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 scroll-boxes 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."
"He fooled Terentia into believing that he wanted her."
"He was rich and she was foolish?"
"You are not going to give up?"
"No."
"All right." She had decided to give me something. It might not be everything (few women do that on a first acquaintance, after all; least of all sworn virgins). "Terentia married him," said Constantia, "because he told her she was the one he had always really wanted. She was thrilled. She took him out of misplaced flattery, and a little spite perhaps-because he was the lover that her married sister had flaunted at her for years."