THE FIRE THAT NEVER DIES

THE FIRE THAT NEVER DIES

Blessed sleep! She had been asleep. For how long? An hour or maybe two, it was still dark. She had always enjoyed her rest, but recently she had not been sleeping well.
She sighed and lay back again. Her hair was still in six braids when she had lain down, but a servant had come in and loosened it while she slept.
It wasn't nightmares keeping her awake, or visits from demons, she reflected. It was a sense of foreboding and despair.
Her world was ending. Soon Theodisius would close the Temple of Vesta and her role in Roman society would effectively come to an end. There had been years of politics and religious debate. The two were one and the same in the Forum. Religion was politics and politics was religion.
She was tired of it all, so very tired, but her tiredness had not led to sleep lately. Perhaps when the Temple was finally closed it would all be over? Maybe then she would know sleeps gentle comforting embrace once more.
After half an hour she rose and dressed. She knew there would be no more sleep tonight. Better to do something useful, there were mountains of paperwork to sort through. Because of their incorruptible character Vestal Virgins were entrusted with wills and other legal documents. They needed sorted, cataloged, indexed.
Ready to be handed over to whoever came after her, although she had know idea who that might be. She was, above all things, a servant of Rome.
The Temple to Vesta was right next to the House of the Vestal Virgins on the Forum. Even though the Forum was safe, she took a guard with her. If it had been an official visit then a lictor would have accompanied her, but for this a palace guard would do.
She knew this one by name.
'Come, Martinus. We will go to the Temple and attend the flame.'
He smiled and nodded, 'Yes, Coelia Concordia.'
She tolerated the use of her name at this time of night although he should have addressed her as Vestalis Maxima. Just another sign of my loss of power, she supposed.
It was a clear starlit night. There were lights on Capitoline Hill. The Temple to Jupiter was up there, not under any political threat. Not yet anyway.
There were still people about, the Forum never truly went to sleep, but it was a very short walk from the Atrium Vestae to the Temple. Behind the Temple to Vesta was that of of Castor and Pollux and ancient building still standing after being ravaged by fire four hundred years ago. She wondered how much longer the Temple to Vesta would stand.
It was a much smaller round building its entrance facing east to symbolise the link between Vesta’s fire and the sun. The guard pushed the door open for her and she stepped inside to where the sacred flame burned at the rear of the building's only chamber. A lone figure sat dozing at the hearth, casting a long shadow across the floor. The Temple was warm and inviting.
'Greetings, Aemilia.'
The young woman sat dozing on the stool roused herself. Once, there would have been six Vestal Virgins to attend the sacred flame, now there was just one, Coelia Concordia. Aemilia was named after one of the first Virgins, but was no more than an attendant, the daughter of a freeman.
'Good morning, Coelia.'
She could see Coelia was not dressed in her infula or suffibulum. The last Vestal Virgin wore only a simple palla over her robes, and besides it was the middle of the night.
Aemilia could be familiar with her in this dark and hushed environment without fear of censure.
'No sleep again?' she asked with a smile.
'No. Not with knowing what will soon happen.'
The young woman shuddered, a true believer, 'The Temple closed? It isn't possible!'
'I assure you it is. It is a matter of days. Theodosius will issue another of his decrees and the Temple of Vesta will be no more. The Vestal Virgins will be no more.'
Aemilia pulled her shawl tighter, 'I don't like Christians. I never said any words when everyone had to. I was just a little girl.'
Coelia knew that she referred to the Edict of Thessalonica, that ordered all subjects to swear faith with the Bishop of Rome. Coelia had not done so either, but that had been part of a political deal. It always came down to politics in the Forum.
'Well, times change', said the older woman, 'We have been a thing of the past for a hundred years. It suits the Empire to be Christian and Christ dislikes the pagan gods.'
Aemilia sniffed back a tear, 'But the sacred flame has burned for a thousand years.'
Coelia knew that this was not strictly true, but said,
'The flame is a symbol, something that used to mean something to Rome. Now Rome no longer needs it. No longer needs me.'
Aemilia pulled a face, 'Well, they are ungrateful then. The sacrifices you made.
The service you have offered. The gods always co-existed. Why can't the Christians just leave you alone?'
Coelia warmed her hands by the fire, 'It was all given with a glad heart. Vesta gives all her gifts freely. The world is a different place from Augustus's day.
Now, where is the stack of writs I was looking at the other day? It was in no kind of order at all.'
'You may as well just throw it all on the fire.', grumbled the younger woman.
Ceolia said nothing and took the first bundle of reed paper from the pile she had located in the gloom.
Ah, the last of the land contracts, I should be able to get through all of these tonight, she thought.
'You can go home Aemilia', she said finally, 'Have Martinus escort you. I will see it through to the end. I will be alone with the flame and my goddess until Theodisius comes with his men to put it out. It will not be long now and I'm in no danger of falling asleep long enough to let it go out.'
~~~
Sleep! She sat up. It was still dark. No more than an hour. That was good. Where
once she had prayed for sleep, now she shunned it.
'Sleep? I mustn't sleep!', she gasped and lay back again. She's spent the last three days at the Temple sorting out paper work. It had really been a pointless task, but she could not have left it undone.
When they'd come she was dead on her feet, but still working. As the men came to carry the Temple goods away and close it up she let the last piece of paper fall from her hand and had said, 'So this is it?'
Not the most momentous thing to have said she realised, but those were her last words inside the Temple of Vesta.
Now she walked through the chambers of the Atrium Vestae, the Palace of the Vestal Virgins, like a ghost. She knew they would never ask her to leave, but it had grown to be a tomb now, the last of her order living out her days in ignored solitude, never again to play her part in the state affairs of Rome.
Coelia knew that one day, they would come for her, and, politely at first, ask her to profess her faith in Christ to the Bishop of Rome. She was resigned to that, in some ways looked forward to it. She would be a person again, not a ghost, a figure in the church, the only church now, and someone involved in the life of Rome once more, even if in a way a hundred-fold more meager than when she had been a priestess of one of the most powerful religions in the Empire.
But that was not this day, or any day soon.
Much of the House of the Vestal Virgins was shut up now, she only needed a few rooms and a handful of servants. From her upper story window she could see all the way down the length of the Forum, to the Temple of Concord, which was now used by the Christians as a place of burial.
She had walked over to the window now and her eyes wandered down to the Temple of Vesta below. There was no light there, the sacred flame did not burn their any longer. The sun was starting to creep up behind her and casting a long shadow across the roof. There was one flame that would last all eternity, she reflected, Vesta would live on in sunlight.
The Goddess would never turn from Rome, even if Rome turned from her. She would shine her light down on the good and the wicked alike. She would never try and separate them out into saints and sinners, judging and damning them. The goddess was better than that, she shared her warmth and goodness with all equally. The Christian God was mean spirited and petty in comparison.
'Well, she's not gone from this world completely', whispered Coelia to herself,
'Not yet anyway.'
She walked from the window and put another log on the fire in her room. Her secret, and the reason why she now welcomed insomnia, was that the fire that burned here in her chambers in the Atrium Vestae had been transfered from the Temple to Vesta by night and by cunning, just before it had been officially put out by Theodisius's men. In effect it was the only part of the sacred flame that
remained.
She would attend it night and day from now on, feeding it, keeping it alive, alone and forgotten until one day she feel asleep long enough for it to go out. Then she would awake, look over the cold ashes for a long while, remembering the old days for as long as she felt proper, but then, eventually, throw her palla over her shoulders and leave the House of the Vestal Virgins, never to return