Metaphor and satire were equally lost on Fabius. “Well, it was just a thought.”

“Thanks.” I forced myself to beam at him. Friendliness was stupid, but I fooled myself I had now escaped.

No such luck: “And what about the guano from the Sacred Geese?” he then asked even more intensely. “Did you know that bird dung is extremely nutritious to crops? The sacred element would be a good catchall advertisement. Have you thought of selling it off for muckspreading?”

A whole vista of dangerously corrupt subcontract fiddles had opened up with my new rank. Being respectable could be very hard work if I took up every opportunity for graft that people kindly flung my way. Grinding my teeth, I leaped up to the driving seat of my cart.

I was actually whipping the mule out through the gate to the road home when we met head-on with a man on a donkey who turned out to be the missing Scaurus.

I knew it was him straightaway. As I had reckoned, he must be in his thirties, though he had the manner of somebody older. Depressingly, he had the same washed-out, defeated look as his wife. Even though he now lived in the country, he looked as if he dwindled in captivity indoors. He was lanky, with a high forehead, his thin shoulders diffidently stooped. He also had the kind of well-meaning attitude that would quickly drive me mad.

“You’re Laelius Scaurus!”

When I dragged the mule to a halt, he looked surprised that I knew him. “Are you Falco?”

There must be something about the air on the Campagna that made every woolly baa-lamb out here prone to stating the obvious. Now I was trapped. I had to interview him at a farm gate, with Ma, the baby, Nux, and Helena all looking on. He stuck on his donkey. I stayed on the cart.

“Yes, I’m Falco. Thank you for coming out here; I know you have had a busy couple of days traveling-”

“Oh, that’s all right.”

I hate people who let themselves be put upon, especially by me. I refused to feel too guilty, however. “Look, I won’t delay you long.. .” Not with my mother’s gimlet eyes boring into me, saying I had already kept her waiting enough after she had been promised she would be driven home before her leeks wilted.

To my relief, Scaurus now slowly dismounted from his donkey. I therefore hopped down too, and we two men strolled apart from the others. “You are Gaia Laelia’s father, aren’t you?” It was too much to expect this dry stick to retort with the old So my wife tells me joke. “I don’t know if you managed to see your young daughter when you were in Rome?” I said.

“I saw all my family,” he answered me gravely. As a runaway son he was about as exciting as a bowl of cold dripping.

I decided to be blunt. “I heard your aunt sent for you. Do you mind telling me why you had been summoned?”

Scaurus looked up at the sky nervously. “No, there can be no real objection.” I bet his father would have found one. “My aunt, who is widowed, wishes me to be appointed as her guardian. I am Terentia Paulla’s only surviving male relation.”

For information retrieval, usually a slog, this was quick going. Only yesterday we had heard that, on her retirement, Terentia Paulla had married. Today I learned that her husband had already passed away. It would be fun to think the man had had a seizure during the excitement of his wedding night with a Vestal-but more likely he was an old bird of ninety-three who went his way naturally. I was too delicate to ask Scaurus.

So now Terentia wanted Scaurus, her late sister’s son, to act for her? In my family solitary aunts ran their own affairs, and did it with a grip of iron. My aunt Marciana could zing beads along their wires on her abacus with a verve any money changer would envy. But the law reckoned women were incapable of managing anything except the colors of their loom wool, so legally, especially where there was property, a woman was supposed to have a male friend or relative take charge of her. A woman who had borne three children became exempt (quite rightly, scoffed most of the mothers I knew). The aunt of Laelius Scaurus, being an ex-Vestal, presumably had no children. Once again, it seemed indelicate to speculate openly.

“You don’t look too happy,” I commented.

Scaurus was frowning and looked ill at ease with my line of questioning. “I daren’t do it. I have never been emancipated from my father’s patriarchal control.”

I already knew that his family was rent by quarrels; now the aunt’ s request added one more disruptive element. “Your father is an exFlamen Dialis and he wishes to keep to the old rules. He will not change his mind?”

“No, never.”

“Could he look after your aunt instead of you? A guardian does not have to be a blood relative.”

“They hate one another,” said Scaurus, as if this was natural.

“No friendly freedmen she could turn to then?”

“That would be inappropriate.” Presumably because she had been a Vestal; some women were less squeamish about ex-slaves. A freedman had a duty to his patroness which could mean more, to be frank, than the affection felt by true relatives. Sometimes a freedman and his patroness were lovers, though of course I could not suggest that of a Vestal.

“So how did you sort it out, Scaurus?”

He hesitated. Perhaps he thought it was none of my business. “My aunt will pursue the matter. I have to return to Rome in twelve days’ time-”

“Twelve days?”

“The next time for legal action.” After Pa’s urgency in sorting out my sister Maia, I should have remembered that. What Laelius Scaurus was planning with his auntie’s connivance, however, turned out to be far more astonishing than our mere attempt to buy a business: “ An approach will be made to the Praetor to name me as sui juris-free to conduct my own affairs. If that fails, we shall petition the Emperor.”

I whistled. “Fast going! Your aunt,” I said admiringly, “seems to be more than capable, if she thought all this up.” He looked vague. I rather liked her idea: “Pleading that she must have a male adviser is legal, reasonable, and modest. If the issue goes to the Emperor, he has her interest at heart, since, as he is Pontifex Maximus, the Vestals are his direct responsibility. He must treat a retired one with heavy respect. As Pontifex, he outranks your father too.” I could see only one possible wrinkle. “You don’t suppose the Emperor will elect to act as your aunt’s guardian himself?” That would be seen as suitable, though it would not help Laelius Scaurus escape from his father’s control-and it could mean the aunt acquired a guardian who would expect to be her heir too. Many did. And Vespasian was famously grasping.

Scaurus looked as if I was rushing him. “If it happens, it happens.” A shade of humor propelled him: “The Emperor may feel that my aunt is a handful.”

“Ex-Vestals do tend to be forceful,” I sympathized. He was frowning again uneasily. Talking to him was like trying to clean cooking oil off a table. Every time I thought I was making headway the surface dried out to reveal the same old sheen. “I take it she does not frighten you?” He looked as if she did. “You’re a grown man. There cannot be too much work or anxiety in running the lady’s estates.”

“My aunt is very fierce.” Scaurus spoke woodenly. I guessed she was making a monkey of him in some way. But that was often the case when a patrician woman assigned her guardianship to some poor cipher who was then supposed to humor her.

“Bear up. Terentia Paulla must have great regard for you. Look, I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but if you remain in your father’s legal control you cannot yourself hold property. Does that mean somebody else owns the farm that you and the delightful Meldina occupy?”

“My aunt,” he confirmed, unsurprisingly. A pattern had emerged here. If I was any judge, the ex-Virgin and the ex-Flamen were enjoying a hot feud and were using poor Scaurus as one of their weapons. He was a limp foil to two tremendously strong characters.