any reverse.

The nomads nowhere withstood his legions and their attendant cloud of allied cavalry; one after the other their strongholds were reached and stormed, methodically and unhurriedly he reduced tribe after tribe to submission, his prestige growing from season to season and from year to year.

When Brinnaria's term of service was drawing to an end and only about eleven months of it remained, all Roman society was convulsed by what was variously referred to as the Calvaster scandal, the great poisoning trial or the murder of Pulfennia.

Pulfennia Ulubrana, one of Calvaster's great-aunts, was a dwarfish creature, humpbacked and clubfooted.

She was an only child and her parents, in spite of her deformities, were devoted to her. They lavished on her everything that fondness could suggest, and, as they were very wealthy, she not only lived but enjoyed life in her way and to a very considerable extent.

To begin with she never had an ill hour or an ache or a pain from her earliest years. Then, like many cripples, she had great vitality and a wonderfully alert mind. Amid the small army of maids, governesses, tutors, pages, litter-bearers, and so on, with which her parents surrounded her she did not become merely peevish, exacting and overbearing, as might have been expected. Even the services of her personal physician, of three expert readers to read aloud to her and of a half dozen musicians to divert her whenever she pleased, did not spoil her. She was imperious enough, self-willed and obstinately resolute to have her own way in all matters, but she had a great deal of common-sense, realized what was possible and what impossible and was considerate of her entire retinue, even of such unimportant slave-girls as her three ma.s.seuses.

She was greedy of all sorts of knowledge and acquired an education altogether unusual for a Roman woman.

Withal she was feminine in her tastes, spent much time on embroidery and was justly proud of her complex and beautiful productions in this womanly art. She overcame her disabilities to a great extent and, with no lack of conveyances, became a figure almost as well-known in oman society as Nemestronia herself.

As she had an accommodating disposition, an excellent appet.i.te and a witty tongue, she was a welcome guest at banquets and went about a great deal. Also she entertained lavishly.

She survived the pestilence and, like so many of the remnants of the n.o.bility, found herself solitary and enormously wealthy.

Her vast estates she managed herself and she knew to a sesterce the value of every piece of property, the justifiable expenses of maintaining each, and the income each should yield. Self-indulgent as she was and moreover an inveterate gambler, she grew richer every year.

Like all childless Romans of independent means she was the object of unblus.h.i.+ng and overwhelming attentions from countless legacy cadgers.

She enjoyed the game, accepted everything offered in the way of gifts, services or invitations, and, moreover, played up to it, for she was forever destroying her last will and making a new one. Each was read aloud to a concourse of expectant and envious legatees. Each specified scores of legacies of no despicable amount, and yet more numerous sops to numerous acquaintances. In every will Calvaster, her nearest relative and favorite grandnephew, was named as chief legatee.

She kept on making wills, and, what was more, she kept on living.

Naturally her wealth, her eccentricities, her amazing healthiness and her obstinate vitality were subjects of general remark by all the gossips of the capital.

One night, an hour or two after midnight, she was seized with violent internal pains, and, in spite of the ministrations of her private physician, died before dawn.

In Rome any sudden death was likely to be attributed to poison. In her case the indications, from the Roman point of view, all converged on the inference that she had been poisoned. No-one questioned the conclusion.

Calvaster was immediately suspected. The evidence against him would not suffice to put in jeopardy any one in our days. To the Romans it seemed sufficient to justify his incarceration and trial. He had more to gain by the old lady's death than anybody else. He had been chronically in need of money and there had been much friction between him and Pulfennia on this point. She had always provided for his necessities, but had always insisted on scrutinizing every item in his accounts, and on being convinced of his need for every sesterce she gave him. She had supported him, but by an irritating dole of small sums. He had joked with his cronies about her hold on life. He had been heard to say that he would be glad when she was gone. He had bought various drugs from various apothecaries, though none within a year of her death and none used merely as a poison. Under torture some of her slaves and some of his slaves told of his having tried to induce them to put poison in her food.

Roman society promptly divided into two camps on the question of his guilt or innocence. The subject was debated with vehemence, even with acrimony. He had been a disagreeable creature from childhood and had made many enemies. On the other hand, great numbers of fair-minded people a.s.serted that no man, however distasteful to themselves, should be convicted on such flimsy evidence.

His trial was watched with great interest, and when he was convicted and an appeal was successful and a retrial ordered, upper cla.s.s Rome seethed with altercations. The case, by common consent, was tabooed as a subject of conversation at all social gatherings; feeling ran so high that it was possible to mention the matter only between intimate friends.

Naturally Flexinna and Brinnaria, Terentia and Vocco discussed the case frequently. To her friends' amazement Brinnaria maintained that she did not feel convinced of Calvaster's guilt.

”I always despised him and hated him,” she said, ”and I despise and hate him as much as ever, if not more. He certainly has been my worst enemy and he came very near to ruining me. But I see no reason why hate should blind me in judging his case. I should be glad to have him plainly convicted and put to death. It would please me. But I am not pleased at his present plight. I am not convinced of his guilt. I don't believe any slave evidence given under torture. A tortured slave will say anything he thinks likely to relax his sufferings or please his questioners. And I see no proof of Calvaster's guilt in the other evidence. Everybody buys such drugs as he bought. And suppose he did joke about Pulfennia's tenacity to life, who wouldn't? I don't believe it is proved that she died of poison anyway. People who have never been ill are reckless eaters. Look at me, I am. She may have died of indigestion or stomach-ache or what not. I'd do anything I could to save him, now.”

”D-D-Do you mean to say,” spoke Flexinna, ”that if you encountered him being led out to execution, you'd reprieve him?”