The Vestal Vanishes

FIVE

I stood up, almost scattering the writing-implements from the tabletop. I was ready to defend my young informant but the slave-girl had already scuttled from the room. The newcomer — who, like me had left her attendant waiting at the door — swept towards me with hands outstretched.

This was very clearly the mistress of the house. The high quality of the dark blue stola which she wore and the lighter blue embroidered over-tunic were evident even to my untutored eyes. Her purple slippers were of finest kid, the soft leather cut into a latticework of leaves which would have made my Gwellia sigh with jealousy. Yet in one respect my wife was much the more fortunate of the two.

The woman before me was not handsome, even for her age — she was far too thin and angular for that — and there was no sign that she had ever been a beauty in her youth. Her face was lined and sallow under the whitening arsenic-powder that she wore, though she had done her best to give some colour with wine-lees on her lips and a touch of enhancing lampblack painted round the eyes. The lustrous black hair, coiled into a fashionable chignon on her head, was all too evidently a wig, and wisps of her own greying mousy locks crept out from under it. Her form was tall and bony and her long-fingered hands so wrinkled, pale and fleshless that they almost seemed translucent as she held them out to me. I noted a very handsome jet-stone in her ring as I bowed over it.

‘You have a message for me, citizen?’ Her face was unsmiling and, glimpsing the smirking handmaiden behind her at the entrance-way, I wondered how much of my conversation with Modesta had been overheard.

However, it was too late to think of that. ‘You are Cyra, wife of Lavinius?’ I murmured to the ring, mentally thanking Modesta that I knew the name, at least. ‘I am the citizen Libertus. But I bring no message from your husband, I’m afraid. My patron Marcus Aurelius Septimus instructed me to come.’

No answer.

I straightened up and met an icy glare. ‘I was just explaining all this to your maidservant. I’m very sorry if I caused her to delay, but — far from failing to look after me — she was attempting to understand my task. Please do not punish her on my account.’

The shrewd eyes thawed a little, but the manner was still as unbending as a sword. ‘And why should His Excellence instruct you to come here?’ she said, without the shadow of a smile.

‘He hopes that I can help you to find your missing niece.’

‘I see!’ She gestured to the female attendant that I had noticed at the door. ‘A stool here, slave. I will listen to what this man has to say.’ The girl came gliding in, and from behind the table took a second folding seat, which she placed for her mistress in what little space remained. Cyra sat down and — dismissing the slave-girl with an impatient wave — indicated that I should do the same. ‘If you can find Audelia, citizen, I will offer a private blessing-tablet to the gods for you.’

Encouraged, I assayed a tiny joke. ‘Offering information would be more use to me,’ I said.

She did not smile. ‘I don’t know what useful information I can give. I have not seen my niece since she was two years old and I was not a great deal older — seven or eight, perhaps.’ She saw my startled look. ‘My sister, of course, had moved away from home and was living with her husband in Londinium by then.’

I was doing a little calculation in my head. It was not uncommon in Roman families for a daughter to be married at fourteen years of age, but even so — allowing for the birth of Audelia… ‘Your sister was a good deal older than you, then, I presume?’

Some might have thought this was a compliment, but the look that Cyra gave me would have withered stone. ‘Nine years my senior. Not so very much. My mother had more children in the years between — all boys — but the women of my family are not good at sons, it seems. Only we two females survived. My father was always cursing that he had no male as heir, though to have his granddaughter accepted as Vestal Virgin was some slight consolation to him, I believe.’

‘Yet your father did not send his own girls to serve the hearth-goddess?’

She gave a bitter smile. ‘He would have liked to. There is no doubt of that. But a Vestal Virgin must be perfect in all ways — physically as well as morally of course — and my sister had poor sight, the result of a spotted fever when she was very young. They would not permit her even to enter the lottery for a place.’

‘And you?’

She gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘They would never have accepted me, even if I had been fair enough of face to qualify. My poor mother died in bearing me and a girl must have two living parents — both freeborn Roman citizens — to be accepted at the shrine. So you see, we were not good enough! That only encouraged my father in his view. He did not regard daughters as of much account in any case. Indeed — perhaps because I cost my mother’s life — he could hardly bear to have me in the house.’

‘Yet he left you property, I understand?’

‘How do you know that?’ She shot a glance at me. ‘Your wealthy patron told you, I suppose?’ I did not disabuse her, and she went swiftly on. ‘As it happens, that report is true — though I cannot see what concern it is of yours, or what this has to do with the disappearance of my niece.’

‘If Audelia was kidnapped, as her bridegroom fears,’ I said gently, ‘the wealth of her family may have much to do with it.’

That sobered her. ‘I see. I’m sorry, citizen, I concede you have a point. Forgive me if I spoke more sharply than I meant. It was my father-’

We were interrupted by a tapping at the door, and Modesta reappeared with the promised tray of fruit, and a jug of something that looked like watered wine — a Roman drink of which I am not particularly fond. She set this down before me and I waved aside the drink, but — not wishing to seem churlish — I selected a few grapes before I turned back to Cyra.

‘Your father… you were about to say, I think?’ I prompted, tipping back my head to bite from my grape-bunch as I’d seen Marcus do.

‘It was at his funeral that I last saw my sister and her family.’ She had begun to fidget with the items on the desk, lining up the seal-stamp and the little pots of soot, gum and vinegar, like a rank of soldiers, as though this would somehow help her to control her evident emotion. ‘And afterwards, on the steps of the basilica, when the will was read.’

‘And you two girls inherited his lands?’

She gave a rueful smile. ‘This part of it, at least — the rest of his fortune went to distant male relatives in Rome. Even then, as the younger sister, I got the smaller part, and of course my inheritance was managed for me by a male cousin, till I wed. My sister was married — as I said before — and already had a child, so she got the villa and the larger piece of land, though in return she had to swear that she would offer Audelia to the Vestal temple to be trained, if there was no son to take charge of the estate.’

‘I take it there was not?’ I bit into a grape.

Cyra shook her head. ‘She bore a boy infant, three years afterwards, but it did not live and afterwards my sister did not conceive again. I told you that my family was not good with sons.’

I could not answer for a moment. The fruit — like my hostess’s tone — was uncomfortably sour. ‘But you do have a daughter, I believe.’

Cyra got abruptly to her feet and turned away, as if to hide the hurt and anger on her face. ‘To the disappointment of my husband, citizen. Of course I was lucky that he agreed to marry me at all — my inheritance was hardly generous, scarcely enough to make a decent dowry. For a time, I feared I’d never wed. Fortunately my guardian found Lavinius for me. He was a widower, whose first wife had been barren and he was prepared to take me so he could have an heir. I did provide one, in the end, though even then it took me many years — and many sacrifices to the gods — to bear a child that lived. I believe that otherwise he would have cut me off in a divorce. Of course, with my ill-fortune, it turned out to be a girl and now I’ve had to hand her to the Vestal temple, too.’

‘She has gone to be a Vestal?’ I was genuinely surprised. Modesta had spoken as if the child was young, but a Vestal novice must be six years old at least and cannot be more than ten. I did a calculation in my head. If Cyra was five years older than her niece, who had just completed thirty years of service at the Vestal House, then — even if Audelia had joined the Vestals young, and Cyra’s daughter was joining very late — Cyra must have been all of thirty when the child was born. No wonder the babe had seemed a present from the gods. ‘Another provision of your father’s will?’

She shook her head. ‘This was my husband’s doing. It was the one way a daughter could bring esteem to him, he said, without the necessity of giving half our land as dowry payment to someone else’s son. Of course my father had given him the idea.’

‘So you sent her to the shrine,’ I said.

‘Not I, citizen!’ The voice was icy cold. ‘It was a shock to me. I begged Lavinius not to let her go. But he formally offered her to the pontifex, who came and ritually dragged her from my knee, and it is the priest who is accompanying her on her way, not us. So my daughter is not legally even a member of this family any more. My only living child, after years of barrenness. All my other children died in infancy — perhaps it is a family failing in some way. But she is on her way to the temple as we speak.’

‘I see. But surely her place is not yet a certainty? Did you not say something about a lottery?’

She gave a bitter laugh. ‘If a well-born citizen offers his daughter to the shrine, and she meets the criteria of perfect form and two living parents of sufficient degree, she is usually accepted without the need for drawing straws — especially if a dowry is provided with the girl. As of course it was. Lavinius saw to that. My daughter will take the same sum with her thirty years from now, when she retires, but until that time the Vestal House will have the use of it.’

‘Just as her husband would have done if she had wed,’ I murmured.

Cyra cast a furious glance at me. ‘And now she never will!’ She gestured to Modesta to fill the empty cup which was still lying used on the tray, and when it was brimming she picked it up herself. That was astonishing enough: it is not customary for a well-bred Roman matron to drink wine at all, except at a banquet — and especially not before a male guest in the mid-afternoon — but Cyra raised the cup and, far from sipping, drained it at a gulp. ‘So I’ll not see her again. I won’t survive another thirty years and my husband will never take me to the Vestal shrine. If I had borne a son, it would be a different thing.’

I could not like this woman — she was bitter and resentful — but I couldn’t help feeling some sympathy for her. I tried to turn the subject to more cheerful things while, of course, continuing to probe. ‘But when she returns she will be provided for. Not only will she have her dowry sum to spend, and of course the famous pension which the state provides for retired Vestals, but I believe that there will also be a house for her. You are building on that piece of land, I think?’

She brightened, just a little. ‘We are. It is a much finer villa than this one, too. You must have seen it, as you travelled here?’

I hadn’t. I had ridden in the litter with the curtains drawn. But I did not tell her that. All I said was, ‘It must be close to finished.’

She almost smiled. ‘There are a few rooms to plaster and a bathhouse to complete, but we could move in tomorrow if my husband chose. Indeed we might have done so earlier, except that Audelia wished to hold the wedding here. I believe that Publius intends to take her off to Rome, to meet what family he has, as soon as they are wed — and we will certainly have moved by the time that they return. Supposing that you find her. Where will you begin?’

I could not confess that I had no idea, but that was how I felt. If I had harboured any notion that there might have been a motive for this family to want Audelia gone — or even dead — it seemed that I was wrong. However, there was still one avenue that I might explore. ‘I understand that you have the carriage-driver in the house? The one who was driving when she disappeared? Perhaps it would be possible for me to speak to him?’

The violence of her answer startled me. ‘Publius sent him back here — though why I cannot think. The fellow is clearly a liar and a thief. I told my husband before we hired him that the man was dangerous — I did not like the look of him at all — but of course Lavinius took no notice of my fears.’

‘You knew the fellow, then?’ I was thinking so hard about the problem that I plucked off another grape.

‘Well, not exactly knew, but he had been here to the house. He took Lavinia to Corinium, of course.’

I could make no sense of this. ‘But I thought-’

Cyra cut me off. ‘My daughter was most anxious to see the bride before she wed, but the pontifex insisted that today — as soon as the birthday feast was over — he must take her to the shrine. So we found a compromise. She couldn’t travel in the same carriage with the pontifex anyway, of course, for the sake of decency, and Audelia was due to spend last night in Corinium. So it was arranged that Lavinia should leave here yesterday and spend Audelia’s wedding-eve with her and learn a little about Vestal life.’

‘At the official mansio, I suppose?’ I asked. A Vestal Virgin would surely merit preferential lodgings at the official inn. I knew the mansio at Corinium. I determined to call there and ask questions if I could.

‘A Vestal Virgin at a military inn? Of course not, citizen.’ Her tone of voice dismissed the fine official inns as though they might be dens of vice. ‘We chose a respectable private household known to my husband from his visits there. They let out rooms sometimes. They did have other guests last night, they said, but the wife gave up her own room and thus they managed to accommodate Lavinia — who drove there in a hired raeda yesterday.’

‘And the same driver was to bring Audelia back here? Rather than use the temple coach to bring her all the way?’

She gave a wry smile. ‘Lavinius suggested the arrangement himself. He found a driver with a raeda for hire, who was to take Lavinia to Corinium, to the lodging-house. The pontifex was to join her in the temple there today, and tomorrow my daughter was to travel on towards the shrine, using the Vestal pilentum which Audelia had used, while the raeda brought the bride the last few miles to us. It saved a double journey for both conveyances and — as my husband pointed out — the cost of hiring the raeda any further than he must.’

I nodded. ‘So your raedarius was to bring the bride back here? Or rather to Glevum to meet up with Publius?’

She nodded. ‘That was the disadvantage of the scheme. Being a hired raeda, and not the Vestal coach, it could not enter the town in daylight hours. But Audelia consented very willingly — this was all arranged before she left the shrine — and she arranged to meet Publius at the games. My husband thought it would create a pretty little spectacle to crown the day. She would make a public entrance there — they always have a symbolic seat for Vestals anyway — and Publius would announce the nuptials to the crowd. Then the raeda could bring them both back here to solemnize the wedding before our banquet guests, and we would pay the raedarius his dues.’

‘A handsome fee?’ I queried. I was a little doubtful of this raedarius.

Cyra clearly shared my thoughts. ‘We would have paid him well. It was not a very complicated task we asked of him, but he seems to have failed to look after my niece or her possessions either. Worse that that. My chief slave believes the fellow had been plotting for this all along — hoping to receive a portion of the ransom, he suggests. I’m bound to say he’s half-persuaded me. Who else would know the value of his passenger? This can’t be an accident. The deepest dungeon in the jail is too good for men like that. I don’t know why Publius did not send for the town-guard and have the fellow arrested and locked up in the town.’

‘I gather this happened at the public gate, where there would be dozens of people looking on. Possibly Publius hoped to be discreet.’ I wondered suddenly whose suggestion that had been.

‘Discreet! It could hardly have been less discreet, from what I hear of it. The raedarius was bellowing to everyone around, swearing by all the gods that he was innocent, and didn’t know that she was missing till he was at Glevum gates.’

I bit the grape I’d selected. It was particularly sour and I began to wish I had a little wine to gulp. ‘So how did the raedarius get here from the town? I presume he did not drive?’ I managed to say through teeth that had been set on edge.

She shook her head. ‘He came here in our gig. It was waiting at the gates to bring Lavinius home — he is too old to walk from Glevum now — and apparently Publius saw it and recognized the slave-boy who was driving it. He had already travelled in the gig the other evening when he came here to dine, and of course the gig-slave knew Publius by sight. So, when the patrician told him to tie the raedarius up and bring him here, the boy obeyed at once.’

‘Tie him up? With what?’

‘With his own tunic-belt, I understand. He had to gag the captive and bind his feet, he said, otherwise the fellow would have jumped out of the gig. But talk to the raedarius yourself. Modesta will take you when you have finished those.’ She gestured to the grapes.

I needed no encouragement to desist from eating more. I put down the remainder of the bunch and got quickly to my feet. ‘Madam, I will go to him at once, and not detain you further. You have been most helpful. Thank you for your patience — if you still intend to have a banquet here tonight you must have much to see to in the house.’

Cyra extended her ringed hand to me again. ‘Then I will leave you to your questioning, and see if there’s a message from my husband yet. I sent him a letter asking what I am to do about the preparations for the feast. I hope I get some sort of answer very soon. I’d better send the gig back to wait for him, I suppose.’ And still frowning, she stalked out of the room, with her personal attendant trailing after her. Fiscus, who was still positioned at the door, peered in to see if he was wanted now.

‘Come with me, citizen.’ Modesta beamed at me. She seemed to regard me as her personal charge. ‘I will attend you. Your servant can wait here. I’ll come back for the tray.’

I had no trouble in accepting that, and motioned to Fiscus to stay where he was, to his evident dismay. Meanwhile the slave-girl led the way across the atrium again; it was looking very handsome, now the garlands were in place and all the lamps were lit, though slaves were still burnishing the bronze statues as we passed. Watched by a dozen curious pairs of eyes, we went out to the courtyard, round the colonnaded walk and out through the back gate into the stable-yard.

When we were safely out of sight and sound of everyone, Modesta turned to me and whispered, confidentially, ‘I hope that fruit was not too horrible, I’m sure it tasted sharp, but the chief slave said the best was wanted for the feast.’

I was emboldened by the little confidence. I answered with a smile. ‘It is of no account. But there is one thing that slightly troubles me. If your master has a private gig to use, why did he hire a raeda to take his daughter yesterday? Would it not have been far safer to have used his own?’

She giggled, clapping a skinny hand across her mouth. ‘Oh, citizen, you haven’t seen the private gig. No more than an open carriage, with a single wooden seat — apart from the driver — and it has no roof. They could never have sent Lavinia all the way in that, much less expect a Vestal Virgin to ride home in it! Supposing it had rained? It would have made a public spectacle of her. In any case, there was too much luggage to get into the gig and — of course — there was Lavinia’s nursemaid travelling with her too.’

‘She did not have a manservant to guard her on her way?’

She grinned at me. ‘She will have one from tomorrow, when the pontifex arrives. As to yesterday, my master chose this carriage driver most especially, because he was particularly young and strong and could protect them if he needed to. Fierce-looking too — or so the mistress said. She didn’t like him from the start. She’s had him shut in there.’

She crossed to a long low building which was clearly the sleeping-quarters of the slaves. I half-expected her to go inside, but she passed the door and made for a smaller outbuilding nearby, with a row of stout doors along the length of it.

Outside the last door she stopped and looked at me. ‘He’s in here, citizen. I’ll undo the bolt.’