"You ought to be around at your sister's instead of loafing here," ordered my mother. I intended it; I wanted to ask Maia about the reception for Queen Berenice and how would-be little Vestal Virgins fitted into it. "Oh, don't bother--I'll go!"

Ma had forestalled me. The Virgins would have to wait. Petronius Longus would say virgins never do that. Still, the kind of virgins Petro joked about were never just six years old.

After Ma had gone, I waited for Helena to tell me about the Flamen Pomonalis visit. I had to pretend that I had come home right at the end of it, not that I overheard the whole interview. Helena could play up to me as a hidden accomplice if a conspiracy had been agreed on beforehand, but she hated to be spied on secretly. For one thing, she resented being supervised.

Obviously now deeply troubled, she gave me a succinct report.

"What exactly was Gaia's story yesterday when you saw her alone before I came home, Helena?"

"She said, 'One of my relations threatened to kill me.' And that it had frightened her," Helena told me, looking thoughtful. "She had got it into her head that she needed to see an informer, so I left it for you to deal with."

"I'm starting to regret sending her away without asking more questions. I know you thought I should have gone into it more thoroughly."

"You had your own troubles, Marcus."

"This little girl may have worse."

"She has grown up in a most peculiar home, that's for certain," said Helena with some force. "Her grandparents will have been married by a strange old formal ceremony, and as they were the Flamen Dialis and the Flaminica, even their house itself had ritual significance. No child in such a home knows a normal upbringing. The daily life of the priest and priestess is proscribed by ridiculous taboos and rituals at every turn. It leaves little time for family matters. Even the children formally take part in religious ceremonies--presumably, Gaia's father went through all that. And now Gaia, the poor mite, is being pushed into becoming a Vestal Virgin--"

"An escape, by the sound of it!" I grinned.

"She is six," growled Helena. She was right. That was no age to be removed from home and subjected to thirty years of sanct.i.ty.

"Do I take it, Helena, you intend to investigate?"

"I want to." She felt wretched, which always unsettled me. "I just don't see how to go about it yet."

She was broody all day, not ready yet to share her further thoughts. I applied myself to clearing up goose droppings. Helena had made it clear that this was a daily rite which ancient traditions decreed could only be carried out by the Procurator of Poultry.

Dinner that evening came as a relief. The one thing to say for the n.o.ble Camilli was that, despite their financial problems, they dined well. In that, they far excelled most Roman millionaires.

Their money was tied up in land (in order to protect their right to remain on the senatorial list), but a delicately poised tier of mortgages allowed them to live in a tolerable style. For instance, when they had invited us to dinner, they sent their carrying chair for Helena and the baby. We stuffed it full of presents and Julia's toys. I carried the baby. Helena was bringing letters from her brother, a bright sprig called Quintus Camillus Justinus whom I knew fairly well.

Helena had two brothers, both younger than her and both heavily bossed by her when they strayed too close. The elder, Aelia.n.u.s, had been betrothed to an heiress from Baetica in southern Spain. The younger, Justinus, ran off with her. I had gone to Tripolitania, funded by the senator, with a brief to find the eloping pair. I knew it was thought to be my fault that Claudia Rufina had decided to swap brothers. Untrue, of course: she fell for the one with better looks and a more attractive character. But I had been involved in first bringing her to Rome as a prospective bride for Aelia.n.u.s, and the senator's wife had long held the opinion that anything touched by M. Didius Falco was bound to go wrong. In that, Julia Justa was following the views of my own family, so I made no attempt to disprove her theory. May as well live with the grief you know.

Helena and I had found that under the stress of desert conditions the young lovers had fallen out, but we ignored their finer feelings and cobbled them back together. We persuaded Justinus to cut his losses and marry Claudia (and her money), first sending the couple on a visit to Spain in order to reconcile her wealthy grandparents.

Justinus had been searching for silphium, the extinct luxury condiment. He had hoped to rediscover it and make millions. Once that mad plan had failed, the only way I could prevent him running off to be a hermit was to lure him into replacing Anacrites as my partner. He had no qualifications, and since he had now gone off to Spain indefinitely, at my third attempt to find a partner I had stuck myself with one who knew absolutely nothing--and who was not even available.

Helena had decided we could all share a house (which might explain why she had told the Flamen Pomonalis that we lived on the Janiculan). Knowing her, she had probably bought a place already. Watching her work around to telling me would give me hours of secret fun.

You might think that securing a Baetican olive oil fortune and a pleasant wife for their talented boy would earn me laurel wreaths from Justinus' parents. Unfortunately, it still left them with the problem of their disgruntled elder son. Aelia.n.u.s had lost the money, lost his bride, and had to stand down from the senate elections for a year, all because his brother had made him look a fool. Whatever his parents felt about the resolution to his brother's life, Aelia.n.u.s was the one they now had sulking at home. A young man in his twenties, with no occupation and very few manners, can dominate a household even if he spends most of his time out on the town.

"It seems best to let him alarm the neighbors with his rowdy friends," murmured the senator on our arrival. "So far he has not actually been arrested or brought home on a trestle covered in blood."

"Is Aulus joining us for dinner?" asked Helena, using Aelia.n.u.s' family name yet trying to disguise the fact that she hoped not. The dutiful elder sister, she always wanted to be fair, but of the two boys, Justinus was much more like her in temperament and att.i.tude.

"Probably not," Camillus Verus, her father, replied. He was a tall, shrewd, humorous man with sprouting gray-tinged hair that his barber had still not successfully tamed. I noticed a hunted air when he spoke of his sons.

"At a party?" I asked.

"This may sound hard to believe, but I have been trying to get him into one of the priesthoods--give him some honors to his name. If he is where he is supposed to be, it's the Sacred Grove of the Arval Brothers. This is the main day of their annual ceremonial."

I whistled approvingly. It seemed the polite thing to do. The chosen clique presided over festivals and religious holidays, with an additional remit to pray for the good fortune of the imperial family. The Arval Brothers' activities derived from the dawn of history, when they had prayed for the health and fruitfulness of crops--in token of which, they all wore chaplets of corn tied on with white ribbons. The thought of the rather gruff Aelia.n.u.s bedecked with a corn-ear crown made a hilarious climax to a good dinner. But frankly, if a son of mine wanted to join the corn-dolly brethren, I would lock him in the broom cupboard until the fantasy sweated out of him.

"So--tell us your news, Marcus."

I announced my elevation and brushed aside congratulations like a good modest Roman. "I warn you, sir, my conversation is limited nowadays to ways of worming poultry. My life is now fixed by the ritual events of the G.o.ddess Juno's calendar."

"What--no more informing?" I caught his eye briefly. Decimus, as I was sometimes emboldened to call him, was a close friend of Vespasian, and I never knew quite how much he knew about my official work.

"Stuck with the birds."

He grinned frankly. "You deserve the status, but can't you ditch the aviary?"

"I am supposed to feel honored."

"b.u.g.g.e.r that!"

Helena's mother gave him a sad look, and decided to lead me to my dining couch before her rude husband infected her newly respectable son-in-law with disreputable views. Until now, I had been the dangerous republican and Decimus the conventional Curia hack. I felt slightly unnerved.

As we reclined, Julia Justa placed olive bowls and saffron prawns before me with her long beringed hands. Helena leaned over and stole the prawns. "Tell me, Marcus," said her mother, resplendent in white and gold that glittered almost as much as her new, worrying friendliness. "I have always wondered--how exactly do they persuade the Sacred Geese to stay on their purple cushion when they are being transported in a procession?"

"I'll find out for you. I suspect they make them hungry first, then a man walks alongside with a fistful of grain to bribe them to sit still."

"Like taking a child to a party," said Helena. Her mother looked approvingly at ours, who was sitting quietly in the arms of a slave, chewing her pottery rattle; she had even tactfully chosen to gnaw a toy her grandparents had bought for her.

Planning her moment. Little Julia knew how to disrupt mealtimes. She had learned new skills since the estimable Camilli last had a chance to dote on her.

"Isn't she good!"

Helena and I smiled the shameless public smiles of experienced parents. We had had a year to learn never to confess that our cute-looking dimpled baby could be a screaming troublemaker. We had dressed her nicely in white, combed her soft dark hair into a sweet curl, and now we were waiting with our nerves on edge for the inevitable moment when she decided to roar and rampage.

It was, as always, a good dinner, one which would have been more enjoyable had I felt able to relax. I liked Helena's father and no longer disliked her mother. They seemed to have accepted that they were stuck with me. Perhaps they had also noticed that I had not yet lived up to expectations and made their daughter unhappy, nor had I been thrown in jail (well, not lately), barred from any public buildings, lampooned in any scurrilous satires, or featured in the rogues' gallery in the Daily Gazette Daily Gazette. Even so, at these gatherings there was always a risk somebody would say something offensive. Sometimes I thought Decimus secretly hoped for the thrill of it. He had a wicked streak. I knew it well; he had pa.s.sed it on intact to Helena.

"Papa and Mama, you can help us with something," said Helena over the dessert course. "Do either of you know anything about Laelius Numentinus, the Flamen Dialis, and his family?"

"What's your problem with a flamen?" her father demanded.

"Well, I have had an early run-in with the silly old b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I hedged, "though it was not face-to-face."

"Naturally. You'd be at arm's length, held off with his precious wand."

"No, he has been retired; his wife died and he had to stand down. Not that it stops him complaining, apparently. The first thing that greeted me in my new post was a crisis caused by his displeasure at unwanted goslings scampering about the Capitol. I managed to avoid meeting him, or I would have been very brusque."

"After a lifetime of being protected from close contact with the real world, he can't be good with people--or birds." Decimus had a definite scorn for the flaminical caste. I had always liked him. He had no time for hypocrisy. And although he was a senator, I reckoned he was politically straight. No one could buy him. That was why he had no money, of course.

He knew few of the right people either; he admitted that Laelius Numentinus was simply a figure glimpsed at public ceremonies.

"What happened to the goslings, Marcus?" asked his wife with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"I found them a good home," I answered soberly, not mentioning that the home was ours. Helena eyed me trickily.

"And are you expecting more trouble from the man--or is there some other reason for enquiring?"

"There's a child in his family whom they expect to be chosen as the next Vestal. I gather the Laelii can mystically influence the lottery." I aimed the last comment at Decimus.

He raised an eyebrow, this time pretending to be shocked at the imputation of fixing. "Well," he scoffed. "We wouldn't want any little unscrubbed plebeian to emerge as the winner, when there are maidens with mile-long patrician pedigrees yearning to carry the water from the shrine of Egeria."

"Famous for their antique chast.i.ty?"

"Absolutely notorious for their purity and simplicity!" concluded Helena dryly.

"No, no. It cannot be," Julia Justa corrected me. "Being a daughter of a flamen counts as an exemption from the lottery."

"She is the Flamen's granddaughter, actually."

"Then the father must have opted out of the priesthood." Julia Justa laughed briefly. For a moment, she sounded like Helena. "I bet that went down well!" In explanation she went on, "That family are known for regarding the priesthood as their personal prerogative. The late Flaminica was notorious for her sn.o.bbery about it. My mother was a keen attendant at the rites of the Good G.o.ddess--remember she took you once, Helena."

"Yes. I've told Marcus it was just a sewing circle with dainty almond cakes."

"Oh, of course!"

They were teasing Decimus and me. The festival of the Bona Dea was a famously secretive gathering of matrons, nocturnal and forbidden to men. All sorts of suspicions circulated about what went on there. Women took over the house of the senior magistrate--turfing him out--and then enjoyed letting their menfolk sweat over what kind of orgy they had organized.

"I seem to remember," I challenged Helena, "you always made out that you disliked the Bona Dea festival--why was that, beloved? Too staid for you?" I smiled, playing the tolerant type and turning back to Julia Justa. "So the Flaminica would have been a regular at the festival in her official capacity?"

"And her overbearing sister too," answered Julia Justa, with an unaccustomed smirk. "The sister, Terentia Paulla, was a Vestal Virgin."

"A Vestal presides, if rumor is correct?"

"Well, she tries!" Julia Justa laughed. "A group of women does not necessarily succ.u.mb to leadership as a group of men would--especially once the refreshments arrive." Out of control, eh? That confirmed the worst fears of our masculine citizenship. Not to mention suggestions that wine played a major part in the girls' giggling rites. "My mother, who was a shrewd woman--"

"Bound to be!" I grinned, including both Helena and Julia Justa in the compliment.

"Yes, Marcus dear." Marcus dear? Marcus dear? I gulped back my disquiet. "Mama held that the Flaminica was very loose living." I gulped back my disquiet. "Mama held that the Flaminica was very loose living."

"Oho! On what evidence?"

"She had a lover. Everyone knew. It was more or less open. She and her ghastly sister were always arguing about it. The affair went on for years."

"I am shocked."

"You are not," said Helena, flipping me with her dinner napkin. "You are a hard-bitten and cynical private informer; you expect adultery at every turn. Mind you, I I am shocked, Mama." am shocked, Mama."

"Of course you are, darling; I brought you up in a very sheltered way . . . Well, being Flaminica is a difficult role," Julia Justa returned. Like Helena, she could be fair. She was a sophisticated woman: nowadays she even managed to be fair to me. "The Flamen Dialis and his wife are selected from a very narrow circle--they have to fulfill strict traditional criteria. She has to be a virgin--"

"That's surely no trouble!" inserted Decimus satirically.

"They both have to be born of parents who have been married by confarreatio, the old-fashioned religious ceremony in front of ten witnesses, with the Pontifex Maximus and the Flamen Dialis present. Then, Marcus, they have to be married themselves with those ceremonies and can never divorce. The chances of them finding each other tolerable are remote to begin with, and if things go wrong they are trapped for life."

"Plus the pressure of constantly appearing in public together to carry out their official functions--" I suggested.

"Oh, anyone can go through the motions in public!" Julia Justa disagreed. "It would be back at home that the tension would show."

We all nodded sagely, while pretending to consider the concept of domestic disagreement as something remote from our own experience. As one does.

"So, what is the problem with the little girl?" asked the senator.

"Nothing at all, according to the family," I said. "The child herself told Helena she has been threatened with serious harm. She came to see us with this tale, and I confess, I failed to take it seriously. I should have asked more questions."

"If she really is earmarked as the next Vestal," Julia Justa commented, "hers are the kind of people who would glory in it. What could cause conflict? Is she playing up about being selected?"

"Overjoyed, apparently."

"I rather suspect," said Helena, "as my grandmother would say, Gaia must be glad of a chance to be taken away from her relatives."

"They do sound a grim lot."

"Fossils!" muttered Decimus.

We had insulted the Laelii for long enough. Since dinner was over Helena buzzed off with her mother to talk about what had happened in North Africa with Justinus and Claudia. Her father and I occupied the senator's study, a squashed glory hole full of scrolls that Decimus had started to read, then forgotten about. We lit lamps and threw cushions off the reading couch, trying to pretend there was room to recline in some elegance. In fact, although the Camillus house was s.p.a.cious, its master had been allocated a poky nook, as he ruefully liked to acknowledge.

It was, however, roomy enough for a pair of friendly fellows to let themselves relax when left unsupervised.

VII.

TO MAKE IT a manly symposium, we had brought a fine gla.s.s bottle of decanted Alban wine. Helena's mother had instructed us to look after the baby; apparently, the grim-faced slaves in her retinue had too much work of their own. We had boasted that childcare fell well within our expertise. The senator placed Julia on a rug and let her grab whatever came to hand. Allowed to play among the grown-ups, she was no trouble; she settled to playing spillikins with equipment from his stylus tray. I was a realistic father; I intended to equip her for life. Even a year and four days could not be too young for a girl to familiarize herself with men's behavior when they are let loose with a good flagon.

"So! Tell me about Aelia.n.u.s singing the ancient hymn of the Arval Brothers."

His father sighed. "Time to garner a few embellishments on his social record."

"I seem to be hearing about nothing but religious cults this week. As far as I remember, the Brethren are the oldest in Rome--a lineage all the way from our agricultural forefathers. And don't they celebrate fertility by way of energetic feasting? Sounds like your son made a good choice."

Decimus grinned, though rather distractedly. He must prefer to think of this as a sober move.