The litter was placed on a platform near the opening. The bearers drew back. Priests opened the curtains, undid the straps that held Cornelia in place, and removed the gag from her mouth. They roughly pulled her from the litter onto her feet.

Cornelia stood before the crowd, dressed not in her linen vestments but in a simple stola made of black wool. The sight of a Vestal without her headdress was startling, even shocking. Without her suffibulum her uncommonly short hair was visible to all. To see her that way, in public, knowing all eyes were on her, made Lucius’s face turn hot. The sight of her short hair had been his exclusive privilege; now all Roma saw her that way. The indignity was as obscene as if she had been stripped naked. Some in the crowd dared to jeer at her. Without her vestments she was no longer a priestess but a mere woman, and a fallen woman at that, a wicked creature deserving a horrible death.

Domitian put an end to the jeering. Lictors with rods quickly moved into the crowd, striking anyone who failed to maintain the proper decorum.

Cornelia was expected to walk the short distance from the litter to the opening in the ground by herself. She did so with halting steps. Her body was stiff. She seemed to be in pain. Lucius knew that she had been beaten with rods and wondered what sort of wounds and bruises were concealed by her black stola.

She reached the opening and looked down at the ladder that descended to the vault. She swayed and jerked, like a reed blown by a wind. She looked upwards and stared at the sky. She raised her hands.

“Vesta!” she shouted. “You know I never betrayed you. While I served in your temple the sacred flame never wavered.”

“Silence!” cried Domitian.

Cornelia lowered her eyes and gazed at the crowd, looking from face to face. “Caesar says I am guilty of impurity, but my conduct of Vesta’s rituals was immaculate. Every one of his victories, every triumph he celebrated, is proof of the goddess’s favour.”

Domitian signalled to one of the lictors, who moved towards Cornelia. If she would not step onto the ladder and begin the descent of her own volition, she would be forced to do so. When the man reached out to grab her arm, she shrugged him off. It was only a slight movement, but the lictor recoiled violently, as if he had been struck.

“Cornelia never touched him!” cried a woman in the crowd. “It was the hand of the goddess that threw him back!”

“See how calm she is, how dignified,” said someone else.

His heart racing, Lucius dared to raise his voice. “Perhaps she’s innocent after all, if Vesta allows no man to touch her!”

It made no difference. The crowd ignored these scattered protests.

Cornelia stepped onto the ladder and took hold of it with trembling hands. She took a step down, and then another, until she was visible only from the waist up. It was all Lucius could do not to call to her. Despite his silence, she seemed to sense his presence. She paused and turned her head. She looked straight at him.

She moved her lips, mouthing silent words intended only for him: “Forgive me.”

Cornelia took another step, and another, then vanished from sight. The crowd let out a collective groan. Men shook their heads and shuddered. Women dropped to their knees and wailed.

While she descended, the ladder moved slightly, relaying the vibration of her steps. Then the ladder was still. Lictors stepped forward and pulled it from the hole. The ladder was a long one; the vault was many feet underground. A large, flat stone was placed over the opening. The mound of earth was spread over the stone and pounded with mallets until the ground was even and no sign remained of the opening.

The new Virgo Maxima, with averted eyes and a trembling voice, stood on the spot and uttered a prayer to Vesta, asking the goddess to forgive the people of Roma for allowing such a breach of piety and to restore her favour to the city. The Pontifex Maximus and his retinue began to withdraw. Catullus was the last to leave, led off by the boy. It seemed to Lucius that there was a smile on the man’s gaunt face.

The crowd gradually dispersed, until only Lucius remained. He stared at the place where the opening had been. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. Cornelia had been swallowed by the earth. Yet he knew she must be still alive, still breathing.

Why was Lucius still alive?

Lucius knew the answer. He had been saved by a quirk of fate. The Master and God of the world, who saw enemies everywhere and executed men without reason, who watched thousands die in the arena without mercy, had been swayed by a sentimental whim. Earinus was the one human being for whom Domitian felt any semblance of love; when Earinus sang in the black room, Lucius had wept. For that reason alone, Domitian had spared him.

Lucius had been saved by a tear. The absurdity of it only deepened his despair.

He thought of Cornelia’s final words: “Forgive me.” He was alive and unscathed, a free man. For his affair with Cornelia he had suffered no consequence whatsoever. For what should he forgive Cornelia? It made no sense, yet he was certain that she had mouthed the words forgive me.

What did it mean?

Reclining in the shade of his garden on a hot afternoon in the month of Augustus, Lucius reflected on the unexpected path his life had taken over the last two years.

The punishment of Cornelia had marked a low point in his life. Existence had lost all meaning. His taste for life had vanished. Nothing brought him pleasure. Was he in pain? If so, his pain was not a sharp agony – a reminder that he was alive – but a dull, hollow sensation, like a foretaste of death. He was stripped of all emotion. He did not loathe the world or hate the people in it; he felt nothing.

Now, all that had changed. His time of utmost despair was in the past. Once again he was able to take enjoyment from simple pleasures – the bright colours and sweet fragrances of flowers in his garden, the cheerful songs of birds, the humming of bees, the warm sunshine on his face, the cooling breeze on his fingertips. He was alive again – fully alive, not merely existing, experiencing each moment as it occurred. He was conscious of himself and accepting of the world in which he lived. He had attained a state of contentment that he had never before thought possible.

His newfound peace was due to one man: the Teacher.

What had his life been like before he met the Teacher? Lucius recalled his frequent visits to the house of Epaphroditus over the years. Friendship had been the main reason for those visits, but he had also been seeking wisdom. But after the death of Cornelia, Martial’s wit no longer amused him, and Lucius found the poet’s ties to the emperor intolerable. The philosophy of Epictetus seemed bland and insubstantial. Nor did the letters Lucius received from Dio convey any sense of enlightenment. Lucius’s visits to the house of Epaphroditus grew less and less frequent. The unanswered letters from Dio piled up on the table in his study.

Yet, even at the deepest point of his despair, Lucius had continued to seek comfort and enlightenment. Turning away from his circle of friends, for a while he had studied the more esoteric modes of belief available to a curious man in Roma. Of these, there were a great many; every cult in the empire eventually found adherents and proselytizers in Roma. As Epaphroditus had once told him, people were capable of believing anything; the startling array of religions practised in the city was proof of that. Lucius even investigated the much-despised cult of the Christians, of which his uncle Kaeso had been a member, but found it no more interesting than any of the other cults.

He had also made a study of astrology, since so many people held such store by it. But the fatalistic nature of it had only made him more despondent. The astrologers taught that every aspect of a man’s life was determined in advance by powers unimaginably larger than himself; within that predestined fate a man had very little leeway to affect the course of his life. What was the point of knowing that a certain day was ill-omened if one could do nothing to reverse the tide of events? A man could hope to propitiate a temperamental god, but nothing could be done to alter the influence of the stars – if indeed such an influence existed. For although wiser men than himself considered astrology a science and devoted great study to it, Lucius was unimpressed by all the charts derived from ancient texts and the endless tables full of esoteric symbols. He had a uneasy suspicion that astrology was a fraud. Certainly, astrologers had carefully observed the heavens and had learned to predict the movements of the celestial bodies with considerable accuracy, but the rest of the so-called science – determining precisely how those celestial bodies affected human existence – seemed a mere invention to Lucius, a compendium of nonsense contrived by men who understood no more about the secret workings of the universe than did anyone else.