himself, and I did not begrudge him that.
Out of unwilling respect for the other man who had helped save my life, I said, “I would like Anacrites to hear this too.” He was allowed to stay. He kept well back, looking humble. Well, as humble as it is possible to be if you are a lousy-natured spy.
The Flamen Dialis addressed Aelianus and me. “You two have been attempting to discover the identity of the Arval Brother who was murdered in the Sacred Grove of the Dea Dia.”
We said nothing.
“His name was Ventidius Silanus.”
Less experienced than me, Aelianus was on the verge of bursting out that we already knew as much. I gripped his arm unobtrusively.
It was Laelius Numentinus, staring ahead fixedly, who then volunteered to tell us what I had privately guessed: “Ventidius Silanus was married to Terentia Paulla, my late wife’s sister.”
It seemed courteous not to comment; it would have been difficult to do so tactfully at first. I breathed slowly, then somehow ignored the scandalous aspects and said in a deferential tone, “We offer our commiserations, sir.” I breathed again. “That gives us a lot to think about. However, with respect, it does not alter the urgent need to find your little granddaughter. I hope you will still accept help to search for her?” Numentinus inclined his white head stiffly. “Then I shall go home quickly now to see my wife. When I have washed off the stench of prison, I shall return to your house and continue where I left off yesterday.”
Nobody said the obvious: according to what the Master of the Arval Brethren had let Aelianus and me believe, Terentia Paulla, wife to the late Ventidius, was a crazy murderess.
Did that mean that this madwoman had also killed little Gaia?
LI
OUTSIDE THE FLAMINIA, we three pulled up to catch our breath.
I offered my hand to Anacrites. We clasped arms like military blood brothers.
“Thanks. You saved my life.”
“So we are quits, Falco.”
“I shall always be grateful, Anacrites.”
I gazed at him. He gazed at me. We would never be quits.
I clasped hands with Aelianus too and then, since he was in effect my brother-in-law, I embraced him. He looked surprised. Not as surprised as I was to find myself doing it. “This was your idea, Aulus? You organized everything?”
“If a ploy fails once, just repeat it with more verve.”
“Sounds like the wonderful nonsense that informers spout!”
Aelianus grinned. “Anacrites suggested I was doing so well at this, I ought to continue working with you. When you have taught me a few things, he says there might be an opening in the security service with him.”
He could have told me this in confidence later, which is what I would have done in his shoes. Anacrites and I glared at each other. We could both see that Aelianus had deliberately said it in front of both of us. He was not the pushover we both had taken him for.
Anacrites tried to make light of it. “I’m letting you have him first, Falco.”
“But you’ll take advantage of the experience I give him? I train him, then you pinch him?”
“You owe me now.”
“Anacrites, I owe you zilch!” I turned to Aelianus. “As for you, you reprobate, let’s not pretend you want to set aside your purple stripes and go slumming.” Aelianus did not really believe I had anything to teach him; if he joined me, his only desire would be to show me how to do my job by effortlessly surpassing me. “I am supposed to be in partnership with your brother-when he deigns to show his face.”
Aelianus grinned. “He pinched my girl-I’ll pinch his position!”
“Well, that’s fair,” I commented, quoting him on another subject.
After a moment we were all laughing.
We calmed down.
“That was a facer about Ventidius,” I said. We all walked slowly towards the Circus side of the Palatine where a path wound down.
“Have you been told the whole story now, I wonder?” Anacrites mused. He was not so dumb sometimes.
“Doubt it. Just enough to keep us off their backs. It does explain a lot. The ex-Vestal married a man who turned out to be a lecher-and so shameless that he even tried it on with one of her own female relatives-Caecilia Paeta, her nephew’s wife; Caecilia told me herself. The rest now fits: Terentia presumably heard about it. Perhaps Caecilia told her, or the other one-Laelia, the ex-Flamen’s daughter. So Terentia runs wild and slays Ventidius in the Sacred Grove, bloodily cutting his throat and saving the drips as if he were the white beast at a religious sacrifice.”
Aelianus took up the story: “To the Arval Brothers this must have been a double horror. The corpse was a terrible sight-I can vouch for that-but it must also have seemed that night as if every cult in the old religion was touched by the scandal: the Arvals themselves, the Vestals, and even the College of Flamens-”
“Right,” I said. “The dead man was an Arval, and it happened in the Sacred Grove; the killer was a Vestal. Ventidius had been the lover of the previous Flaminica. That seems to have been common knowledge in Rome. Certainly most women knew. Then, to cap it all, the whole bunch is related to the child who has been picked out as the next Vestal.”
“So that was why a coverup was so readily agreed upon?” suggested Anacrites. “Influence?”
We stopped, on the heights just by the carefully preserved (that is, entirely rebuilt) supposed Hut of Romulus.
“Looks like it. Numentinus was definitely nagging the Arvals about something; he was at the Master’s house the next night, and they did not sound too pleased about it. They were even less pleased about us,” I said. “Everything would probably have worked very smoothly, if Aelianus and I had not started to poke about. The corpse was spirited away and a funeral held very quietly. Terentia is to be looked after and guarded, eventually no doubt at her own home, though my guess is that as a first move she has been taken in by Laelius Numentinus, perhaps out of some regard for his dead wife. She has been living in a guestroom, though when I turned up to search she had to be packed off hastily to the Vestals’ House, out of the way. As she is one of their own, the Virgins would agree to tend her.”
“Would her presence explain why Numentinus did not want the vigiles to come in after the child disappeared?” Anacrites asked.
“You heard about that?”
“I keep in touch,” he bragged.
“The vigiles might have sniffed out the scandal. And this explains the nonsense Laelius Scaurus told me about his aunt wanting a legal guardian. As an ex-Vestal, she would not need one, but arrangements are essential now. She must have been declared furiosa-not to be prissy, a raving lunatic. Somebody has to be her custodian.”
“Can she choose her own?” Aelianus asked.
“If she has moments of lucidity, why not?”
“But is she still dangerous?”
“After the way Ventidius was killed, she must be. That was not just an angry wife, lashing out with the nearest cooking knife. You cannot say it was a sudden act that she will never repeat. She planned it; she took the implements to the Grove; she dressed up in religious style; she murdered the man, and then carried out an extraordinary sequence of actions with his blood…”
Aelianus shuddered. “Remember the cloth I saw covering the dead man’s face? Now I know about the rituals involved, I think it must have been one of those veils priestesses wear when they attend a sacrifice.”
