"Right. I don't want to be indelicate, but do you think it goes beyond flirting?" I did wonder if Gaia had seen something that shocked her.

Ariminius scoffed quietly. "You have seen the nurse! But the men don't mind laughing with her--any excuse to stop their work."

"And then Gaia slips away?"

"She means no harm," Laelia cooed, like a doting aunt. "She just plays by herself."

"A huge imagination, I gather?" The woman nodded. I asked quietly, "And is that why she came to tell me someone wanted her dead?"

Both bristled. Both ignored the question fixedly.

"I think she really had been threatened," I said.

Still no answer.

I looked pointedly from one to another, as if deciding whether the death threats came from either of them. Then I let it drop. "There are various possibilities," I told them coldly. "Prime options are that--being unhappy for reasons that n.o.body wants to admit--Gaia ran away either to seek out her father or your aunt Terentia. My view is, you should inform both of them, so they can look out for her."

"Your view is noted," said Ariminius. "I shall discuss with the Flamen whether to tell Scaurus."

"Terentia Paulla already knows the child is lost?"

"She does," replied Ariminius--not revealing that the ex-Vestal had been staying here until only that morning. I in turn did not reveal that I was aware she had been a visitor.

"Other possibilities are that the child may be here, hiding or trapped; a full systematic search is my next move. The third option is that she has been abducted, possibly for financial gain."

"We are not a wealthy family," Laelia said, raising her eyebrows.

"That's a comparative term, of course. Where you see only mortgages, a starving robber might nonetheless hope to extract a fortune. Is money a problem?" I saw Ariminius shake his head, as much at his wife as at me. Although I had first thought him ineffectual, he now seemed to have a grasp of reality the others here lacked. Laelia just shrugged vaguely. I said to him, "Well, please inform me immediately if anything like a ransom note arrives."

"Oh yes." Ransomers would probably address the ex-Flamen, but Ariminius was playing the man of decision again. At any rate, if he saw a large spider who could only run slowly he would perhaps think about ways he could step on it.

"The worst possibility, if indeed she has been abducted, is that she is brothel fodder by now." I was being blunt deliberately. Shock tactics were the only weapon I had left. "A potential Vestal Virgin would be seen as rich pickings."

"Dear G.o.ds, Falco!"

"I don't mean to frighten anyone. But you have to know. That is one reason why the Emperor decided to take Gaia's loss so seriously. That is why I am here. That is why you have to be frank. The child is six. Wherever she is, she must be terrified by now. And I have to get to her fast. I need to know about any unusual occurrences--anyone seen hanging around--any aspect of her inclusion in the lottery that could affect her. She wanted to be a Vestal, but it was not universally popular, I understand?" I had borne around on the old tack again: their family feuds.

"Oh, that was just Aunt Terentia!" Laelia a.s.sured me. Nervousness got the better of her, and she giggled uncharacteristically. "She was wicked about it--actually, she said enough women in this family had had their bedroom lives ruined."

I managed not to look startled. "She did not enjoy the celibate life herself, then?"

Laelia now regretted having spoken. "Oh no, she was devoted to her calling."

"She was a chaste Virgin--and afterwards she married. The sequence is not unknown. So, tell me about 'Uncle Tiberius.' Am I right that his his boudoir life was, let's say, uninhibited?" boudoir life was, let's say, uninhibited?"

A glance was exchanged by the husband and wife. Ariminius had moved his foot against Laelia's; coincidence, perhaps. If it was a warning, it was not much of a kick.

"The man is dead," he reminded me rather pompously.

"So all he deserves now are eulogies? Luckily we are past the funeral, so you can drop the sickening pretense that he was a worthy descendant of right-thinking republican heroes, and had unimpeachable moral standards." I looked at Laelia. "I gather he thought he should share his manly favors widely. Did he ever make advances to you?"

I was prepared for her to hide behind her husband, but she answered straight: "No. Though I must say, I did not care for him." It was very direct--too much so, perhaps, as though she had rehea.r.s.ed it.

"You knew what he was like?"

This time her gaze did waver. Perhaps the man had groped her, yet she had never told her husband. I wished I could have talked to her without the Pomonalis present.

"You knew he had made himself unpleasant to Caecilia Paeta?" I insisted.

"Yes, I knew that," Laelia answered in a low voice.

"It was you she confided in?"

"Yes." I wondered briefly: If Caecilia had attracted the lecher but Laelia did not, was Laelia jealous?

"Did she tell you of her fears that he might one day go for Gaia?"

"Yes!" These affirmatives were snapping out now.

"Did anybody tell Laelius Numentinus?"

"Oh no."

"You already had enough troubles in this family?" I asked dryly.

"How right you are!" returned Laelia, rather defiantly. That did not mean she would expound on what those troubles were. Ariminius, I noticed, looked distinctly uncomfortable.

"Did Terentia Paulla know what the man she had married turned out to be like?"

Laelia now sought support from her husband. He was the one taking decisions on what confidences to reveal--or what lies to tell. He said, "Terentia Paulla knew what she was doing when she married."

I gazed at him. "How did she know?"

"Uncle Tiberius was a very old friend of the family."

I paused. That, colleagues, is always an intriguing situation. Old friends of families are rarely what everyone pretends. They may well be like this one: dirty swine who can never keep their p.r.i.c.ks under their tunics, men who bully the women into tolerating their abuse because quite simply no one ever complained before and it seems too late to say anything after so many years.

"So why, if his predilections were obvious, did an extremely holy woman who had just spent three decades living modestly ever want to marry him?"

"Only she can answer that!" cried Laelia harshly.

"Well, if I have no luck finding Gaia, I may have to talk to your aunt." I noticed that caused a shock of panic, at least in Laelia. She hid it well.

Despite her disguised alarm, for once it was the wife and not her husband who came out with the official tale: "Aunt Terentia prefers to see n.o.body at present. She is in mourning for her husband--and not in the best of health." Mourning for her husband--or mourning her own stupidity in marrying a philanderer? Poor health--or just poor judgment?

"I shall try to spare her then. I met your brother," I told Laelia. "Do you get on with Scaurus?"

"Yes, we're very close." I let that go too. I would not fancy having my sisters asked the same question.

"I believe you have seen him recently?"

"Not for anything special," gasped Laelia, looking nervous at the question. Her shiftiness seemed to have something to do with her husband, as if he might not know.

"Wasn't there a family conference?"

"Minor legal issues," Ariminius put in. Still watching Laelia, who was now feigning wide-eyed innocence, I remembered that Meldina, the girl at the farm, had mentioned that Scaurus had been to Rome recently "to see his sister." Once again, I yearned to interrogate Laelia without her husband. They seemed welded together, unfortunately.

"Issues arising from the death of Terentia's husband?"

Ariminius did not want to go down this route. "Partly."

"So Terentia was present?"

"Terentia Paulla is always welcome."

Why, then, had the slave with the sponge and bucket been instructed to say that Terentia never came anymore?

"This family conference must have been a lively occasion!" I remarked quietly. Laelia and Ariminius exchanged glances in which more was being said than I yet understood. "By the way," I enquired casually, "what did your ever-so-friendly Uncle Tiberius actually die of?" When n.o.body answered I did not press the point, but asked, "Was his wife with him when he died?"

Ariminius looked me straight in the eye. "No, Falco," he said gently, as if he knew why I was asking. "Terentia Paulla was dining with her old colleagues at the House of the Vestals that night."

The ultimate unshakable alibi--had anybody needed one, of course.

I stared straight back at Ariminius. "Sorry," I said, not bothering to explain why.

"You know nothing about it, Falco." The Pomonalis suddenly sounded tired. "And this has nothing to do with finding Gaia."

I pulled up.

He and his wife were involved in some deceit; I had no doubt of it. But he was right. A young child was in danger, and that took precedence. Finding Gaia was my job.

I asked Ariminius to supply me with slaves to a.s.sist, and then I set about completing a systematic search of the entire house and grounds.

x.x.xVII.

IT MUST HAVE been early afternoon when we set out. With the help of a large contingent of slaves, the whole place was gone over within a few hours.

Ariminius Modullus hung about. I might have wondered if he knew something bad and was watching in case I got too close. I did not trust him, but he was straight about the search. He watched and listened when I first gave orders, then he joined in. He did seem to understand how urgent the situation was, yet in a perverse way he was starting to enjoy the action, as he collected a posse and began supporting my efforts to show them how they must look into every chest and hamper, then under, in, and behind anything that had even a crack of room to squeeze inside.

He liked having something to do. I always kept an eye out, but his cooperation took some of the strain off me. I was grateful. The responsibility of finding the child was a hard one. Not finding her would be a grim burden to live with. It would have been oppressive enough, even if I did not know she had asked for my help and I had refused her.

My bet was that since he married Laelia, Ariminius had sunk into apathy, living with such a strong figure as his father-in-law. By the end of the afternoon I actually went so far as to tell him, man to man, "Numentinus has no patriarchal authority over you. You may respect him and the honored position he used to hold in your priesthood--but you answer to your own father."

"Grandfather, actually. He drools a bit, but he lets me do what I like." He seemed almost human; still, before he joined the pointy-heads, he had been as common as I used to be. We were both born plebs.

"My advice is to leave here when this episode is over, and become head of your own household." When he looked uncertain, I remembered the drab side of being a plebeian and asked, "Is funding a problem?"

To my surprise he said at once, "No. I have money."

"But living in the Flaminia was too attractive?"

He smiled wryly. "I was ambitious once! But I shall probably not be promoted above Flamen Pomonalis now." He did not say, even with the ex-Flamen Dialis as my father-in-law. even with the ex-Flamen Dialis as my father-in-law.

"I suppose you get sneered at by your in-laws for that?"

At first he was not intending to answer, then he squeezed out an affirmative. "And there is my wife to consider."

"But Statilia Laelia does not remain in her father's patriarchal control now she is married."

"Not legally!" he said, with feeling.

"If her husband left to live independently, she would go with him--of course."

Ariminius was silent. Interesting. "At the moment," he then said, like a man who had thought this out already, "desertion would be a cruelty." Desertion seemed a strong word to use for moving out of his father-in-law's house--though Numentinus was no ordinary father-in-law. Then I wondered if he meant more; if he left, would he shed the whole pack of them, wife and all? Would he want to leave Laelia behind?

Before I could ask him, he added, as if wanting to close the subject, "It's a difficult time, Falco."

"Really? There is a family secret, I gather."

"Nothing escapes you."

"I get to the truth in the end. I am beginning to suspect that I know what your secret is. So are you going to enlighten me?"

"It is not for me to tell. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with the child," said Ariminius.

"Flamen Pomonalis, you had better be right--or if anything has happened to her, it will be on your conscience!"

We had started with the kitchen garden at the back of the house. We scoured every patch of ground, while the men used forks and two-p.r.o.nged hoes to turn all the piles of rubbish. There had been a bonfire; I myself raked through its ashes while the slaves were making the final push into the area of wildest growth towards the far wall. I sent for a ladder (the builders had left plenty) and even climbed up and looked over that wall. There was a public bath beyond it, in a maze of streets. If Gaia had, somehow, scaled this barrier she would then have been away in the reaches of the Aventine that ran towards the Raudusculana Gate. But first she would have had a climbing feat ahead of her. Even I only managed to barge through the rampant undergrowth with a great many curses, scratches, and a badly torn tunic; it seemed impossible for a child. The height of the wall when balanced on a precarious ladder placed on very rough ground was too off-putting. Not that I ever rule out anything absolutely. If she thought she was fleeing for her life, desperation could make anything feasible.

Next we probed and picked over the house. I divided the workforce and placed half in command of Ariminius; I started at the top with my men, he started at the bottom with his, and after crossing halfway we knew that every cranny should have been investigated not just once but twice.

There were large salons and small cubicles. An area which must have been far older than the rest of the property had all the rooms running into each other in an old-fashioned sequence, then there were other wings where tasteful modern reception rooms led off frescoed corridors. A damp bas.e.m.e.nt consisted of about fifty cells for slaves; that allowed rapid searching. All they had in them were a few meager treasures and hard pallets to sleep on. We lined up the slaves, army style, each outside his or her own compartment, while we searched. That gave me a chance to ask every one if they knew anything or had seen Gaia yesterday after her mother sent the nurse to other duties.

"What duties were they, incidentally?" I checked routinely with Ariminius, but he only shrugged and looked vague. Giving instructions to women was a woman's business--or at least that was what he wanted me to think.

There are odd contents in most homes, though few so odd as I saw here. In the ex-Flamen's bedroom, which was some way from the rest of his family, stood a casket of sacrificial cakes (in case of night starvation?) and the bed legs were smeared with clay--an accommodation that allowed a practicing Flamen Dialis to escape the ancient prescription that he must sleep upon the ground. It was no longer necessary for Numentinus. Retirement meant nothing to the old man--though this seemed an affectation in his new house.

I could not have lived here. What pa.s.sed for refinement in their lives made me turn up my fine long Etruscan nose: the ex-Flamen's library, for instance, contained nothing but scrolls of ritual nonsense, as oblique as the Sibylline Books. Throughout the house there were too many niches that had been set up as shrines, and the cloying stench of incense lingered everywhere. Looms for the women were lined up in a whole bank in a bare room, like the workshop of the most miserable tailor. The wine store was meager. Even Helena and I, at our lowest ebb financially, had paid more attention to the quality of what went in our oil lamps. Shabbiness is one thing; lack of interest is pitiful.

I was not here to criticize their life. But if more people had done so in the past, and if its quality had been improved, just maybe there would have been less unhappiness. Then maybe the child would be safe at home.