me. Orders from the Flamen, no doubt. We paced along in silence for a while, then I pressed it: “Was the trouble to do with your husband’s aunt?”
Caecilia glanced at me sideways. “You know about that?” She looked amazed. Too amazed. At the same moment we both realized we were somehow at cross-purposes. I made a mental note of the subject.
I said, “Terentia Paulla sounds a force to be reckoned with.” She laughed, rather bitterly. “Be frank. What’s this aunt really playing at?”
Caecilia shook her head. “It is all a disaster. Please don’t ask any more. Just find Gaia. Please.”
We had reached the child’s room.
It was of modest size, though the mother had correctly implied that the child hardly lived in a cell. Anyway, there was only so much space, so Caecilia ordered the slave that Numentinus had imposed on me to wait outside. The man did not like it, yet he took her instructions as though overruling the Flamen was not unknown.
I absorbed the scene. There was more jumble here than I had found anywhere previously. I had seen Gaia dressed in her finery; there was an open chest full of similarly dainty clothes: gowns and undergowns, small fancy-strapped sandals, colored girdles and stoles, tot-sized cloaks. A tangle of beads and bracelets-not cheap fakes, but real silver and semiprecious hardstones-occupied a tray on a side table. A sunhat hung on a hook on the door.
For her amusement, Gaia possessed many a toy that my Julia would be happy to bang around the floor: dolls, wooden, ceramic and rag; feather- and bean-stuffed balls; a hoop; toy horses and carts; a miniature farm. They were all good quality, the work of craftsmen, not the whittled stumpy things that youngsters in my family had to make do with. The dolls had been sat in a line on a shelf. The toy farm was spread over the floor, however, with its animals arranged as if the child had just left the room temporarily while playing with them.
Looking down at the model farm that had been so meticulously displayed by her small daughter, Caecilia Paeta caught her breath, though she tried to conceal it. She folded her arms tight, gripping her body as if resolutely holding back her emotion.
I had stopped her on the threshold. “Now, look around carefully. Is everything the way Gaia normally has it? Anything odd? Anything out of place?”
She looked, quite carefully, then rapidly shook her head. In the sea of treasures Gaia had owned, it would be difficult to spot disturbance. I entered the room and started a search.
The furnishings were less lavish than the child’s personal possessions, and may even have come with the house. The oil lamps, rugs, and cushions were minimal. There was a narrow child-sized bed in a specially designed alcove, covered with a checkered spread, and several cupboards, mainly built in. I looked in the bed and under it, then in the cupboards, where I found a few more toys and shoes and an unused chamberpot. A large wooden box, of fairly standard type and quality, contained a mirror, combs, pins, manicure tools on a big silver ring, and tangled lengths of hair ribbon.
Holding a solitary small ankle boot that I had found under the bed, I asked, “Who buys all the toys?”
“Relatives.” Caecilia Paeta crossed the room and obsessively neatened the coverlet on the bed. She looked near to tears.
“Anyone special?”
“Everyone buys her things.” She gestured around, acknowledging that Gaia had had luxury lavished upon her. I could understand it: the only child in a moneyed family and, as I had seen, cute with it.
“You moved here when the Flaminica died. Does Gaia miss her grandmother?”
“A little. Statilia Paulla was fonder of my husband than anyone. She spoiled him, I’m afraid.”
“Even after he left home?”
Caecilia lowered her voice nervously. “Please don’t talk about him. His name is never mentioned now.”
“People do abscond,” I commented. Caecilia made no reply. “How did Statilia Paulla react to the fact that her own sister Terentia had encouraged Scaurus to go, and had facilitated the move?”
“How do you think? It caused more trouble.” I could have guessed that.
I sighed. “Does Gaia miss her father?”
“She sees him from time to time. As much as many children would.”
“If their parents were divorced, you mean? What about you? Do you miss him?”
“I have no choice.” She did not sound too upset.
“Had you any choice over marrying him in the first place?”
“I was content. Our families had old connections. He is a decent man.”
“But I take it you two were not passionately in love?”
Caecilia smiled faintly. It was not an affront, yet she appeared to regard the suggestion of passion as some odd quirk. Privately, I thanked the gods not all patrician girls had that upbringing. At least Caecilia did not seem to know what she was missing.
Plenty of Roman women of “good” family are bedded by men they hardly know. Most bear them children, since that is the point of it. Some are then left to their own devices. Many welcome the freedom. They need not feign deep affection for their husbands; they can avoid the men almost totally. They acquire status without emotional responsibility. So long as acceptable financial arrangements are made, all that is demanded of them is that they refrain from taking lovers. Any rate, they should not flaunt their lovers openly.
I did not believe Caecilia Paeta had a lover. But how can you tell?
Still pressing to find Gaia, I tried a different tack: “Does your husband’s aunt, Terentia Paulla, have much to do with Gaia?”
Caecilia’s expression became veiled again. I wondered if the subject might be even more tricky than I had already realized. “Only since she retired from being a Vestal, of course. That was about a year and a half ago. She is very fond of Gaia.” It reinforced my impression that Gaia Laelia had been used in the family’s endless emotional tugs of war.
“Yet she disapproves of Gaia becoming a Vestal?”
For once, Caecilia showed some natural acidity. “Maybe she wants all the honor for herself!”
“Have you told her that Gaia had gone missing?” Caecilia looked uneasy. I was crisp. “If Gaia felt close to her and has run away, she may turn up at Terentia’s house.”
“Oh, we would be told!”
“Where does Terentia live?”
“Her husband’s house is twenty miles outside Rome.” Too far for a child to make the journey alone easily- though runaways have been known to cover astonishing distances. “I shall need an address.”
Caecilia seemed flustered. “There’s no need for this-Gaia knew very well that Terentia is away from home at present.”
“Why? Is she in Rome?”
“She comes sometimes.”
I could not see why Caecilia was stalling. “Look, I’m just considering people Gaia might run to.”
She still looked distressed. She had picked up a model bull from Gaia’s farm and was twisting it in her fingers obsessively. I knew she must be lying about something, but I let her think I had swallowed it. “Have you informed your husband that Gaia is gone?”
“I am not allowed to contact him.”
“Oh, come! Not only is this rather important-but I do know you wrote to him only this week saying his aunt wished to see him.” Caecilia’s head spun towards me. “I have met your husband. He told me himself.”
“What did he say to you?” Caecilia gasped, rather too carefully. Was she afraid he might have criticized her conduct in their marriage?
“Nothing to alarm you. We talked mostly about a guardianship issue.”
She seemed horrified. “I cannot discuss that.”
Since I thought the ridiculous tale Scaurus spun me was all nonsense, I felt startled. Was there another
