One Virgin Too Many

XXXIX

In Nero's day the entire ground floor of the Esquiline Wing of the Golden House had been given over to dining rooms. There were matched pairs, one half looking into a spacious courtyard, the complementary mirrored groups facing out over the Forum, where Nero installed a wildlife park but where Vespasian was now building his Amphitheatre. With his rather different lifestyle, Nero had needed not one elegant hall for feeding flatterers-his best being the famous Octagonal Room-but complex suites in threes or fives that would contain the wild parties he loved. It was among the labyrinth of these that we had seen Titus.

The Flavians were another breed from Nero. They conducted most official imperial business in the old Palace of the Caesars, high on the Palatine. It was said they intended to dismantle the Golden House soon. It represented not just hated luxury, but Nero's contempt for the people he had deliberately burned out and displaced in order to build it. The Flavians respected the people. At any rate, they would do, so long as the people respected them. But they were also frugal. While their predecessor's mad, gloriously ornate dwelling still existed, it did seem proper to them that Rome-in the person of the frugal Flavians-should make use of it. It had cost a great deal and Vespasian was hot on the value-for-money principle.

I had been here for private meetings before, and for one formal conference held in the Octagon. Titus often lurked here when he was off duty. He would call me in sometimes for a staid heart-to-heart.

The place was vast. Tall frescoed corridors ran in all directions. Most of the rooms were not too ostentatious sizewise, but they ran into each other in a bemusing honeycomb. There were peculiar backdoubles and dead ends, due to this wing having been hewn from the naked rock under the Oppian Hill. Unescorted, it would have been easy to get lost.

There was a casual atmosphere. Occasional Praetorian Guards had parked themselves in corridors, not least because Titus was their commander now. On the whole, nobody looked at visitors too closely, and it seemed possible to wander at will.

Somehow, you never did. Somehow your feet were guided out of the building quite rapidly and on what I was coming to realize was a well-worn path. The result was that despite the huge number of rooms, with their variety of exits and entrances, and despite the temptation to tiptoe into them to collect ideas for home decor, if two groups of people were visiting Titus on the same evening for the same purpose, although it hardly seemed feasible, they would actually end up face-to-face.

That was how Helena and I met Rubella and Petronius.

Those two big snide bastards were not pleased.

"Looks like we got to the buffet first," I greeted them. I knew they would be hopping mad that the vigiles were firmly refused permission to investigate the Laelius house, whereas I had been called in specially. The gap between private informers and the vigiles would never close. "Don't worry; I gave Titus Caesar a thorough briefing. You can just show your faces, then bunk off back to your patrol house."

"Skip it, Falco," growled my onetime partner, Petro.

"All right. Owning-up time: I've failed to find any trace of the lost baby. How about you boys?"

"Nothing," Rubella deigned to say. The Fourth Cohort tribune was a wide, tough, shaven-headed ex-centurion who practiced the lowest degree of fairness and unpleasantness. In that, he was better than average. Fanatical ambition had hauled him up all the rungs in the vigiles; he really wanted to be a Praetorian. Still, so do lots of lads.

At his side Petronius looked taller, less wide in the body yet more powerful in the shoulder, quieter, a couple of pounds heavier because of his height, and far less intense. He was in brown leather, with a thong twisted around his head to hold down his straight hair during a tussle, triple-soled boots so heavy it made my feet tired just looking at them, and a night stick through his wide belt. He was a good-looking boy, my old tentmate.

I gave him an ironical grin of approval. "The luscious Berenice will love you!"

"As he said, skip it, Falco." That came from Helena. She was still subdued over the unfair snub to her brother. I introduced her to Rubella, though he had worked out who she was.

"Falco is tired," she announced. "I am taking him home to recover from gawping at flashy Judaean pulchritude."

"Have you given up the search?" Petro asked, sticking to the job in hand. He had a prudish streak. Alone with me, he would happily discuss leer-worthy women, but he believed it improper for women to know that that was what men did.

"Not me. How about you lot?"

"We'll find her if she's out on the streets. But will you, if she is still at home?"

Temporarily riled, I abandoned my plan of asking him to join me tomorrow. Obviously, the raucous members of the Fourth Cohort-and probably members of all the other six-were just standing around watching and waiting for me to make a mess of the task. I would disappoint them. But I needed to keep all options open: "Don't let's quarrel when a child's life is at stake."

"Who's quarreling?"

Petronius was, but thinking about Gaia, I changed my mind again about tomorrow: "Lucius Petronius, I just asked Numentinus for permission to bring you in, for the benefit of your experience."

Petronius mimed an irritating bow. "Marcus Didius, whenever you're stuck, just ask me to set you right."

"For heaven's sake, stop playing about, you two," Helena grumbled.

I shrugged, and prepared to leave. Rubella decided to take a hand. To him, normally, I was an interfering amateur whom he would like to lock in a cell until my boots rotted off. Tonight, since he always overruled Petro and since Petro was niggling, he chose amicable cooperation. "Anything you need, Falco?"

"Thanks, but no thanks. It is a routine house search, and the family are not being difficult. Well, not that I can see."

"Found anything to help us?"

"I don't think so. The last time the girl was seen she was at home. She ought to be still there. There are no known external contacts." Well, apart from me. I chose not to dwell on that. Rubella was suspicious as Hades. He would love to arrest me on a trumped-up charge of personal involvement. "I have seen no sign that the Laelii are concealing a ransom demand. All the problems that I know about are family ones. That's going to be the answer."

"They do have problems." Rubella loved to repeat part of your briefing as though it was his own. I caught Petro's eye. He and I had always reckoned that persons in senior positions stole our ideas.

"Plenty. By the way-are either of you law-and-order experts able to tell me this about the rules for guardians?" I asked them. "Could a son who was still officially in his father's control accept the job?"

"Oh yes." It was Petro who answered. "It's a civic duty. Like voting. Anyone who has come of age is entitled to do it, whatever his status otherwise. I thought you yourself would be standing guardian for Maia now, Falco."

"Jupiter! I would hate to be the person who told Maia she had to report formally to me."

Petro gave me an odd look, almost as though he felt I was abandoning my sister.

"So what's that to do with the missing girl?" Rubella asked.

"Gaia's father spun me some yarn. There was talk of legal pleas and all sorts-all for nothing, apparently. Either the father is up to something extraordinarily devious-or he is, as his father defines him, a complete idiot."

"Where is this idiot?" Rubella mused.

I told him where Laelius Scaurus lived. "I advised the family to inform him that Gaia was lost-"

"Oh, we can do better than that," said the tribune, smirking. "If his darling daughter is in terrible trouble, we must bring the poor suffering man to Rome as quickly as possible-in fact, he can have an official escort of vigiles to clear the way for him!"

Refusing the assistance of the vigiles, as Numentinus would find, was unwise. Their cohort tribunes do not submit to rebuff.

I grinned. "Dear me. Laelius Scaurus received an innocent, priestly upbringing. This will be a terrible shock. He will think you are arresting him."

"So he will!" Rubella grinned evilly.

I had no idea what good this could possibly do, but anything unexpected can shake people up to good effect. To have the Fourth Cohort of vigiles explain his legal rights and responsibilities would certainly alarm Scaurus.

However, I was not sure I wanted to be in Rubella's shoes when this influential family complained with shrieks of outrage to the Prefect of the City that one of them had been subjected to an unfair arrest. The Laelii were more than just influential. They were being treated with elaborate care by the highest authorities-and I still did not know why.