LXVI I
I WAS IN disgrace. Back at the wedding Lenia had called for her augury to be taken. This was the ceremony I had promised to supervise. Nobody could find me. Nobody knew where I was. It was, of course, considered untenable to proceed without the inspection of a sheep's liver. Respectable people would be shocked. Luckily the imperturbable Gaius Baebius had seized upon my absence and stepped into the breach.
`Oh I'm sure you did it better than I would have done, Gaius!'
And at least the head veil fitted him.
`He gave me some very nice promises,' said, Lenia sniffily.
`I had never realised that Gaius Baebius was such a liar!' Helena whispered. Gaius explained to me very soberly that as part of his preparations for trying to join the priestly college of the Augustales, he had been taking lessons on sheep-skinning.
The bride was by now ensconced on her neatly hacked-off sheepskin, side by side with the slumped form of her husband, newly removed from the laundry basket. She was gripping his hand, not so much to symbolise union as to stop him falling onto the floor. A friend of Smaractus was going around trying to get up ten witnesses for the contractual tablets, but most of the guests tried to wriggle out of this duty and privilege with weak excuses such as they had inadvertently left their seals at home. Nobody wanted to be blamed if the marriage failed, or be called upon to help sort out the dowry afterwards.
We all decided we had suffered enough and wanted our presents. This meant sending the bridegroom over the road to get them. It was obvious we would only get him over there once, so we combined this trip with sending him to sing the Fescennine verses (a raucous litany that nobody sober could remember, let alone your average bridegroom). Soon he was lighting the torches along the route for the bride's procession. Somebody supplied him with his fire and water for welcoming Lenia to his home. Smaractus revived enough to cry loudly that she could go to Hades for all he cared. Lenia had in fact gone to the lavatory, or the divorce could have been ratified that very day.
We kept the bride's procession short. This seemed wise because by then the bride herself was drunk as well as tearful. With no mother of her own from whose arms she could be dragged protesting, Lenia, overcome by a last-minute realisation of her stupidity, decided to cling to Ma instead. Ma told her to stop messing everyone about. Heartlessly jovial, we hauled Lenia away and set her up in proper fashion, with Marius and little Ancus taking her hands while Gaius gingerly carried the whitethorn torch ahead of them. Her veil had slipped and she was limping, as in her left shoe was one of the traditional coins she must take to her husband. `As if I hadn't given him enough already!'
It had grown dark enough to lend some mystery. A hired flautist came to lead the happy throng. Throwing nuts and yelling, we all jogged up one side of Fountain Court, then danced inelegantly back again, tripping on the nuts. Children woke up and became really excited. People hung out of upstairs windows, watching and cheering. The night was still and the torchlight flickered handsomely. The air, on the last day of October, was chill enough to sober us slightly.
We reached the bakery. Jostling up the narrow outer stairs, I joined the group of delirious attendants who pulled the bride up the last few steps to the nuptial rooms. Smaractus appeared in the doorway, with one of his friends loyally propping him up from behind. He managed to cling on to his ritual torch-and-water vessel while Lenia spilled oil down her dress as she made an attempt to anoint the doorframe in the time-honoured way. Petronius and I braced ourselves, then linked hands under her backside and heaved her indoors.
Smaractus rallied abruptly. He saw Lenia, leered horribly, and made a sudden grab. Lenia proved a match for him. She let out a shriek of salacious delight and lunged for him.
Appalled, Petronius and I made a break for the outside and left hurriedly. Most of the other attendants followed us. Any tradition of witnessing what happened in that nuptial bed was too ghastly to
contemplate. Besides, the remaining wine was in the laundry across the road.
The street was packed with singing revellers. It took single-minded desperation (and thirst) to force a passage through. We made it as far as the laundry's garlanded doorway. We found Arria Silvia shrieking to Petro over the noise that she was taking their young daughters home to bed. She asked if he was going with them, and of course he said yes but not yet. Helena, looking wan, told me she was going up to our apartment. I too promised to follow my dear one `very soon' as the old lie has it.
Something made us look back across the road. Lenia had run out onto the first-floor landing, waving her. arms about. Her veil flapped wildly and her gown was half off. A raucous cheer rose from the crowd. Lenia shouted something and raced back in.
It was dark. There was plenty of smoke from the torches. Almost immediately the distraught bride reappeared in the doorway of the nuptial home. People had quietened down, most of them looking for something to drink. Lenia spotted Petronius and me. In a voice like a grindstone she shrieked to us: `Help, help, you bastards! Fetch the vigiles! The bed's collapsed and the apartment is on fire!'
LXVIII
GUESTS WHO HAD been prepared to fill the street when there was hope of free food and liquor found a sudden urge to go home quietly once they realised they might be asked to form a bucket chain. Others made sure they didn't help us, though they still hung around in doorways having a good gape.,
The smell of real smoke had become apparent. Lenia had vanished again back into the first-floor apartment with a wild cry of `My wedding presents! My husband! Help me get them out!' It was clear that the presents were to be given priority.
There was one saving feature: as soon as someone cried `Fire!' out from my own new apartment came a group of vigiles. My Fourth Cohort helpers were soon spotted by the excellent Petronius and chivied into action. They smartened up immediately. Someone went running to the patrol house for equipment, the rest were ordered straight into the laundry where there was a well and plenty of water carriers too. Petro and I then raced across to see what we could do for the disrupted bridal group.
Lenia was scuttling about the outer room, uselessly gathering armfuls of gifts. We shoved her outside, fairly roughly for fire has to be taken seriously; things could end up worse than she realised: In the second room we were met by a pitiful sight: the nuptial bed, complete with exotic purple coverlet, had crashed partway through the floor. My landlord, even more dishevelled than usual, was clinging on to one corner in terror. He was afraid to move a muscle in case the bed slipped completely and fell into the bakery store below. That was where the fire was, started when in the midst of his uncontrollable passion for Lenia, Smaractus had pounded his bride so heavily that the props beneath the floor had given way. A bridal torch had then rolled across the collapsing floor and fallen through the jagged hole onto the baker's well-dried logs.
`Dear gods, Smaractus, we never knew you were such a hot lover!'
`Shut up and get me out of here!'
Below us we could already hear battering as the vigiles tried to break into the bakery. Petro and I began to cross towards Smaractus, but the boards lurched beneath us too dangerously. We had to stay where we were, trying to calm the stricken bridegroom while we waited for helpers with proper equipment. At first the smoke seemed slight enough and we were not too worried. A pillow slid slowly across the tilting bed, then tumbled down into the fire, showing what could happen to Smaractus. He squealed. He was looking dangerously warm. Petronius started bellowing for help.
A setback occurred. Instead of dousing the fire immediately, the vigiles allowed themselves to be lured from their duty by the tragic spectacle of a heartbroken bride: I won't say Lenia offered bribes to them, but overcome by good nature (or something) they came galloping upstairs to save her precious wedding gifts. By the time more help arrived and operatives started flinging water and mats over the logs in Cassius' store, lively flames were at work. Upstairs with us Smaractus was now screaming as the mattress he was clutching caught light from the flames beneath. That was when Petro and I really started worrying.
