One Virgin Too Many (15 page)

"When did that stop you?" muttered Ma.

"The little girl asked you for help," Helena reminded me. Then she paused, looking thoughtful. I knew her well enough to wait. "There is something madly wrong about that legal tale Scaurus spun you."

"It sounded reasonable to me."

"But for one thing." Helena had made up her mind and was highly indignant. "Marcus, it's complete nonsense--a Vestal Virgin is exempt from the rules of female guardianship!"

"Are you certain?"

"Of course," Helena rebuked me for doubting her. "It is one of their famous privileges."

My mother's mouth tightened. "Total freedom from male interference! The best reason for ever becoming a Vestal, if you ask me."

"Of course," said Helena, calming down as she became interested in the problem, "it is always possible that the ex-Vestal in question has to have a guardian for special reasons. She may be disposing of her property in a brazenly profligate manner."

"Or she may be a lunatic!" Ma chortled wickedly.

But Terentia Paulla sounded too good an organizer for that to be the case.

"So," I pondered, with a certain amount of annoyance, "Laelius Scaurus is either an unworldly booby who has utterly misunderstood something his aunt has said to him--or he has just bamboozled me with a pack of outright lies!"

But why should he do that?

I had let Scaurus go and we were too far down the road for me to drive back and challenge him. Besides, I really had to think about Gaia. Tomorrow was the Nones of June. In two days' time, as any conscientious procurator knew from consulting his calendar of festivals, would begin a period that was sacred to Vesta, including two great days of ceremony called the Vestalia. The women of Rome would progress to the temple to beg the goddess for favor in the coming year; there would be elaborate cleansing ceremonies for the temple and its storehouse. The start of these events this year was when the Pontifex Maximus had elected to draw lots for the next Virgin, after which it seemed likely that Gaia's fate would be fixed. Even if I did attempt to help her, I had only three days left. After that, the girl might well be removed from the oppression and strife of her family; but she would be sweeping up embers from the Sacred Hearth for the next thirty years.

Her father's aunt, who had carried out the duties for a full term, thought this a bad idea. Well, she should know.

XXIII

THE NONES OF June was dedicated to Jupiter, Guardian of Truth. Naturally, this was my favorite manifestation of the Best and Greatest of gods. Truth, in the life of an informer, is such a rare phenomenon. In case there were any ramifications for me in the festival, I made damned sure I stayed away from the big temples on the Capitol.

I had now been home from Africa for about ten days. I had expected that private clients who had need of an informer would have heard this with relief, and would start queuing up for my expert advice. Prospective clients thought otherwise.

There were three reasons to accept this calmly. Firstly, my supposed new partner, Camillus Justinus, was abroad and unable to share the task of rebuilding the business. If he offended his girlfriend's rich relatives in Corduba they might extract her and leave him so desolate he would go off on Herculean adventures for the next ten years. If Claudia's grandparents took to him too much, however, they might set him up as a married man, permanently growing olives in Baetica. Either way, if I ever saw him again, I would be lucky. But until I knew the result for certain, I was hampered in honing my business plan.

Secondly, I had rented an office in the Saepta Julia when I worked with Anacrites, but I dumped that when I dumped him. Once again my nominal office was my old apartment in Fountain Court, still occupied by Petronius Longus since his wife left him. Any person who needed to employ an informer was likely to have reasons to keep their private life unofficial on all fronts; they would be horrified to arrive for a consultation and find a large specimen of the official vigiles in his after-hours tunic, swigging a drink, with his feet up on the balcony parapet. I could not evict Petro. Instead I currently interviewed any clients who did turn up at my new apartment. Many a craftsman's lockup in Rome is overrun by children; it may be fine if you only want to buy a bronze tripod with satyrs' feet, but people dislike being interviewed about their life-or-death problems while an energetic baby hurls porridge at their knees.

Thirdly, for the first time ever I could view all this without much urgent concern. Anacrites and I had achieved so much in our work for the Great Census that I had no pressing financial worries.

Yet that in itself was disturbing. I would need to get used to it. For the past eight years, since I had persuaded the army that it wanted to release me from legionary service, I had lived in fear of starvation and being thrown on the street by my landlord. I had once felt unable to marry, for dread of dragging others down with me. I had lived in filth. I lacked leisure and intellectual refinement. I had been forced into work that was dangerous and demeaning. So I drank, dreamed, lusted, complained, conspired, wrote gauche poetry, and did all that informers are reckoned to do by those who insult them. Then in Britain, on my first mission for Vespasian, I had met a girl.

For a man who sneered at snooty women, I had thrown myself into wooing Helena Justina with a wholeheartedness that appalled my friends. She was a senator's daughter and I was a street rat. Our relationship seemed impossible--a wondrous attraction to a fellow who liked challenges. She at first hated me: another lure. I even thought I hated her: ridiculous.

The story of how we came to live as we did now, so much more closely and companionably than most people (more, especially, than my turmoiled clients) would fill a few scrolls for your library. That Helena loved me was one mystery. That, even though she cared, she chose to endure my way of life was even stranger. We had lived for short periods in my old apartment, the one Petronius now filled with his mighty frame when he forced himself to return for a night's sleep under the leaky tiles. We had briefly shared a rental in a building that was "accidentally" demolished by a crooked developer--fortunately when neither of us was at home. And now we lived in a three-room first-floor sublet, from which we had removed the obscene wall frescos and to which we imported our child's screams and our own laughter, but little else.

I had long harbored grandiose fantasies of owning a mansion--in a few decades, when I had time, money, energy, motive, and the name of a trustworthy real estate vendor (well, the last criterion ruled it out!). More recently Helena Justina had talked of acquiring somewhere spacious enough for us to share with her younger brother, whom we liked, and whose young lady (if she stuck with him) was as pleasant as we could hope for. I was not sure I liked anyone enough to endure a joint tenure of my home. Apparently, it was a closer possibility than I had thought.

"While we have the mule cart on hire," Helena announced, looking only slightly sheepish, "we could drive out tomorrow and look at this house I bought."

"This is the house that I know nothing about, I suppose?"

"You know it is."

"Right. If a man takes up with a formidable woman, he has to expect some curtailment of his domestic liberties. A whole house has been bought for me, without anybody telling me the street or the locality, showing me the site plan, or even, if I may be so coarse as to raise this, Helena, mentioning the price."

"You will like it," Helena assured me, sounding as if she had begun to doubt that she liked the place herself.

"Of course I will, if you chose it." I was often firm. Helena had always ignored firmness, so it might have seemed pointless, but the statement made it clear who would be blamed if we were stuck with a bummer.

As we were. I could already tell.

* * *

Because of the daytime wheeled-vehicle curfew in Rome, after we took my mother home that evening we hitched the mule in Lenia's laundry and planned to rise very early in order to leave just before dawn. After a few hours' sleep at our apartment, I dragged myself awake the next morning only reluctantly. We put Julia and Nux in the back of the cart, still both asleep in separate baskets, and set off through the silent streets like defaulters doing a bunk.

"This seems to be the first disadvantage. Our house is miles outside town?"

"I was told that the distance is walkable." Helena looked miserable.

"Time to own up, lady. Is that true?"

"You always said you wanted to live on the Janiculan Hill--with a view over Rome."

"So I did. Very nice. I saw a superb gangster's house there once--mind you, he had excellent reasons for guarding his privacy."

The house Helena had bought was the other side of the Tiber: secluded, you could say. If it had a view as she promised, I knew it must be an upland property. Every day when I returned home in the evening (I would obviously not bother nipping back just for lunch as I did now), the last part of the walk would be up a steep hill. I could manage that, I told myself. I had lived all my life on the Aventine.

"We can afford our own litter now," Helena ventured nervously as we drove past the Theatre of Pompey and rattled over the Agrippan Bridge. This was already further out of the city than I normally enjoyed tramping.

"If you want a social life, we'll need one each."

* * *

The house had tremendous potential. (Those deadly words!) Renovated--for it was suffering about twenty years of total neglect--it could end up truly beautiful. Airy rooms led from lofty corridors; attractive interior peristyle gardens separated pleasingly proportioned wings. There were good polychrome geometric mosaic floors in the principal rooms and hallways. Old-fashioned, slightly faded frescos posed interesting problems: whether to keep them or invest in more modern designs.

"It had no bathhouse," Helena said. "There is a spring, luckily. I don't know how the previous owners managed. I thought it was essential to have our own facilities."

I gulped. "Gloccus and Cotta?"

"How did you guess?"

"They sound likely candidates for a job that can easily go wrong. I don't see them here." I could, however, see their various piles of ladders, litter, and old lunch crusts. They also had a large trade plate advertising their services, which had pushed over the welcoming herm at the entrance gate. No doubt they would reerect Hermes for us before they finally left.

I jest. The situation was clear to me. These were, without question, boys who left a trail of destruction in their wake. Snagging, in this contract, would mean employing a major contractor to put right everything that these smaller folk had done wrong--and all they had ruined which they should never have touched. There was nothing new or surprising in this situation. It is carefully worked out in the builders' guild. It is how they perpetuate their craft. Every time one comes in and ruins your home, the next in the chain is guaranteed work. Don't try to escape. They know every trick the luckless householder can pull. They are gods. Just leave them to get on with it.

"Gloccus and Cotta are never here," Helena replied in a taut voice. "That, I am forced to admit, is their big disadvantage. If I tell you I bought this house before we went to Africa--"

I smiled gently. "We went in early April, didn't we? We were there nearly two months?"

"Gloccus and Cotta were supposed to build the bathhouse while we were away. It was a simple construction on a clean site and they had told me they were free to program it in. It was to take twenty days."

"So what happened, fruit?" She was so dismal it was easy to be kind to her; I could wind her up later, once she had provided the ammunition.

"I expect you can imagine." She knew how I was playing this. Helena, who was a stalwart girl, took a deep breath and recounted the odyssey: "They were late starting; their previous contract overran. They have to keep returning to Rome for more materials--disappearing for the rest of the day. They need money in advance, but if you pay them up front as a courtesy they take advantage and vanish again. I gave them a clear list of what I wanted, but every item they supply is different from what I chose. They have broken the white marble bowl I ordered specially from Greece; they have lost half the tesserae for the hot-room floor--after the first half were firmly laid, of course, so the rest cannot now be matched. They drink; they gamble, and then fight over the results. If I come here to work on other parts of the house, they interrupt me constantly, either asking for refreshments or announcing that I have a problem with the design that they did not foresee . . . Do stop laughing."

"What's the fuss about?" I was now openly doubled up with mirth. "These seem like prime delights from the world of contracting--and what's more, Pa found them!"

"Don't mention your father!"

"Sorry." I took a grip. "We can sort this."

Helena was beginning to show her panic and despair. "Marcus, I cannot get anywhere with them! Every time I take them to task, they just admit they have let me down in an intolerable fashion, apologize cringingly, promise to apply themselves diligently from now on--then vanish from sight again."

I had caught her eye. Relief at involving me was softening her tragedy. It was a mess, but now she could cry over it into my tunic braid. Just knowing that she could admit the truth to me was making her brave. "Good thing you live with a man who never beats you, Helena."

"Oh, I am grateful for that. I would be happy if you restricted any teasing too."

"Ah, no chance, sweetheart."

"So I thought."

Looking rueful, she let me caress her flushed cheek. She was wearing a dark red dress with a bevy of bracelets to hide her forearm, scarred where a scorpion had bitten her outside Palmyra. Due to our early start that morning her fine dark hair was simply tucked in the neck of her tunic; I reached around and started pulling it loose. More relaxed, Helena leaned her head against my hand. I gathered her close and turned her around to survey the property.

It was the hour of the morning when the sun's heat first begins to strengthen as it fires up for a blazing day. We gazed at the fine two-storied house, with its satisfying rhythms of repeated arched colonnades below shuttered windows on the upper floors. The exterior facade was regular, and so fairly plain, with small red turrets on each corner and a porch with low steps and two thin pillars to break up the frontage.

A nervous white dove fluttered onto the pantiles; probably it had nested messily up in the warm roof space, though the roof in fact looked sound.

The grounds, in which the famous bathhouse was not being built, hosted a terrace with stone pines and cypresses, unkempt topiary dotted through a sloped area, and near the house the usual box hedges and trellises. Graveled paths, with most of the gravel missing, led in a determined way from gate to house and then wandered about the gardens, pausing now at the detached site of what Helena had planned as the bathhouse. What the property lacked in pools and fountains would provide plenty of scope for a schemer like me to design and install them (and tear them out again after a child fell in). It was very peaceful here.

I twisted my belt around so the buckle would not dig into Helena as I held her tight against me, looking over her shoulder and nuzzling her neck. "Tell me the story."

She sighed. "I liked it as soon as I saw it," she said, after a moment, speaking quietly and with the direct honesty I had always adored in her dealings with me. "I bought it for you. I thought it would delight you. I thought we would enjoy living here as a family. It was in decent condition, yet there was plenty we could do to make improvements in our own taste when we had time and the inclination. But I see it is a disaster. You cannot be so far from Rome."

"Hmm." I liked it too. I understood just what had made Helena choose this place.

"I can sell it again, I suppose. Build the bathhouse, then pass it on as a 'newly renovated home of character--fine views and own baths.' Somebody else can discover that Gloccus and Cotta have failed to install a working soakaway."

"And that the new hypocaust leaks smoke."

Helena squirmed around to look at me in horror. "Oh no! How can you tell?"

I shook my head sadly. "When boneheads like Gloccus and Cotta install them, they always do, love. And they will leave the wall flues blocked up with rubble--and quite inaccessible--"