The Vestal Vanishes Read online

  The slave-girl was a timid, skinny little thing, in an orange tunic far too big for her, but she contrived a little smile and led us shyly in. She took us down a central passage from the portico to the central atrium, a large room where there was a mosaic of a pool – in imitation of the real ones which they’re said to have in Rome – though of rather indifferent workmanship, I thought. Normally this was a place where one would wait, but today it was a hive of domestic industry: a senior slave was supervising the fuelling of lamps and the arrangement of sweet-scented herbs around the family altar in a niche, while a group of slave-boys struggled with the weight of a table and more couches for the dining room beyond.

  The folding doors were thrown open to the rear to reveal a pretty little colonnade where troops of garden slaves were also hard at work, sweeping the pathways round the court with bundles of bunched broom, and garlanding the outside shrines and statues with fresh flowers. Other servants were hurrying to and from a separate wooden building to the rear – evidently the kitchen, from which mouth-watering smells were beginning to emerge – carrying pails of water and great trays for serving food. The chief slave looked up and bowed as we walked by but none of the others acknowledged us at all, as our slave-girl led us through the atrium and into a small study to the right.

  It was not a large room and it was already full with a cupboard, boxes and a set of open shelves which must have held at least a dozen manuscripts in pots. The top of a handsome wooden table by the window-space was covered too, with opened letter-scrolls, clean bark-paper, an iron-nibbed pen or two, little containers with the elements for mixing ink, two oil-lamps, and – at the very front, as if it had recently been used – a stylus, and the kind of stamp-seal and wax that ladies (not having seal-rings) sometimes used to seal the ties on their fancy writing-blocks, though there was no such wax-tablet here that I could see.

  A folding stool had been set up beside the desk and the maidservant suggested shyly that I should sit on it, but indicated that Fiscus – to his visible dismay – should stand and wait outside the study door. No question of entertainment in the servants’ room today.

  ‘I will bring some wine and dates for you,’ the slave-girl ventured, rather timidly. ‘The mistress won’t be long.’

  ‘Thank you for your help,’ I murmured, as she turned to go. I saw the doubtful smile that briefly lit her face, and realized that she was very rarely praised. That gave me an idea. I motioned to the girl that she should shut the door. ‘You could help me further,’ I said, when this was done and I was sure that Fiscus could not overhear. ‘I am a stranger to the household and I don’t know the names. Perhaps you could tell me?’

  She misunderstood me, her thin cheeks aglow. ‘They call me Modesta, citizen.’ She seemed astonished to be addressed at all.

  I would have to do better, without alarming her. ‘Thank you, Modesta,’ I answered with a smile. ‘You have done very well. It is not your normal duty to greet visitors, I think? No doubt the usual attendants are with your master in the town?’ I was only guessing this, from her awkward manner, but it seemed that I was right.

  She blushed still brighter. ‘Exactly, citizen. I am just a sewing-slave who mends the garments here, and I do not usually have anything to do with guests. But I am not wanted to help prepare the feast so they have released me to come and show you in. You bring word from the master?’

  ‘Not exactly that.’

  ‘The mistress will be disappointed then. She sent a message to her husband, an hour or so ago, to ask him whether the banquet was likely to take place – but up to now there has been no reply.’

  ‘Yet she has gone on making preparations just the same? Even if there is no wedding for you to celebrate?’

  I’d mentioned the wedding to see what she would say, but she just shrugged her skinny shoulders. ‘My master holds a banquet every year in honour of the Imperial holiday. Everyone knows that. Lavinius’s feast is quite a famous one, and if it was cancelled the mistress is afraid that the Emperor might get to hear of it.’

  So the master was called Lavinius, I thought. That was a little victory, at least. ‘I see. So she thought it might be dangerous to cancel everything?’

  An eager nod. ‘That’s why we were hoping that you brought a message back. We should have heard by now.’

  My imagination made a sudden leap. ‘She sent a written letter – a wax tablet possibly,’ I said, thinking of the stylus I’d noticed earlier.

  The slave-girl coloured. ‘It was difficult for her. She can read, of course – I think it’s wonderful the way she understands all the inscriptions on graves and everything – but obviously she doesn’t often write. When would she have occasion to? But I heard her saying to the senior slave that she didn’t want this message to be delivered verbally: it might be overheard, and we’d have the whole town knowing what the problem was. She sealed it up and gave it to the last remaining page and told him to run the whole way in with it.’

  It seemed that I was not the only one to think discretion was the safest policy! ‘Then perhaps her letter hasn’t reached your master yet,’ I said. ‘It would not be easy for the message-boy to interrupt, if the official party was busy with the games.’

  She looked at me distressed. ‘You mean, perhaps the master doesn’t know about . . . the troubles with the wedding?’

  I remembered what Marcus had told me earlier. ‘He does know that his daughter has disappeared,’ I said. I was about to go on to explain how he, too, was trying to keep that knowledge from the general populace but the girl let out a cry of pure dismay.

  ‘Little Lavinia? She’s disappeared as well? When did this happen? How did you hear of it? Is that what you have come for – to tell us about that?’

  I was as surprised as she was. ‘Lavinia? I thought the bride was called Audelia?’

  The small face cleared a little. ‘So she is. But . . . oh, I see! You said you did not know the family!’ She saw my face and gave a little giggle of relief. ‘Lavinius Flaccus is not the father of the bride. Did you suppose he was? He is just her uncle – or at least he is the husband of my mistress, who is Audelia’s aunt.’

  ‘Aunt?’ I echoed, rather stupidly.

  ‘Her dead mother’s sister, as I understand. Both of Audelia’s parents died of plague in Rome some years ago, and Lavinius is her nearest living male relative – though she doesn’t need one as a legal guardian, of course, as other women would.’ My error had cured her of her timidity, and she was savouring the unaccustomed joy of knowing something other people didn’t know. She rolled her eyes to heaven. ‘Being a Vestal Virgin must be wonderful. She didn’t even need anyone’s consent when she chose to marry Publius – though of course Lavinius would have given it at once. He and my mistress are absolutely thrilled.’

  ‘So Audelia was to be married from her uncle’s house?’

  ‘But it is not her uncle’s. You really didn’t know? This whole estate belongs to Audelia herself. Her father left it to her when he died.’

  I was astonished. ‘Although she was a girl?’

  She nodded. ‘She was an only child. Of course, as a Vestal Virgin, she could officially have managed everything herself, but she was still living in the temple then, so she installed her uncle to take care of it for her.’ She gave her timid smile. ‘So now I’ve explained things for you, shall I fetch this fruit and wine?’

  ‘Just one more moment!’ I said, urgently. My thoughts were in a whirl. If this house belonged to Audelia herself and she was due to marry, what would happen then? Surely it would come to Publius as part of her dowry – even Vestal Virgins lose their status when they wed. So what would happen to the uncle who was living here? Would he and his family be obliged to leave? Had I stumbled on a reason why somebody should wish that the prospective bride should disappear?

  The girl was staring uncertainly at me, expecting me to speak. I cleared my throat. ‘Lavinius was content with that arrangement, I suppose? Surely – since I understand he is a wealthy man �
�� he has his own affairs? No doubt including substantial property elsewhere.’

  ‘Ooh, certainly!’ She glanced around, as if she feared the walls were listening to all this, then dropped her voice and grinned, showing a set of little pointed teeth. ‘He’s got a town house in Venta, over to the west – that’s where I was born. But this arrangement was convenient to him. He didn’t have a country villa anywhere near here – only a tract of forest and a stone-quarry – and it suited him to be a little closer to the docks.’

  That made a difference to my theory, of course. The man would clearly not be homeless after all, but . . . ‘And now he’ll lose all those advantages?’

  She stared at me. ‘Of course, you wouldn’t know. He has some land adjoining this, which my mistress – Cyra – brought him as a dowry when she wed, and they are building another house on that. It would have been competed by this time, in fact, if it wasn’t for the rain that we’ve had recently.’

  Any hopes that I had found a motive for a kidnapping had vanished more completely than the gatekeeper’s smile. But I was struck by what seemed an odd coincidence. ‘Land adjoining this? You don’t mean the farmland that I saw outside the gate?’

  She did her shy giggle at my ignorance. ‘Of course not. Though it was once all one estate. Cyra’s father left her the other portion when he died.’ She saw my puzzled face and went on patiently. ‘He was Audelia’s grandfather, of course – he had two daughters and no other heirs – and his land was subdivided between the pair of them.’

  It was the obvious explanation, when you thought of it. I was about to say as much when the door was thrust open and we were interrupted by a shrill, reproving voice.

  ‘Modesta, why are there no refreshments for our guest? Go, see to it at once. How dare you stand about! This is no time for idle gossiping! I’m sorry, citizen, the child is not accustomed to receiving guests. When Lavinius gets home, I’ll see that she is whipped!’

  FIVE

  I stood up, almost scattering the writing-implements from the tabletop. I was ready to defend my young informant but the slave-girl had already scuttled from the room. The newcomer – who, like me had left her attendant waiting at the door – swept towards me with hands outstretched.

  This was very clearly the mistress of the house. The high quality of the dark blue stola which she wore and the lighter blue embroidered over-tunic were evident even to my untutored eyes. Her purple slippers were of finest kid, the soft leather cut into a latticework of leaves which would have made my Gwellia sigh with jealousy. Yet in one respect my wife was much the more fortunate of the two.

  The woman before me was not handsome, even for her age – she was far too thin and angular for that – and there was no sign that she had ever been a beauty in her youth. Her face was lined and sallow under the whitening arsenic-powder that she wore, though she had done her best to give some colour with wine-lees on her lips and a touch of enhancing lampblack painted round the eyes. The lustrous black hair, coiled into a fashionable chignon on her head, was all too evidently a wig, and wisps of her own greying mousy locks crept out from under it. Her form was tall and bony and her long-fingered hands so wrinkled, pale and fleshless that they almost seemed translucent as she held them out to me. I noted a very handsome jet-stone in her ring as I bowed over it.

  ‘You have a message for me, citizen?’ Her face was unsmiling and, glimpsing the smirking handmaiden behind her at the entrance-way, I wondered how much of my conversation with Modesta had been overheard.

  However, it was too late to think of that. ‘You are Cyra, wife of Lavinius?’ I murmured to the ring, mentally thanking Modesta that I knew the name, at least. ‘I am the citizen Libertus. But I bring no message from your husband, I’m afraid. My patron Marcus Aurelius Septimus instructed me to come.’

  No answer.

  I straightened up and met an icy glare. ‘I was just explaining all this to your maidservant. I’m very sorry if I caused her to delay, but – far from failing to look after me – she was attempting to understand my task. Please do not punish her on my account.’

  The shrewd eyes thawed a little, but the manner was still as unbending as a sword. ‘And why should His Excellence instruct you to come here?’ she said, without the shadow of a smile.

  ‘He hopes that I can help you to find your missing niece.’

  ‘I see!’ She gestured to the female attendant that I had noticed at the door. ‘A stool here, slave. I will listen to what this man has to say.’ The girl came gliding in, and from behind the table took a second folding seat, which she placed for her mistress in what little space remained. Cyra sat down and – dismissing the slave-girl with an impatient wave – indicated that I should do the same. ‘If you can find Audelia, citizen, I will offer a private blessing-tablet to the gods for you.’

  Encouraged, I assayed a tiny joke. ‘Offering information would be more use to me,’ I said.

  She did not smile. ‘I don’t know what useful information I can give. I have not seen my niece since she was two years old and I was not a great deal older – seven or eight, perhaps.’ She saw my startled look. ‘My sister, of course, had moved away from home and was living with her husband in Londinium by then.’

  I was doing a little calculation in my head. It was not uncommon in Roman families for a daughter to be married at fourteen years of age, but even so – allowing for the birth of Audelia . . . ‘Your sister was a good deal older than you, then, I presume?’

  Some might have thought this was a compliment, but the look that Cyra gave me would have withered stone. ‘Nine years my senior. Not so very much. My mother had more children in the years between – all boys – but the women of my family are not good at sons, it seems. Only we two females survived. My father was always cursing that he had no male as heir, though to have his granddaughter accepted as Vestal Virgin was some slight consolation to him, I believe.’

  ‘Yet your father did not send his own girls to serve the hearth-goddess?’

  She gave a bitter smile. ‘He would have liked to. There is no doubt of that. But a Vestal Virgin must be perfect in all ways – physically as well as morally of course – and my sister had poor sight, the result of a spotted fever when she was very young. They would not permit her even to enter the lottery for a place.’

  ‘And you?’

  She gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘They would never have accepted me, even if I had been fair enough of face to qualify. My poor mother died in bearing me and a girl must have two living parents – both freeborn Roman citizens – to be accepted at the shrine. So you see, we were not good enough! That only encouraged my father in his view. He did not regard daughters as of much account in any case. Indeed – perhaps because I cost my mother’s life – he could hardly bear to have me in the house.’

  ‘Yet he left you property, I understand?’

  ‘How do you know that?’ She shot a glance at me. ‘Your wealthy patron told you, I suppose?’ I did not disabuse her, and she went swiftly on. ‘As it happens, that report is true – though I cannot see what concern it is of yours, or what this has to do with the disappearance of my niece.’

  ‘If Audelia was kidnapped, as her bridegroom fears,’ I said gently, ‘the wealth of her family may have much to do with it.’

  That sobered her. ‘I see. I’m sorry, citizen, I concede you have a point. Forgive me if I spoke more sharply than I meant. It was my father—’

  We were interrupted by a tapping at the door, and Modesta reappeared with the promised tray of fruit, and a jug of something that looked like watered wine – a Roman drink of which I am not particularly fond. She set this down before me and I waved aside the drink, but – not wishing to seem churlish – I selected a few grapes before I turned back to Cyra.

  ‘Your father . . . you were about to say, I think?’ I prompted, tipping back my head to bite from my grape-bunch as I’d seen Marcus do.

  ‘It was at his funeral that I last saw my sister and her family.’ She had begun to fidget wi
th the items on the desk, lining up the seal-stamp and the little pots of soot, gum and vinegar, like a rank of soldiers, as though this would somehow help her to control her evident emotion. ‘And afterwards, on the steps of the basilica, when the will was read.’

  ‘And you two girls inherited his lands?’

  She gave a rueful smile. ‘This part of it, at least – the rest of his fortune went to distant male relatives in Rome. Even then, as the younger sister, I got the smaller part, and of course my inheritance was managed for me by a male cousin, till I wed. My sister was married – as I said before – and already had a child, so she got the villa and the larger piece of land, though in return she had to swear that she would offer Audelia to the Vestal temple to be trained, if there was no son to take charge of the estate.’

  ‘I take it there was not?’ I bit into a grape.

  Cyra shook her head. ‘She bore a boy infant, three years afterwards, but it did not live and afterwards my sister did not conceive again. I told you that my family was not good with sons.’

  I could not answer for a moment. The fruit – like my hostess’s tone – was uncomfortably sour. ‘But you do have a daughter, I believe.’

  Cyra got abruptly to her feet and turned away, as if to hide the hurt and anger on her face. ‘To the disappointment of my husband, citizen. Of course I was lucky that he agreed to marry me at all – my inheritance was hardly generous, scarcely enough to make a decent dowry. For a time, I feared I’d never wed. Fortunately my guardian found Lavinius for me. He was a widower, whose first wife had been barren and he was prepared to take me so he could have an heir. I did provide one, in the end, though even then it took me many years – and many sacrifices to the gods – to bear a child that lived. I believe that otherwise he would have cut me off in a divorce. Of course, with my ill-fortune, it turned out to be a girl and now I’ve had to hand her to the Vestal temple, too.’