One Virgin Too Many

by Lindsey Davis

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

International bestselling author Lindsey Davis has done in the mystery genre what Caesar did in Gaul: came, saw, and conquered! Her innovative series put hard-boiled detective Marcus Didius Falco, “the Sam Spade of ancient Rome” (Publishers Weekly), on the mean streets of the Eternal City. Now Davis returns to AD 74 with a riveting investigation into a missing child.

Men are fools for love. And that includes Marcus Didius Falco. To please his beloved, the tough shamus has become Procurer of the Sacred Poultry (i.e., babysitter of the temple geese). It’s steady work and good pay, but Falco is soon restless. So when a beautiful child, chosen to enter the secret order of Vestal Virgins, disappears, he grabs the case. He quickly discovers that greed and religious fervor are only a thread away from madness. And a little girl’s life may be cut short, not by Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, but by a sinister human hand—unless Falco finds her in time.

Release date: April 4, 2019

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 336

Sample

I had just come home after telling my favourite sister that her husband had been eaten by a lion. I was in no mood for greeting a new client.

Some informers might welcome any chance to flourish their schedule of charges. I wanted silence, darkness, oblivion. Not much hope, since we were on the Aventine Hill, in the noisiest hour of a warm May evening, with all Rome opening up for commerce and connivance. Well if I couldn’t expect peace, at least I deserved a drink. But the child was waiting for me outside my apartment halfway down Fountain Court, and as soon as I spotted her on the balcony I guessed that refreshments would have to wait.

My girlfriend Helena was always suspicious of anything too pretty that arrived in a very short tunic. Had she made the would-be customer wait outside? Or had the smart little girl taken one look at our apartment and refused to venture indoors? She was probably linked to the luxurious carrying chair with a Medusa boss on its smoothly painted half-door that was parked below the balcony. Our meagre home might strike her as highly undesirable. I hated it myself.

On what passed for a portico, she had found herself the stool that I used for watching the world go by. As I came up the worn steps from the alley, my first acquaintance was with a pair of petite, well-manicured white feet in gold-strapped sandals, kicking disconsolately against the balcony rail. With the thought of Maia’s four children, frightened and tearful, still burning my memory, that was all the acquaintance I wanted. I had too many problems of my own.

Even so, I noticed that the little person on my stool had qualities I would once have welcomed in a client. She was female. She looked attractive, confident, clean and well dressed. She appeared to be good for a fat fee too. A profusion of bangles was clamped on her plump arms. Green glass beads with glinting spacers tangled in the four-colour braid on the neck of her finely woven tunic. Adept boudoir maids must have helped to arrange the circle of dark curls around her face and to position the gold net that pegged them in place. If she was showing a lot of leg below the tunic, that was because it was such a short tunic. She handled her smooth emerald stole with unflustered ease when it slid off her shoulders. She looked as if she assumed she could handle me as easily.

There was one problem. My ideal client, assuming Helena Justina permitted me to assist such a person nowadays, would be a pert widow aged somewhere between seventeen and twenty. I placed this little gem in a far less dangerous bracket. She was only five or six.

I leaned on the balcony newel post, a rotting timber the landlord should have replaced years ago. When I spoke my voice sounded weary even to me. ‘Hello, princess. Can’t you find the door porter to let you in?’ She stared at me scornfully, aware that grimy plebeian apartments did not possess slaves to welcome visitors. ‘When your family tutor starts to teach you about rhetoric, you will discover that that was a feeble attempt at irony. Can I help you?’

‘I was told an informer lives here.’ Her accent said she was upper class. I had worked that out. I tried not to let it prejudice me. Well, not too much. ‘If you are Falco, I want to consult you.’ It came out clear and surprisingly assured. Chin up and self-confident, the prospective client had the bright address of a star trapeze artiste. She knew what she wanted and expected to be listened to.

‘Sorry, I am not available for hire.’ Still upset by my visit to Maia, I took a sterner line than I should have done.

The client tried to win me over. She hung her head and looked down at her toes pathetically. She was accustomed to wheedling sweetmeats out of somebody. Big brown eyes begged for favours, confident of receiving what she asked. I simply gave her the hard stare of a man who had returned from imparting tragic news to people who then decided to blame him for the tragedy.

Helena appeared. She cast a frowning gaze over the cutesy wearing the bangles, then she smiled ruefully at me from behind the slatted half-door that Petronius and I had built to stop my one-year-old daughter crawling outside. Julia, my athletic heir, was now pressing her face through the slats at knee level, desperate to know what was going on even if it left her with grazed cheeks, a squashed mouth and a distorted nose. She greeted me with a wordless gurgle. Nux, my dog, leapt over the half-door, showing Julia how to escape. The client was knocked from her stool by the crazy bundle of rank fur and she shrank back while Nux performed her routine exuberant dance to celebrate my homecoming and the chance that she might now be fed.

‘This is Gaia Laelia.’ Helena gestured to the would-be client, like a seedy conjurer producing from a tarnished casket a rabbit who was known to kick. I could not quite tell whether the disapproval in her tone related to me or to the child. ‘She has some troubles regarding her family.’

I burst into bitter laughter. ‘Then don’t look to me for comfort! I have those troubles myself. Listen, Gaia, my family view me as a murderer, a wastrel, and a general all-round unreliable bastard – added to which, when I can get into my apartment I have to bath the baby, cook the dinner, and catch two baby birds who keep crapping everywhere, running under people’s feet and pecking the dog.’

On cue, a tiny bright yellow fledgling with webbed feet ran out through the gaps in the half-door. I managed to field it, wondering where the other was, then I grabbed Nux by her collar before she could lunge at it, and pushed her down the steps; she scrabbled against the backs of my legs, hoping to eat the birdie.

Bangles clonked angrily like goatbells as Gaia Laelia stamped her little gold-clad foot. She lost some of her previous air of maturity. ‘You’re horrid! I hope your duckling dies!’

‘The duckling’s a gosling,’ I informed her coolly. ‘When it grows up’ – If ever I managed to nurse it from egg to adulthood without Nux or Julia frightening it to death – ‘it will be a guardian of Rome on the Capitol. Don’t insult a creature with a lifelong sacred destiny.’

‘Oh that’s nothing,’ scoffed the angry little madam. ‘Lots of people have destinies –’ She stopped.

‘Well?’ I enquired patiently.

‘I am not allowed to say.’

Sometimes a secret persuades you to take the job. Today mysteries held no charm for me. The terrible afternoon that I had just spent at my sister’s had killed any curiosity.

‘Why have you got it here, anyway?’ demanded Gaia, nodding at the gosling.

Despite my depression, I tried to sound proud. ‘I am the Procurator of Poultry for the Senate and People of Rome.’

My new job. I had only had it a day. It was still unfamiliar – but I already knew that it was not what I would have chosen for myself.

‘Flunkey for Feathers,’ giggled Helena from inside the door. She thought it was hilarious.

Gaia was dismissive too: ‘That sounds like a title you made up.’

‘No, the Emperor invented it, the clever old boy.’

Vespasian had wanted me in a position which would look like a reward but which would not cost him much in salary. He thought this up while I was in North Africa. At his summons I had sailed all the way home from Tripolitania, eagerly hoping for position and influence. Geese were what the imperial joker inflicted on me instead. And yes, I had been awarded the augurs’ Sacred Chickens too. Life stinks.

Gaia, who knew how to be persistent, still wanted me to explain why the yellow bird was living in my house. ‘Why have you got it here?’

‘Upon receipt of my honoured post, Gaia Laelia, I rushed to inspect my charges. Juno’s geese are not supposed to hatch their own eggs on the Capitol – their offspring are normally fostered under some wormy hens on a farm. Two goslings who didn’t know the system had hatched out – and on arrival at the Temple of Juno Moneta I found the duty priest about to wring their sacred little necks.’

‘Why?’

‘Somebody complained. The sight of scampering goslings had annoyed some ancient retired old Flamen Dialis.’ The Flamen Dialis was the Chief Priest of Jupiter, top greaser to the top god in the great Olympian Triad. This menace who loathed fledglings must be a humourless traditionalist of the worst type.

Maybe he had slipped on their mess, which the goslings frequently deposited in large quantities. You can imagine the problems we now had at home.

Gaia blinked. ‘You must not upset the Flamen!’ she commented, in a rather strange tone.

‘I shall treat this Flamen as he deserves.’ I had managed not to meet him face to face; I just heard his moans from a harassed acolyte. I meant to avoid him. Otherwise, I would end up telling some powerful bastard where he could shove his wand of office. As a state procurator, I was no longer free to do that.

‘He is very important,’ the girlie insisted. She seemed nervous of something. It was obvious the Flamen thought too much of himself. I hate members of ancient priesthoods, with their snobbery and ridiculous taboos. Most of all I hate their undercover influence in Rome.

‘You speak as if you know him, Gaia!’ I was being satirical.

That was when she floored me: ‘If his name is Laelius Numentinus, he’s my grandfather.’

My heart sank. This was serious. Tangling with some hidebound king of the cult priesthoods over a couple of ill-placed goslings was a bad enough start to my new post, without him finding out his darling grandchild had approached me, wanting me to act for her. I could see Helena raising her eyebrows and wincing with alarm. Time to get out of this.

‘Right. How do you come to be here, Gaia? Who told you about me?’

‘I met somebody yesterday who said that you help people.’

‘Olympus! Who made that wild claim?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Who knows you are here?’ asked Helena in a concerned voice.

‘Nobody.’

‘Don’t leave home without telling people where you are going,’ I rebuked the child. ‘Where do you live? Is it far?’

‘No.’

From indoors came a sudden loud cry from Julia. She had crawled away and disappeared, but was now in some urgent trouble. Helena hesitated, then went to her quickly in case the crisis involved hot water or sharp objects.

There was nothing that a child of six could need from an informer. I dealt with divorce and financial double-dealing; art theft; political scandal; lost heirs and missing lovers; unexplained deaths.

‘Look, I work for grown-ups, Gaia – and you ought to go home before your mother misses you. Is that your transport in the street?’

The child looked less sure of herself and seemed willing to descend to the elaborate conveyance that I had seen waiting below. Automatically I started wondering. A rich and richly spoiled infant, borrowing Mama’s fine litter and bearers. Did this happen often? And did Mama know that Gaia had pinched the litter today? Where was Mama? Where was the nursemaid Gaia ought to have attached to her even inside the family home, let alone when she left it? Where, thought the father in me without much hope of a serious answer, was Gaia’s anxiety-burdened Papa?

‘Nobody listens to me,’ she commented. From most children of her age it would have been petulance; from this one it sounded simply resigned. She was too young to be so certain that she did not count.

I relented. ‘All right. Do you want to tell me quickly what you came for?’

She had lost faith. Assuming she ever had any in me. ‘No,’ said Gaia.

I was several steps down from her but I could still look her in the eye. Her young age would have been a novelty if I had been prepared to take her commission – but my time for pointless risks was past. With my new post from Vespasian, ludicrous though it was, my social status had improved dramatically; I could no longer indulge in eccentric decisions.

I managed to find the patience you are supposed to lavish on a child. ‘We all have quarrels with our relatives, Gaia. Sometimes it matters, but mostly it comes to nothing. When you calm down, and when whoever offended you has had time to do the same, just apologise quietly.’

‘I haven’t done anything to apologise for!’

‘Neither have I, Gaia – but take my word, with your family, it’s best just to give in.’

She marched past me, head in the air. Encumbered by Nux and the gosling, I could only stand aside. But I leaned over the railing as she reached street level, and within hearing of the litter-bearers (who ought to have known better than to bring her) I ordered her in a fatherly manner to go straight home.

Helena Justina came out to me, as I was watching the litter move off. She regarded me with her fine brown eyes, eyes full of quiet intelligence and only half-hidden mockery. I straightened up, stroking the gosling. It let out a loud, appealing squeak at which Helena humphed. I doubted that I impressed my beloved too much either.

‘You let her go, Marcus?’

‘She decided of her own accord.’ Helena obviously knew something. She was looking concerned. Immediately I regretted my rebuff. ‘So what wonderful job from this Gaia have I just cruelly turned down?’

‘Didn’t she tell you? She thinks her family want to kill her,’ said Helena.

‘Oh that’s all right then. I was worried it might have been a real emergency.’

Helena raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t believe it?’

‘Granddaughter of a chief priest of Jupiter? That would be a high-profile scandal and no mistake.’ I sighed. The litter had already vanished, and there was nothing I could do now. ‘She’ll get used to it. My family feel like that about me most of the time.’

Let’s go back a day and get things straight.

Helena and I had just returned from Tripolitania. It was a rushed sea trip, hastily taken after Famia’s ghastly death and funeral. My first task after the journey had to be breaking the bad news to my sister. She must have expected the worst from her husband, but his being eaten by a lion in the arena would be more than even Maia could have foreseen.

I needed to hurry, because I wanted to tell Maia quietly myself. Since we had brought back with us my partner Anacrites, who was lodging with my mother, Ma was bound to discover what had happened pretty quickly. My sister would never forgive me if anyone else heard the news before she did. Anacrites had promised to maintain silence on the subject for as long as he could, but Ma was notorious for worming out secrets. Anyway, I had never trusted Anacrites.

Burdened by my responsibilities, I rushed off to my sister’s house immediately we arrived in Rome. Maia was out.

All I could do then was slink back home, hoping I could find her later. As it turned out, Anacrites was removed from any danger of gossiping with Ma because both he and I were sent messages summoning us to a meeting on the Palatine to consider the Census results. By coincidence, I later discovered that Maia herself was missing from home because she too was attending a function with a royal connection – not that I would ever have expected it from my soundly republican sister – though her fancy do was at the Golden House on the other side of the Forum, whereas we went in search of the narrow pleasures of bureaucracy at the old imperial offices in the Palace of the Claudian Caesars.

The reception that Maia was attending would be relevant to all that happened subsequently. It would have been handy for me to have warned her to do some eavesdropping. Still, you rarely know that in advance.

* * *

For once, I was visiting Vespasian in full confidence that he had nothing to complain about.

I had worked on the Census for the best part of a year. It was my most lucrative employment ever and I had myself identified the opportunity. Anacrites, previously the Emperor’s Chief Spy, had been my temporary partner. This had proved an oddly successful arrangement – given that he had once tried to have me killed, and that I had always hated his profession in general and him in particular. We had been an excellent team, screwing cash out of lying taxpayers. His meanness complemented my scepticism. He took a filthy line with the feeble; I charmed the tough. The Secretariat we reported to, not realising how good we would be, had promised us a substantial percentage of all underpayments we identified. Since we knew the Census had a short time-scale, we had worked flat out. Laeta, our contact, tried to renege as usual, but we now possessed a scroll confirming that Vespasian loved what we had done for him, and that we were rich.

Somehow, at the end of our commission Anacrites and I had ended up without killing each other. Even so, he had done his best to come to a sticky end. In Tripolitania, the idiot had managed to get himself nearly killed in the arena. Fighting as a gladiator for real would damn him to social disgrace and harsh legal penalties if anyone in Rome ever found out. When he recovered from his wounds, he had to face life knowing I had acquired a permanent hold over him.

He had reached the meeting ahead of me. As soon as I entered the high, vaulted audience chamber, I was annoyed to see his pale face. His pallor was natural, but there were bandages under the long sleeves of his tunic and I, in the know, could see him holding his body very carefully. He was still in pain. That cheered me up.

He knew I was supposed to be visiting Maia that day. Had I missed the palace messenger, I wondered whether dear Anacrites would have kept me in the dark about this meeting.

I grinned at him. He never knew how to take that.

I made no effort to join him across the room. He had plonked himself alongside Claudius Laeta, the papyrus bug we had outflanked over our fee scale. Now our Census work was over, Anacrites wanted to edge himself back into his old job. Throughout this meeting, he stuck close to Laeta; they continually exchanged little pleasantries in an undertone. In reality, they were locked in a struggle for the same top position. Outside the individual offices where they plotted against one another, they put on an urbane act as best friends. But if either ever followed the other down a dark alley, one would be found dead in the gutter next day. Fortunately perhaps, palaces tend to be well lit.

The meeting room had been set out in a square with cushioned thrones for the Emperor and his son Titus, the two official Censors; there were scroll-armed seats which meant we were expecting senators, and hard stools for the lower orders. Scribes lined the walls, standing up. Most of the large assembly had bald heads and bad eyesight. Until Vespasian came in with Titus, who was in his thirties, Anacrites, Laeta and myself stood out, younger even than the secretaries on the sidelines. We were amongst hard-bitten Treasury of Saturn types, the wizened mixtures of priestliness and money-collecting who had now gleefully counted the Census revenue into ironbound strongboxes in the basement of their temple. Jostling them were envoys of senatorial status who had been sent to the provinces to extract taxes from the loyal members of the Empire overseas who had so gratefully accepted Roman rule and so reluctantly agreed to pay for it.

Later in his reign Vespasian openly called these envoys his ‘sponges’, placed abroad to soak up money for him, with the implication that he did not care too much what methods they used. No doubt they had balanced their natural inclinations to use bullying and brutality against his clear wish to be known as a ‘good’ emperor.

I knew one of the envoys – Rutilius Gallicus, assigned to arbitrate in a land dispute between Lepcis Magna and Oea. I met him out there. Somehow, between his first conversation with me and his departure he augmented his title until he was no longer a mere desert land surveyor but the Emperor’s special agent of the Census in Tripolitania. Far be it from me to suspect this noble fellow of engineering his remit. Obviously, as an ex-consul, he was well in at the Palace. In Lepcis, we had enjoyed the close social bonds of two Romans trapped far from home amongst tricky foreigners, but now I felt myself starting to regard him cautiously. He was more influential than I had previously realised. I guessed his rise had nowhere reached its zenith. He could be a friend – but I would not bank on it.

I saluted him unobtrusively; Rutilius nodded back. He was sitting quietly, not attached to any particular group. Knowing that he came to Rome as a first generation senator from Augusta Taurinorum in the despised north of Italy, I sensed that he carried the outsider’s whiff. I reckoned it did not bother him.

Being a new man, sneered at by the patrician class, no longer served as a handicap since Vespasian, the ultimate rustic upstart whom nobody had ever taken seriously, had surprised the world and made himself Emperor. He now entered the chamber with the air of a curious sightseer, but he went straight to his throne. He wore the purple on his solid frame with visible enjoyment and without making any effort he dominated the room. The old man took his place centrally, a sturdy figure, forehead lined as if with a lifetime’s effort. That was deceptive. Satirists could make sport with his constipated appearance but he had Rome and the whole Establishment just where he wanted them, and his grim smile said that he knew it.

At his side eventually was Titus, similarly thickset but half his father’s age and twice as cheerful. He delayed taking his seat as he gave affable greetings to those who had only recently returned to Rome from the provinces. Titus had a reputation as a nice soft-hearted darling – always a sign of a nasty bastard who could be bloody dangerous. He was providing the new Flavian court with vigour and talent – and with Queen Berenice of Judaea, an exotic beauty ten years his senior who, having failed to entrap Vespasian, had turned her blowsy charms on the next-best thing. After only one day back in the Forum, I already knew that the hot news was that she had recently followed her handsome plaything to Rome.

Titus himself was supposed to be overjoyed by this dubious good fortune, but I was damned sure Vespasian would handle it. The father had built his imperial claim on high-minded traditional values; a would-be empress with a history of incest and interference in politics could never make a suitable portrait for the next young Caesar’s bedroom wall, not even if she sat for the artist sucking a stylus and looking like a stay-at-home virgin whose only thoughts were of kitchen inventories. Somebody should tell her: Berenice would get the push.

Titus, friendly fellow, smiled benignly when he noticed me. Vespasian noticed Titus smiling and scowled. Being a realist, I preferred the scowl.

The details of the ensuing meeting are probably subject to official rules for secrecy. The results are fully visible anyway. At the start of his reign, Vespasian had announced he needed four hundred million sesterces to put Rome on its feet. Shortly after concluding the Census, he was building and rebuilding on every plot in sight, with the astonishing Flavian Amphitheatre at the end of the Forum to set the seal on his achievements. That he achieved his huge fiscal target is hardly news.

Even with a chairman who hated dawdling and the smartest officials in the world to steer the agenda through, the budget for an empire is extensive. It took us four hours to appraise all the figures.

Vespasian never appeared to notice that he had grounds for extreme satisfaction with his new funds, though Titus raised complimentary eyebrows a couple of times. Even the Treasury men looked relaxed, which was unheard of. Eventually the Emperor made a short, surprisingly gracious speech thanking everyone for their efforts, then he was gone, followed by Titus.

The meeting was over, and I would have been out of there at a fast march had not a spruce slave shuffled Anacrites and me into a sideroom unexpectedly. There we kicked our heels and sweated amongst a group of nervous senators until we were shunted on to a private interview with Vespasian. He should have been lying down for a nap like a respectable pensioner; instead, he was still hard at work. We finally grasped that rewards were being handed out.

We had ended up in a much smaller throne room. Titus was missing, but as we had joked during our wait, Titus looked tired; Berenice must be sapping his strength. Vespasian used both his sons as public props but that was to accustom the public to their pink little imperial faces for when he passed on; he never really needed a sidekick. He could certainly manage a few brisk thanks for a pair of low characters like Anacrites and me.

Vespasian made it seem as if he was genuinely grateful. In return, he said, he was adding both our names to the equestrian list. This came out so casually I nearly missed it. I had been watching a woodlouse scurry along a painted dado and only woke up when I heard Anacrites express an unpleasantly suave murmur of gratitude.

To be bumped up to the middle rank required land holdings worth four hundred thousand sesterces. Do not imagine our trusty old emperor was donating the collateral. He pointed out with a snort that we had screwed so much money from him in fees that he expected us to put aside the qualifying amount; he just bestowed on us the formal right to wear the middle rank’s gold ring. There was no ceremony; that would have required gold rings for Vespasian to hand out. He of course preferred people to buy their own. I did not intend wearing one. Where I lived, some thief would steal it the first time I went out.

In order to make a distinction between me, the freeborn conniver, and Anacrites, a publicly employed ex-slave, Vespasian then told Anacrites that he was still valued in intelligence work. I, on the other hand, was honoured with the kind of horrible sinecure that the middle ranks traditionally crave. While working on the Census, I had prevented a fatal accident to the Sacred Geese on the Capitol. As a reward, Vespasian had created for me the post of Procurator of Poultry for the Senate and People of Rome.

‘Thanks,’ I said. Smarming was expected.

‘You deserve it,’ grinned the Emperor. The job was rubbish, we both knew that. A snob might be thrilled to be associated with the great temples on the Capitol, but I hated the idea.

‘Congratulations,’ smirked Anacrites. In case he planned to annoy me any more, and to remind him I could ruin him, I gave him the traditional gladiators’ salute. He fell silent. I let it go there; he was already enough of an enemy.

‘Was I recommended for this position by some kind friend, Caesar?’ Antonia Caenis, the Emperor’s long-term mistress, had before her death given me a hint that she might ask him to look again at my prospects. His gaze was direct. After forty or fifty years of respecting Antonia Caenis, past advice from her would always count with Vespasian.

‘I know your worth, Falco.’ Sometimes I wondered whether he ever remembered that I held some damning evidence against his son Domitian. I had never yet tried blackmail, though they knew I could.

‘Thanks, Caesar!’

‘You will go on to worthy things.’

I was hamstrung, and we both knew it.

Anacrites and I walked from the Palace together in silence.

For him, there was probably little change in store. He was expected to continue his career in state service, simply enhanced by his new rank. It might do him some good materially. I had always suspected that after a career in spying Anacrites had already stashed away a secret fortune. He owned a villa in Campania, for one thing. I had learned of its existence from Momus, a carefully cultivated nark.

Anacrites never discussed his origins, but he was undoubtedly an ex-slave; even a freedman at the Palace only acquired a luxury villa legitimately as a reward for an exceptional lifetime’s service. I had never worked out his age, but Anacrites was not looking at retirement yet; he was vigorous enough to have survived a head wound that ought to have finished him, he had quite a few teeth left and most of his sleeked-back black hair. Well, the other way Palace slaves collected pretty things was straightforward: bribery. Now he was in the middle rank, he would expect the bribes to be bigger.

We parted still in silence. He was not the type to offer a celebratory drink. I could never have swallowed it.

For me, the future looked dreary. I was freeborn, but plebeian. Today I had risen above generations of rascally Didii – to what? To being a rascal who had lost his natural place in life.

I left the Palace, exhausted and gloomy, knowing that I now had to explain my terrible fate to Helena Justina. Her fate too: a senator’s daughter, she had left her patrician home for the thrills and the risks of living with a low-down rogue. Helena might seem reserved, but she wa. . .