One Virgin Too Many

XL

Incredibly it was still eight days before the Ides of June. Dusk had fallen, but this was the same day that I rose at dawn and went to the House of the Vestals, trying to meet Constantia, followed her to Egeria's Spring, was sent for by Rutilius Gallicus, and gained entrance to search the Laelius house. Now I had endured a visit to the Golden House as well. This was as long a day as I ever wanted to endure, but it was not over yet.

"You take the litter. Go home and rest," said Helena. She sounded wan.

"Where's Julia?"

"I managed to find Gaius." When my scruffy nephew could be deterred from totting in the backstreets, he made a dedicated nursemaid (if we paid him enough). "I told him to sleep in our bed if we were late."

"You'll regret that. He's never clean. What are you up to, as if I don't know?"

"I had better walk over to my father's house and break this news about my brother's fate."

I went with her, of course.

The senator lent me his barber, and they gave me more to eat. While I was being cleaned up and pampered, I had a lot to think about. It did not really concern the Camilli and their dead traitor. For me, Publius Camillus Meto was a closed case. His relations, however, would never be free of him. Memories for scandal are long in Rome. A family could have scores of statesmanly ancestors, but biographers would dwell on their one ancient traitor.

When I rejoined the party, they were all absorbed in frantic debate over their new suffering. Aelianus saw me appear in the doorway; he rose and led me to an anteroom, asking for a private word. The conversation in the salon behind him dropped slightly, as his parents and Helena watched him draw me aside.

"Aelianus, you have to ask your father for the details." My situation had always been difficult; I badly wanted to avoid anybody finding out that I had disposed of Publius down a sewer.

"Father told me what happened. I was abroad. I came home and found my uncle gone, and what he had done settling on us like blight. Now I am stuck with the results, it seems. Falco, you were involved-"

"Anything beyond what your father has told you is confidential, I'm afraid."

"So I am being shafted, yet I cannot be told why?"

"You know enough. Yes, it is unfair," I sympathized. "But a stigma was inevitable. At least there were no wholesale executions, or confiscation of property."

"I always rather liked Uncle Publius." That aspect must frighten his parents, though I did not tell Aelianus so. They feared he might yet follow his uncle in temperament. He too was restless and impatient with society. Like his uncle, Aelianus might lose patience with the rules and seek out his own solutions, unless he was handled just right in the next few years. An outsider. Latent trouble.

For a moment, I wondered whether this was the kind of trouble the Laelius family had gone through with Scaurus.

"Your uncle seemed quite hard to get close to." To me, he had had a cold, almost gloomy outlook.

"Yes, but he was supposed to have lived a wild life; he spent all that time abroad; he lived on the edge. He had an illegitimate child too-and I heard that she was killed in peculiar circumstances." Aelianus stopped.

"Sosia," I said reproachfully. "Yes, I know how she was killed."

"She was just a girl. I don't really remember her, Falco."

"I do." I stared him down, as I fought back a tear.

Aelianus still wanted to press me for information. He was out of luck. I was sinking under the effects of a long, depressing day. I had two choices now: to collapse and sleep, or to keep alert in the search for little Gaia by tackling some new activity. This was what I had been brooding on, while the barber grazed my neck. As I lay still, while I tried to avoid having my throat cut, my body had rested and my mind cleared. My thoughts had had time to concentrate, as they had not done all that afternoon while I was bound up in physical effort at the Laelius house.

Now I knew what was needed next. I also knew I required help. The best person would be Lucius Petronius, but in fairness to him I could not ask. He had already nearly lost his job over his dalliance with the gangster's daughter. What I planned was far too big a risk.

"So what's your advice to me, Falco?" Aelianus asked, surprisingly.

"Forget the past."

"I have to live with it."

"Build for the future. The Arvals were probably the wrong choice for you anyway: too much of a clique, too restrictive and backward looking. You don't want to dance around some grove where mad wives are killing their corn-wreathed husbands with sacrificial knives." I remembered something I wanted to tackle him about. "By the way, I hear you asked the Chief Spy to discover who the victim was?"

Aelianus had the grace to blush slightly. "We were getting nowhere-"

"We? It was your puzzle, which you told me you were giving up anyway."

"Sorry."

"Right."

"Anyway, Anacrites is useless, Falco. I never got an answer."

"He told me instead. Ventidius Silanus is the man's name. Ever heard of him?" Aelianus shook his head. "Nor me." I gazed at him quietly. "I was surprised you had approached Anacrites."

"Well, it seemed the only hope. I had done all I could. I even thought of riding out along the Via Appia and looking at all the patrician tombs for evidence of a recent funeral. There was nothing. If that's where the urn went, all the funerary flowers and so forth have been swept up."

He had really shown initiative. I hid my astonishment. "You're lucky. The Chief Spy does not know."

"Know what, Falco?"

I let him stew just long enough. "But he could easily find out."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the evidence is still sitting there in his pigeonholes. I am amazed you should have risked reminding him. Of course, somebody else could do so."

"You?" He was starting to notice my threats.

"You're in my power!" I grinned. Then I got tough. "You were entrusted with a secret document, on which the fate of the Baetican oil industry, and perhaps the whole province of Hispania Baetica, hung. You let it fall into the hands of the very men named as conspirators. You allowed them the time and opportunity to alter it. Then, realizing you had betrayed your trust, you pretended not to notice and handed in the corrupt scroll, in silence, to the Chief Spy."

Aelianus was very still.

"Just like Uncle Publius, really," I taunted him. "And we know what then happened to him-well, no; we have to imagine it." I stopped, imagining all too vividly the stench of the traitor's gaseous and disintegrating body. "Now listen hard: Anacrites is extremely dangerous. If you want a career-in fact, if you want any kind of future at all-don't tangle with him."

The young man ran a dry tongue over drier lips. "So what now, Falco?"

"Now," I said, "I have to attempt something that is sheer madness. But I am fortunate because you, Aulus, do owe me a large debt. So you-without any argument or hesitation, and certainly without telling your family-will be coming along to support me."

"That is fair," he acknowledged. He put a brave face on it. "What is my task?"

"Just holding a ladder."

He blinked. "I can do that."

"Good. You will have to be very quiet while I climb up. We cannot risk discovery."

He looked more nervous. "Is this something illegal, Falco?" Sharp fellow!

"About as illegal as it can be. You and I, trusty comrade, are about to break into the House of the Vestals."

Aelianus knew it was bad news, but it took him a moment to remember precisely that for an offense against the Vestal Virgins, the penalty was death.