One Virgin Too Many Page 16

  “Falco!”

  “Oh look; every perfect day has its low point, Helena.”

  “Marcus, you’re so rude! Good evening, Anacrites. I am sorry to hear that your wounds have been troubling you.”

  He did look drawn. He had been suffering from a near-deadly head blow when he went out to Tripolitania, and the sword slashes he took while playing the fool in the arena were a further hindrance to his recovery. He had lost far too much blood in Lepcis; it had taken me hours to bind him up, and all through the trip home I had expected to find myself chucking his corpse over the side of the ship. Well, a boy can hope.

  Ma fussed around him now while he tried to look brave. He managed; I was the one who nearly threw up.

  He had forced himself to come off his couch still in his siesta wear—a bedraggled gray tunic and battered old slippers like something Nux might bring me as a treat. It was far from Anacrites’ normal sleek gear: a hideous glimpse of the man behind the public persona, as unsuitable as a domesticated lynx. I felt embarrassed being in the same room as him.

  He scratched his ear, then beamed. “How is the new house?”

  I would have given a good chest of gold to prevent him knowing my potential new address. “Don’t tell me you had your sordid operatives tail us there?”

  “No need. Your mother always keeps me up to date.” I bet the bastard knew about the house before I did. Loyal to Helena, I bit that back.

  Ma was bringing him invalid broth. At least that meant we all got some. It was stuffed with the vegetables she had pinched from the market garden yesterday.

  “I am so well looked after here!” Anacrites exclaimed complacently.

  I gritted my teeth.

  “Maia was here today,” said Ma, as I wielded my spoon morosely. I saw Anacrites take an interest. Perhaps he was just being polite to his landlady. Perhaps he wanted to upset me. Perhaps he did have an eye on my newly available sister. (Dear gods!) Ma pursed her lips. “I heard all about this plan you cooked up with your confederate.”

  I decided not to mention that buying the tailor’s business was my hated confederate’s plan. My mother had guessed, I could tell. Whether she also knew it was Pa’s money buying it for Maia I dared not even contemplate.

  “It seems an ideal solution.” Helena backed me up firmly. “Maia needs an occupation. Tailoring is what she knows, and she will thrive on the responsibility.”

  “I’m sure!” said Ma, sniffing. Anacrites was keeping quiet in such a tactful way I could have rammed his broth spoon down his throat. “Anyway,” my mother went on with great satisfaction, “nothing may come of it.”

  “It’s all fixed, as far as I know, Ma.”

  “No. Maia refused to agree unless she was given time to consider it. The contract was not signed.”

  I put down my spoon. “Well, I tried. The children need a future. She ought to consider that.”

  Ma relented. She was a fierce defender of her grandchildren. “Oh, she’s intending to do it. She just wanted to make it clear she does not jump when your father orders it.”

  It was so rare for my mother to mention my father that we all fell quiet. This really was embarrassing. Helena kicked me under the table, as a signal for us to leave.

  “I say, Marcus.” Anacrites interrupted the awkward silence suddenly. “I did find out what that lad you sent was asking.”

  I replaced my backside on the bench from which I had lifted it tentatively. “Someone I sent? What lad?”

  “Camillus, what’s his name?”

  I glanced at Helena. “I know two lads called Camillus. Camillus Justinus helped me rescue you from your due fate in Lepcis Magna—Anacrites, I presume not even you are so ungrateful as to forget him—”

  “No, no. The other, this must be.”

  “Aelianus,” Helena said coldly. Anacrites looked disconcerted. He seemed unaware that both Camilli were Helena’s younger brothers and that he himself had actually cultivated Aelianus as a useful contact once. His head wound had affected the patterns of his memory.

  I was annoyed. “I never sent him or anyone else to see you, Anacrites.”

  “Oh! He said you did.”

  “Playing at mystery men. Have you forgotten you do know him? For some reason you and he were cuddled up like long-lost cronies last year at that dinner for the olive oil producers—the night you took your big crack on the head.”

  Now Anacrites had definitely lost his bumptiousness. He chewed his lower lip. I had established in previous discussions that he remembered nothing about the evening he was battered. This troubled him. It was rather pathetic. For a man whose career involved knowing more about other people than they chose to tell even their mistresses and doctors, losing part of his own memory was a terrible shock. He tried not to show it, but I knew he must lie awake at night, sweating over the missing days of his life.

  I had not been too cruel. He knew something about that night, because I had told him: he had been found unconscious, was rescued by me and taken to a safe house—Ma’s—where he lay semi-comatose for weeks while she nursed him. But for her, he would be dead. You could say—though I was carefully too polite to do it—he also owed his life to me. I had made sure his jealous rival at the Palace, Claudius Laeta, could not find him and help him into Hades. I had even tracked down those responsible for attacking him and, while Anacrites still lay helpless, I had brought them to justice. He never thanked me much for that.

  “So I know him,” mused Anacrites, struggling to recover some feel for the past contact.

  “You had been talking to him about what was going wrong in Baetica.” Helena took pity on him. “At the time my brother had been living there, working with the provincial governor. He was only a passing contact of yours. You cannot be expected to recall it particularly.”

  “He didn’t remind me.” Anacrites still had a dark, disturbed look. He had held a discussion with a man who failed to disclose their previous relationship. There must seem a frightening lack of logic in that. I knew the reason, as it happened: Aelianus wanted to cover up a serious error of judgment on his own part. While delivering a document to the intelligence chief, he had let it fall into the wrong hands and be mangled. Anacrites had never found out, but once he saw that the Chief Spy had forgotten him, Aelianus would have happily played the stranger.

  “Young tease!” I let Anacrites see me smirking. “He’s playing games,” I condescended to explain. “I imagine he told you that one of the Arval Brethren has died in ghastly circumstances. Aelianus is annoying the cult by looking for a conspiracy.”

  The conspiracy might be real, but if so I was annoyed that the young fool had alerted Anacrites. Aelianus and I were playing this game—and the spy would have to ask very nicely indeed before I let him join in.

  “So what did Aelianus want?” Helena put to him.

  “A name.”

  “Really?”

  “Stop acting, Falco,” Anacrites snorted. He was Chief Spy, as I had found out when we worked on the Census, because he did have some discernment.

  I grinned and gave way. “All right, partner. I suppose he asked if you know who the dead Arval Brother is?”

  “Right.”

  “You have an identification?”

  “None, when Aelianus raised it. The secretive Brethren had succeeded in keeping their loss under wraps. I was impressed!” he admitted, for once mocking himself gently.

  “And did you and your cunning trackers then find out?”

  “Of course.” Smug bastard.

  “Well then?”

  “The dead man was called Ventidius Silanus.” I had never heard of him. “Mean anything?” prompted Anacrites, warily watching me.

  I decided against bluff. I leaned back and threw open my hands frankly. “It means absolutely nix.”

  It was his turn to grin. “Same here,” he confessed, and he too gave every appearance of speaking with a rare burst of honesty.

  XXV

  ROME WAS AT her best. Warm stone, limpid
fountains, swifts screaming at roof height; a resonance in the evening light that no other city I have ever visited seems to possess.

  We had returned the mule cart to the hiring stable, so we were now on foot. As Helena and I walked home from Ma’s house, both thinking in silence about our new Janiculan property, the streets on the Aventine remained lively without yet becoming dangerous. It was still light enough and hot enough for the day’s commercial and domestic activities to be continuing, while the nighttime whores and housebreakers had hardly begun to swarm. Even narrow alleyways were almost safe.

  Julia Junilla lay asleep on my shoulder with a dead weight that reminded me of carrying cut turfs for temporary ramparts in my army days. Ma always managed to tire the baby out. Nux trotted beside Helena, looking coy. Seven dogs of various shapes and sizes but all with one intent relentlessly trailed Nux.

  “Our girl’s definitely in season,” I commented glumly.

  “Oh good—pups!” Helena sighed.

  We lost a few followers outside a butcher’s shop where scraps had been piled in the gutter. We would have lost Nux too, once she noticed what the curs were at, but Helena grabbed her as she nosed a particularly foul piece of discarded entrail. We dragged her off, paws scrabbling furiously on the lava slabs, then I picked her up and clamped her under my free arm. The dog howled for help from her sleazy admirers, but they preferred slavering over bits of bloody bone and sweetbread.

  “Forget them, Nux; men are never worth it,” commiserated Helena. I ignored the seditious girl talk. I was carrying the family treasure, and likely to lose my grip if I forgot to concentrate. Once again I remembered the army: anyone who had humped his quota of military equipment on a Marian Fork halfway around Britain—javelins, pickaxe, toolbag and contents, earth-moving basket, mess tins and three days’ rations—could manage a baby and a dog for a few strides without raising a sweat. On the other hand, a military kettle does not thump you in the rib cage or try to slide off your shoulder; well, not if properly stowed.

  In Fountain Court someone was having grilled scallops for dinner—more charred than grilled, by the smell of them. Dusk had fallen now. Shadows of the looming tenements made the way treacherous. A solitary lamp burned on a hook outside the funeral parlor, not so much for the benefit of passersby as to allow the unshaven staff to continue playing a game of Soldiers they had scratched in the dust. That tiny circle of light only served to make the narrow corridor of our street more dim and dangerous. Broken curbstones harbored slithery vegetation on which it was easy to skid to a bone-breaking fall. We trod cautiously, knowing that every stride took our sandals into a morass of dung and amphora shards.

  Helena said that she would take charge of bathing the baby; we normally did this at the laundry, using any unwanted warm water after Lenia closed up. I decided to go upstairs and see Petronius. I had to tell him about the Janiculan house before he heard of it elsewhere.

  His boots were lying askew under the table in the outer room; he was outside the folding doors, lazing in the last rays of sunlight on the balcony. This always gave me a jar. It was too reminiscent of my own bachelor life. I half expected to find some tasseled dancing girl sprawled in his lap.

  He was having a drink. I could cope with that. He let me find myself a beaker and pour my own tipple.

  “Been to your new house?” So much for telling him.

  “Everyone in Rome seems to have known about it, except me!”

  He grinned. He had reached the benevolent phase of dreaming on a bench after dinner. Remembering how easy it was not to bother preparing a platter for one, I guessed he had not had much dinner, in fact, but that just brought the dreamy phase forwards. “So long as the rest of us liked the idea, why trouble you, my son?”

  “Well, the plan is a dud. Helena now thinks we cannot live so far out of town.”

  “Why did she buy the place then?”

  “Probably the rest of you, who were in on the secret, forgot to point out the disadvantages.”

  “Well, is it a nice property?”

  “Wonderful.”

  We swallowed our drinks in silence for a while. I heard familiar women’s voices down below at street level, but supposed it was Helena talking to Lenia. Lenia was probably sounding off about the latest horrors imposed on her by her ex-husband, Smaractus, the landlord who owned this block. I cradled my cup, thinking what an evil, unsanitary, money-grubbing, tenant-cheating insult to humanity he was. Petronius had his head lolling far back against the apartment wall behind us, no doubt pondering hatreds of his own. His cohort tribune, probably. Rubella: an ambitious, unscrupulous, discipline-mad, tyrannical hard man who—according to Petro—could never wipe his bum with a latrine sponge without consulting the rules to see if a ranker was supposed to do it for him.

  Footsteps scuffled outside. Petro and I both sat quite still, both suddenly tensed. You never knew here whether visitors were bringing you bad news or just a battering. He never knew if they were unwelcome manifestations of his own life and work, or some violent hangover from when I had lived here.

  Someone came through the door into the room behind us. The steps were light and quick, even after mounting six flights of stairs. The person emerged through the folding doors. I was nearest; I stayed motionless, though ready to jump.

  “Gods, you two are still a disreputable pair!” We relaxed.

  “Evening, Maia.” We were not drunk, or even lightly disheveled. Still, all my family liked to be unfair.

  I wondered why my sister would be visiting Petronius. I knew him well enough to tell when he was nervous; he was wondering the same.

  Petro raised the flagon, offering. Maia seemed tempted, but then shook her head. She looked tired. Almost certainly she needed solace, but she had four children relying on her at home.

  “Helena said you were up here slumming, Marcus. I can’t stop; Marius is downstairs, inspecting that terrible dog of yours. He wants to know if there’s a puppy yet. I’ll murder you for this—”

  “I am doing my utmost to keep Nux chaste.”

  “Well, speaking of chaste maidens, I heard something today that I thought you would be intrigued to know,” said Maia. “I was talking to one of the other mothers whose daughter is in the Vestal Virgins’ lottery like my Cloelia. This woman happens to know Caecilia Paeta socially and had visited their house this afternoon. She’s more welcome there than I am—but then her husband is some sort of Temple of Concord priest—well, I may be unfair to the man; perhaps he’s a decent step-washer… . Anyway she told me she found all the Laelii running about in a fine tizz, and though they want to pretend publicly that there’s nothing amiss, she knows why. Something has happened to Gaia Laelia.”

  I sat up. “Are you going to tell us?”

  Maia had relished the tale up to this point. Now her voice stilled with genuine concern. “They have lost her, Marcus. She has absolutely vanished. Nobody knows where the child is.”

  XXVI

  IT WAS NONE of our business. At least, that was what we would be told by the Laelii. Anyway, there was little we could do at that late hour.

  Petronius said he would escort Maia and her young son back home, not that Maia thought twice about the risk. Helena and I went straight to bed. All of us hoped, as you have to when a child is lost, that by morning everything would have resolved itself and Gaia would have turned up, leaving the adventure to become just one of those never-forgotten stories people retell every year around the fire at Saturnalia to embarrass the victim. But when a missing person is a child who has said that her family wants her dead, it evokes a bad feeling, however calm you try to stay.

  Next day, Maia went early to see her friend, the mother who had told her the news. Anxious herself, the woman had already called to see Caecilia Paeta, Gaia’s mother. The child had not come home. The family were making light of it publicly.

  Helena then visited the Laelius house with Maia—as matrons offering sympathy—but they were briskly rebuffed at the door.

  Child
ren lose themselves for all sorts of reasons. They forget the way home. They stay with friends without bothering to tell anyone. Occasionally, though, they have made sinister friends nobody knows about, and are lured to dangerous fates.

  Children like to hide. Many “lost” children are found again at home: stuck in a cupboard or head-down in a giant urn. Usually they have managed not to suffocate.

  Sometimes girls are abducted for brothels. Petronius Longus muttered to me in an undertone, that in the disgusting stews where anything goes there would be a very unpleasant premium on a six-year-old from a good home, who was known to be a potential Vestal Virgin. As soon as Maia reported next morning that the child was still missing, he took it upon himself to put out an immediate all-cohort alert.

  “You are my star witness, Falco. Description of the child, please?”

  “Jupiter, how do I know?” Suddenly I felt more patient towards all the vague witnesses I had previously yelled at for giving me incompetent statements. “Her name is Gaia Laelia, daughter of Laelius Scaurus. She is six years old; she’s small. She was well dressed, with jewelry—bangles—and her hair fixed up—”

  “That can be changed,” Petro said grimly. If she had been snatched by brothel-owners, disguising her was the first thing they would do. “Right. Dark hairs, dark eyes. Well spoken, confident. Pretty—”

  Petro groaned.

  *

  Perhaps against his better judgment, he decided to tell Rubella, his cohort commander, what was happening. He could not ignore the possibility that Gaia had been kidnapped to order. That would mean all the other girls whose names were in the lottery might be potential targets too.

  Rubella first told Petronius he was off his head. Despite that, the sceptical tribune immediately took himself to see the Prefect of the Urban Cohorts. At least the Fourth would be covered if there was any fallout later. Should the Prefect take this story seriously, his next step would probably be to ask the office of the Pontifex Maximus—the Emperor, of course—for a full list of the young girls in the lottery so all their parents could be warned. Since the Laelius family wanted to pretend this was a slight domestic problem that nobody need know about, I thought things were escalating dangerously. But in view of their social prominence, they would not be surprised that the story had been leaked.