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I am not convinced of his guilt. I don't believe any slave evidence given under torture. A tortured slave will say anything he thinks likely to relax his sufferings or please his questioners. And I see no proof of Calvaster's guilt in the other evidence. Everybody buys such drugs as he bought. And suppose he did joke about Pulfennia's tenacity to life, who wouldn't?
I am prejudiced against Calvaster, as I have told you, yet I am by no means ready to admit that your beliefs about him are evidence against him, more particularly as they rest solely on Flexinna's ingenious conjectures. The notion is plausible and it is entirely congruent with Calvaster's character as I imagine it. Yet it is, after all, merely a plausible surmise.
The case, by common consent, was tabooed as a subject of conversation at all social gatherings; feeling ran so high that it was possible to mention the matter only between intimate friends. Naturally Flexinna and Brinnaria, Terentia and Vocco discussed the case frequently. To her friends' amazement Brinnaria maintained that she did not feel convinced of Calvaster's guilt.
As when younger, she dined out very often and regularly with Vocco and Flexinna. But since Calvaster's accusation, she never visited Flexinna alone, always in company with another Vestal, usually Terentia, so that her dinners at Flexinna's became restricted to evenings on which she and Terentia were both off duty.
When Brinnaria's term of service was drawing to an end and only about eleven months of it remained, all Roman society was convulsed by what was variously referred to as the Calvaster scandal, the great poisoning trial or the murder of Pulfennia. Pulfennia Ulubrana, one of Calvaster's great-aunts, was a dwarfish creature, humpbacked and clubfooted.
Almo himself found this out through Elufrius since he became again a free man and in control of his fortune, and it took a great deal of money and the participation of a great many experts to uncover and prove the facts. Proved they have been to my satisfaction and Calvaster's confusion.
I am just as inclined to accept Calvaster's own explanation; he is an inquisitive busybody. "My verdict is that you need feel no alarm." "But I do," Brinnaria maintained; "I do not feel safe with Calvaster anywhere about." The Emperor reflected.
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