time I saw Gaia, she was playing with my Cloelia, and they both gave me a glare that said nobody should interrupt.”
“Playing?” Helena demanded.
“Yes, they spent over an hour carrying imaginary water vessels from one of the fountains.”
“What did you think of Gaia?”
“Too good mannered. Too nice natured. Too pretty and well favored. Don’t say it: I know I’m just a rude grouse.”
“We love you for it,” I assured my sister affectionately. I now explained how Gaia had come to see me, and what she had said about her family. “I don’t know what it’s all about, but she was asking me for help. So what did you think of Gaia’s mother? If someone in the family has it in for the child, could it be her?”
“Doubt it,” said Maia. “She was far too proud of her little mite.”
“We only met an uncle,” Helena contributed. “Is the mother downtrodden?”
“Not noticeably, at least not when she is out in female company.”
“But at home, who knows?… Did Cloelia tell Gaia she has an uncle who is an informer?”
“No idea. She could well have done.”
“And on the other side, I suppose you don’t know if Gaia told Cloelia anything about her family?”
“Helena, when Julia is older you will learn about this: I,” said Maia, “was merely the chaperon who enabled my daughter to mingle with elevated people and dream that she herself was ludicrously important. I hired the litter that took us to the Palatine. I caused embarrassment by wearing too bright a gown and by making jokes about the occasion in a rather loud undertone. Other than that, I was superfluous. I was not allowed to know anything that Cloelia got up to when the girls were let loose together. My only other role was later at home, mopping her brow and holding the bowl when the excitement made her throw up all night.”
“You are a wonderful mother,” Helena assured her.
“Do mention it to my children sometime.”
“They know,” I said.
“Well, Cloelia won’t think so when I have to break the news that she won’t be chosen.”
“Mothers all over Rome will have the same problem,” Petro reminded her.
“All except the self-satisfied piece with the squint who produced Gaia Laelia.” The child’s mother had really offended Maia. But I reckoned it was merely by existing.
“It may not be so simple. Something is definitely amiss there. The child came to ask for help for a reason.”
“She came to see you because she had a wild imagination and no sense of judgment,” said Maia. “Not to mention a family who allow her to steal the litter and to traipse around town without her nurse.”
“I feel there may be more to it,” Helena demurred. “It’s no use. We cannot just forget it-Marcus, one of us will have to look into this further.”
However, we had to stop there because of a commotion at the street door when the children returned. The little ones were whimpering, and even Marius looked white.
“Oh, Uncle Marcus, a big dog jumped on Nux and would not get off again.” He was curling up with embarrassment, knowing what the beast had been up to, yet not wanting to say.
“Well, that’s wonderful.” I beamed, as Nux shot under the table with a sheepish and disheveled appearance. “If we end up having dear little scruffy puppies, Marius, you can have first pick!”
As my sister shuddered with horror, Petronius murmured in a hollow aside, “It’s very appropriate, Maia. Their father was a horse vet; you have to allow your dear children to develop their inherited affinity with animals.”
But Maia had decided she had to save them from the bad influence of Petro and me, so she jumped up and bustled them all off home.
XIII
“WELL, THAT WAS a waste of time!”
I had allowed myself to forget temporarily that Camillus Aelianus had somehow lost a corpse. He pounded up our steps and burst into the apartment, scowling with annoyance. I hid a smile. The aristocratic young hero would normally despise everything connected with the role of an informer, yet he had fallen straight into the old trap: faced with an enigma, he felt compelled to pursue it. He would carry on even after he made himself exhausted and furious.
He was both. “Oh Hades, Falco! You packed me off on a wild errand. Everyone I questioned responded with suspicion, most were rude, some tried to bully me, and one even ran away.”
I would have given him a drink, the traditional restorative, but we had consumed my whole stock that day at lunch. As Helena nudged him to a bench, his mid-brown eyes wandered vaguely as if he were looking for a jug and beaker. All the right instincts were working, though he lacked the sheer cheek to ask for a goblet openly.
“Did you chase him?”
“Who? ”
“The one who ran away. This was, almost certainly, the person you needed to speak to.”
He thought about it. Then he saw what I meant. He banged a clenched fist on his forehead. “Oh rats, Falco!”
“Would you know him again?”
“A lad. The Brothers have youngsters assigned to them as attendants at their feasts-called camilli, coincidentally. There are only four. I could pick him out.”
“You’ll have to get into a feast first,” I pointed out, perhaps unnecessarily.
He dropped his head onto the table and covered his face, groaning. “Another day. I cannot face any more. I’m whacked.”
“Pity.” I grinned, dragging him upright. The crass, snooty article had behaved abominably in the past over Helena and me; I loved paying him back. “Because if you really want to get anywhere, you and I have to make ourselves presentable and take a stroll to the house of the Master of the Arval Brothers-now, Aulus!”
It was the final day of the festival. This would be his last chance. My youthful apprentice had to accept that his mission was governed by a time constraint. Like me, he was astute enough to see that if we were to tackle the slippery intendant of a cult that was hiding something, we would need all our wits and energy-and we had to act fast. His day’s work had hardly begun.
“Men’s games,” I apologized to Helena.
“Boys!” she commented. “Be careful, both.”
I kissed her. After a momentary hesitation, her brother showed he was learning, and forced himself to do the same.
Aelianus knew how to find the Master’s house; he had been invited to the feasting as an observer on the first day of the festival. It was a substantial mock-seaside villa on its own property island, somewhere off the Via Tusculana. A profusion of stone dolphins provided salty character and looked cheerful and unpretentious, though in the urban center of Rome the rows of open-sided balconies on every wing gave a twee effect. On the Bay of Neapolis the owners could have gone fishing off their boarded verandas, but here their nostalgia for long-gone August holidays was way out of place. Nobody fishes in the gutters in Rome. Well, not if they know what I do about things that float in the city water supply.
As we arrived, it was clear from the disgorging palanquins that the elite members of the college were just assembling for that night’s feast. There was a special buzz. I wondered if these men in corn-ear wreaths were greeting each other with extra excitement, knowing of the death the night before.
One man was leaving, however. Tall, gaunt, elderly, haughty as Hades. Eyes that were careful never to alight on anyone. Flyaway white hair around a bald pate.
He had paused at the top of the entrance steps, as if waiting for some flunky to clear a free path. When
