One Virgin Too Many (13 page)

XVIII

NEXT DAY WAS the Kalends of June. There were celebrations for Mars and the Tempestates (goddesses of weather). It was also the festival of Juno Moneta. The day the geese were carried out in state to see the watchdogs crucified.

I prefer not to dwell on details of this bloodthirsty fiasco. Suffice it to say that when I came to make my report to the Palace as Procurator of the Sacred Poultry it would recommend extremely strongly that:

• To avoid cruelty to the animals and distress to very sensitive observers, the condemned watchdogs should be pacified with drugged meat before any attempt to nail them up.
  

• To prevent the Sacred Geese escaping from their ceremonial litter while acting as an audience, they too should be pacified with a dose of something, then tied down with jesses (which could be hidden beneath the purple cushions on which the geese traditionally sat).
  

• To clinch it, bars or a cage should be added to the litter.
  

• On the day before the Kalends, it should be the responsibility of the gooseboy to ensure that the wings of all Sacred Geese who would be taking part in the ceremony were adequately clipped so that they definitely could not fly away.
  

• Dogs from good homes (for instance, Nux) should be permitted to roam the Capitol in the control of authorized persons (say, me), without risk of being rounded up and held in custody under threat of being made part of the crucifixion ceremony.
  

• Innocent dogs who were accidentally apprehended should be returned to the charge of their authorized persons without having to be made the subject of a two-hour argument.
  

• The entire ritual of crucifying the "guilty" guard dogs should be allowed to fall into abeyance as soon as possible. (Suggestion: to pacify die-hards, the cessation of this very ancient ceremony could be excused in our modern state as a compliment to the Celtic tribes, now that Gaul was a part of the Empire and the barbarians were no longer likely to attempt to storm the Capitol except in the form of tourists.)
  

• Every time the Procurator of Poultry attended the festival of Juno Moneta, he should be entitled to a serious drink allowance, at official expense, immediately afterwards.
  

XIX

NEXT DAY--FOUR before the Nones of June, droned my calendar of festivals--happened to have no religious ceremonies assigned to it, and was a day on which legal transactions could occur.

I had an urgent message from Pa, to say he had persuaded the tailor to sell up, but the decision might prove temporary (or the price might go up) unless we pinned the man down and got his signature on a contract that very day. Pausing only to hope that when I folded my own informing partnership I would not be bludgeoned into it by an entrepreneur like my father, I fell to and took myself to my sister's house: Pa had decreed that convincing Maia she wanted to do what we had planned for her would be my task.

Her immediate reaction was suspicion and resistance. "Olympus, Marcus, what's the hurry?"

"Your erstwhile employer may consult his lawyer."

"Why--are you and Pa cheating him?"

"Of course not. We are honest lads. Everyone who deals with us says so. We just don't want to give him leeway to turn around and cheat us."

"Everyone who deals with the pair of you says 'Never again!' This is my life you weasels are organizing, Marcus."

"Don't dramatize. We are giving you a healthy livelihood."

"Can I not have at least a day to think this over?"

"We, the strong, benevolent males who are heads of your household, have done your thinking for you, as we are supposed to do. Besides, Pa says the next opportunity for legal business is days away, and we dare not wait. His legal assistant has drawn up a nice scroll, and Pa wants to hear that you are happy for him to go ahead."

"I don't want anything to do with Pa."

"Excellent. I knew you would come around."

Pa was right (I looked it up on my calendar). Thanks to the fine Roman attitude that lawyers are sharks who should be given as little encouragement as possible, there are usually only four or five days a month in which they are allowed to bamboozle clients. (Other nations might consider adopting this rule.) (Lawyers like it too, the lazy bums.) June offered particularly caring protection for the nervous citizen--though this was a trifle inconvenient if you were in league to do some bamboozling yourself. If we missed this chance, our next contract-signing day would be well after the Ides. I sent Marius to tell Pa that Maia was delighted.

My sister allowed Marius to leave but then, made even more contrary than usual by her bereavement, she changed her mind and wanted to scoot after him. Luckily, Marius was sharp enough to realize that to secure his future school fees, he must run very fast once he left the family home.

Helpfully too, Maia was intercepted by a visitor. As my sister bustled out of her front door with me tagging after her, we saw in the street the now-familiar shape of the litter with the Medusa head boss that belonged to the Laelii. Considering that they wanted to avoid dealing with us, it was ploughing deep furrows between the houses of my family.

"Greetings, Maia Favonia!"

"Caecilia Paeta! Why Marcus, this is the mother of dear little Gaia Laelia."

"Good heavens--well, she must come in at once, Maia darling--" (and I, your curious brother, must stay here to supervise . . . )

Caecilia Paeta was of slender build, dressed in rather heavy white clothes, with one dull metal necklace and nothing so irreverent as face paint to enliven her pallid complexion. Maia had claimed Caecilia squinted; in fact she suffered from severe shortsightedness, giving her that vague air of someone who misses anything more than three strides away and who pretends that nothing beyond her field of vision can really be happening. She had a thin mouth, a nose that looked better from the front than in profile, and a mass of undernouished dark hair tied back in an old-fashioned style with a central parting.

She was not my type. (I had not expected she would be.) Of course, that did not prevent her being a woman other men would eventually warm to. (But probably not friends of mine.)

She looked nervous. As soon as a few listless pleasantries had been disposed of, she burst out, "I know that you have visited our house. Don't ever tell Laelius Numentinus that I came here--"

"Why?" My sister was playing awkward. Maia had one eye on her door, still wanting to dash off after Marius so she could remonstrate with Pa. "A girl has to go out and chat to her friends sometimes. A respectable matron should be trusted to have social contact. Are you telling us your father-in-law keeps you a prisoner?"

It was too much to hope that Caecilia had made a brave bid for freedom; she loved being safe in religious-flavored oppression: "We are a private family. When Numentinus was Flamen Dialis this was essential for the rituals, and he wishes to continue with the life he always knew. He is an old man--"

"Your daughter made an odd approach to my brother," interrupted Maia bluntly. "You are her mother. What do you think of her saying that someone wanted to kill her?"

"She told me too--and I then told her not to be so silly!" The woman appealed to Maia: "Gaia Laelia is six years old. I was horrified to hear she had approached your brother--"

"This is my brother," Maia finally remembered to inform her. I gave a polite salute.

Caecilia Paeta looked frightened. Well, informers have bad reputations. She may have been expecting a mean-eyed political reprobate. The sight of a normal, rather attractive fellow with spots of fish sauce down his tunic, being shoved down hard beneath his little sister's expert thumb, must have confused the poor woman. It often confused me.

"Gaia is rather overimaginative. There is nothing wrong," Caecilia said swiftly.

"So we have been told." I found a snakelike grin. "The Flamen Pomonalis insisted this to my wife, like a loyal and well-trained brother-in-law. Now you say it too. To feel absolutely certain, I would like to question Gaia herself again--though the Pomonalis went to a great deal of trouble to inform us that she is much loved and in no danger. So I imagine the same idea has been very thoroughly rammed into Gaia." Caecilia's eyes did not blink. People who live in terror of tyrants do not flinch when threatened; they have learned to avoid annoying their oppressor.

"Is there," I insisted, without much hope, "any chance of me talking to Gaia?"

"Oh no. Absolutely not." Aware that this sounded far too overprotective, Caecilia tried to soften it. "Gaia knows what she told you was nonsense."

"Well, you are her mother," said Maia again wryly, like a mother who knew better. Still, even my hotheaded sister could be fair. "She did seem thrilled with the idea of becoming a Vestal when she was talking about it to my daughter Cloelia."

"She is, she is!" exclaimed Caecilia, almost pleading for us to believe her. "We are not monsters--as soon as I realized something had made her unhappy I arranged for her to have a long talk with Constantia about what her life in the House of the Vestals would be--"

"Constantia?" I asked.

"The Virgin we all met at the Palace," Maia reminded me grumpily.

"Right. Constantia is liaison officer for the new recruits?"

"She ensures the hopefuls hear the proper lies," Maia returned with deep cynicism. "She lays stress on the fame and respect Vestal Virgins receive--and forgets to mention drawbacks like living for thirty years with five other sexually deprived women, who all probably loathe you and get on your nerves."

"Maia Favonia!" protested Caecilia, truly shocked.

Maia grimaced. "Sorry."

There was a silence. I could see Maia still writhing in frustration that she could not escape to run and deal with Pa. Caecilia seemed to have no clue how to continue or to break off this interview.

"Whose idea was it to put Gaia's name into the Virgins' lottery?" I asked, thinking about what had happened in my sister's family.

"Mine." That surprised me.

"What does her father think?"

Her chin came up slightly. "Scaurus was delighted when I wrote to make the suggestion." I must have looked puzzled at the way she had expressed it; Caecilia Paeta added calmly, "He no longer lives with us."

Divorce is common enough, but one place I had not expected to find it was a house where every male was destined to serve as a flamen, whose marriage had to last for life. "So where does Scaurus live?" I managed to sound neutral. Scaurus must be Gaia's father's name; it was his first hint of any personal identity, and I wondered if that was significant.

"In the country." She named a place that I happened to know; it was about an hour's drive past the farm my mother's brothers owned. Maia glanced my way, but I avoided her eye.

"And you are divorced?"

"No." Caecilia's voice was quiet. I had the feeling she rarely spoke of this to anyone. The ex-Flamen Dialis would be outraged that she should. "My father-in-law is strongly opposed to that."

"Your husband--his son--was he a member of the priesthood?"

"No." She looked down. "No, he never was. It had always been presumed he would follow the family tradition, indeed it was promised at the time I married him. Laelius Scaurus preferred a different kind of life."

"His break with family tradition must have caused great discontent, I imagine?"

Caecilia made no direct comment, though her expression said it all. "It is never too late. There was always a hope that if we were at least only separated something might be salvaged--and there would be Gaia, of course. My father-in-law intended that she would be married in the ancient way to someone who would qualify for the College of Flamens; then one day, he hoped, she might even become the Flaminica like her grandmother. . . ." She trailed off.

"Not if she is a Vestal Virgin!" Maia shot in. Caecilia's head came up. Maia's voice dropped conspiratorially. "You defied him! You put Gaia into the lottery deliberately, to thwart her grandfather's plans!"

"I would never defy the Flamen," replied Gaia's mother far too smoothly. Realizing she had given us more than she intended, she prepared to sweep out. "This is a difficult time for my family. Please, show some consideration and leave us alone now."

She was on her way out.

"We apologize," said Maia briefly. She might have argued, but she still wanted to be off on her own errand. Instead, she picked up the reference to it being a difficult time. "We were, of course, sorry to hear of your loss."

Wide-eyed, Caecilia Paeta spun back to stare at her. A rather extreme reaction, though grief can make people touchy in unexpected ways.

"Your family were attending a funeral when Maia came to visit you," I reminded her gently. "Was it somebody close?"

"Oh no! A relative by marriage, that is all--" Caecilia pulled herself together, inclined her head formally, and went out to the carriage.

Even Maia managed to wait until the woman had departed, so she could mouth at me, "What's going on? That family is so sensitive!"

"All families are sensitive," I intoned piously.

"You cannot be thinking of ours!" scoffed my sister--running off at last to hurl herself into a quarrel with Pa.

I went to see my mother, like a devoted boy.

It was a long time since I had driven Ma out to the Campagna to see Great-Auntie Phoebe and whichever she was currently harboring of my unbelievable uncles: moody Fabius and broody Junius--though never the truly loopy one who had gone permanently missing, and of whom we were never supposed to speak. It would be easy to dump Ma at the family market garden for a long gossip, then to find something harmless to occupy myself.

I could, for instance, drive on a few miles to the place Caecilia Paeta had mentioned, and interview the estranged escapee father of little supposedly overimaginative Gaia Laelia.

XX

"HELENA JUSTINA, A man who loves you ferociously is offering to jolt you for hours in a hot open cart, and then grope you in a cabbage field."

"How can I resist?"

"You can surely leave Gloccus and Cotta on their own for just a day."

Helena made no sign of hearing me mention the two names. "Do you need me?"

"I do. I have to manage a mule, and you know how I hate that; I shall also require your sensible presence to control Ma. Anyway, if I don't produce you, Great-Auntie Phoebe will assume you have left me."

"Oh, why would anyone think that?" Helena knew how to deny it in a way I found faintly worrying.

"By the way, sweetheart, Pa sent a message, in his devious style. He thinks you should know he has heard that Gloccus and Cotta are not all they were at the time he recommended them."

Helena finally turned around from a pot she had been scrubbing with grit and vinegar. Her eyes blazed. Through set teeth she hissed, "I really do not need anybody to tell me what Gloccus and Cotta are like. If I hear anyone else mention Gloccus and Cotta, I shall scream!"

It was from the heart. The picture at least had a chalk outline now. Pa had stuck her with a pair of his pet noodles; these boys had to be fixers in the building trade. I grinned and backed off.

* * *

It was now three days before the Nones of June, a festival of Bellona, Goddess of War: a deity to respect, naturally, but one with no direct poultry connections as far as I knew. Another voting day, so it was handy to flee from the Forum before anyone grabbed me for jury service.

We made good time out to my relatives' disorganized patch of vegetable fields, where as usual the leeks and artichokes were struggling on their own, while the uncles busied themselves with lives of fervent emotional complexity. They were men of huge passions--grafted onto absolutely mediocre personalities. I stayed long enough to hear that dopey Uncle Junius had finally broken his heart over his doomed affair with a neighbor's flirty wife, and--after a terrible scene bang in the middle of the cress harvest--having failed to hang himself from a broken beam in the ox-harness room (which Great-Auntie Phoebe had repeatedly told him to mend), he had left home in a new huff over the ill-timed reappearance during a violent thunderstorm of his brother, Fabius, who had previously gone off in a huff over, I think, a crisis about what he did in life (since what Fabius actually did was to cause trouble in the lives of other people and then hang around apologizing, his huff had been encouraged by everyone else). All much as usual. The two brothers had a lifelong feud, a feud so old neither of them could remember what it had been about, but they were comfortable loathing each other. I had not seen Fabius for years; he had failed to improve.

Ma took Julia from us and settled in to shake heads with Phoebe over the lads and their troubles. Nux came with me. Nux had become anxious and clinging after the episode on the Capitol where she was arrested by the priestly acolytes who were looking for doggies to crucify. In addition to that, a succession of nasty male curs had occupied our front porch recently, suggesting Nux was in heat; this too was making her behavior unstable. I was annoyed; acting as midwife for my own child had been enough of a disturbing experience, one I was not keen to resume for a bunch of pups.

Helena knew I was checking up on the Laelius family, so once we dropped off Ma, she came on with me.

A hot June morning, ambling along with a mule who was tired enough to do as I instructed, feeling Helena's knee against my own, and Helena's lightly clad shoulder nuzzling my arm. Only the wet nose of Nux, squeezing between us from the back of the cart, spoiled what could have been an idyll.

"Well, here we are peacefully traveling together," mused my beloved. "Your chance to lull me into telling what my secret is."

"Would not dream of it."

"I expect you to try."

"If you need to share your troubles, you'll come out and say so."

"What if I really want you to squeeze the story out of me?"

"Child's stuff. You are far too serious," I proclaimed piously. "I love you because you and I never have to descend to such games."

"Didius Falco, you are an aggravating swine."

I smiled at her fondly. Whatever she was doing, I trusted her. For one thing, if she really wanted to deceive me, there was no way I would ever have noticed that anything was happening; Helena Justina was too clever for me.

I had my work. It tended to be a solitary occupation. She helped when it seemed appropriate--and sometimes when it was so dangerous I felt terrified that she was involved--but she deserved stimulus of her own. Even when our lives were separate, I would always seize any chance to extract her and take her apart so that we could lose ourselves. . . .

Part of our early courtship had taken place in the countryside. It seemed a nostalgic treat to roll around with her while hard lumps of vegetation were sticking in our backs. Still, nostalgia is a dish for the young.

"
Ow!
Jupiter, let's just concede that we have a bed at home. Fun's fun--but we're grown up now."

Helena Justina looked at me tenderly. "Didius Falco, you will never be grown up!"

Nux, tied up to the cart, started to howl.

* * *

Anyway, it was later than it might have been when we found the farm. It was a neat smallholding that looked well run, though barely capable of supporting more than the people who were living there. They had rows of summer salad crops, occasional poultry pottering about in a soft fruit orchard, a couple of cows, and a large friendly pig. Two geese wandered out to greet us; I could have done without them.

The farm dogs sniffed out the presence of Nux within minutes. Tying her up would only have made her a sacrificial victim. I tied them up instead. Then I carried Nux, preserving her canine chastity however fiercely she tried to squirm. Helena said it would be good practice for when our daughter grew up.

This smallholding seemed designed as a Roman intellectual's retirement home, after the patronage ran out; from here he could write bucolic notes to his friends in town, praising the simple life where his table was set with just runny cheese and a lettuce leaf (while hoping some civilized visitor would bring him gossip, memories of sophisticated women, and a decent flask of wine). However, if Laelius Scaurus was, as I supposed, in his thirties, it seemed early for him to be giving up on city life.

We found a bent-backed aged retainer who pushed a hoe about. He looked happy to see us, but we got no sense out of him. All my prejudice against the country was rising fast. First my peculiar uncles, and now a rural slave who left his brains behind on a shelf when he went out of doors. Then things looked up. A girl appeared.

"Well!" I grinned at Helena. "I can manage on my own now if you want to go and rest in the mule cart."

"Forget it!" she growled.

The smallholding girl had a round face, with a big mouth, and swiftly emerging dimples. Her smile was willing; her figure fulsome; her nature friendly and open. Her eyes were dark and promising and her hair was tied up with blue ribbon. She wore a loose natural-cream gown that had a few unraveled sections in the seams through which her burnished skin was clearly visible. Wherever could Scaurus have found her, leading his austere life as a flamen's son?

"He has gone to Rome."

"Can't be parted from the Forum?" I asked.

"Oh, he goes to and fro. Last time he sneaked a visit to his sister. This time he had a letter from his wife." At least she knew about the wife. I would not have liked to think this shining young lady was the victim of cruel deception. "He could have gone yesterday, but he held back because it was a legal day, and he was afraid they might make him sign something."

"Like what?" I smiled. Her friendliness was extremely infectious.

"Oh, I don't know."

"And you are?" enquired Helena, rather sternly.

"I am Meldina." Very nice. I managed to hold back the comment that she had a pretty name. It always sounds like a trite old pickup line, however genuinely meant. I was in a difficult enough situation, trying to hold on to a skillfully wriggling dog who had hopes of a country romance.

From then on, I let Helena take on the questioning while I just controlled Nux and watched admiringly. (I mean--of course--only that I was admiring the skill of my dear girl's questioning.) "How long has Laelius Scaurus lived out here?"

"About three years."

"As long as that! And have you lived here all the time?"

"Mostly." Meldina gave us an especially big smile. "It's very nice out here."

We all looked around. It was a picture of country perfection. If you were talking in terms of perspective, the foreground was particularly fine, due to the presence in it of Meldina's large-scale charms.

"Let me guess," Helena said gently, in a tone that was unlikely to give offense. "You would have been a Laelius family freedwoman?"

"Oh no!" Meldina sounded horrified. "I had nothing to do with that lot. My mother was a freedwoman of his aunt's," she corrected. This rather complicated definition implied that there had been no pressure on her to move here with Scaurus; freeborn herself, she had come of her own choice. Nonetheless, I wondered whether the aunt had encouraged her; such an attractive girl might have been too much of a favorite with Auntie's husband, maybe.

"Did you know Scaurus before he moved out to the country?" Helena was seeking to discover whether it was his friendship with Meldina that had caused Scaurus' estrangement from his wife.

"No, afterwards. Still," said the smiling girl (who never really stopped smiling), "we are pretty settled now."

"No chance of him divorcing his wife, presumably?"

"Never. His father has forbidden it." As we thought.

"Excuse me asking all these questions," Helena said.

"Oh, that's all right. I'll talk to anyone." What a refreshing attitude. I wondered how far Meldina's accessibility went. It seemed unlikely that she stinted much. Helena was giving me a stern look, for some reason. "What did you want to see Scaurus about?" Meldina asked, also throwing a look my way. I was a man of the world; I could handle that. On the other hand, I might not be able to handle Helena after this incident.

"We wanted a word about his young daughter--little Gaia. We had an encounter with her that left us feeling concerned."

"Funny little tot," said Meldina, with a delicious frown. "I've met her a few times. His aunt brings her out here to see him."

The aunt had featured sufficiently for Helena now to fix on her. "When you say his aunt, that wouldn't be Terentia Paulla, I suppose?" I was surprised by this, until reminded of a conversation at Helena's parents' house about this woman; she had been the sister of the late Flaminica: "My grandmother knew her from the Bona Dea Festival," Helena explained. "Terentia is a Vestal Virgin, isn't she?"

"That's the right aunt. But she's not a Virgin anymore!" Meldina was giggling. "Didn't you know? She retired at the end of her thirty years--then upset everyone by marrying!"

Retired Vestal Virgins could do that, in theory. It rarely happened since it was thought unlucky for a man to marry an ex-Virgin. Since she would probably be past childbearing age, a bridegroom would have to place a higher than usual premium on virginity to think it worthwhile. Any quick thrill from bedding a Vestal would be outweighed by then gaining a tyrant who came with thirty years' experience of ruling the roost.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Helena, with spirit. "Grandmother never told me that!"

"You are shielded from anything scandalous," I intervened.

"Oh, he can speak!" trilled Meldina.

"Far too much," said Helena, sneering. "I only bring him out with me to carry the lapdog. Well, retired Vestals are allowed to take husbands, but people do always look askance . . . I cannot say Grandmama liked Terentia much," she tried.

"Oh, didn't she?" The girl continued to look bright and helpful, though she was definitely deflecting the question this time. She was being loyal. To whom? I wondered.

Helena let it go and changed her approach. "Meldina, did you know there is a plan for young Gaia Laelia to follow Terentia and become a Vestal too?"

"Yes, Scaurus said his wife came up with that."

"He has given his consent?"

"I suppose so."

"I just wondered if that was why he went to Rome today?"

"Oh no. His aunt wants him. He said it was to help with her affairs."

Helena paused. "I'm sorry; I must have misunderstood something. I thought you said Laelius Scaurus went to Rome after receiving a letter from his wife, not his aunt?"

Meldina's smile became broader than ever. "Well, that's his lot all over, isn't it? His auntie wants him, but his wife wrote and told him that his father had decided Scaurus was not to know anything about it." She grinned. "Scaurus has gone to Rome to kick up a right stink!"