One Virgin Too Many

XXVI

It was none of our business. At least, that was what we would be told by the Laelii. Anyway, there was little we could do at that late hour.

Petronius said he would escort Maia and her young son back home, not that Maia thought twice about the risk. Helena and I went straight to bed. All of us hoped, as you have to when a child is lost, that by morning everything would have resolved itself and Gaia would have turned up, leaving the adventure to become just one of those never-forgotten stories people retell every year around the fire at Saturnalia to embarrass the victim. But when a missing person is a child who has said that her family wants her dead, it evokes a bad feeling, however calm you try to stay.

Next day, Maia went early to see her friend, the mother who had told her the news. Anxious herself, the woman had already called to see Caecilia Paeta, Gaia's mother. The child had not come home. The family were making light of it publicly.

Helena then visited the Laelius house with Maia-as matrons offering sympathy-but they were briskly rebuffed at the door.

Children lose themselves for all sorts of reasons. They forget the way home. They stay with friends without bothering to tell anyone. Occasionally, though, they have made sinister friends nobody knows about, and are lured to dangerous fates.

Children like to hide. Many "lost" children are found again at home: stuck in a cupboard or head-down in a giant urn. Usually they have managed not to suffocate.

Sometimes girls are abducted for brothels. Petronius Longus muttered to me in an undertone, that in the disgusting stews where anything goes there would be a very unpleasant premium on a six-year-old from a good home, who was known to be a potential Vestal Virgin. As soon as Maia reported next morning that the child was still missing, he took it upon himself to put out an immediate all-cohort alert.

"You are my star witness, Falco. Description of the child, please?"

"Jupiter, how do I know?" Suddenly I felt more patient towards all the vague witnesses I had previously yelled at for giving me incompetent statements. "Her name is Gaia Laelia, daughter of Laelius Scaurus. She is six years old; she's small. She was well dressed, with jewelry-bangles-and her hair fixed up-"

"That can be changed," Petro said grimly. If she had been snatched by brothel-owners, disguising her was the first thing they would do. "Right. Dark hairs, dark eyes. Well spoken, confident. Pretty-"

Petro groaned.

Perhaps against his better judgment, he decided to tell Rubella, his cohort commander, what was happening. He could not ignore the possibility that Gaia had been kidnapped to order. That would mean all the other girls whose names were in the lottery might be potential targets too.

Rubella first told Petronius he was off his head. Despite that, the sceptical tribune immediately took himself to see the Prefect of the Urban Cohorts. At least the Fourth would be covered if there was any fallout later. Should the Prefect take this story seriously, his next step would probably be to ask the office of the Pontifex Maximus-the Emperor, of course-for a full list of the young girls in the lottery so all their parents could be warned. Since the Laelius family wanted to pretend this was a slight domestic problem that nobody need know about, I thought things were escalating dangerously. But in view of their social prominence, they would not be surprised that the story had been leaked.

Time counts. The Laelii were ignoring that. Even if little Gaia were just trapped in a store cupboard in her own home, they needed to hold a systematic search. They had to start now. Petronius and I could have instructed them how to go about it; we were frustrated by our inability even to approach those involved. But a Flamen Dialis was as close to the gods as you could get in human form, and a retired one could be just as arrogant. Laelius Numentinus had represented Jupiter on earth for thirty years. Both of us knew better than to tackle him. Petronius was too lowly a member of the vigiles, and his superiors had firmly told him to make no approach unless or until the Laelii directly requested help. As for me, I was the upstart in charge of the Capitoline geese-and Laelius Numentinus had made it plain what he thought of that.

It was now eight days before the Ides of June. Tomorrow the festival of Vesta would begin. Today had no sacred connections at all. As Procurator of Poultry, I had no demands on my time. When Helena and Maia returned, furious, from their abortive mission to offer sympathy at the Laelius residence, I was ready with a ploy to outflank that secretive family. It involved a visit to a very different house, one that was even more carefully closed to the public: the House of the Vestals at the end of the Sacred Way.