The Unwilling Vestal | Page 8

copper sieves, rush sieves with rims of white willow wood, white horse-hair sieves whose hoops were stout ash, sieves of black horse-hair stretched in rims of clean steamed oak and linen sieves hooped about with birch. Sieves were piled on the counter, mostly fancy sieves with hoops of carved wood strung with black and white horse-hair interlaced in bold patterns, or copper sieves, polished till they shone, they being most likely to catch the eyes of the passing throng.
Brinnaria, sprawled on the sofa against the wall behind the work-bench, surveyed her surroundings and sighed happily, entirely at home. Truttidius was beating copper wire, a process always fascinating to watch.
"I've had an awful time in the country with Aunt Septima," Brinnaria chatted, "and I had an awful scare before they sent me to the country. Daddy threatened to make me a Vestal."
"In place of Rabulla?" Truttidius queried, glancing up.
"Yes," Brinnaria answered, "but I got off; my, but I was scared though."
"You didn't want to be a Vestal?" Truttidius asked, eyeing her over his work.
"Not I!" Brinnaria declared. "I can't think of anything worse except being killed."
"Well," mused Truttidius, "there is no accounting for tastes. Most girls would be wild with delight at the idea. But there would be no sense in being a Vestal unless you wanted to be one."
"I don't," Brinnaria proclaimed emphatically, "but I have been thinking about Vestals ever since Daddy threatened me and scared me so; I've been thinking about Vestals and sieves. Did anybody ever really carry water in a sieve, Truttidius?"
"Water in a sieve?" the old man exclaimed. "Not anybody that ever I saw. What do you mean?"
"You must have heard the story of Tuccia, the Vestal," Brinnaria wondered, wide-eyed. "She lived ages ago, before Hannibal invaded Italy, when everything was different. They said she was bad and she said it was a lie and they said she could not prove it was a lie and she said she could. She said if she was all she ought to be the Goddess would show it by answering her prayer. And she took a sieve and walked down to the river, right by the end of the Sublician bridge, where the stairs are on the right-hand side. And the five other Vestals, and the flamens, and all the priests, and the Pontifex, and the consuls went with her. And she stood on the lowest step with her toes in the water and prayed out loud to the Goddess to help her and show that she had told the truth and then she stooped over and dipped up water with her sacrificing ladle and poured it into the sieve and it didn't run through, and she dipped up more and more until the sieve was half full of water, as if it had been a pan. And then she hung her ladle at her girdle-hook and took the sieve in both hands and carried the water all the way to the temple. And everybody said that that proved that she had told the truth.
"That's the story. Had you ever heard it?"
"Yes, little lady," Truttidius said, "I have heard it."
"What I want to know," Brinnaria pursued, "is this: Is it a made-up story or is it a true story P"
Little lady," spoke Truttidius, "it is impious to doubt the truth of pious stories handed down from days of old."
"That isn't answering my question," said the practical Brinnaria. "What I want you to tell me is to say right out plain do you believe it. Did anybody really ever carry water in a sieve?"
"You must remember, dear little lady," the sieve-maker said, "that she was a most holy priestess, most pleasing in the eyes of her Goddess, that she was in dire straits and that she prayed to the Goddess to aid her. The Goddess helped her votary; the gods can do all things."
"The gods can do all things," Brinnaria echoed, her eyes flashing, "but the gods don't do all things, not even for their favorites. There are lots and lots of things no god ever did for any votary or ever will. What I want to know is this: Is carrying water in a sieve one of the things the gods not only can do but do do? Did anybody ever carry water in a sieve truly?"
Truttidius smiled, his wrinkles doubling and quadrupling till his face was all a network of tiny folds of hard, dry skin. He put down his work and regarded his guest, his face serious after the fading of his brief smile. The soft-footed sandalled throng that packed the narrow street shuffled and padded by unnoticed. No customer interrupted them. They might have been alone in a Sibyl's cell on a mountain side.
"Little lady," spoke the sieve-maker, "you are, indeed, very old for your