“I know the Vestals possess the right to ride in a carriage, but is this yours too, for when you travel incognito to buy knickknacks and fashionwear?”
“No, it belongs to a visitor.”
“Now who would that be?”
“An ex-Vestal. Some stay here on retirement, well cared for in the tranquillity of the home they know. Others who decide to leave are always welcome back.”
Her grapple with me had left her unruffled, but she knew we were in danger here. She was trying to move me on. I stood my ground. “Your visitor is a complete stranger to tranquillity! I know she left the Laelius house earlier today. This is Terentia Paulla, returning to the sisterhood?”
“The Chief Virgin is comforting her; she is desolate about the disappearance of little Gaia.”
“Is that so? I need to speak to her.”
“Do not intrude, Falco.”
“Don’t balk me! Will I have to climb in through her window too?”
“No. You are going to walk out of the gate now.”
I knew I had pushed it far enough tonight. I let Constantia lead me to the door in the wall that led to the Temple of Vesta enclosure. My hair-raising adventure was reaching its end, quite successfully. Or so I thought, until my companion unlocked the gate for me.
Outside, near the temple, a group of lictors and other heavy types were clustered around a young man; I could see it was Aelianus. They must have only just apprehended him. He was responding with spirit: “ Officers!” he cried in his reassuringly patrician tones. “I am so glad I ran into you. I just noticed that there is a ladder leaning up against the Vestals’ House. It may have something to do with a roughlooking fellow I just saw running off. He went that way…” He gestured towards the Regia.
“Show us!” The watch guards were not completely convinced. More practical than I had hoped, they had the sense to keep him with them while they went to investigate. Still, he was a senator’s son and had every right to stroll around Rome at night looking for a rumpus he could join in.
Constantia had pulled the door closed hastily before we were seen by anyone. Again, she used that word a Virgin should not know. Pulling a face, she gestured for me to follow her, whispering that she would show me the Via Nova exit.
“Is it locked?”
“I hope not.”
“Dear gods!” I was deeply apprehensive. I could cope with the mere fact of gliding about a residence that was strictly closed to men. I did not want to find myself in another dark corner where Constantia might jump me.
Somebody else was coming. Even Constantia was losing her nerve. I asked her for directions, then instructed her to hasten back to the security of her own suite. “If I get arrested, you never saw me, and you know nothing about me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Falco!” She was incorrigible.
“That’s right. Be sensible.”
I had some trouble with the directions. Nobody is perfect. Constantia had seemed a thoroughly delightful character, no doubt absolutely packed with talent. She could probably have driven a chariot around and around the Circus, but as a navigator she was useless; she could not distinguish between left and right. Still, eventually I found the door she had described. Unfortunately, it was locked.
This was a door in the interior of the residential block, so there was no climbing out. Increasingly apprehensive now, I worked my way once more to the central garden area. Here too, the gate had now been secured by somebody. Keeping deep in the shadows, I sidled back for my ladder. All went well. I was extremely tired, but I took care how I lifted and carried it. More or less in silence, I made it back to where I first climbed over and set the ladder gingerly against the wall. Up I went, once again within sight of freedom.
Needless to say, when I reached the top, the ladder I had left beside the shrine on the other side was no longer there. No use hoping for help from Aelianus. He would have removed himself from this dangerous scene.
I could lower myself onto the shrine’s roof, then drop carefully. I had done worse. Alternatively, I could sit astride the wall, and try to raise the inner ladder up enough to heave it over. I was still debating when I heard troops marching outside, coming towards the temple enclosure. I stepped down a few rungs again, keeping out of sight. Then somebody below on the ground behind me grabbed the back of my left calf.
Thinking it was Constantia about to grope me again, I turned to protest, only to find myself looking down into the ferocious scowls of three lictors. Normally they have nothing much to do; today was now their best day ever. For perhaps the first time in history they had caught an intruder. They were thrilled.
The man who had hold of me jerked my foot outwards. I fell off the ladder, luckily on top of him. It gave me a soft landing, though it seemed to annoy him.
My captors did then courteously allow me to put on my toga. I would be formally attired for my interview with the Chief Vestal. That’s the interview I was now compelled to have, where she would sentence me to death.
XLIX
WHAT A HORRENDOUS woman.
She looked as if she had been boiled in milk for too long. She was in full garb, with the white, purple-bordered veil that they wear at sacrifices, its two cords pinned under her double chin with her special Vestal’s brooch. I recognized her outline and deportment from seeing her at the theater and at festivals. One of the well-built, statuesque variety. One with truly Gorgonesque features. Religious devotion oozing from her. This time the sacrificial beast was a captured informer; that did seem to give her pleasure.
“A man! And what are you doing here?” she enunciated sarcastically.
I left Constantia out of it. She was watching. All of the four lesser Virgins had appeared and were jostling behind their leader excitedly, owl-eyed; Constantia was conspicuous by the yellow hem hanging down under the white robe that she must have flung on top of her lounging wear.
“I merely wanted to ask some vital questions of Terentia Paulla,” I decided to say. Nobody present looked identifiable as Terentia. She had retired from her duties, so she was allowed to see men; anyway, she could say that I had never found her. Would that let me off?
Also present at my humiliation was a full set of lictors, and their other prize: Camillus Aelianus. “This man, a respectable senator’s heir, saw somebody lurking suspiciously, ma’am.”
“Is this the felon you saw?”
“Oh no. That was a tall, handsome, fair-haired man.” Good try.
“Thanks for exonerating me, young sir, but if you don’t regard me as handsome, let me give you the name of a competent oculist.”
“You have defiled the House of Vesta.” Something about the slow, deliberate way the Chief Vestal made her pronouncements was beginning to draw my attention.
I suppose after my visit to Constantia I should have been prepared for anything. The Chief Vestal was a forty- year-old, iron-hard, prudish, dictatorial image of moral purity. And something else: Jupiter! She had the slack eyelids of a drear toper who had really been hitting the amphora. The rich evidence hung on her breath. On close inspection, anyone could detect that she was a hesitant, sozzled, soused, fuzzled, bung-licking, dreg-draining, secret Bacchanalian.
Why mince words? The Chief Vestal was a lush.
In the time it was taking for the woman’s thoughts to broach the grape-clogged path from brain to speech, I managed to invent and try out various sickly protests about the official nature of my mission, the high level of support I could command, and the urgency of finding Gaia Laelia, through whatever unorthodox means it took. I made myself out to be, in this search, actually a servant of the Vestals. Reduced to the lowest depths, I even
