Goddess
Chapter 5

Although we want to meet Cassius again the nextmorning, we’re once again busy with our Vestal duties before we can head to thegames. I try to turn my mind to my work, but all I can think about is theclearing. As we grind more spelt wheat for the mola salsa cakes, I turn to Marta. We’re alone. I motion her into apantry and close the door.

“Oh, real smooth,” she says. “Like someone wouldstumble onto this conversation and just go, ‘Hey, girls, lovely day for adarkened pantry chat, isn’t it? I bet this is all aboveboard! Carry on!’”

Damn. She does have a point. We ease back to ourmortars and, feeling somewhat foolish, I whisper, “Do you think Cassius wouldmeet us at the shore?”

“Let’s talk to him about it tonight,” shewhispers back.

At ten thirty we head toward the market square,just in time to see the first of the pompacircenses pass by, the parade that announces the start of the games. Theyoung boys, sons of Polonian nobles, pass by first, followed by the day’sathletes and charioteers. My favorite part is the satyrs, dancers, andmusicians, who make up the liveliest part of the procession, but Gaius replaces usand wants to head straight to the circus.

There must be a hundred thousand people outtoday to see the races, and the stadium is nearly full. We thread our waythrough the crowds, down to the very front rows in the box reserved for theheads of state, and wind up only four rows behind the stadium edge. These areprime seats. People look curiously at Gaius, including the Vestalis Maxima, butshe won’t say anything, at least to him. She knows who his father is. I,however, could possibly hear about this later. This is kind of a risk to betaking, being seen with him in public. I’m still not quite sure how this allcame about.

As we’re looking for the perfect spot we seeAelia and Alypia, my young friends, so we join them. Gaius insists on sittingnext to me, placing himself at the very end of the bench. Fine, I think. But you’regoing to get up every time I have to pee.

Then there’s a huge cheer, and a thrill runsthrough me as the first chariot race begins. We’re so close we can actually seethe faces of the charioteers as they round the curve at breakneck speed. Theylook so calm. I’d be terrified.

After the chariot races comes the venatio, where they release live deerinto the arena and men hunt them down for the audience’s amusement. I don’tcare for these, as it’s sad to watch the deer die. Sometimes they do the huntwith bears, or even lions imported from distant lands, but that’s an enormous expenseso it doesn’t happen often.

Whatever reason Gaius had for coming with ustoday, it wasn’t to talk to me. He sits very still, stretched up to his fullheight, and he’s watching the crowd far more closely than the races. Half thetime he sits twisted around to see behind us. I don’t know who he’s lookingfor, and when I try to ask he holds up a finger as though he’s not to bedisturbed. Eventually he says, “I can’t see any Selanthi in the crowds.”

“Oh. I haven’t seen any today either…ah, there’sone,” I say, pointing to a seat about fifteen rows behind us in the adjacentsection. Gaius studies him intensely. Clueless as to where his interest stemsfrom, I turn back to watch the race.

“Olivia,” Gaius says quietly, “if I get up andleave this bench without giving you a reason why, I want you to immediatelytake all the girls and go down there.” He indicates a small alcove in thestadium railing. It used to be a stairwell to the lower portion of the circus,I think, but the stairs were walled up for safety when they started releasinglions into the ring.

“Why, what’s going on—?”

“I don’t have time for questions. Donot disobey me,” he says tensely. So Ipass the message down to Marta, Lucia, and the two younger girls. They look atme curiously, but I don’t have any answers for them. “We just have to do it,” Isay.

Intrigued and unsettled, I look back up towardthe Selanthian in the other section. He’s wearing a heavy cape, but that’s notunusual for his people: because of their colder climate, capes are part oftheir formal dress. As I watch he starts moving, fiddling with something underthe cape. In an instant I feel Gaius vault from the bench and streak up thestairs toward him, taking them two at a time and bowling over people in hispath.

“Come on! Now!” I say to the girls and yank onMarta, who grabs everybody else, and we make our way quickly down to thestairwell and out of sight.

Boom. We hear the sound of a massive thunderclap, at least I guess that’swhat it is. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.At least twenty more rock us as we huddle together.

“Is it an earthquake?” Marta asks, terrified. Noone can answer her. We all peer around the side of the stairwell to look. Smokeis rising from points around the stadium, and everyone is panicking. Thousandsrush from the stands, and the exit points are blocked as the crush of peoplepushes desperately to get through.

“Should we try to escape? To go through theexits?” asks Alypia, wide-eyed. She’s holding Aelia, who is crying from shock.

I shake my head, trembling. “Gaius told us tocome here. And we’d never get through. We’d be trampled.”

We hide for a long time, maybe more than anhour. When we finally emerge, smoke drifts in the sky and the crowd hascleared. I look up, and am shocked at what I see. The stadium is dotted withpiles of unconscious or dead, now being tended to by dozens of medics orwilling assistants. As we run up the first few stadium steps to get a betterlook, I see that most of the dead have simply been suffocated, crushed by thecrowds.

“Oh my gods. We have to help them. Shouldn’t wehelp?” I ask Marta and Lucia.

“What could we do?” Marta asks. “Do you knowanything about how to help injured people?”

“Olivia, you could pray with them,” Luciasuggests, touching my arm.

“I think most of these people are beyondprayer,” Marta says quietly, putting her arm around my waist. “Come on.” Andshe leads us up the stairs to a stadium exit that is not totally blocked. “Thegirls shouldn’t see this,” she says to me in an undertone. “And I’m not leavingyou here.”

As we walk, we all feel very cold, and the younggirls are shaking like leaves. After we reach the house, I put them to bed,even though they’re twelve years old and it’s early afternoon. We sit in theirroom with them, trying to be comforting. They’re as docile as lambs. You couldtake any one of us by the hand right now and lead us like children.

“What was it?” whispers Lucia. “What happened?”

But none of us can answer her.

When the girls are asleep, we go to replace theVestalis Maxima, who holds us all to her when she sees us, weeping. Everyonefrom our section is fine, she says. Whatever it was that made the noise andsmoke didn’t happen there. We were so far below most of the crowd that everyonewho tried to flee got stuck far behind the crush, where they were safe. Nowit’s time, she says, to go to the temple and pray with the bereaved.

I don’t even have the means to comfort myself,much less a crowd of weeping people who’ve lost loved ones, but we head to thetemple. It’s a very long day. We pray with them and hold their hands, butnobody can explain what’s happened. No one can give a reason for their tragedy.The world has gone mad.

Around five, we’re finally relieved by otherVestals. As we walk down the temple steps, we see Gaius in the distance, and ashe’s the only person who seems to understand what happened today, we pounce.

“Gaius,” I call, waving him down. He’s obviouslygoing somewhere in a hurry, but to my relief, he stops for us.

“Are you okay?” He asks us, looking us over.

“We’re fine. We’re confused. Please tell us whathappened,” I beg.

“It’s a long story,” he sighs. “The Selanthihave a deadly weapon now, something that can create large explosions, a bomb,”he explains. We take in this vocabulary. “The peace talks were always going tofail. Everyone involved in them knew it from the first. The Flamen Martialis,the head of the academy, tried to convince the government, but they wanted totry negotiating.” Gaius scoffs. “There was nothing of real value we could offerthem. They want Polonia. Their location makes it hard for them to trade withthe southern nations. We offered them exclusive trade routes, their own portnear the city, everything we could think of, but it wasn’t enough,” he says.

“Why do we have to do what they say?” says Lucia.“Can’t we just stop them at the borders?”

“Their forces outnumber us five to one,” hesays, depressed. “The bombs they make can cause serious damage to our ships.They can also use them on land, launch them into enemy ranks using powerfulcatapults far more advanced than ours. They’ve tested this during some of ourborder engagements, and they’re deadly accurate.”

“What’s going to happen now?” asks Marta in ahushed tone.

“The Selanthi have declared war, and in the mostoffensive way possible,” he says. “They’re showy, and they don’t care aboutkilling civilians. We knew it was coming today. We had a boy posted at one ofthe residences, posing as a servant. His grandmother was Selanthian and shetaught him the language. Anyway, yesterday morning he overheard the decision tobegin the war. He also caught one fragment of conversation that nobody couldunderstand, because the Selanthi didn’t elaborate on it. They probably assumedthey were being watched,” he says. “They said that they hoped the Parcaeans wouldenjoy the ludi today. Seems like aninnocuous comment, but the way it was said, abruptly and off topic, seemedominous to our informer.”

“But you understood,” I say. “You knew exactlywhat to do. You saved our lives.”

“I didn’t know. I made a guess. The others atthe academy weren’t as interested in that comment as I was. I was sure the ludi had to be some sort of target andI’ve always been wary of their ability to cause incredible damage. I hate tosee them in crowds, it makes my blood run cold. I’ve seen them hide stuff undertheir stupid capes, like knives they can pull at the beginning of a fight.Anyway, I knew I had to be there, to prevent what I could. The Selanthi Ichased didn’t get far,” he smiles wanly. “And he didn’t have enough time to triggerhis bomb and lob it into the reserved seats. They could have taken out theentire College of Pontiffs.”

“AND the Vestals,” Marta says tartly.

“So you saved the lives of everybody in oursection, too,” I say.

Gaius shrugs. “I don’t know for how long. In amatter of months, it’s highly likely we’ll all be Selanthian slaves.”

***

We return to the House of Vestals for an earlydinner, although nobody feels like eating much. The Vestalis Maxima gives uspermission to skip over our normal practice time for rituals, since everybody’spacking up for Floralia. There’s still plenty of light, and there’s an unspokenagreement between the three of us that we’ll try to meet Cassius again.

We replace him stretched out napping in the sacredgrove at the edge of the temple yard.

“Well, girls,” he says, “the world has changed alittle bit since we last met.”

“We were there, Cassius,” I say shakily, “and itwas awful.”

“I know,” he says. “I was with the Academy ofCeres crowd. We were part of the opening ceremonies. We were all dressed up inour fancy special-occasion outfits, did you see us? We stayed to watch theraces, but we had nosebleed seats. Probably the reason I’m still alive is thatI can’t run in my dressy shoes.”

“Did anybody from the academy die?” I ask,aghast.

“Everybody’s okay,” he says cheerfully. “Thegods were kind to us. And on that happy note, let’s go see some prettyflowers.”

As we walk to the clearing, we fill him in onGaius’s explanations, but most of it he’s already familiar with, given hisproximity to, and friendships with, the Mars boys. The closer we get to theclearing, the more my concerns fall away, and soon all I can think about is myanemone plant. I quicken my pace as I feel my excitement and anticipationreturning. I can’t wait to see what my prayer has done.

When I finally see the clearing, I run the lastfew yards through the woods and skid to a stop, my eyes rooted on the spotwhere I know my anemone is waiting. Mine has five pink flowers. Marta’s hasthree. And…

We all give a collective gasp. Cassius actuallyfalls to his knees. There, exactly where she planted it, stands Lucia’senormous, vibrant, flourishing, thirty-foot fig tree.