“Probably.”
She looked less mad than my own aunts, most of whom are contentious harridans with a tendency to throw burning-hot skillets around. All the same-well, perhaps because of my dear aunties-I did not relax.
“May I talk to you?” I asked meekly. “I am not a spy, merely a Procurator of the Sacred Geese, ma’am.”
“My name is Terentia Paulla, as you well know.” I thought to myself that proper lunatics were supposed to believe themselves to be Julius Caesar. Mind you, this one issued orders like a dictator, right enough. “As for you,” she said, “I imagine that after your escapade at the Vestals’ House, you will find it expedient to resign from your curation of the poultry.”
“No, no; I’ll stand my ground. I have learned to enjoy the post.”
“Vespasian will sacrifice your sinecure in the next round of public spending cuts.”
“I agree that’s a possibility.”
“I shall suggest it to him myself,” said Terentia, in the full hauteur of an ex-Virgin. Well, that would save me bestirring myself. I was starting to feel very glad Maia’s daughter would not become a Virgin. We would not want Cloelia coming back to us in thirty years’ time as rude and provocative as this.
With my bright new credentials under attack, I decided to turn tough. “If it is not impolite to ask, why did you marry Ventidius?”
“It is impolite. Because he asked me. He was an attractive, urbane, amusing man, with a great deal of money too. He had been, as I am sure you know, my sister’s lover for a very long time.”
“You were not afraid of upsetting your sister?”
“I daresay I intended it.” I tried not to look shocked. I could see why Helena’s mother, Julia Justa, that most rational and socially restrained of women, had spoken of Terentia with dislike. The exVirgin was not just awkward; she actively enjoyed being unlikeable. “ My sister paraded her conquest shamefully and laid rather too much emphasis on telling me the details, pointing out how her bedroom activities contrasted with my own chaste life. She forgot that my vowed thirty years would end one day. Statilia Paulla was ill. She was not aware that I knew it, but when our betrothal was announced I realized I would not be depriving her of her lover for long.” Terentia paused. “Still, it should have been longer than it was.”
“Her illness advanced very rapidly?”
“No, Falco. She opened her veins in her bath. My sister killed herself.”
She was quite matter-of-fact. Was this the unfeeling outspokenness of a crazy woman, or simply that, like an extremely sane one, Terentia saw no purpose in messing me about? At any rate, it meant there had been yet another crisis, yet another tragedy, disrupting this terrible family. I began to understand why the ex-Flamen spoke as he did of his wife’s death; she would presumably have died anyway, but she had deprived him of his own position before time, and deliberately.
“So then,” Terentia continued softly, “I married Ventidius. I had no choice.”
“Why? ”
“Well, don’t you see? I thought I could control him. My sister had managed it before she became ill.”
“I don’t follow.”
“He was a very old friend of the family-”
“The very friendly ‘Uncle Tiberius’-so I heard,” I said dryly. Terentia shot me a look of distaste. I survived.
“Ventidius needed to be closely watched,” she explained. “He would have been around all the time-”
“On the prowl?”
“Precisely. I knew Numentinus would certainly not break with Ventidius after Statilia’s death, not after he had tolerated the man’s behavior before. He refused to see there was now a danger to the girls. What a fool. He could not see how necessary it had become for him to act.”
“Necessary, why?”
“You know that.”
“Because Ventidius started to eye Caecilia?”
“Caecilia and, to a far greater extent, Laelia.”
“Caecilia admits that she had to rebuff Ventidius. Laelia denies he ever touched her.”
“Then,” said Terentia crisply, “Laelia lied to you.”
“Modesty, no doubt,” I murmured, thinking that a Vestal would approve of that.
“Don’t be ridiculous! Statilia Laelia has good reasons for everything she does.”
“She needs to lie?”
“Oh, we all need to do that!” For a moment, Terentia looked tired.
“So,” I mused, “you knew about Ventidius moving in on the other two? Who told you, may I ask?”
“Laelia told me that Caecilia had confided in her. She took more pleasure in the telling than she should have done. Before that, I had myself already warned him to leave Laelia alone. He had been playing about with her for some time; she is very immature-and she took it very seriously. Scaurus, her brother, had found out and told me in the end. Ventidius enjoyed thinking he had the privilege of bedding more than one generation.”
“So he made a long-term play for Laelia-successfully? I find it hard to believe.”
“You misjudge everyone, Falco.” After crushing me to her own satisfaction, she settled to explanations again. “Laelia probably allowed it quite readily, I am afraid. She was always difficult. But I stopped it, once I knew.”
“So Laelia was promiscuous?”
“Not widely; she never had much opportunity. The children of a Flamen Dialis are brought up in isolation.”
“I can see that would have made her easy meat for an ever-present family friend. Why was she always difficult?”
“Why?” Terentia seemed astonished that I had asked. “How should I know why? That was just how it was. Children are born with inherent, strong-willed streaks of character.” Strong-willed was the last word I would have used for the ex-Flamen’s pasty daughter. Again, I reminded myself that I was hearing all this from a supposed madwoman. “Her mother was too busy spoiling Scaurus to notice-unless perhaps Statilia simply felt powerless to deal with Laelia. The boy and girl were a strange, secretive couple, too often left in their own company. Sometimes they squabbled violently, sometimes they were dangerously quiet, heads together like little conspirators.”
“Being the offspring of a Flamen, they were kept from other children-and to some extent, I suppose, from adult company too?”
“It was fatal, in my opinion,” said Terentia cryptically.
“They never learned normal behavior?”
“No. They seemed to buckle down to their religious duties well as infants, but they developed a ridiculous sense of their own importance which could do neither any good.”
“They both seem rather vague now,” I commented.
“They both have uncontrollable tempers when thwarted. They brood. They lash out. They lack tolerance and restraint. Some children never need companionship to make them sweet natured. Look at Gaia; yet she is an only child, brought up utterly solitary too.”
“A little spoiled materially?” I suggested.
“Blame Laelia,” Terentia said, in a clipped tone. “No sense of decency. She constantly buys presents without reference to Caecilia, and sneaks them to Gaia. Once Laelia has given clothes or toys to the child, it is hard to remove them again.”
“So Laelia loves her little niece Gaia?” Laelia, it struck me, was the real aunt here; Terentia a great-aunt. “Is it consistent, or might she turn on the child?”
“Laelia’s love is a volatile emotion,” Terentia commented. Still, she was mad. How could she evaluate emotion?
“Would she threaten Gaia with violence just as easily as spoiling her?”
Terentia made a slight gesture of assent-as if congratulating me on at last seeing the truth. “As for Laelia, we did our best. When she reached marriageable age, I suggested Ariminius-a complete change, fresh blood. He was flattered to be asked to join a family of such standing. It has to be said, he is very good with Laelia.”
I had interviewed Ariminius and his wife together, at their choice-his, maybe? He must have been deliberately guarding against indiscretions by the woman. I had certainly missed any suggestion that Laelia had been willingly
