One Virgin Too Many

V

After a few words with the basket weaver on the ground floor, the flamen's attendants preceded him up the decaying steps towards my apartment. Outside on the tiny landing where Gaia had broached me yesterday, Nux was now gnawing a large raw knucklebone. She was a small dog, but the way she growled stopped the cavalcade dead.

There was a short confrontation.

Nux gripped the bone, which was almost too heavy to lift. I had seen it-and smelled it-when I went out, a decayed monster she must have retrieved after letting it mature for weeks. A couple of flies buzzed off it. Since the half door had been shut behind her to keep Julia in and away from the dog while it was dangerous, Nux had limited options. Her ears went back and she showed the whites of her eyes. Even I would not have approached her. Continually growling, she advanced down the steps, lugging the bone, which thudded on each stone tread. The attendants retreated, stepping on the flamen's toes. Back at the foot of the stairs they squashed into a scared huddle as my dog stalked past them with her precious cargo, all the way subjecting them to a ferocious rolling growl.

The flamen clutched his cloak around him and sneaked up the steps. His attendants, four in all, reluctantly formed up at the foot of the stairs to protect his back, then when he disappeared indoors they stood at ease beside the litter. Nuxie dropped her bone in the road. Head down, she went around in a circle, pushing imaginary earth over the bone with her nose. Then, convinced her treasure was now invisible, she strolled off looking for something more interesting.

Petronius, a cat man, guffawed silently. I clapped him on the shoulder; I waved violently to Ma to say this official business should not be interrupted for her usual loving enquiry about my family's bowels; I winked at the basket weaver as I passed his shop. I walked upstairs quietly. The attendants ignored me. Ma called out, but I was used to not hearing my mother when she wanted me.

Indoors, I captured Julia as she crawled headlong for the half door, which the flamen had left swinging open. Holding the baby on my shoulder and hoping she would keep quiet, I settled my backside against the new turquoise paint of the corridor wall, to overhear the fun.

I wondered what the flamen had expected. What he got was the girl I had left at home a few minutes before I met Petronius: a fairly domesticated treasure-with a volatile, rebellious streak. She had kissed me good-bye with a sensual hug and beguiling lips. Only her faraway eyes had revealed to a man who knew her well that she would like to see the back of me; she was dying to read some scrolls Pa had brought for her last night, lifted from an auction in which he was involved. By now she would have delved around in the scrollbox and been happily unrolling the first discovery. She would be furious when the priest interrupted.

She would see he was a flamen. The cap and prong were unmistakable. Senators' daughters know how to behave. But informers' wives say what they think.

"I want a man named Falco."

"You are in his house. Unfortunately, he is not here." Under her naturally pleasant approach, I could tell she had immediately taken against him.

Helena's accent was more refined than the flamen's. He spoke with unattractive vowels, which were pretending to be better than they were. "I shall wait."

"He may be a long time. He has gone to see his mother." Despite the fact that I had dodged Ma in Fountain Court, telling her about Famia was indeed supposed to have been my errand.

If he had heard I was an informer, the flamen probably thought Helena was a hangover from some past adventure of mine. True. He would have assumed he was trying to contact a hard man in a squalid location whose female accomplice would own all the wrinkled charm of an old shoestrap. A bad mistake.

He would be realizing now that Helena Justina was younger, fiercer, and more refined than he had expected. His pinched nose must register that he stood in a small but scrupulously clean room (swept daily by Ma while we were abroad). It was typical of the Aventine, in that despite an open shutter it smelled of baby, pets, and last night's supper, but through it that morning was issuing a richer, more exotic, much more expensive perfume from the rare balsam on the warm skin beneath the light dress that Helena wore. She was in blue. Without paint, without jewelry. Needing neither. When completely unadorned she could startle and trouble an unwary man.

"I need to speak to the informer," he whined again.

"Oh, I know that feeling!" I could imagine how Helena's great brown eyes were dancing as she stalled the priest. "But his specialty is dodging. He will turn up in his own time."

"And you are?" the man demanded snootily.

"Who am I?" she mused, still teasing. "The daughter of Camillus Verus, senator and friend of Vespasian; the wife and partner of Didius Falco, agent of Vespasian and Procurator of the Sacred Poultry; the mother of Julia Junilla, who is too young to have social relevance. Those are my formal definitions. My name, should you be keeping a daily diary of the interesting people you meet, is Helena Justina-"

"You are a senator's daughter-and you live here?" He must be looking around at our bare decorations and furniture. We coped. We had each other. (Plus various tasty artifacts waiting in store for better days.)

"Certainly not," Helena rattled back promptly. "This is merely an office where we meet members of the public. We live in a spacious villa on the Janiculan." First I heard of it. Still, I was only the head of the household. With a practical young woman in charge of my private life (and in possession of her own bank box), if my home address changed overnight I would be the last to be notified.

Helena was picking on the prong-bearer now. "I see you are a flamen. Obviously not the Flamen Dialis." The top man, Jupiter's priest, wore an even more ludicrous uniform and kept the public at a distance with a long wand. "The Flamen Quirinalis is my father's second cousin." As far as I knew, this was pure invention. Being related to the priest of Quirinus, the deified Romulus, would place Helena in high circles, if true, and was designed to intimidate. "The Flamen Martialis is ninety and renowned for groping women." Not many people would know the unsavory habits of the priest of Mars. "I believe the Emperor is very concerned about how to deal with it…" Incorrigible girl. "So you are not one of the patrician group," Helena's cool voice concluded, insulting the man if he was at all sensitive about his status. "Which, then, shall I tell Falco has called on him?" she cooed.

"I am the Flamen Pomonalis."

"Oh, poor you! That's the lowest of all, isn't it?" Excluding the novelty newcomers who honored the deified emperors, there were fifteen priests in the College of Flamens, three culled from the aristocracy to attend the major deities, and the rest, who sacrificed to gods most people had never heard of and who were recruited from the plebeian ranks. No one I knew had ever been selected; you had to be a pleb whose face fitted. "Do you have a name?" demanded Helena.

"Ariminius Modullus." I could have guessed it would be an awkward mouthful.

"Well, if this is about the goslings, Falco has the matter well in hand."

"The goslings?"

"The Flamen Dialis has some objection to small birds, I believe."

This made little sense to Pomona's pointy head. He sounded so wound up that his birchwood prong must be shooting right out of his bonnet. "I have come about Gaia Laelia!"

"Well, so I assumed." Helena knew how to reply to an overexcited supplicant with maddening calm. "The child came here with an intriguing complaint. You need to know what was said."

The flamen must be biting his lip as he worried about what had been discussed yesterday.

"And you want to know what Didius Falco is intending to do," Helena added ominously. If the child really were being threatened at home, it would do no harm to let her people know that we were aware of it. "Is Gaia Laelia a relation?"

"I am her uncle-by marriage." Where, I wondered, were Gaia's parents in this? Why had they sent this rather stiff mediator? Distracted, I leaned my head sideways, to try to discourage Julia from eating my earlobe.

"And you are acting for Gaia's parents?" Helena asked, barely hiding her skepticism. I dried Julia's dribble off my ear, using my tunic sleeve. She burped, messily. I wiped her face on the same bunch of sleeve.

"Gaia is in the guardianship of her grandfather. The family holds to tradition. My father-in-law will remain head of the household while he lives." This meant Gaia's father had not been legally emancipated from the grandfather's control-a situation so old-fashioned that most modern men would regard it as untenable. The scope for causing friction in the family was huge.

"Gaia Laelia belongs to a family who have a long history of the highest religious service. Her grandfather is Publius Laelius Numentinus, the recently retired Flamen Dialis-"

Yes, that was the fool who had been complaining about my goslings. Interesting that he had in fact retired from office; everyone on the Capitol had still seemed to regard him with active terror.

"I thought a priesthood was for life. Some dereliction of his duties?" Helena chuckled, ignoring the speaker's pomposity. Priests who disgraced their office might be asked to resign, but it was rare. For one thing, the priests of the official cult had the power to cover up their crimes and the wherewithal to control critics. They could be absolute bastards, yet the truth would never get out. Let's be honest: they could be bastards and everybody knew it, but still no controls would be applied.

The Flamen Pomonalis was stiff: "The Flaminica, his wife, has died. Since the Flaminica partakes officially in many ceremonies, it is necessary for a widowed Flamen Dialis to step down. Otherwise, essential rites would be incomplete."

Helena's own voice grew cold. "Hard, I always thought, for a man to lose both his wife and his position at a stroke. Especially when the position is so significant, and its rituals are so demanding. Gaia's grandfather must now find his life rather empty. Is this part of the problem?"

"There is no problem."

"Well, I am relieved to hear it." She had the knack of seeming to engage in mere polite conversation, while she doggedly pursued a point. She wanted to know what had been happening in this family to make a young child take the unusual step of seeking outside help. A thwarted six-year-old would normally slam doors, scream herself into convulsions, and throw her wooden doll through a window, but then be pacified in a few seconds with just a bowl of honeyed nuts. "Even so, your young niece came here with a tale of woe and now you too are here to discuss it… What puzzled us was how Gaia chose Falco to confide in. How would she have known who he was?"

"She may have heard his name mentioned in connection with his appointment as Procurator of the Sacred Birds." It gave me a thrill to imagine some crusty old ex-priest of Jupiter exploding with rage over his breakfast while he heard that the Emperor had given ancient responsibilities to an upstart informer-who would now be allowed to poke around with impunity among the temple enclosures. Was that why Vespasian had done it? "And I believe," conceded the Flamen Pomonalis, "Gaia Laelia met a relative of yours at the reception when certain promising young ladies were introduced to Queen Berenice."

His significant tone seemed rather overdone. The only link I had with Berenice was my sister Maia's uncharacteristic foray to the Palace, the day I had first tried to find her. Had the function Maia attended been stuffed with female relatives of priests? I controlled a snigger, wondering what my sister had made of that.

Helena must have decided to pursue the mystery with Maia later. "Well, I suggest," she said, so crisply that it seemed like a rebuke, "you tell me exactly what your family's concerns are."

"Our concerns should be obvious!" the flamen snapped. Bluffing. Hoping little Gaia had never said whatever it was her precious family was hoping to keep quiet. Or, if Gaia had revealed too many secrets, trying to play down their importance.

"Don't worry. Falco and I know how to regard the complaints of an unhappy child. So embarrassing, is it not?"

"Children exaggerate," he declared, relieved that she seemed to understand.

"I hope that's the case!" agreed Helena, with feeling. Then she faced him with it: "Gaia says someone in her family threatened to kill her."

"Ridiculous!"

"Not you, then?"

"How dare you!"

"So who was it?"

"Nobody!"

"I do want to believe that is true."

"Whatever you were told…" He paused, hoping Helena would tell him more details. No chance.

"You are requesting us not to interfere." Helena's tone was quiet. I knew what that meant: for her, this visit from the flamen made it look as if the child's appeal for help might be justified.

"I am glad we understand each other."

"Oh yes," she said. Oh yes! She understood him all right.

"No one could possibly wish her harm. There are high hopes of Gaia Laelia," concluded the Flamen Pomonalis. "When the ballot for the new Vestal Virgin is drawn…" He trailed off.

So a new Vestal was needed, and the little girl I met on my front doorstep had been put forward for the privilege. Could her uncle be suggesting to Helena that Gaia's name was certain to be drawn by the Pontifex Maximus in the formal lottery? Impossible! Vespasian's hand would have to dig around in an urn among a whole bunch of tablets. How could anyone know in advance which one would be gripped by the pontifical paw? I felt my face screw up in disgust, as I saw that the Vestal Virgins' lottery must be fixed.

How could they do it? Easy as wink. Only one name written on all of the tablets. Or one tablet loaded, like a bad dice. Or quite simply, Vespasian would just announce the preselected name, without looking at the tablets at all.

Pointy-head was still enthusing. "It would be a new departure in the family-but a great honor. We are all absolutely delighted."

"Does that include Gaia herself?" asked Helena coolly.

"Gaia is passionate about being entered."

"Little girls do have such quaint ideas." The Vestals were not Helena's favorite women, apparently. I was surprised. I thought she would have approved of their honored role and status. "Well, let us hope she is successful," Helena went on. "Then she will be taken straight to the House of the Vestals and handed into the control of the Pontifex Maximus."

"Er-quite," agreed the flamen, belatedly sensing an undercurrent. Presuming, however, that his appeals had been successful, he seemed to be about to leave. Taking a firm hold on Julia, I slid down the corridor and towards another room where I could conceal myself. I glimpsed Pomona's priest, in his cloak and birchwood prong, with his back to me as he bade Helena farewell; he hid me from her view as I crept past.

I waited until I was sure he had left before I emerged.

As I opened the door behind which I had been hiding, a small determined figure blocked my way. Julia was whipped from my grasp. I groaned, but only quietly.

I was facing a tiny, frail old woman whose black eyes bored like bradawls. A bad conscience-for which I had no damned reason-pinned me to the spot.

"I suppose you have a good explanation," announced the new arrival fiercely, "why you failed to come home for the little one's birthday?" I did have. Famia's funeral rites, such as they were, for the few scraps that had been left of him by the lion: an explanation, though not good. "And I do know what happened to Famia-though I had to hear it from dear Anacrites!"

"Hello, Mother," I said. I made it sound meek. "We were forced to spend Julia's first birthday becalmed off Otia… Are you going to congratulate me on my new status as a pillar of the state religion?"

"Don't give me any of your silly nonsense," scoffed Ma.

As usual, I had done what I thought she wanted, only to find her unimpressed.