"Just a knack."

"Actually, we know charming, self-confident, dear little patrician Gaia," I said.

"Through your family?" Maia asked Helena.

"One of my clients," I returned smoothly. Maia and Petro guffawed. "She looks ideal for the Vestal's job. All her relatives specialize in holding priestly posts. She has grown up in the house of a Flamen Dialis."

"Well, dear me, I heard all about that. The child is perfect for the role!" quipped Maia sourly. "So I don't want to be rude, Marcus, but what does she need you for?"

"That, I admit, is a puzzle. Did she talk at all to Cloelia?"

"Afraid so. I may lack social climbing skills, but my strange ambitious baby goes straight to make friends with the people who matter."

"Cloelia cannot be yours," said Helena. "Famia must have found her under an arch. Tell us about Gaia Laelia; did she look happy being favored by Berenice and the Vestal?"

Maia paused. "Mostly. She was one of the youngest, and after a long time in the royal embrace I thought she probably got bored--anyway, there was a little flurry. It was handled very smoothly, and most people never noticed."

"What kind of flurry?" I asked.

"How should I know? It seemed as if she said something embarra.s.sing, the way children do. Berenice looked startled. Gaia was whisked off the Queen's lap, her mother grabbed her, looking as if she wanted to be swallowed by a chasm opening up, and you could see everyone nearby laughing and pretending nothing had happened. Next time I saw Gaia, she was playing with my Cloelia, and they both gave me a glare that said n.o.body should interrupt."

"Playing?" Helena demanded.

"Yes, they spent over an hour carrying imaginary water vessels from one of the fountains."

"What did you think of Gaia?"

"Too good mannered. Too nice natured. Too pretty and well favored. Don't say it: I know I'm just a rude grouse."

"We love you for it," I a.s.sured my sister affectionately. I now explained how Gaia had come to see me, and what she had said about her family. "I don't know what it's all about, but she was asking me for help. So what did you think of Gaia's mother? If someone in the family has it in for the child, could it be her?"

"Doubt it," said Maia. "She was far too proud of her little mite."

"We only met an uncle," Helena contributed. "Is the mother downtrodden?"

"Not noticeably, at least not when she is out in female company."

"But at home, who knows? . . . Did Cloelia tell Gaia she has an uncle who is an informer?"

"No idea. She could well have done."

"And on the other side, I suppose you don't know if Gaia told Cloelia anything about her family?"

"Helena, when Julia is older you will learn about this: I," said Maia, "was merely the chaperon who enabled my daughter to mingle with elevated people and dream that she herself was ludicrously important. I hired the litter that took us to the Palatine. I caused embarra.s.sment by wearing too bright a gown and by making jokes about the occasion in a rather loud undertone. Other than that, I was superfluous. I was not allowed to know anything that Cloelia got up to when the girls were let loose together. My only other role was later at home, mopping her brow and holding the bowl when the excitement made her throw up all night."

"You are a wonderful mother," Helena a.s.sured her.

"Do mention it to my children sometime."

"They know," I said.

"Well, Cloelia won't think so when I have to break the news that she won't be chosen."

"Mothers all over Rome will have the same problem," Petro reminded her.

"All except the self-satisfied piece with the squint who produced Gaia Laelia." The child's mother had really offended Maia. But I reckoned it was merely by existing.

"It may not be so simple. Something is definitely amiss there. The child came to ask for help for a reason."

"She came to see you because she had a wild imagination and no sense of judgment," said Maia. "Not to mention a family who allow her to steal the litter and to traipse around town without her nurse."

"I feel there may be more to it," Helena demurred. "It's no use. We cannot just forget it--Marcus, one of us will have to look into this further."

However, we had to stop there because of a commotion at the street door when the children returned. The little ones were whimpering, and even Marius looked white.

"Oh, Uncle Marcus, a big dog jumped on Nux and would not get off again." He was curling up with embarra.s.sment, knowing what the beast had been up to, yet not wanting to say.

"Well, that's wonderful." I beamed, as Nux shot under the table with a sheepish and disheveled appearance. "If we end up having dear little scruffy puppies, Marius, you can have first pick!"

As my sister shuddered with horror, Petronius murmured in a hollow aside, "It's very appropriate, Maia. Their father was a horse vet; you have to allow your dear children to develop their inherited affinity with animals."

But Maia had decided she had to save them from the bad influence of Petro and me, so she jumped up and bustled them all off home.

XIII.

"WELL, THAT WAS a waste of time!"

I had allowed myself to forget temporarily that Camillus Aelia.n.u.s had somehow lost a corpse. He pounded up our steps and burst into the apartment, scowling with annoyance. I hid a smile. The aristocratic young hero would normally despise everything connected with the role of an informer, yet he had fallen straight into the old trap: faced with an enigma, he felt compelled to pursue it. He would carry on even after he made himself exhausted and furious.

He was both. "Oh Hades, Falco! You packed me off on a wild errand. Everyone I questioned responded with suspicion, most were rude, some tried to bully me, and one even ran away."

I would have given him a drink, the traditional restorative, but we had consumed my whole stock that day at lunch. As Helena nudged him to a bench, his mid-brown eyes wandered vaguely as if he were looking for a jug and beaker. All the right instincts were working, though he lacked the sheer cheek to ask for a goblet openly.

"Did you chase him?"

"Who? "

"The one who ran away. This was, almost certainly, the person you needed to speak to."

He thought about it. Then he saw what I meant. He banged a clenched fist on his forehead. "Oh rats, Falco!"

"Would you know him again?"

"A lad. The Brothers have youngsters a.s.signed to them as attendants at their feasts--called camilli, coincidentally. There are only four. I could pick him out."

"You'll have to get into a feast first," I pointed out, perhaps unnecessarily.

He dropped his head onto the table and covered his face, groaning. "Another day. I cannot face any more. I'm whacked."

"Pity." I grinned, dragging him upright. The cra.s.s, snooty article had behaved abominably in the past over Helena and me; I loved paying him back. "Because if you really want to get anywhere, you and I have to make ourselves presentable and take a stroll to the house of the Master of the Arval Brothers--now, Aulus!"

It was the final day of the festival. This would be his last chance. My youthful apprentice had to accept that his mission was governed by a time constraint. Like me, he was astute enough to see that if we were to tackle the slippery intendant of a cult that was hiding something, we would need all our wits and energy--and we had to act fast. His day's work had hardly begun.

"Men's games," I apologized to Helena.

"Boys!" she commented. "Be careful, both."

I kissed her. After a momentary hesitation, her brother showed he was learning, and forced himself to do the same.

Aelia.n.u.s knew how to find the Master's house; he had been invited to the feasting as an observer on the first day of the festival. It was a substantial mock-seaside villa on its own property island, somewhere off the Via Tusculana. A profusion of stone dolphins provided salty character and looked cheerful and unpretentious, though in the urban center of Rome the rows of open-sided balconies on every wing gave a twee effect. On the Bay of Neapolis the owners could have gone fishing off their boarded verandas, but here their nostalgia for long-gone August holidays was way out of place. n.o.body fishes in the gutters in Rome. Well, not if they know what I do about things that float in the city water supply.

As we arrived, it was clear from the disgorging palanquins that the elite members of the college were just a.s.sembling for that night's feast. There was a special buzz. I wondered if these men in corn-ear wreaths were greeting each other with extra excitement, knowing of the death the night before.

One man was leaving, however. Tall, gaunt, elderly, haughty as Hades. Eyes that were careful never to alight on anyone. Flyaway white hair around a bald pate.

He had paused at the top of the entrance steps, as if waiting for some flunky to clear a free path. When Aelia.n.u.s leaped up the steps athletically, his cloak brushed very slightly against this old man, who flinched as if he had been touched by a leprous beggar. Sensing a patrician who might own a senate election vote, Aelia.n.u.s apologized briefly. The only answer was an impatient humph.

The man seemed vaguely familiar. Perhaps he held some position of honor, or I might have seen him lounging in the good seats at the theater. Jove knew who he was.

We marched boldly inside the main porch. I found a chamberlain. Our manner had warned him we were trouble, but we proved quiet enough to win him over. "I apologize; this is very urgent. Before the fun begins this evening, we need to see the Master on a confidential matter. Didius Falco and Camillus Aelia.n.u.s. It concerns an unfortunate occurrence yesterday."

The chamberlain was suave, expressionless--and without doubt apprised of the scandal in the Grove. To the disbelief of my companion, we got straight in.

That was bad. The Master must be playing this the clever way.

At first it was not the Master himself we met, but his vice--a fl.u.s.tered barnacle covered with warts from whom, had he been a commoner instead of a pedigreed n.o.ble, I would not have bought a fresh fish in case it gave me bellyache. He was accompanied by the college's vice-flamen--a pallid cheese with a drip on his nose who must be the main source of this month's summer cold in Rome. These two stand-ins greeted us nervously, explained who they were, and mumbled a lot about having to officiate at that day's rites in the temple because the real Master and flamen had been called away. They were spared embarra.s.sment when their princ.i.p.als turned up in traveling clothes.

I stood to attention deferentially. So, at this cue, did Helena's brother.

"Camillus Aelia.n.u.s!" Washing his hands in a bowl held by a slave, the Master nodded congenially to show that he recognized him. "And you are--?"

"Didius Falco." It was probably convention in such company to name your own a.s.sociation with religion, but I was not prepared to admit being the guardian of the geese. "I have worked for the Emperor." They could guess how. "I am here as a friend to this young man. Aelia.n.u.s had a rather unpleasant experience in the late hours of yesterday. We do feel that he should report it formally, should you be unaware of what occurred."

"I am so sorry to keep you waiting; we had extra business at the Sacred Grove." The Master was a huge-bellied man whose size must have been enormous long before he took office in a post with compulsory feasting. d.o.g.g.i.ng him, the cult's sacrificing flamen had neither girth nor height, but made his presence felt by a harsh laugh at inappropriate moments.

"A purification rite?" I asked quietly.

The efficient chamberlain must have warned his head of household what we had said we wanted. "Exactly. The Grove has been polluted by an iron blade, but due solemnities have now been offered--a suovetaurilia."

Major expiation by swine, ram, and bull. Sorted. Three perfect animals rounded up and their throats cut, the very next day.

Would a b.l.o.o.d.y corpse be dealt with just as briskly? In this cult, yes.

The three subsidiary officers had found seats. The ears of grain in their headdresses nodded gently in the light from a bank of suspended oil lamps; shadows pa.s.sed across their faces. They were used to the effect. Aelia.n.u.s, who had hoped to join them, must have trained himself to accept the sight. I managed to contain a smirk. Just.

"So, young man! Tell me what happened to you," offered the Master, so graciously that my teeth set. He was now changing into a flowing white dinner gown, like those the others already wore. Over one shoulder was placed a folded vestment. The feast must have been delayed; still a.s.sisted by the discreet slave, he dressed hurriedly. The pressure on us rose. Well, n.o.body wanted the Arval cook to start bewailing a burned roast.

Aelia.n.u.s exhibited his least attractive scowl and said bluntly, "I fell over a corpse at the back of your pavilion, sir."

"Ah." The big man revealed no surprise, only delicate concern. Garbed for the feast now, he gestured to the slave to leave us. "That must have been a terrible experience."

"You saw the body?" I slipped in.

"I did." He was making no attempt at subterfuge. Normally in my job you meet head-on resistance, but this was a familiar scenario too; I knew it was far worse. To deal with complete openness is like falling into a grain storage pit. It can very quickly suffocate.

"The body subsequently disappeared." Still upset, Aelia.n.u.s spoke too harshly. If I let him continue in this style, we would lose any grip on the conversation that we still possessed.

The Master looked from one to the other of us. It was a fine display of gentle reproach. "Oh dear. You are suspecting dark deeds!" I felt my cheek twitch. We could have been discussing a few missing denarii from their petty cash, instead of a man who had been honoring the old religion, hacked to death in a tent.

"You tidied up?" I posed the question without exaggerated disapproval. These people were intelligent. They knew that I knew they wished that their secret had remained within the cult.

The Master immediately increased his air of deep apology. "I am afraid we did. It was, after all, the main night of our annual festival and we hoped to avoid panic among the attendant staff and members of the public who were visiting the Games. The Sacred Grove of the Dea Dia had been polluted too, so there were considerations of how to reconsecrate it as swiftly as possible. . . . Well, this is a most dreadful business, but there is no untoward secrecy. I am grateful that you have come to me with your concerns. Let me explain what has happened, as far as we know it--"

"The dead man was one of the Brethren?" I asked.

"Unhappily, yes." I noticed he made no attempt to give a name. "A sad domestic incident. The woman responsible was found wandering in the Grove immediately afterwards, covered with blood and weeping hysterically, totally deranged."

"You call it a 'domestic incident'; do you mean she is a relative of her victim?"

"Sadly, yes. Is it not true, Falco, that people are most likely to be murdered by members of their families?"

I acknowledged it. "Men get killed by their wives, usually. You saw the woman yourself?"

For the first time he did appear to be overcome by the grim story. "Yes. Yes, I did." He was silent for a second, then went on. "She became calmer, seeming bemused. I spoke to her gently, and she admitted what had happened."

"Was she capable of giving any rational explanation?"

"No."

"Difficult!" I said dryly.

"These things happen. It was quite unexpected, or the ghastly consequences might have been averted. Our member, it now transpires, had been troubled by the woman's bouts of mental stress but was attempting to protect her by concealing them. People do that, you know." I made a face that said I knew. "I have made further enquiries, and I am satisfied that this is the truth. Her mind went. Whether it was under some great burden that cannot now be discovered or some unfortunate natural illness, we may never know."

"Official action?"

"No, Falco. I have consulted the Emperor today, but there is nothing to gain by a court case. It would only add to the immense distress of those involved. Nothing remained for us to do but arrange for the body to be given reverently into the care of his relatives for burial. The poor woman has been a.s.signed to her own close family, on the promise she will be nursed and constantly guarded."

At this, the two deputy officials we had first met seemed to shift slightly in their seats. Glances pa.s.sed between them and the Master, then the vice-Master told him, "We were just discussing the arrangements before you returned."