One Virgin Too Many

by Lindsey Davis

  We dropped it. I put my hand over the light.

  Nothing.

  Sucking at my scorched palm, I listened to the nighttime sounds of Rome. Distant voices; faint wafts of desultory flute music; dear gods, an owl. More likely some gang’s watchman, giving a signal to his mates. Perhaps early notice that their mark was now approaching; perhaps a warning about the vigiles.

  Already wheels were rumbling on all the roads into town. The rumpus would grow louder as huge delivery wagons strove against one another in the rush to bring provisions in. Heavy goods and fresh produce; delicacies and household wares; marble and timber; baskets and amphorae; rich men’s carriages. At least the racket might cover us if we had any more accidents.

  Even though it was early June, the temperature had dropped with the coming of darkness. Cool air chilled my upturned face. Time to move.

  Aelianus touched my arm; I breathed agreement. Together we lifted the ladder and transported it to beside the shrine. I bundled my toga and slung it over my shoulder. A well-sculpted haughty goddess watched me disapprovingly. Aelianus grinned and covered her up with his discarded cloak. He was worse than me.

  I shinned up. The wall was too high. I might jump down on the other side with only mild sprains to hamper me, but I would have no means of escape. Cursing, I descended and whispered that we would have to bring another ladder, raise it, then I would sit astride the wall and heave the second one over to the other side. Professional roofers do it every day. I wished I had brought one with me to manage this.

  It took a long time. Maneuvering ladders is no joke. People who have never tried it just have no idea. Builders’ ladders are crude—rough, thin trees as side members, with branches nailed too far apart to climb up easily—and they tear your hands to shreds if you slip. If you want to test your ingenuity, brute strength, and calmness under pressure, try moving ladders in the dark, in silence, while thinking at every moment that your hour has come.

  “Well done, Aulus. I’m going over. If you hear anybody coming, better remove the outside ladder. And keep quiet if a lot of lictors rush out here. Those layabouts don’t care a damn where they poke their rods.”

  “What do I do if anything goes wrong?”

  “Run for your life.”

  He was Helena’s precious brother. I should have told him to go home.

  XLII

  NOBODY SEEMED TO be about.

  I had descended into a corner of the garden area. Nearby, on the inner side of the gate, a handy lantern dangled from a hook. It was probably waiting for the Virgin who was on duty that night with responsibility for checking the Sacred Fire. I borrowed it.

  If the Sacred Fire is ever allowed to go out due to inattention by one of the Virgins, the culprit is stripped and whipped by the Pontifex Maximus (in the dark, and from behind a modesty screen), then the Pontifex has to rekindle the flame using friction on fruitwood bark. Quite a performance. The Virgins are holy women who respect their ancient duties—but I had no doubt that if the flame should waver and dim at night, when no one was there as a witness, the duty Vestal just relit the embers from her lamp. Nervous that it might be missed, I decided to take it back.

  I set off exploring, and within minutes my foot dropped into nothing, then I found myself plunged up to my knee in the cold water of an ornamental pool. I managed not to yell. With an effort I pulled out my sopping wet boot, shook off some strands of pondweed, and squelched back for the lamp.

  Shielding the light, I picked my way around from the gate, this time along the ground floor of a long, quiet colonnade. The modest accommodation that had been destroyed in Nero’s Great Fire was being remodeled, though there seemed to be the usual hitches, for the work was not advanced. Under the damp, dark lee of the Palatine Hill, the charred bulk of the residence was hung with scaffolding. Filthy with fine dust, the colonnades had their upper columns missing altogether, the lower ones currently replaced by temporary braces. Staircases were now just gaping holes in the masonry.

  At the far end I found the skeleton of a large new hall under construction, approached by temporary framework steps, and apparently due to be flanked by six small rooms; it would represent a king’s royal hut and six cells for his maidenly daughters, but even had it been complete the modern Virgins would never have slept here. Without doubt, their house contained numerous rooms for attendants—and fancy suites for each of them.

  It was still quiet. Maybe the ladies all liked early nights. Their staff probably slipped out to taverns over towards the Circus Maximus if they wanted to carouse.

  I retraced my steps, this time in the colonnade of the block that ran alongside the Via Nova. Here, there were more signs of occupation. I gently tested doors and windows, but they were all secure. Bound to be. Not so much to keep flighty Virgins in, as to keep out light-fingered construction workers who might purloin their jewelry.

  Libel, Falco. Vestal Virgins never adorn themselves with necklaces.

  CRINGING DISCLAIMER: Any imputation of Vestals’ vanity is retracted on legal advice.

  I gathered they did wash their smalls: hearing a woman’s voice humming, I walked out into the garden and peered up at the building above me. Light broke in a thin ray from an upper-story window where the shutters were open—and where a string such as you may see any day above any Aventine backstreet hung, with long white ribbons drying in the night air. What you do not normally spot on washing lines are ribbons like the hair ornaments that the Vestals wear.

  The tune being hummed was too cheerful to be hymnal, but I was contemplating a big surprise for one of the Empire’s most serious, stately women, who had absolutely no reason to welcome an intruder on her windowsill. The risk was hers too. A Virgin suspected of breaking her vow of chastity faced death. A presumed lover would be stoned; she would be buried alive.

  I was in a predicament, but the whole adventure was crazy. There was no going back. I tried standing in the shadows and letting out a low whistle to see what it produced, but the lighthearted hum just continued as before. I went and fetched the ladder which had brought me down over this side of the wall. I brought my toga too, though it was hardly a disguise.

  The ladder was a very long one; upright, it swayed dangerously overhead. Inching the heavy contraption into place, I strained to make no sound as I lodged it carefully below the lit window. It took a few difficult moments to find a level place to stand it. Once I could let go, I collapsed against the rungs, breathing throatily. My heart raced. This certainly was the most stupid thing I had ever done.

  I had climbed halfway up before disaster struck. My boot, still slimy from the pool, slipped on a rung. I managed to regain my footing, but made too much noise. I froze and clung on, motionless.

  I thought all was well, until I heard the window open wider. Light flooded down. Looking up, I made out a woman’s shape, with the stiff, high diadem all Vestals wore. I heard a stifled sound, which in other circumstances might have been giggling. Then a voice whispered facetiously, “Oh darling, I thought you would never come!”

  Joking. Well, I hoped she was.

  Anyway, I had no time to argue, as the revered Constantia reached down with both arms, grabbed me by the back of my tunic, hauled me up over the windowsill, and dragged me inside.

  XLIII

  “NICE PLACE!”

  “Thank you.”

  “Constantia?” Vestals are generally known by only one name, though she presumably had two.

  “That’s me. And you?”

  I tried to inject some formality. “Marcus Didius Falco.”

  “Oh, Falco! I have been hearing about you. You’re a chancer! What would you have done if I had screamed?”

  “Pretended I was a shutter-painter on night work, and yelled very loud that it was you who had attacked me.”

  “Well, it might have worked.”

  “I won’t test the theory. I hoped it was you up here. I’ve been standing in the garden trying to tell if the sweet soprano tones I could hear were the same ones that
grunted ‘Balls!’ this morning.”

  “Oh, you heard that,” she commented, matter-of-factly. “Have the couch. Do excuse me while I slip off the uniform.”

  Her slim fingers were unfastening the Hercules knot beneath her white-clad bosom. I gulped. For one startling moment, I thought I was about to be treated to a live impersonation of Aphrodite Undressing for the Bath. But as well as the spacious boudoir I had tumbled into, Constantia apparently had been allocated a dressing room where any slipping off of her white robes could be done decently. She saw me panic, though. Throwing me a wink, she vanished into the inner cubicle. “Sit tight. Don’t you go away!”

  This wasn’t the time for a brave boy to start crying for his mother. I perched on the couch as ordered. There was only one. I wondered where Constantia intended to sit when she came back.

  It was an elegant piece of furniture in some exotic foreign hardwood, padded and covered with fine-woven wool. My boots discovered a matching footstool. My elbow sank sideways into a tasseled cylindrical bolster. Looking around, I saw that the room was a model of taste. Red and black architectural wall paintings, with roundels depicting simple urns. Light bronze tripods and lampstands. Discreet deerskin rugs. It was equipped with scrollboxes that probably held romantic Greek novels. Well, you could not expect the girl to sit in here night after night, playing endless games of Soldiers against herself.

  In no time I was rejoined by my hostess. I took a good look, while pretending not to. She knew I was inspecting her.

  Closer to twenty than thirty, she was now looking a stunner in a flowing gown of mobile ocher material and dainty gold mules which showed her toes. Gripped under one arm were a decorated hand mirror and what looked like a cosmetics box. She had discarded the diadem and, as we talked, she untied various ribbons and shook out her traditionally plaited braids until her hair flowed loose. Gleaming in the lamplight, it was a rich chestnut, the long locks probably never cut since she first came to the Vestals’ House.

  Bending up one small foot under her, she dropped onto the couch at the other end, with space between us. She balanced the mirror on her knee. Then she proceeded to light a small brazier, using the wick in one of the lamps.

  “I see you’re used to handling fire!”

  Despite my pang of disquiet, the brazier was for neither witchcraft nor anything religious; it was to heat her curling iron. So there I was, illegally inside the House of the Vestals, watching a very much off-duty Virgin while she dipped her comb in a basin of water and restyled her hair.

  “Yes, we are allowed relaxation,” she commented, at my bemused look. Her hands twisted the hot iron with great competence. “Our free time is entirely our own. Nobody bothers us, so long as the Chief Vestal never notices any loud music or perfumes that have disturbingly erotic Parthian undernotes.”

  “So the simple, celibate life doesn’t bother you?”

  Her eyes, which were midbrown and well set, glinted. “It has a few disadvantages.”

  “Not many visitors?”

  “You’re my first, Falco!”

  “Lucky me. My friend Petronius reckons all the Virgins must be lesbians.”

  “Some may be.” Not this one, I decided.

  “Or that really they have secret lovers scampering in and out all night.”

  “Some may do.” She gave little away, but added some more suggestions: “Or that we are all crabby, dried-up frights who want to dispossess men—or that simplicity of life means black teeth and body smells?”

  “Yes, I believe those are other popular theories.”

  “From time to time I expect they all apply. Why generalize? Any group of six people would contain all kinds of characters. What do you think, Falco?”

  I thought a lot that I was not prepared to say. For instance, I liked the way she had made cheeky little ringlets to hang in front of her ears. “You sound as if you were born on the wrong side of the Sacred Way. A token plebeian, right?”

  Constantia shrugged. Her ringlets bobbed. Her accent was in fact perfectly neutral, but of course she would have been trained to speak acceptably. It was her outspoken, sprightly attitude that had given her away. “You feel I don’t fit in?” I nodded. “Wrong, Falco. This is my career, and I am proud of it. Oh, I never expect to become Chief Vestal, but you won’t find me skimping the duties or dishonoring the gods.”

  “No doubt your salt cakes are impeccable.”

  “Exactly. I am planning to open a cake stall after I retire.”

  “I would have thought you would take the imperial dowry and get married?”

  Constantia looked at me sideways as she twirled a lock of hair free from the iron. “That will depend on what is on offer at the time!”

  I thought not many men would feel up to taking on this lively character.

  *

  Applying her curler to the heat again, she wiped off smuts on a soft cloth, then wound a new strand of hair around the metal bar.

  “If you have the iron too hot, all your hair will snap off.” She gave me a look that made me retract. “Well, so I have been told. I assume you have to be braided up again demurely tomorrow to attend the lottery?” Constantia paused, realizing that this was what I had come to talk about. I handed her the mirror so she could check the progress of her coiffure. “I have been searching for the lost child.”

  “But you failed to find her.” It was a blank statement, one that put me in my place.

  “Ah, you know? I suppose as the virginal liaison point, you have been receiving hourly reports?”

  “As well as almost hourly demands to discuss the issue with your girlfriend.” That came out as somewhat critical.

  “Helena Justina is extremely persistent.”

  “Now she has sent you?”

  “No, she knows nothing about it. I intrude on women on my own account.”

  “She will find out.”

  “I shall tell her myself.”

  “Will she be annoyed?”

  “Why? She knows how much I desperately need to speak to you about Gaia Laelia. I climbed in the window after reasonable requests failed, not because I was looking for a cheap thrill.”

  “More expensive than cheap, if you are caught, Falco.”

  “Don’t I know it! So why is there this obsessive secrecy about the high-flown Laelii?”

  Constantia put aside her feminine dib-dabs and leaned towards me earnestly. Her gown was modestly pinned, yet I felt an odd quirk of alarm just at seeing a Virgin’s pale bare neck above the gown’s loose dark yellow folds. “Never mind why, Falco.”

  I was annoyed. She ignored it. “All right; what about Gaia? I know she talked to you about becoming a Virgin—first at the reception for the Queen of Judaea. Her mother tells me she was brought back afterwards too?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what worries did she want to talk about?”

  “Only being a Virgin. I thought the dear little thing had a wonderful enquiring attitude. A most promising candidate. She consulted me about all the rituals. Naturally, I was as helpful as I could be.”

  “I am consulting you now,” I growled. “And you are not helping me.”

  “Oh dear!” Her pout would not have disgraced any slightly tight tavern waitress flirting with a customer.

  I restrained my annoyance. “Gaia told me somebody in her family wanted to kill her. Jupiter, what in Olympus will it take to make anyone in authority listen and regard this as serious?”

  “Nothing. She told me the same. I thought it was the truth.”

  I leaned back on the couch, finally feeling that some mad nightmare might be ending. I breathed slowly. My troubles were not over, however. The Vestal in whose private apartment I was dallying reached over and stroked my forehead, then offered me wine.

  She had a Syrian glass jug on a chased tray. She cannot have known I was coming to see her; it must be her regular nightcap. There was only one goblet. We agreed it would be unwise to send out for another one.

  “What do you think?
” she asked courteously as I sipped. “I don’t know the name, but I am promised it is good.”

  “Very nice.” I did not recognize its vintage either, but whatever the grape and origin, it was more than acceptable. I would like to have tried it on Petro. In fact, I would have liked to show Petro this whole situation and watch him shoot off into a catalogue of howling incredulity. “A gift from an admirer?”

  “Honoring Vesta.”

  “Very devout. So what did Gaia say?” I refused to be sidetracked. “Which of them has threatened her?”

  “Nobody will harm her. She is in no danger, Falco.”

  “You know something!”

  “I know she is now safe from anyone in her family. But I cannot say where she is. Nobody knows that. You have to discover the answer.”

  “Why should I?” My temper was up now. “I have already spent all day on this. I am exhausted, and baffled by the hindrances put in my way. What is the point? If I knew what Gaia was afraid of, I could find her more easily.”

  “I don’t think so, Falco.”

  The girl continued plying me with wine, but I knew that old trick. Perhaps she sensed it, because she took the goblet from me and had a drink herself.

  I grabbed the goblet back, then set it down smartly on its tray. “Concentrate! I thought Gaia might have been troubled by the evil ways of nasty ‘Uncle Tiberius.’ Did she mention him?”

  “Oh, he was a filthy article,” Constantia admitted immediately.

  “Then whyever would a retired Vestal like Terentia Paulla marry him?”

  “Because he was rich?”

  “A rich bastard.”