“I found them a good home,” I answered soberly, not mentioning that the home was ours. Helena eyed me trickily.
“And are you expecting more trouble from the man-or is there some other reason for enquiring?”
“There’s a child in his family whom they expect to be chosen as the next Vestal. I gather the Laelii can mystically influence the lottery.” I aimed the last comment at Decimus.
He raised an eyebrow, this time pretending to be shocked at the imputation of fixing. “Well,” he scoffed. “We wouldn’t want any little unscrubbed plebeian to emerge as the winner, when there are maidens with mile-long patrician pedigrees yearning to carry the water from the shrine of Egeria.”
“Famous for their antique chastity?”
“Absolutely notorious for their purity and simplicity!” concluded Helena dryly.
“No, no. It cannot be,” Julia Justa corrected me. “Being a daughter of a flamen counts as an exemption from the lottery.”
“She is the Flamen’s granddaughter, actually.”
“Then the father must have opted out of the priesthood.” Julia Justa laughed briefly. For a moment, she sounded like Helena. “I bet that went down well!” In explanation she went on, “That family are known for regarding the priesthood as their personal prerogative. The late Flaminica was notorious for her snobbery about it. My mother was a keen attendant at the rites of the Good Goddess-remember she took you once, Helena.”
“Yes. I’ve told Marcus it was just a sewing circle with dainty almond cakes.”
“Oh, of course!”
They were teasing Decimus and me. The festival of the Bona Dea was a famously secretive gathering of matrons, nocturnal and forbidden to men. All sorts of suspicions circulated about what went on there. Women took over the house of the senior magistrate-turfing him out-and then enjoyed letting their menfolk sweat over what kind of orgy they had organized.
“I seem to remember,” I challenged Helena, “you always made out that you disliked the Bona Dea festival-why was that, beloved? Too staid for you?” I smiled, playing the tolerant type and turning back to Julia Justa. “So the Flaminica would have been a regular at the festival in her official capacity?”
“And her overbearing sister too,” answered Julia Justa, with an unaccustomed smirk. “The sister, Terentia Paulla, was a Vestal Virgin.”
“A Vestal presides, if rumor is correct?”
“Well, she tries!” Julia Justa laughed. “A group of women does not necessarily succumb to leadership as a group of men would-especially once the refreshments arrive.” Out of control, eh? That confirmed the worst fears of our masculine citizenship. Not to mention suggestions that wine played a major part in the girls’ giggling rites. “My mother, who was a shrewd woman-”
“Bound to be!” I grinned, including both Helena and Julia Justa in the compliment.
“Yes, Marcus dear.” Marcus dear? I gulped back my disquiet. “Mama held that the Flaminica was very loose living.”
“Oho! On what evidence?”
“She had a lover. Everyone knew. It was more or less open. She and her ghastly sister were always arguing about it. The affair went on for years.”
“I am shocked.”
“You are not,” said Helena, flipping me with her dinner napkin. “ You are a hard-bitten and cynical private informer; you expect adultery at every turn. Mind you, I am shocked, Mama.”
“Of course you are, darling; I brought you up in a very sheltered way… Well, being Flaminica is a difficult role,” Julia Justa returned. Like Helena, she could be fair. She was a sophisticated woman: nowadays she even managed to be fair to me. “The Flamen Dialis and his wife are selected from a very narrow circle-they have to fulfill strict traditional criteria. She has to be a virgin-”
“That’s surely no trouble!” inserted Decimus satirically.
“They both have to be born of parents who have been married by confarreatio, the old-fashioned religious ceremony in front of ten witnesses, with the Pontifex Maximus and the Flamen Dialis present. Then, Marcus, they have to be married themselves with those ceremonies and can never divorce. The chances of them finding each other tolerable are remote to begin with, and if things go wrong they are trapped for life.”
“Plus the pressure of constantly appearing in public together to carry out their official functions-” I suggested.
“Oh, anyone can go through the motions in public!” Julia Justa disagreed. “It would be back at home that the tension would show.”
We all nodded sagely, while pretending to consider the concept of domestic disagreement as something remote from our own experience. As one does.
“So, what is the problem with the little girl?” asked the senator.
“Nothing at all, according to the family,” I said. “The child herself told Helena she has been threatened with serious harm. She came to see us with this tale, and I confess, I failed to take it seriously. I should have asked more questions.”
“If she really is earmarked as the next Vestal,” Julia Justa commented, “hers are the kind of people who would glory in it. What could cause conflict? Is she playing up about being selected?”
“Overjoyed, apparently.”
“I rather suspect,” said Helena, “as my grandmother would say, Gaia must be glad of a chance to be taken away from her relatives.”
“They do sound a grim lot.”
“Fossils!” muttered Decimus.
We had insulted the Laelii for long enough. Since dinner was over Helena buzzed off with her mother to talk about what had happened in North Africa with Justinus and Claudia. Her father and I occupied the senator’s study, a squashed glory hole full of scrolls that Decimus had started to read, then forgotten about. We lit lamps and threw cushions off the reading couch, trying to pretend there was room to recline in some elegance. In fact, although the Camillus house was spacious, its master had been allocated a poky nook, as he ruefully liked to acknowledge.
It was, however, roomy enough for a pair of friendly fellows to let themselves relax when left unsupervised.
VII
TO MAKE IT a manly symposium, we had brought a fine glass bottle of decanted Alban wine. Helena’s mother had instructed us to look after the baby; apparently, the grim-faced slaves in her retinue had too much work of their own. We had boasted that childcare fell well within our expertise. The senator placed Julia on a rug and let her grab whatever came to hand. Allowed to play among the grown-ups, she was no trouble; she settled to playing spillikins with equipment from his stylus tray. I was a realistic father; I intended to equip her for life. Even a year and four days could not be too young for a girl to familiarize herself with men’s behavior when they are let loose with a good flagon.
“So! Tell me about Aelianus singing the ancient hymn of the Arval Brothers.”
His father sighed. “Time to garner a few embellishments on his social record.”
“I seem to be hearing about nothing but religious cults this week. As far as I remember, the Brethren are the oldest in Rome-a lineage all the way from our agricultural forefathers. And don’t they celebrate fertility by way of energetic feasting? Sounds like your son made a good choice.”
Decimus grinned, though rather distractedly. He must prefer to think of this as a sober move.
“And what about selection, sir? Is it another lottery?”
“No. Co-option from within the serving Brothers.”
