One Virgin Too Many Read online

  There was a casual atmosphere. Occasional Praetorian Guards had parked themselves in corridors, not least because Titus was their commander now. On the whole, nobody looked at visitors too closely, and it seemed possible to wander at will.

  Somehow, you never did. Somehow your feet were guided out of the building quite rapidly and on what I was coming to realize was a well-worn path. The result was that despite the huge number of rooms, with their variety of exits and entrances, and despite the temptation to tiptoe into them to collect ideas for home decor, if two groups of people were visiting Titus on the same evening for the same purpose, although it hardly seemed feasible, they would actually end up face-to-face.

  That was how Helena and I met Rubella and Petronius.

  *

  Those two big snide bastards were not pleased.

  “Looks like we got to the buffet first,” I greeted them. I knew they would be hopping mad that the vigiles were firmly refused permission to investigate the Laelius house, whereas I had been called in specially. The gap between private informers and the vigiles would never close. “Don’t worry; I gave Titus Caesar a thorough briefing. You can just show your faces, then bunk off back to your patrol house.”

  “Skip it, Falco,” growled my onetime partner, Petro.

  “All right. Owning-up time: I’ve failed to find any trace of the lost baby. How about you boys?”

  “Nothing,” Rubella deigned to say. The Fourth Cohort tribune was a wide, tough, shaven-headed ex-centurion who practiced the lowest degree of fairness and unpleasantness. In that, he was better than average. Fanatical ambition had hauled him up all the rungs in the vigiles; he really wanted to be a Praetorian. Still, so do lots of lads.

  At his side Petronius looked taller, less wide in the body yet more powerful in the shoulder, quieter, a couple of pounds heavier because of his height, and far less intense. He was in brown leather, with a thong twisted around his head to hold down his straight hair during a tussle, triple-soled boots so heavy it made my feet tired just looking at them, and a night stick through his wide belt. He was a good-looking boy, my old tentmate.

  I gave him an ironical grin of approval. “The luscious Berenice will love you!”

  “As he said, skip it, Falco.” That came from Helena. She was still subdued over the unfair snub to her brother. I introduced her to Rubella, though he had worked out who she was.

  “Falco is tired,” she announced. “I am taking him home to recover from gawping at flashy Judaean pulchritude.”

  “Have you given up the search?” Petro asked, sticking to the job in hand. He had a prudish streak. Alone with me, he would happily discuss leer-worthy women, but he believed it improper for women to know that that was what men did.

  “Not me. How about you lot?”

  “We’ll find her if she’s out on the streets. But will you, if she is still at home?”

  Temporarily riled, I abandoned my plan of asking him to join me tomorrow. Obviously, the raucous members of the Fourth Cohort—and probably members of all the other six—were just standing around watching and waiting for me to make a mess of the task. I would disappoint them. But I needed to keep all options open: “Don’t let’s quarrel when a child’s life is at stake.”

  “Who’s quarreling?”

  Petronius was, but thinking about Gaia, I changed my mind again about tomorrow: “Lucius Petronius, I just asked Numentinus for permission to bring you in, for the benefit of your experience.”

  Petronius mimed an irritating bow. “Marcus Didius, whenever you’re stuck, just ask me to set you right.”

  “For heaven’s sake, stop playing about, you two,” Helena grumbled.

  I shrugged, and prepared to leave. Rubella decided to take a hand. To him, normally, I was an interfering amateur whom he would like to lock in a cell until my boots rotted off. Tonight, since he always overruled Petro and since Petro was niggling, he chose amicable cooperation. “Anything you need, Falco?”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. It is a routine house search, and the family are not being difficult. Well, not that I can see.”

  “Found anything to help us?”

  “I don’t think so. The last time the girl was seen she was at home. She ought to be still there. There are no known external contacts.” Well, apart from me. I chose not to dwell on that. Rubella was suspicious as Hades. He would love to arrest me on a trumped-up charge of personal involvement. “I have seen no sign that the Laelii are concealing a ransom demand. All the problems that I know about are family ones. That’s going to be the answer.”

  “They do have problems.” Rubella loved to repeat part of your briefing as though it was his own. I caught Petro’s eye. He and I had always reckoned that persons in senior positions stole our ideas.

  “Plenty. By the way—are either of you law-and-order experts able to tell me this about the rules for guardians?” I asked them. “Could a son who was still officially in his father’s control accept the job?”

  “Oh yes.” It was Petro who answered. “It’s a civic duty. Like voting. Anyone who has come of age is entitled to do it, whatever his status otherwise. I thought you yourself would be standing guardian for Maia now, Falco.”

  “Jupiter! I would hate to be the person who told Maia she had to report formally to me.”

  Petro gave me an odd look, almost as though he felt I was abandoning my sister.

  “So what’s that to do with the missing girl?” Rubella asked.

  “Gaia’s father spun me some yarn. There was talk of legal pleas and all sorts—all for nothing, apparently. Either the father is up to something extraordinarily devious—or he is, as his father defines him, a complete idiot.”

  “Where is this idiot?” Rubella mused.

  I told him where Laelius Scaurus lived. “I advised the family to inform him that Gaia was lost—”

  “Oh, we can do better than that,” said the tribune, smirking. “If his darling daughter is in terrible trouble, we must bring the poor suffering man to Rome as quickly as possible—in fact, he can have an official escort of vigiles to clear the way for him!”

  Refusing the assistance of the vigiles, as Numentinus would find, was unwise. Their cohort tribunes do not submit to rebuff.

  I grinned. “Dear me. Laelius Scaurus received an innocent, priestly upbringing. This will be a terrible shock. He will think you are arresting him.”

  “So he will!” Rubella grinned evilly.

  I had no idea what good this could possibly do, but anything unexpected can shake people up to good effect. To have the Fourth Cohort of vigiles explain his legal rights and responsibilities would certainly alarm Scaurus.

  However, I was not sure I wanted to be in Rubella’s shoes when this influential family complained with shrieks of outrage to the Prefect of the City that one of them had been subjected to an unfair arrest. The Laelii were more than just influential. They were being treated with elaborate care by the highest authorities—and I still did not know why.

  XL

  INCREDIBLY IT WAS still eight days before the Ides of June. Dusk had fallen, but this was the same day that I rose at dawn and went to the House of the Vestals, trying to meet Constantia, followed her to Egeria’s Spring, was sent for by Rutilius Gallicus, and gained entrance to search the Laelius house. Now I had endured a visit to the Golden House as well. This was as long a day as I ever wanted to endure, but it was not over yet.

  “You take the litter. Go home and rest,” said Helena. She sounded wan.

  “Where’s Julia?”

  “I managed to find Gaius.” When my scruffy nephew could be deterred from totting in the backstreets, he made a dedicated nursemaid (if we paid him enough). “I told him to sleep in our bed if we were late.”

  “You’ll regret that. He’s never clean. What are you up to, as if I don’t know?”

  “I had better walk over to my father’s house and break this news about my brother’s fate.”

  I went with her, of course.

  *r />
  The senator lent me his barber, and they gave me more to eat. While I was being cleaned up and pampered, I had a lot to think about. It did not really concern the Camilli and their dead traitor. For me, Publius Camillus Meto was a closed case. His relations, however, would never be free of him. Memories for scandal are long in Rome. A family could have scores of statesmanly ancestors, but biographers would dwell on their one ancient traitor.

  When I rejoined the party, they were all absorbed in frantic debate over their new suffering. Aelianus saw me appear in the doorway; he rose and led me to an anteroom, asking for a private word. The conversation in the salon behind him dropped slightly, as his parents and Helena watched him draw me aside.

  “Aelianus, you have to ask your father for the details.” My situation had always been difficult; I badly wanted to avoid anybody finding out that I had disposed of Publius down a sewer.

  “Father told me what happened. I was abroad. I came home and found my uncle gone, and what he had done settling on us like blight. Now I am stuck with the results, it seems. Falco, you were involved—”

  “Anything beyond what your father has told you is confidential, I’m afraid.”

  “So I am being shafted, yet I cannot be told why?”

  “You know enough. Yes, it is unfair,” I sympathized. “But a stigma was inevitable. At least there were no wholesale executions, or confiscation of property.”

  “I always rather liked Uncle Publius.” That aspect must frighten his parents, though I did not tell Aelianus so. They feared he might yet follow his uncle in temperament. He too was restless and impatient with society. Like his uncle, Aelianus might lose patience with the rules and seek out his own solutions, unless he was handled just right in the next few years. An outsider. Latent trouble.

  For a moment, I wondered whether this was the kind of trouble the Laelius family had gone through with Scaurus.

  “Your uncle seemed quite hard to get close to.” To me, he had had a cold, almost gloomy outlook.

  “Yes, but he was supposed to have lived a wild life; he spent all that time abroad; he lived on the edge. He had an illegitimate child too—and I heard that she was killed in peculiar circumstances.” Aelianus stopped.

  “Sosia,” I said reproachfully. “Yes, I know how she was killed.”

  “She was just a girl. I don’t really remember her, Falco.”

  “I do.” I stared him down, as I fought back a tear.

  *

  Aelianus still wanted to press me for information. He was out of luck. I was sinking under the effects of a long, depressing day. I had two choices now: to collapse and sleep, or to keep alert in the search for little Gaia by tackling some new activity. This was what I had been brooding on, while the barber grazed my neck. As I lay still, while I tried to avoid having my throat cut, my body had rested and my mind cleared. My thoughts had had time to concentrate, as they had not done all that afternoon while I was bound up in physical effort at the Laelius house.

  Now I knew what was needed next. I also knew I required help. The best person would be Lucius Petronius, but in fairness to him I could not ask. He had already nearly lost his job over his dalliance with the gangster’s daughter. What I planned was far too big a risk.

  “So what’s your advice to me, Falco?” Aelianus asked, surprisingly.

  “Forget the past.”

  “I have to live with it.”

  “Build for the future. The Arvals were probably the wrong choice for you anyway: too much of a clique, too restrictive and backward looking. You don’t want to dance around some grove where mad wives are killing their corn-wreathed husbands with sacrificial knives.” I remembered something I wanted to tackle him about. “By the way, I hear you asked the Chief Spy to discover who the victim was?”

  Aelianus had the grace to blush slightly. “We were getting nowhere—”

  “We? It was your puzzle, which you told me you were giving up anyway.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, Anacrites is useless, Falco. I never got an answer.”

  “He told me instead. Ventidius Silanus is the man’s name. Ever heard of him?” Aelianus shook his head. “Nor me.” I gazed at him quietly. “I was surprised you had approached Anacrites.”

  “Well, it seemed the only hope. I had done all I could. I even thought of riding out along the Via Appia and looking at all the patrician tombs for evidence of a recent funeral. There was nothing. If that’s where the urn went, all the funerary flowers and so forth have been swept up.”

  He had really shown initiative. I hid my astonishment. “You’re lucky. The Chief Spy does not know.”

  “Know what, Falco?”

  I let him stew just long enough. “But he could easily find out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, the evidence is still sitting there in his pigeonholes. I am amazed you should have risked reminding him. Of course, somebody else could do so.”

  “You?” He was starting to notice my threats.

  “You’re in my power!” I grinned. Then I got tough. “You were entrusted with a secret document, on which the fate of the Baetican oil industry, and perhaps the whole province of Hispania Baetica, hung. You let it fall into the hands of the very men named as conspirators. You allowed them the time and opportunity to alter it. Then, realizing you had betrayed your trust, you pretended not to notice and handed in the corrupt scroll, in silence, to the Chief Spy.”

  Aelianus was very still.

  “Just like Uncle Publius, really,” I taunted him. “And we know what then happened to him—well, no; we have to imagine it.” I stopped, imagining all too vividly the stench of the traitor’s gaseous and disintegrating body. “Now listen hard: Anacrites is extremely dangerous. If you want a career—in fact, if you want any kind of future at all—don’t tangle with him.”

  The young man ran a dry tongue over drier lips. “So what now, Falco?”

  “Now,” I said, “I have to attempt something that is sheer madness. But I am fortunate because you, Aulus, do owe me a large debt. So you—without any argument or hesitation, and certainly without telling your family—will be coming along to support me.”

  “That is fair,” he acknowledged. He put a brave face on it. “What is my task?”

  “Just holding a ladder.”

  He blinked. “I can do that.”

  “Good. You will have to be very quiet while I climb up. We cannot risk discovery.”

  He looked more nervous. “Is this something illegal, Falco?” Sharp fellow!

  “About as illegal as it can be. You and I, trusty comrade, are about to break into the House of the Vestals.”

  Aelianus knew it was bad news, but it took him a moment to remember precisely that for an offense against the Vestal Virgins, the penalty was death.

  XLI

  “I DON’T LIKE this, Falco.”

  “Hush. It’s just a minor trespass.”

  I had brought Aelianus to the end of the Sacred Way before his courage failed. He was huddling in a dark cloak, his idea of what to wear for murky work. I did not need to play dressing-up games; I had spent my working career under cover for real. It was best to look normal. I was still in my toga, a respectable procuratorial Roman.

  Well, Festus used to swank in it. On me, for some reason, this old toga had always looked seedy and moth-eaten.

  My idea was that we could pass along the streets like two relaxed dinner companions, deep in philosophical talk. If at any point later in the enterprise I was apprehended, wearing the toga should gain me valuable leeway. I would still be beaten to death, but I would be given time to apologize first. Unlike Maia’s children enduring the shame of Famia, Julia Junilla would know when she grew up that her dear father might have shown disrespect to the Vestals, but he went down in style.

  “We are going to get caught, Falco.”

  “We will be if you don’t shut up. Look as if you have a docket that entitles you to be here.�
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  Now my heart was pounding. The last time I felt this anxious, I had been working with Pa. In his company, there was good reason to feel terrified. Mind you, rampaging through the art world as the naughty Didius boys had been a doddle compared to this.

  “Aulus, I’m not expecting you to come with me; you can stay on guard outside. I’ve done worse things. All I have to do is climb in, then prowl about until I find Constantia’s bedroom door.”

  “I can’t believe the Vestals have name-tablets on their rooms.”

  “I see you are the logical one in your family.”

  We had left the senator’s house (giving the porter a very oblique message about our future movements). We marched up to the Capena Gate, then turned right in front of the Temple of the Divine Claudius and left down the Via Sacra until we reached the Street of Vesta. We wheeled straight into the walled enclosure, which was not locked.

  “Surprise!” muttered Aelianus.

  “No, no; they have builders working here. Workmen never lock up other people’s property.”

  I could smell the scent from the Sacred Fire, as it wreathed up gently through the hole in the temple roof. It was too dark now to make out the thin trail. The temple’s ornamental drum seemed to loom above us, larger than normal, with a pale white sheen. The Forum outside would soon become eerie. It would look deserted, but everywhere would be alive with sinister rustlings and shufflings. Lovemaking and other unsavory deals would probably occur in here too. If the temple had been left open, dossers would warm themselves at the Sacred Hearth.

  There would be patrols. They would come around and kick out vagrants. Once the creatures of the night took over Rome, we would be at risk from both them and those who guarded against them. We had to work fast.

  Pallid lights flickered on the large Ionic shrine built against the entrance block. We could not risk a torch. I had not even brought one. The twinkly lamps on the shrine made it the best place to attempt entry. Anywhere else would be simply too dark. It would also mean we would be visible, if anyone came along.

  I knew exactly where I was going to find a ladder. I had not been wasting time when I came here this morning. As in everywhere else I seemed to go these days, the contractors working on the Vestals’ House after it was destroyed in the Great Fire had adopted a storage area, roping off a corner of the enclosure, probably without a by-your-leave. Nothing was sacred to them. I did borrow a lamp from the shrine in order to explore what the men had left for me. Struggling to be quiet, we edged out the nearest set of rungs. It moved freely at first, then as we angled one end away from the other stuff it seemed to grow heavier and more awkward.