The Vestal Vanishes (6 page)

This suggestion that I was of no account was not a compliment either, but – to Fiscus’s growing horror – I responded with a smile. Even if the gateman turned me from the door, I wanted at least to lure him into saying something more. I had hopes of learning the family’s name, at least, though I dared not show my ignorance by asking him outright. He had already told me – without intending to – that the bride was called Audelia, and I’d also learned much about the household’s attitudes.

‘I am not a member of the family,’ I said. ‘I have been sent here by His Excellence, Marcus Aurelius Septimus, to try to find out what happened to the bride. My attendant here will bear me out, I’m sure.’ I gestured at Fiscus who briefly raised his eyes, nodded grimly, and then went back to gazing at his feet. I turned a wheedling smile onto the gatekeeper. ‘Would it be possible for you to let us in?’

The man looked doubtful. ‘Well, I don’t know I’m sure. There’s not a slave to spare that I can send to ask. Wait here and I will go and make enquiries myself.’ And before I could answer he had gone inside the gate and barred the entrance firmly in my face.

I glanced at Fiscus but he would not meet my eyes. He would never have endured this kind of greeting in his life, and was doubtless mortified at finding himself in attendance to a mere ex-slave. I would have to tell him sometime that – among my own people – I was a nobleman before I was captured into slavery. But in the meantime I was glad that he was there. Without him, I suspected, I would have been turned away before I’d had the opportunity to say a word.

There was a short uncomfortable silence while we stood there in the lane and I was just beginning to calculate how long it would take us to walk back to the town, when the doorman reappeared. From the haste with which he opened wide the gate and ushered us inside, I deduced that he had been reprimanded for not admitting us at once. The name of Marcus Septimus had no doubt worked its charm.

The gatekeeper was all obsequious helpfulness now, as he led us through the court. ‘I am sorry, citizen, that there is no page to show you in. The whole of the household is in disarray not knowing whether there will be a wedding feast or not – or whether the whole banquet will be cancelled after all. But I see there is a maidservant waiting at the door, she will escort you and show you where to wait. My mistress will be with you in just a little while.’

The slave-girl was a timid, skinny little thing, in an orange tunic far too big for her, but she contrived a little smile and led us shyly in. She took us down a central passage from the portico to the central atrium, a large room where there was a mosaic of a pool – in imitation of the real ones which they’re said to have in Rome – though of rather indifferent workmanship, I thought. Normally this was a place where one would wait, but today it was a hive of domestic industry: a senior slave was supervising the fuelling of lamps and the arrangement of sweet-scented herbs around the family altar in a niche, while a group of slave-boys struggled with the weight of a table and more couches for the dining room beyond.

The folding doors were thrown open to the rear to reveal a pretty little colonnade where troops of garden slaves were also hard at work, sweeping the pathways round the court with bundles of bunched broom, and garlanding the outside shrines and statues with fresh flowers. Other servants were hurrying to and from a separate wooden building to the rear – evidently the kitchen, from which mouth-watering smells were beginning to emerge – carrying pails of water and great trays for serving food. The chief slave looked up and bowed as we walked by but none of the others acknowledged us at all, as our slave-girl led us through the atrium and into a small study to the right.

It was not a large room and it was already full with a cupboard, boxes and a set of open shelves which must have held at least a dozen manuscripts in pots. The top of a handsome wooden table by the window-space was covered too, with opened letter-scrolls, clean bark-paper, an iron-nibbed pen or two, little containers with the elements for mixing ink, two oil-lamps, and – at the very front, as if it had recently been used – a stylus, and the kind of stamp-seal and wax that ladies (not having seal-rings) sometimes used to seal the ties on their fancy writing-blocks, though there was no such wax-tablet here that I could see.

A folding stool had been set up beside the desk and the maidservant suggested shyly that I should sit on it, but indicated that Fiscus – to his visible dismay – should stand and wait outside the study door. No question of entertainment in the servants’ room today.

‘I will bring some wine and dates for you,’ the slave-girl ventured, rather timidly. ‘The mistress won’t be long.’

‘Thank you for your help,’ I murmured, as she turned to go. I saw the doubtful smile that briefly lit her face, and realized that she was very rarely praised. That gave me an idea. I motioned to the girl that she should shut the door. ‘You could help me further,’ I said, when this was done and I was sure that Fiscus could not overhear. ‘I am a stranger to the household and I don’t know the names. Perhaps you could tell me?’

She misunderstood me, her thin cheeks aglow. ‘They call me Modesta, citizen.’ She seemed astonished to be addressed at all.

I would have to do better, without alarming her. ‘Thank you, Modesta,’ I answered with a smile. ‘You have done very well. It is not your normal duty to greet visitors, I think? No doubt the usual attendants are with your master in the town?’ I was only guessing this, from her awkward manner, but it seemed that I was right.

She blushed still brighter. ‘Exactly, citizen. I am just a sewing-slave who mends the garments here, and I do not usually have anything to do with guests. But I am not wanted to help prepare the feast so they have released me to come and show you in. You bring word from the master?’

‘Not exactly that.’

‘The mistress will be disappointed then. She sent a message to her husband, an hour or so ago, to ask him whether the banquet was likely to take place – but up to now there has been no reply.’

‘Yet she has gone on making preparations just the same? Even if there is no wedding for you to celebrate?’

I’d mentioned the wedding to see what she would say, but she just shrugged her skinny shoulders. ‘My master holds a banquet every year in honour of the Imperial holiday. Everyone knows that. Lavinius’s feast is quite a famous one, and if it was cancelled the mistress is afraid that the Emperor might get to hear of it.’

So the master was called Lavinius, I thought. That was a little victory, at least. ‘I see. So she thought it might be dangerous to cancel everything?’

An eager nod. ‘That’s why we were hoping that you brought a message back. We should have heard by now.’

My imagination made a sudden leap. ‘She sent a written letter – a wax tablet possibly,’ I said, thinking of the stylus I’d noticed earlier.

The slave-girl coloured. ‘It was difficult for her. She can read, of course – I think it’s wonderful the way she understands all the inscriptions on graves and everything – but obviously she doesn’t often write. When would she have occasion to? But I heard her saying to the senior slave that she didn’t want this message to be delivered verbally: it might be overheard, and we’d have the whole town knowing what the problem was. She sealed it up and gave it to the last remaining page and told him to run the whole way in with it.’

It seemed that I was not the only one to think discretion was the safest policy! ‘Then perhaps her letter hasn’t reached your master yet,’ I said. ‘It would not be easy for the message-boy to interrupt, if the official party was busy with the games.’

She looked at me distressed. ‘You mean, perhaps the master doesn’t know about . . . the troubles with the wedding?’

I remembered what Marcus had told me earlier. ‘He does know that his daughter has disappeared,’ I said. I was about to go on to explain how he, too, was trying to keep that knowledge from the general populace but the girl let out a cry of pure dismay.

‘Little Lavinia? She’s disappeared as well? When did this happen? How did you hear of it? Is that what you have come for – to tell us about that?’

I was as surprised as she was. ‘Lavinia? I thought the bride was called Audelia?’

The small face cleared a little. ‘So she is. But . . . oh, I see! You said you did not know the family!’ She saw my face and gave a little giggle of relief. ‘Lavinius Flaccus is not the father of the bride. Did you suppose he was? He is just her uncle – or at least he is the husband of my mistress, who is Audelia’s aunt.’

‘Aunt?’ I echoed, rather stupidly.

‘Her dead mother’s sister, as I understand. Both of Audelia’s parents died of plague in Rome some years ago, and Lavinius is her nearest living male relative – though she doesn’t need one as a legal guardian, of course, as other women would.’ My error had cured her of her timidity, and she was savouring the unaccustomed joy of knowing something other people didn’t know. She rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘Being a Vestal Virgin must be wonderful. She didn’t even need anyone’s consent when she chose to marry Publius – though of course Lavinius would have given it at once. He and my mistress are absolutely thrilled.’

‘So Audelia was to be married from her uncle’s house?’

‘But it is not her uncle’s. You really didn’t know? This whole estate belongs to Audelia herself. Her father left it to her when he died.’

I was astonished. ‘Although she was a girl?’

She nodded. ‘She was an only child. Of course, as a Vestal Virgin, she could officially have managed everything herself, but she was still living in the temple then, so she installed her uncle to take care of it for her.’ She gave her timid smile. ‘So now I’ve explained things for you, shall I fetch this fruit and wine?’

‘Just one more moment!’ I said, urgently. My thoughts were in a whirl. If this house belonged to Audelia herself and she was due to marry, what would happen then? Surely it would come to Publius as part of her dowry – even Vestal Virgins lose their status when they wed. So what would happen to the uncle who was living here? Would he and his family be obliged to leave? Had I stumbled on a reason why somebody should wish that the prospective bride should disappear?

The girl was staring uncertainly at me, expecting me to speak. I cleared my throat. ‘Lavinius was content with that arrangement, I suppose? Surely – since I understand he is a wealthy man – he has his own affairs? No doubt including substantial property elsewhere.’

‘Ooh, certainly!’ She glanced around, as if she feared the walls were listening to all this, then dropped her voice and grinned, showing a set of little pointed teeth. ‘He’s got a town house in Venta, over to the west – that’s where I was born. But this arrangement was convenient to him. He didn’t have a country villa anywhere near here – only a tract of forest and a stone-quarry – and it suited him to be a little closer to the docks.’

That made a difference to my theory, of course. The man would clearly not be homeless after all, but . . . ‘And now he’ll lose all those advantages?’

She stared at me. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know. He has some land adjoining this, which my mistress – Cyra – brought him as a dowry when she wed, and they are building another house on that. It would have been competed by this time, in fact, if it wasn’t for the rain that we’ve had recently.’

Any hopes that I had found a motive for a kidnapping had vanished more completely than the gatekeeper’s smile. But I was struck by what seemed an odd coincidence. ‘Land adjoining this? You don’t mean the farmland that I saw outside the gate?’

She did her shy giggle at my ignorance. ‘Of course not. Though it was once all one estate. Cyra’s father left her the other portion when he died.’ She saw my puzzled face and went on patiently. ‘He was Audelia’s grandfather, of course – he had two daughters and no other heirs – and his land was subdivided between the pair of them.’

It was the obvious explanation, when you thought of it. I was about to say as much when the door was thrust open and we were interrupted by a shrill, reproving voice.

‘Modesta, why are there no refreshments for our guest? Go, see to it at once. How dare you stand about! This is no time for idle gossiping! I’m sorry, citizen, the child is not accustomed to receiving guests. When Lavinius gets home, I’ll see that she is whipped!’

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.