“Oh Uncle Marcus, don’t be so silly!”

“Cloelia, I don’t mind if you believe state lotteries are fixed, but please don’t tell anyone that I said so.”

“Don’t worry. Marius and I have decided we won’t ever tell anyone we even know you.”

“You think Uncle Marcus is a scamp?” asked Helena, pretending to be shocked. Cloelia looked prim. “You and Gaia Laelia became quite friendly, didn’t you?”

A scornful expression crossed my niece’s face. “Not really. She is only six!”

An easy one to miscalculate. For adults the little girls were a single group. But they ranged in age between six and ten, and within the hierarchies of childhood rolled enormous gulfs.

“But you did talk to her?” Helena asked.

“She was lonely. Once we could all see she had been singled out, none of the other girls would speak to her. Of course,” said Cloelia, “after they thought about it, there were some who would have swarmed all over her. She could have been very popular. But then their mothers got sniffy and grabbed their precious darlings close to them.”

“Not your mother?”

“I dodged her.”

Helena and I exchanged a quick glance. We had slowed our pace through the Forum Boarium, but we were now passing the Basilica Julia, fighting our way through the crowds that always milled on the steps in a haze of overused hair pomade.

I decided to be frank. “Cloelia, as your mother has probably told you, something bad may have happened to little Gaia, and what she talked about to you may help me help her.”

“We just played at being Vestal Virgins.” Cloelia had been ready for me. “All she wanted to do was pretend to be fetching water from the Spring of Egeria and sprinkling it in the temple like the Virgins have to do. She just kept on playing the same game. I got really bored.”

“Before that, didn’t she throw a little tantrum when she was sitting on the Queen’s lap?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t hear what it was about?”

“No.”

“Did you think Gaia was happy to be put forward as a Virgin?”

“I suppose so.”

“Did she say anything to you about her family?”

“Oh, she wanted me to know how important they all were.” I waited. Cloelia considered. “I don’t think they have much fun. When my mother came to see if I was all right, Gaia saw her wink at me. Gaia seemed very surprised a mother would do that.”

“Yes, I met her own mother. She is very serious. I don’t suppose Gaia said anything about wanting to run away from home?”

“No. You don’t tell people you are going, or you get stopped.” Maia would be horrified to think Cloelia had thought about it.

“Right. So you don’t think she was in any trouble at home?”

“I can’t tell you any more,” Cloelia decided. The briskness with which she ended the interview was significant. Unfortunately, I could not push my eight-year-old niece up against a wall and yell at her that I knew she was lying. I was being glared at by Helena, and I was too frightened of Maia.

“Well, thank you, Cloelia.”

“That’s all right.”

“Maia is right,” said Helena, frowning at me sternly. “You should have asked her permission to question Cloelia. I know how I would feel if it was Julia.” Cloelia nodded agreement, ganging up.

“Hold on, both of you. I’m not a total stranger. Now Famia is dead, I am Maia Favonia’s head of household-”

Helena laughed uproariously; so did Cloelia. So much for patriarchal power.

I knew when to shut up.

We had reached the Temple of Vesta anyway. Destroyed in the Great Fire in Nero’s time, it had been quickly rebuilt, still on the ancient model: a mock round hut. In fact it was now a solid marble construction, standing on a high, stepped podium and surrounded by the famous columns and carved latticework. Smoke wreathed through a hole in the circular roof from the Sacred Fire below. At present the temple doors were open. Praetors, consuls, and dictators would sacrifice before this flame upon taking up office, but a mere Procurator of Poultry would have to find a damned good excuse before he dared approach the sanctum.

Within the temple I knew there was never an image of Vesta, only the hearth representing the life, welfare, and unity of the Roman state, shaded by a sacred laurel tree. Also there was the Palladium, an obscure article said by some to be an image of Athene/Minerva though others doubted it; whatever it was, the Palladium acted as a talisman protecting Rome, and guarding it was one of the main tasks entrusted to the Virgins. Since the public was kept out by a walled enclosure, the chances of the precious talisman being spirited away by some light-fingered wrongdoer were slim. You could not sell it, anyway. Pa once told me that since nobody knew what it looked like, the Palladium had no value as collectable art.

The Vestals were attending to their chores as we arrived. They were one short in number, of course, the position to be filled by tomorrow’s lottery. Five of them, led by the pouchy-eyed Chief Vestal, who looked as if she were having trouble with hot flushes nowadays, were here in their old-fashioned white woollen dresses, tied under the bust with girdles in Hercules knots that would never be unfastened by lovers, their hair bound up in bridal complexity and fastened with bands and ribbons. They had to tend the flame, since if it ever died it was an ill omen for the city; they would be scourged for the offense by the Pontifex Maximus, currently Vespasian, who was known for his strict views on traditional virtues. They also had to carry out daily purification rites, which would include sprinkling water from the Sacred Spring all around the temple. (One of them emerged carrying the ritual mop made from a horse’s tail with which they performed this function.) Later they would be busy making salt cakes for religious purposes. They would say prayers and attend sacrifices, with veiled heads.

Each Vestal was attended by a lictor. Since even the Praetor’s lictor was obliged to lower his ceremonial fasces if a Virgin approached, the Vestals’ lictors were notoriously cocky. The maidens themselves might represent the antique simplicity of life enjoyed by a king’s daughters back in the mists of time, but their modern guards were never slow in coming forward to stamp on your foot. These men were lounging in the enclosure, which it was possible to enter, though doing so caused suspicion even of a perfectly respectable procurator accompanied by his serene patrician wife and a demure female child. Inside the complex were an ostentatiously large shrine and the guarded entrance to the Vestals’ House. It was perfectly clear I stood no chance of reaching the house or of bypassing the lictors to get into the temple. All I could do was to stand with my womenfolk, looking pious, while the Virgins paraded from the temple straight inside their menacing home. Cloelia kicked me when one of the youngest dames passed by, to let me know that was Constantia.

Helena Justina marched boldly to the entrance gate and requested a formal interview. She even said she had information that touched on the forthcoming lottery. Her name was taken by an attendant in that bureaucratic manner that means Don’t bother to stay at home waiting for a messenger.

We stood around for a while like stale bread rolls after a party. Eventually we decided to leave, for a change making our way up the long stairway that led to the Via Nova in the deep shade of the Palatine. At the top of the steps I turned and looked back for a moment, because the view over the Forum is worth a breather any day. Suddenly Helena grabbed my arm. People were now coming out of a door in the back of the Vestals’ House. A small group headed by a lictor had emerged, at the center of which was the Virgin who must be on that day’s rota to fetch water from Egeria’s Spring for the House of the Vestals itself (to which no proper piped water had ever been led). Bearing on her head one of the special pitchers that the Vestals had to use, by good fortune today’s water-carrier was Constantia.