The House of Vesta

The Capture

 The Capture

            I was only ten years old when it happened. I was working by the brick oven with my mother, baking bread like we did every morning, when we heard a large bang by the front door. Moments later, our slave Diana uttered a blood curling scream. I remember how my skin prickled, and even though I was sitting next to the fire, I felt a chill make its way through my body. Diana was quickly silenced, the scream evaporating instantly. Somehow, the silence was worse.

            Mother looked over at me with wide, alert eyes and pressed a finger to her lips, warning me not to make a sound. I remember wondering how she could sit so still, how she could be so calm, when it took everything I had not to burst into to tears. My hands shook and my heart raced up my throat like a wild rabbit; desperately, silently, I prayed to Salus, the goddess of safety. Behind us, our bread was burning.

            Soon there were shouts, closer this time than they had been before. They were many voices speaking at once, but one I could pick out above all the rest.

            “Where is the girl?” the voices asked. “Where is Aemilia?”

“Go to hell,” the familiar voice snapped. There was a loud crash and then screaming.

 My heart stopped.

Even it didn’t dare to make a sound. It was too busy being horrified by the sound of my older brother Crispus crying out in pain. Whoever was here, they really wanted to find me. For some reason, I wasn’t too keen on that idea.

After a while, even my brother’s screams went silent. I hoped, I prayed, I begged that he was alright. Tears steadily streamed down my face, my fist was stuffed into my mouth to stop me from making any noise. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth I rocked. I knew not how I retained even that amount of calm.

My mother took me into her steady arms, holding my head to her chest. I could hear heart; I could hear how it betrayed her. My mother, it seemed, was very afraid. But she refused to show her fear, even though we both knew it consumed her. After a few seconds of sitting like this, she kissed the top of my dark, curly head of hair then whispered very softly into my ear.

“Go Aemilia, run and hide in the courtyard.” She looked deep into my brown eyes and gave me a sad smile. “Go,” she said again softly and I ran away. I slipped out of the kitchen door, sneaked all the way to the courtyard in the center of our villa home. Never before had I truly appreciated living in a large home, had I really realized the perks of being a senator’s daughter.

I found a place to hide behind the statue of Vesta, goddess of the home and the hearth, and surrounded by bushes. The day was beginning to get hot and before long beads of sweat trickled down my tiny back. Rome was always boiling this time of year, but sitting there behind that statue, with my heart thumping so loudly it surely must have been echoing throughout the entire empire, I was convinced I must have descended into Tartarus.

Several minutes passed and no one came outside.  Shouts came from inside the house a few times, but after awhile they went quiet and I heard nothing for a long time. Perhaps 30 minutes passed, and I grew less frightened and increasingly bored. I played with the ants in the dirt, making them little bridges and homes out of sticks and leaves. I picked flowers from the bushes around me and created a crown for my hair. It wasn’t long before I fell asleep.

I awoke, Jupiter knows how much later, to the sound of voices. I yawned lazily and stretched my arms out before it hit me. The screams, the desperation, the cries of pain; they all echoed in my head and ripped apart my nerves into millions of panicked, dysfunctional shreds. My heart jump started and took off again in its high speed race; terrified at the possibility of being found and guilty for momentarily forgetting the initial terror.