I waited until I was sure he had left before I emerged.
As I opened the door behind which I had been hiding, a small determined figure blocked my way. Julia was whipped from my grasp. I groaned, but only quietly.
I was facing a tiny, frail old woman whose black eyes bored like bradawls. A bad conscience-for which I had no damned reason-pinned me to the spot.
“I suppose you have a good explanation,” announced the new arrival fiercely, “why you failed to come home for the little one’s birthday?” I did have. Famia’s funeral rites, such as they were, for the few scraps that had been left of him by the lion: an explanation, though not good. “And I do know what happened to Famia-though I had to hear it from dear Anacrites!”
“Hello, Mother,” I said. I made it sound meek. “We were forced to spend Julia’s first birthday becalmed off Otia… Are you going to congratulate me on my new status as a pillar of the state religion?”
“Don’t give me any of your silly nonsense,” scoffed Ma.
As usual, I had done what I thought she wanted, only to find her unimpressed.
VI
THIS HAD TURNED into a tiring day. First, I had had to dance around Petronius Longus while he showed his pique; now here was Ma. She had various complaints: primarily why I had let her favorite, Anacrites, come home from Tripolitania half dead from the wounds he acquired in the arena. Playing gladiators had been his own idea, but I would get the blame for it. Luckily, it meant he was back as a lodger at Ma’s house for further nursing, so she was not entirely upset.
“Why are you letting the poor thing go back to his job at the Palace?”
“Anacrites is grown up, Ma. His career decisions are nothing to do with me.”
“You two worked so well together.”
“We made a good pairing for the Census. That’s over now.”
“You could find other work to share.”
“Neither of us wanted to remain in partnership. I showed him up.”
“You didn’t like him, you mean.” Ma kept insisting that I did not really know Anacrites; that I had missed his fine sensitivity; that I belittled his talent. My own theory was that anyone who had tried to persuade an exotic foreign potentate to murder me should be allowed to run his own life-after being sealed in a barrel and dumped a thousand feet under the sea. Somewhere rough off Britain, preferably. “You never gave him a chance. Listen, Anacrites has his sights set on running a new branch of the security services. You could help him with that, Marcus-”
“Alternatively, I could rot in the Pontine Marshes, eaten by leeches and infected with fever. That would be a whole lot more fun.”
“And what about Petronius?” demanded Ma, changing tack to catch me out.
“Petronius belongs in the vigiles.”
“He belongs with his wife!”
“The wife who has decided that she now belongs with a potted-salad seller.”
“I blame you,” said Ma.
“Not guilty. I wouldn’t shove even Silvia into a life of pressed tripe and lettuce leaves. Petronius looks respectable, but he’s a wandering dog who never saw where his best interests lay until it was too late. Of course the mere fact that I told him all along that he was stupid need not prevent people placing the blame on me!”
“I don’t dare ask what you did to poor Famia,” Ma muttered darkly.
“He did it to himself. I brought home the remains, I’ll be a good uncle to the children, and I’ll try to look after Maia.”
“She won’t thank you.”
“No, Ma.”
My mother’s eyes narrowed, and we shared one of our rare moments of sense: “So how is she, son?”
“Too quiet. When I told her the news, she showed almost no emotion.”
“That won’t last.”
“I’m keeping an eye out for when she breaks down.”
“Just don’t you go upsetting her!”
Helena Justina, who had observed this conversation in silence from her wicker chair, holding the dog on her lap while allowing Julia Junilla to sit on her feet, smiled at me tenderly.
She was no help. What was more, I faced dinner with her parents that evening, where I would have to stand up to further inquisition about their family problems.
“You ought to be around at your sister’s instead of loafing here,” ordered my mother. I intended it; I wanted to ask Maia about the reception for Queen Berenice and how would-be little Vestal Virgins fitted into it. “Oh, don’t bother-I’ll go!”
Ma had forestalled me. The Virgins would have to wait. Petronius Longus would say virgins never do that. Still, the kind of virgins Petro joked about were never just six years old.
After Ma had gone, I waited for Helena to tell me about the Flamen Pomonalis visit. I had to pretend that I had come home right at the end of it, not that I overheard the whole interview. Helena could play up to me as a hidden accomplice if a conspiracy had been agreed on beforehand, but she hated to be spied on secretly. For one thing, she resented being supervised.
Obviously now deeply troubled, she gave me a succinct report.
“What exactly was Gaia’s story yesterday when you saw her alone before I came home, Helena?”
“She said, ‘One of my relations threatened to kill me.’ And that it had frightened her,” Helena told me, looking thoughtful. “She had got it into her head that she needed to see an informer, so I left it for you to deal with.”
“I’m starting to regret sending her away without asking more questions. I know you thought I should have gone into it more thoroughly.”
“You had your own troubles, Marcus.”
“This little girl may have worse.”
“She has grown up in a most peculiar home, that’s for certain,” said Helena with some force. “Her grandparents will have been married by a strange old formal ceremony, and as they were the Flamen Dialis and the Flaminica, even their house itself had ritual significance. No child in such a home knows a normal upbringing. The daily life of the priest and priestess is proscribed by ridiculous taboos and rituals at every turn. It leaves little time for family matters. Even the children formally take part in religious ceremonies-presumably, Gaia’s father went through all that. And now Gaia, the poor mite, is being pushed into becoming a Vestal Virgin-”
“An escape, by the sound of it!” I grinned.
“She is six,” growled Helena. She was right. That was no age to be removed from home and subjected to thirty years of sanctity.
“Do I take it, Helena, you intend to investigate?”
“I want to.” She felt wretched, which always unsettled me. “I just don’t see how to go about it yet.”
She was broody all day, not ready yet to share her further thoughts. I applied myself to clearing up goose droppings. Helena had made it clear that this was a daily rite which ancient traditions decreed could only be carried out by the Procurator of Poultry.
Dinner that evening came as a relief. The one thing to say for the noble Camilli was that, despite their financial problems, they dined well. In that, they far excelled most Roman millionaires.
Their money was tied up in land (in order to protect their right to remain on the senatorial list), but a
