One Virgin Too Many

XXVII

It was not too far to walk, down from the Aventine via the Temple of Ceres, around the end of the Circus Maximus at the Cattle Market end, and into the Forum below the Capitol in the shadow of the Tarpeian Rock. We took the Sacred Way past the Basilica, turned under the Arch of Augustus between the Temples of Castor and Julius Caesar, and at about the midpoint of the Forum came to the Virgins' sanctuary. On our left the Regia, once the palace of Numa Pompilius, the second King of Rome, and now the office of the Pontifex; on our right the Temple of Vesta; beyond the temple, established between the Sacred Way and the Via Nova, the House of the Vestals.

Helena had escorted me, acting as a chaperon. We had brought Julia, though we left Nux with Maia, who reluctantly agreed to safeguard her from the attentions of lecherous dogs. With us came Maia's daughter Cloelia, on condition that she never left our sight in case she had been marked by Gaia's abductors, should they exist. My plan was to consult the Virgin Constantia; Cloelia would be able to identify Constantia if I had to beard her when she was among the other respected ones solemnly engaged in their duties for the day.

I was wearing my toga. My late brother's toga, I should say. It had had a long life. Helena had wrapped it around me with much muttering that now I was respectable I must buy a new one. Being respectable would be expensive, apparently. But you do not approach a Virgin in a stained tunic with its neck braid hanging loose.

You may wonder why I did not simply call at the House of the Vestals and enquire if the lady would see me. There was no point trying. I knew she would not. Vestal Virgins are allowed to speak to people of rank in the course of their respected work. They will take in a consul's will for safekeeping, or appeal to the Prefect of the City in a crisis-but they have the same prejudices as anyone. Informers are way off their acceptable visitors' list.

Maia had looked at me very suspiciously when I suggested taking Cloelia. She suspected I wanted to pump her daughter for information. As we walked down to the Forum, I did tackle the child.

Helena gripped her hand. Clopping along in her rather large sandals (Maia expected her to grow into them), Cloelia looked up at me, expecting trouble. She had the Didius curls and something of our stocky build, but facially she resembled Famia most. The high cheekbones that had given her father's features a tipsy slant could, in Cloelia's finer physiognomy, make her strikingly beautiful one day. Maia had probably foreseen trouble. She could handle it, or at least make a fierce attempt. Whether her daughter would agree to be steered on a safe course was yet to be seen.

"Well, Cloelia; you have become a celebrity since I last saw you. How did you enjoy being taken to the Palace of the Caesars to meet Queen Berenice?"

"Uncle Marcus, Mother told me not to let you ask me a lot of questions, unless she was there." Cloelia was eight, far more mature than Gaia had been, less obviously self-assured with strangers, but in my view probably more intelligent. I was no stranger, of course; I was just crazy Uncle Marcus, a man with a ridiculous occupation and new social pretensions, whom her female relations had taught her to scoff at.

"That's all right. You just may be able to help me with something important."

"Well, I'm sure I don't know anything," said Cloelia, smirking. She was a typical witness. Anything she did know would have to be screwed out of her. If Helena had not been watching with a disapproving glare, I might have tried the normal inducement (offering money). Instead, I could only grin gamely. Cloelia fixed her eyes ahead, satisfied that I was in my place.

"Suppose I ask the questions," suggested Helena. "What did you think of the Queen then, Cloelia?"

"I didn't like the scent she smelled of. And she only wanted to talk to the right people."

"Who were they? "

"Well, not us, obviously. We stood out a bit. My mother's dress was much brighter than all the others; I had told her it would be. She did it on purpose, I suppose. And then I had to keep telling everyone my father works among the charioteers. Well, Helena Justina, you can imagine what they thought of that!" She paused. "Used to work," she corrected herself in a quieter voice.

I took her other hand.

After a moment, she looked up at me again. "I can't be a Vestal now, you know. We had to be examined to ensure we were all sound in every limb-and they told us the other particular was that you have to have both parents alive. So you see, I don't qualify any longer. Neither Rhea nor I ever will. Anyway, it's probably better if I stay at home and help Mother."

"True," I said, feeling nonplussed as I often did. Maia's children were more grown up in some ways than our own generation. "Tell me, Cloelia, did you meet the little girl called Gaia Laelia?"

"You know I did."

"Just testing."

"She was the one who might be selected."

"By the Fates?"

"Oh Uncle Marcus, don't be so silly!"

"Cloelia, I don't mind if you believe state lotteries are fixed, but please don't tell anyone that I said so."

"Don't worry. Marius and I have decided we won't ever tell anyone we even know you."

"You think Uncle Marcus is a scamp?" asked Helena, pretending to be shocked. Cloelia looked prim. "You and Gaia Laelia became quite friendly, didn't you?"

A scornful expression crossed my niece's face. "Not really. She is only six!"

An easy one to miscalculate. For adults the little girls were a single group. But they ranged in age between six and ten, and within the hierarchies of childhood rolled enormous gulfs.

"But you did talk to her?" Helena asked.

"She was lonely. Once we could all see she had been singled out, none of the other girls would speak to her. Of course," said Cloelia, "after they thought about it, there were some who would have swarmed all over her. She could have been very popular. But then their mothers got sniffy and grabbed their precious darlings close to them."

"Not your mother?"

"I dodged her."

Helena and I exchanged a quick glance. We had slowed our pace through the Forum Boarium, but we were now passing the Basilica Julia, fighting our way through the crowds that always milled on the steps in a haze of overused hair pomade.

I decided to be frank. "Cloelia, as your mother has probably told you, something bad may have happened to little Gaia, and what she talked about to you may help me help her."

"We just played at being Vestal Virgins." Cloelia had been ready for me. "All she wanted to do was pretend to be fetching water from the Spring of Egeria and sprinkling it in the temple like the Virgins have to do. She just kept on playing the same game. I got really bored."

"Before that, didn't she throw a little tantrum when she was sitting on the Queen's lap?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't hear what it was about?"

"No."

"Did you think Gaia was happy to be put forward as a Virgin?"

"I suppose so."

"Did she say anything to you about her family?"

"Oh, she wanted me to know how important they all were." I waited. Cloelia considered. "I don't think they have much fun. When my mother came to see if I was all right, Gaia saw her wink at me. Gaia seemed very surprised a mother would do that."

"Yes, I met her own mother. She is very serious. I don't suppose Gaia said anything about wanting to run away from home?"

"No. You don't tell people you are going, or you get stopped." Maia would be horrified to think Cloelia had thought about it.

"Right. So you don't think she was in any trouble at home?"

"I can't tell you any more," Cloelia decided. The briskness with which she ended the interview was significant. Unfortunately, I could not push my eight-year-old niece up against a wall and yell at her that I knew she was lying. I was being glared at by Helena, and I was too frightened of Maia.

"Well, thank you, Cloelia."

"That's all right."

"Maia is right," said Helena, frowning at me sternly. "You should have asked her permission to question Cloelia. I know how I would feel if it was Julia." Cloelia nodded agreement, ganging up.

"Hold on, both of you. I'm not a total stranger. Now Famia is dead, I am Maia Favonia's head of household-"

Helena laughed uproariously; so did Cloelia. So much for patriarchal power.

I knew when to shut up.

We had reached the Temple of Vesta anyway. Destroyed in the Great Fire in Nero's time, it had been quickly rebuilt, still on the ancient model: a mock round hut. In fact it was now a solid marble construction, standing on a high, stepped podium and surrounded by the famous columns and carved latticework. Smoke wreathed through a hole in the circular roof from the Sacred Fire below. At present the temple doors were open. Praetors, consuls, and dictators would sacrifice before this flame upon taking up office, but a mere Procurator of Poultry would have to find a damned good excuse before he dared approach the sanctum.

Within the temple I knew there was never an image of Vesta, only the hearth representing the life, welfare, and unity of the Roman state, shaded by a sacred laurel tree. Also there was the Palladium, an obscure article said by some to be an image of Athene/Minerva though others doubted it; whatever it was, the Palladium acted as a talisman protecting Rome, and guarding it was one of the main tasks entrusted to the Virgins. Since the public was kept out by a walled enclosure, the chances of the precious talisman being spirited away by some light-fingered wrongdoer were slim. You could not sell it, anyway. Pa once told me that since nobody knew what it looked like, the Palladium had no value as collectable art.

The Vestals were attending to their chores as we arrived. They were one short in number, of course, the position to be filled by tomorrow's lottery. Five of them, led by the pouchy-eyed Chief Vestal, who looked as if she were having trouble with hot flushes nowadays, were here in their old-fashioned white woollen dresses, tied under the bust with girdles in Hercules knots that would never be unfastened by lovers, their hair bound up in bridal complexity and fastened with bands and ribbons. They had to tend the flame, since if it ever died it was an ill omen for the city; they would be scourged for the offense by the Pontifex Maximus, currently Vespasian, who was known for his strict views on traditional virtues. They also had to carry out daily purification rites, which would include sprinkling water from the Sacred Spring all around the temple. (One of them emerged carrying the ritual mop made from a horse's tail with which they performed this function.) Later they would be busy making salt cakes for religious purposes. They would say prayers and attend sacrifices, with veiled heads.

Each Vestal was attended by a lictor. Since even the Praetor's lictor was obliged to lower his ceremonial fasces if a Virgin approached, the Vestals' lictors were notoriously cocky. The maidens themselves might represent the antique simplicity of life enjoyed by a king's daughters back in the mists of time, but their modern guards were never slow in coming forward to stamp on your foot. These men were lounging in the enclosure, which it was possible to enter, though doing so caused suspicion even of a perfectly respectable procurator accompanied by his serene patrician wife and a demure female child. Inside the complex were an ostentatiously large shrine and the guarded entrance to the Vestals' House. It was perfectly clear I stood no chance of reaching the house or of bypassing the lictors to get into the temple. All I could do was to stand with my womenfolk, looking pious, while the Virgins paraded from the temple straight inside their menacing home. Cloelia kicked me when one of the youngest dames passed by, to let me know that was Constantia.

Helena Justina marched boldly to the entrance gate and requested a formal interview. She even said she had information that touched on the forthcoming lottery. Her name was taken by an attendant in that bureaucratic manner that means Don't bother to stay at home waiting for a messenger.

We stood around for a while like stale bread rolls after a party. Eventually we decided to leave, for a change making our way up the long stairway that led to the Via Nova in the deep shade of the Palatine. At the top of the steps I turned and looked back for a moment, because the view over the Forum is worth a breather any day. Suddenly Helena grabbed my arm. People were now coming out of a door in the back of the Vestals' House. A small group headed by a lictor had emerged, at the center of which was the Virgin who must be on that day's rota to fetch water from Egeria's Spring for the House of the Vestals itself (to which no proper piped water had ever been led). Bearing on her head one of the special pitchers that the Vestals had to use, by good fortune today's water-carrier was Constantia.

As the white-clad maiden made her way along the well-trodden route, Cloelia grabbed Helena and me by the hand and towed us along after her.