One Virgin Too Many Read online

  My grandfather and Great-Uncle Scaro (both long passed away) had built the original hen yard, a large enclosure which they had covered with nets and lined with coops, and where in good times they had nurtured upwards of two hundred birds. A woman and a boy lived alongside in a hut, but my uncles were the world’s worst managers of staff (either seducing them, feuding with them, or totally neglecting them), and so the birds were badly managed too. Reduced to forty or fifty in total during the recent reign of Uncle Junius, the flock had lived pleasantly, hardly ever troubled by having eggs removed or birds killed for the family pot. Now that Junius had run off somewhere, Fabius had plans to change all that.

  “I am fattening them for sale scientifically. We are going to be thoroughly organized.” Nothing about my uncle was scientific or organized, except when he went fishing. His note-tablets of tedious data on fishes caught, location and weather, variety, length, healthiness, and bait used took up a whole shelf in the kitchen food cupboard, forcing Phoebe to keep her pickles at the back of the bucket store. Otherwise, Fabius could hardly put on a pair of boots by himself; he would get stuck after the first one and worry what to do next.

  Fabius now had a large clutch of hens in a dark building where they were individually confined, some in cribs along one wall, some in special wicker containers with a hole fore and aft for the head and the tail. They were lying on soft hay, but packed so that they could not turn around and use up energy. Here the hapless fowl were being crammed with linseed or barleymeal kneaded with water into soft pellets. I was informed it took just under four weeks to bring them up to a good marketable size.

  “Is this regime cruel, Fabius?”

  “Don’t talk like a soft townie.”

  “Well, be practical then. Is their flavor as good as that of the ones who run free?”

  “People don’t pay for flavor, you know. What buyers look at is size.”

  This astuteness must be why the Romans thought so highly of their agricultural forebears. In mine, I was descended from true masters of the land. No wonder Ma, like that smelly old peasant Romulus, had escaped to the city life.

  Against the constant clucking of the birds, Fabius relentlessly detailed his financial projections, which led him to the conclusion that in two years he would be a millionaire. After an hour of tosh, I lost my temper. “Fabius, I have heard this before. If every get-rich scheme that came out of this family had worked, we would be a legend among the Forum banking fraternity. Instead, we just go downhill from year to year—and our reputation stinks.”

  “The trouble with you,” said Fabius, in his maddeningly grave way, “is that you never want to take a risk.”

  I could have told him that my life was based on hazard, but it seemed cruel to boast when his own was grounded in hopelessness.

  I always liked visiting the country. It reminded me why my mother had been so keen to get away that even marrying Pa had seemed worth it. It refreshed my view of the joys of city life. I always went home a true Roman: full of my own superiority.

  XXII

  THE DAY BEFORE the Nones of June: the festival of Hercules the Great Custodian. A voting day.

  At first, it looked as if Laelius Scaurus would not show. That’s a common drudgery in the world of informing. I had spent half my life waiting for time-wasters who made no attempt to keep appointments.

  Now the misery was aggravated by Helena’s mockery: “Meldina fooled you! She looked so desirable, grinning at you as she was bursting out of her tunic—she couldn’t possibly be lying, could she?”

  I went along with it. “Seems she is so busy being a fertility goddess, she has no time to pass on simple messages.”

  “Or maybe Scaurus is still stuck in Rome,” Helena conceded.

  “Oh, I expect he’s back here. He just sees me as an interfering outsider: that’s a family trait,” I said.

  “And true, of course.”

  Having seen both his pallid wife and his sumptuous girlfriend, I reckoned Scaurus would cut short his city visit. In his position, there were better pleasures on the farm. But I kept that to myself. I’m not stupid.

  I hung about a while longer, discussing with Phoebe whether she could take in one of my young nephews, one of Galla’s brood who needed to be lifted from Rome before life on the streets was the ruin of him. Ma sat in the cart, ready to go, pursing her lips and pronouncing that Galla would never agree to let Gaius leave home, even if it was for his own good. She had a point. I had already extracted his elder brother Larius and left him enjoying life as an artist at the Bay of Neapolis, so my sister now saw me as a child-thief. For some reason, Great-Auntie Phoebe had faith in my talents, so she promised to make preparations to receive Gaius right away. He was a revolting little tyke, but I had faith in her too. If he could be saved, she would do it.

  I was collecting my party when Fabius came wandering by. “Listen, Marcus, I have had a thought—”

  I managed to restrain my irritation.

  “We have to go now!” Ma chipped in loudly. She had had seventy years of trying to bring her brother Fabius to the point. Anyway, she had stuffed our cart with vegetables and wanted to get them to Rome while they were still fresh. (I mean, she needed to leave before Phoebe realized quite how many nets of onions and baskets of young asparagus Ma had decided her affectionate relatives would hand over as free gifts.)

  “No, look—now that you have responsibility for the Sacred Chickens, maybe we can work something out,” Fabius suggested, looking dangerously keen.

  “I don’t want to sound pompous, but there is no chance of putting the augury birds into body baskets to fatten them up, Uncle Fabius. The whole point is to give them free movement so they can express the will of the gods in an untrammeled way.”

  “I can see that, Marcus,” replied my uncle ponderously. “I was thinking about supplying you with new birds from time to time.”

  “Sorry. They supply their own. We hatch their eggs.”

  “What, even in the town?”

  “Cities are hotbeds of nature, Fabius. Encyclopedists sit on every street fountain making notes of the copulating species they have seen that day and the peculiar spawn they have watched hatch out.”

  Metaphor and satire were equally lost on Fabius. “Well, it was just a thought.”

  “Thanks.” I forced myself to beam at him. Friendliness was stupid, but I fooled myself I had now escaped.

  No such luck: “And what about the guano from the Sacred Geese?” he then asked even more intensely. “Did you know that bird dung is extremely nutritious to crops? The sacred element would be a good catchall advertisement. Have you thought of selling it off for muck-spreading?”

  A whole vista of dangerously corrupt subcontract fiddles had opened up with my new rank. Being respectable could be very hard work if I took up every opportunity for graft that people kindly flung my way. Grinding my teeth, I leaped up to the driving seat of my cart.

  I was actually whipping the mule out through the gate to the road home when we met head-on with a man on a donkey who turned out to be the missing Scaurus.

  *

  I knew it was him straightaway. As I had reckoned, he must be in his thirties, though he had the manner of somebody older. Depressingly, he had the same washed-out, defeated look as his wife. Even though he now lived in the country, he looked as if he dwindled in captivity indoors. He was lanky, with a high forehead, his thin shoulders diffidently stooped. He also had the kind of well-meaning attitude that would quickly drive me mad.

  “You’re Laelius Scaurus!”

  When I dragged the mule to a halt, he looked surprised that I knew him. “Are you Falco?”

  There must be something about the air on the Campagna that made every woolly baa-lamb out here prone to stating the obvious. Now I was trapped. I had to interview him at a farm gate, with Ma, the baby, Nux, and Helena all looking on. He stuck on his donkey. I stayed on the cart.

  “Yes, I’m Falco. Thank you for coming out here; I know you have had a busy co
uple of days traveling—”

  “Oh, that’s all right.”

  I hate people who let themselves be put upon, especially by me. I refused to feel too guilty, however. “Look, I won’t delay you long …” Not with my mother’s gimlet eyes boring into me, saying I had already kept her waiting enough after she had been promised she would be driven home before her leeks wilted.

  To my relief, Scaurus now slowly dismounted from his donkey. I therefore hopped down too, and we two men strolled apart from the others. “You are Gaia Laelia’s father, aren’t you?” It was too much to expect this dry stick to retort with the old So my wife tells me joke. “I don’t know if you managed to see your young daughter when you were in Rome?” I said.

  “I saw all my family,” he answered me gravely. As a runaway son he was about as exciting as a bowl of cold dripping.

  I decided to be blunt. “I heard your aunt sent for you. Do you mind telling me why you had been summoned?”

  Scaurus looked up at the sky nervously. “No, there can be no real objection.” I bet his father would have found one. “My aunt, who is widowed, wishes me to be appointed as her guardian. I am Terentia Paulla’s only surviving male relation.”

  For information retrieval, usually a slog, this was quick going. Only yesterday we had heard that, on her retirement, Terentia Paulla had married. Today I learned that her husband had already passed away. It would be fun to think the man had had a seizure during the excitement of his wedding night with a Vestal—but more likely he was an old bird of ninety-three who went his way naturally. I was too delicate to ask Scaurus.

  So now Terentia wanted Scaurus, her late sister’s son, to act for her? In my family solitary aunts ran their own affairs, and did it with a grip of iron. My aunt Marciana could zing beads along their wires on her abacus with a verve any money changer would envy. But the law reckoned women were incapable of managing anything except the colors of their loom wool, so legally, especially where there was property, a woman was supposed to have a male friend or relative take charge of her. A woman who had borne three children became exempt (quite rightly, scoffed most of the mothers I knew). The aunt of Laelius Scaurus, being an ex-Vestal, presumably had no children. Once again, it seemed indelicate to speculate openly.

  “You don’t look too happy,” I commented.

  Scaurus was frowning and looked ill at ease with my line of questioning. “I daren’t do it. I have never been emancipated from my father’s patriarchal control.”

  I already knew that his family was rent by quarrels; now the aunt’s request added one more disruptive element. “Your father is an ex-Flamen Dialis and he wishes to keep to the old rules. He will not change his mind?”

  “No, never.”

  “Could he look after your aunt instead of you? A guardian does not have to be a blood relative.”

  “They hate one another,” said Scaurus, as if this was natural.

  “No friendly freedmen she could turn to then?”

  “That would be inappropriate.” Presumably because she had been a Vestal; some women were less squeamish about ex-slaves. A freedman had a duty to his patroness which could mean more, to be frank, than the affection felt by true relatives. Sometimes a freedman and his patroness were lovers, though of course I could not suggest that of a Vestal.

  “So how did you sort it out, Scaurus?”

  He hesitated. Perhaps he thought it was none of my business. “My aunt will pursue the matter. I have to return to Rome in twelve days’ time—”

  “Twelve days?”

  “The next time for legal action.” After Pa’s urgency in sorting out my sister Maia, I should have remembered that. What Laelius Scaurus was planning with his auntie’s connivance, however, turned out to be far more astonishing than our mere attempt to buy a business: “An approach will be made to the Praetor to name me as sui juris—free to conduct my own affairs. If that fails, we shall petition the Emperor.”

  I whistled. “Fast going! Your aunt,” I said admiringly, “seems to be more than capable, if she thought all this up.” He looked vague. I rather liked her idea: “Pleading that she must have a male adviser is legal, reasonable, and modest. If the issue goes to the Emperor, he has her interest at heart, since, as he is Pontifex Maximus, the Vestals are his direct responsibility. He must treat a retired one with heavy respect. As Pontifex, he outranks your father too.” I could see only one possible wrinkle. “You don’t suppose the Emperor will elect to act as your aunt’s guardian himself?” That would be seen as suitable, though it would not help Laelius Scaurus escape from his father’s control—and it could mean the aunt acquired a guardian who would expect to be her heir too. Many did. And Vespasian was famously grasping.

  Scaurus looked as if I was rushing him. “If it happens, it happens.” A shade of humor propelled him: “The Emperor may feel that my aunt is a handful.”

  “Ex-Vestals do tend to be forceful,” I sympathized. He was frowning again uneasily. Talking to him was like trying to clean cooking oil off a table. Every time I thought I was making headway the surface dried out to reveal the same old sheen. “I take it she does not frighten you?” He looked as if she did. “You’re a grown man. There cannot be too much work or anxiety in running the lady’s estates.”

  “My aunt is very fierce.” Scaurus spoke woodenly. I guessed she was making a monkey of him in some way. But that was often the case when a patrician woman assigned her guardianship to some poor cipher who was then supposed to humor her.

  “Bear up. Terentia Paulla must have great regard for you. Look, I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but if you remain in your father’s legal control you cannot yourself hold property. Does that mean somebody else owns the farm that you and the delightful Meldina occupy?”

  “My aunt,” he confirmed, unsurprisingly. A pattern had emerged here. If I was any judge, the ex-Virgin and the ex-Flamen were enjoying a hot feud and were using poor Scaurus as one of their weapons. He was a limp foil to two tremendously strong characters.

  What a terrible family. They made mine look perfectly normal.

  I reminded myself that my interest was supposed to be in a child. I already believed little Gaia was also being used—by her parents, Scaurus and Caecilia, in their own struggle to thwart the old man’s plans. Where did the aunt fit in there?

  “I suppose Terentia Paulla must be delighted that your daughter is—fortune willing—to follow her career at the Vestals’ House?”

  An odd look crossed the face of the child’s father. “Actually, this is the one subject of difference between my dear aunt and me. I believe it would be an honor—and one in the traditions of my family—but my aunt for some reason is very strongly opposed.” He gave me a direct stare.

  “Terentia objects? Why?”

  “That is a long story,” said Scaurus. He had previously seemed like dough anyone could knead—yet he was as slippery as any other devious swine. “And it is our family business, if you don’t mind. I understand the Pontifex Maximus will conduct the lottery three days from now, so the matter will then be settled. Was that all you wanted to say to me, Falco? I promised Meldina I would not be away from home too long today.”

  “You must have finished, Marcus!” shouted Ma from the cart. And so I took the hint. We bade Scaurus farewell. He drove south again to his luscious companion; we set off northwards towards Rome.

  I gave Helena Justina a brief account of my interview. Her reaction was scathing: “Save us from the intervention of loving aunts!”

  “Your grandmother recognized a Virgin to avoid,” I agreed. I then listed for Helena all the caring actions of Terentia Paulla in her late sister’s family—well, all the ones we knew about: “Terentia was always at odds with her sister, the late Flaminica, over the Flaminica’s having a lover; yet Terentia seems to have made a favorite of her sister’s son. It can’t be popular with his family. Three years ago she provided the means for Scaurus to leave home and live on her farm; by doing that she ensured he will never satisfy
his father by joining a priesthood—and when he escaped he left his wife. If the family in Rome have heard about Meldina—who is connected to Terentia through her mother—it won’t help. Terentia now courts more trouble by naming Scaurus as her guardian against his father’s wishes. She is planning legal action, which at the very least will drag the ex-Flamen’s name to public notice—we can guess how he will feel about a lurid Daily Gazette court report. If the action is successful, it may remove Scaurus from his father’s authority.”

  “Virgins who break their vows of chastity are buried alive,” Ma scoffed. “It sounds as though this one should have been buried somewhere deep the instant she retired.”

  “I have a feeling,” Helena answered, “that whatever this woman has done or said—or whatever she is planning—may be at the heart of what was troubling Gaia Laelia.”

  If she was right, a dreamy soul like Scaurus hardly seemed an adequate guardian of the lady’s affairs. Nor did he inspire me in his role as father to a disturbed and rather isolated six-year-old. “Well, we may have to accept that it is none of our business. Not one of these people is a paying client of mine.”

  “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.”