One Virgin Too Many Read online

  “Who’s this, then?” demanded Pa, whose curiosity was notorious. “Your new partner?”

  “No. This is his brother, Camillus Aelianus, the next shining star in the senate. My partner has very sensibly gone to Spain.”

  “That should make it easy to combine your expertise,” Pa quipped. Justinus had no expertise for informing, but I saw no need to enlighten Pa that I had lumbered myself with an even more unsuitable colleague than Petronius or Anacrites. Aelianus might not yet have heard that his brother was setting up with me, because I saw him look askance. “Were you expecting that riffraff to drop in?” Pa then asked.

  “Something like it, possibly. I reckon I was followed home last night—someone checking my address.”

  “Gods!” exclaimed Aelianus, enjoying the chance to sound pious, while insulting me. “That’s rather thoughtless, Falco. What if my sister had been here today?”

  “She’s out. I knew that.”

  “Helena would have bashed the intruder with a very heavy skillet,” Pa declared, as if it were his right to boast of her spirit.

  “And made sure she tied him up,” I agreed, reminding the pair of their error. “Then I could have found out who sent him to put the frighteners on.”

  “Who do you think it was?” demanded Pa, ignoring the rebuke. “You’ve only been back in the country about four days.”

  “Five,” I confirmed.

  “And you already managed to upset someone? I’m proud of you, boy!”

  “I learned the art of upsetting people from you, Pa. I was the chosen target. But I think,” I said, making it pleasant for Aelianus, “the rough message was really being sent to our friend here.”

  “I never did anything!” Aelianus protested.

  “And the message is: Don’t try it, either.” I smirked. “I suspect that you, Aulus, have just taken delivery of a hint to back off from offending the Arval Brothers.”

  “Not those disasters?” groaned Pa in heavy disgust. “Anything to do with the old religion makes my flesh creep.”

  I pretended to be more tolerant: “Fastidious father, you don’t have a senatorial career to build from scratch. Poor Aelianus has to grit his teeth and enjoy cavorting about in a rustic dance, waving ears of moldy grain.”

  “The Arval Brethren are an honorable and ancient college of priests!” protested their would-be acolyte. He knew it sounded feeble.

  “And I’m Alexander the Great,” returned my father pleasantly. “Those lads are ancient and as savory as an old dog turd on the Sacred Way, waiting for you just where you plant your sandal… . So what have you done to annoy them, Marcus?”

  “We only asked too many questions, Pa.”

  “Sounds like you!”

  “You taught me to stir.”

  “If this is the reaction, maybe you should stop, Falco,” suggested my beloved’s brother, as if it had been all my idea.

  “Don’t let the bastards get away with it,” Pa counseled us. It was not his head the man had taken a swing at.

  I opted for giving Aelianus the choice of whether we now backed down like good boys, reminding him that his father wanted him to obtain more evidence for political leverage; he decided to ignore his father, which—in the presence of my own—I could only applaud. Aelianus had been sent to see me by Decimus, but he now felt absolved from that duty and took his bruises home, where his mother was bound to blame his mishap on me.

  Sometimes, dealing with the Camilli was even more complex than maneuvering around my own relatives.

  *

  Pa snuggled up to the table where we normally ate, like a man who was hoping for a free dinner. He looked shifty. “I got your message that you wanted to speak to me. Is this about Helena’s project?” I was annoyed. If anybody else had given me this opener, I could have used it to discover what Helena had in hand. I resented Pa too much. “Did she take up my tip about using Gloccus and Cotta, then?” His tip? My heart sank. “Only I have heard since,” my father confessed uneasily, “they may be going downhill a bit—”

  Now this outfit really did sound dubious. “I am sure,” I pronounced pompously, “Helena Justina can sort out anyone who gives her trouble.”

  “Right,” said Pa. He looked anxious. “We should probably feel sorry for them.”

  He jumped up. If he was leaving before he had tried to screw a meal out of me, he must be feeling even more guilty than usual. I leaned on his shoulder and shoved him back onto the bench. When I told him I wanted to discuss help for Maia, he remembered a very urgent appointment; I made it plain he had to talk, or have his head stuffed in the doorjamb. “Look, we have a family crisis and it’s down to us men. Ma can’t do anything this time; she’s already looking after Galla’s brood financially—”

  “Why should she? Bloody Lollius has not had a fight with a lion.” Now Famia was dead, Lollius probably ranked as the most horrendous of my brothers-in-law. He was a Tiber boatman, a foul bubble of riverbank scum. His one redeeming feature was his knack of keeping out of the way. It saved me having to think up new ways to be rude to him.

  “Unfortunately not. But you know bloody Lollius is bloody useless, and even when he gives her any money Galla cannot be called a deft budget manager. Their children don’t deserve to have been born to such terrible parents—but Ma drags the whole worthless crew through life as best she can. Look, Pa, Maia now has to find the rent, food, plus school fees for at least Marius, who wants a career in rhetoric—and she just found out that Famia never paid his funeral dues, so she even has to pay for a memorial to that scoundrel as well.”

  Pa drew himself up, a broad, gray-haired figure with slightly bandy legs; forty years of fooling art purchasers helped him look convincing, even though I knew he was a fraud. “I am not unaware of your sister’s position.”

  “We all know it, Pa—Maia most of all. She says she will have to work for that short-arsed tailor again,” I told him gloomily. “I always thought the leery wretch had his eye on her.”

  “Time he retired. He doesn’t do much; he never did. He has all those girls who weave for him, and half the time they serve in the shop as well.” After a brief distraction while he felt jealous of the tailor’s alluring young loom girls, Pa became thoughtful. “Maia would be perfect at running a business.”

  He was right. I felt annoyed that he had first seen it—and Maia, who loathed Pa even more than I did, would have to be led extremely gently towards any idea which came from him. Yet we now had the answer, and to my surprise Pa actually volunteered to persuade the old tailor that he wanted to be bought out. Best of all, Pa offered to provide the cash.

  “You’ll have to make the fellow think it’s his own idea.”

  “Don’t teach me how to do business, boy.” It was true that my father was extremely successful; I could not avoid knowing it. A brilliant talent for bluff had made him far richer than he deserved.

  “Well, tomorrow is a public festival day, so you can shut up your shop—”

  “I can’t believe I heard that blasphemy! I never close for footling festivals.”

  “Well, do it this time and buzz off to strong-arm the tailor.”

  “You coming with me?”

  “Sorry; prior appointment.” I refrained from admitting I would have to maneuver fractious Sacred Geese. “He won’t let it go cheap, Pa.”

  “Oh, I’ve got funds—since you’ve spurned me!” (Pa had once offered to find me the money to support my bid for middle-rank status; there was no way he would ever appreciate that it was a measure of character when I earned the cash myself.) “Leave this to me,” declared my incorrigible parent, throwing himself into being magnanimous as eagerly as he had once fled the family coop. “You just enjoy yourself playing at being a gooseboy!” The bastard had just been waiting to thrill himself with this insult.

  “Don’t forget,” I retaliated. “Keep everything in your name for when some new chancer takes Maia’s fancy. You don’t want to wake up one day and find yourself financing Anacrites!”
<
br />   Well, that brought him up short.

  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.”