“She said, ‘One of my relations threatened to kill me.’ And that it had frightened her,” Helena told me, looking thoughtful. “She had got it into her head that she needed to see an informer, so I left it for you to deal with.”

“I’m starting to regret sending her away without asking more questions. I know you thought I should have gone into it more thoroughly.”

“You had your own troubles, Marcus.”

“This little girl may have worse.”

“She has grown up in a most peculiar home, that’s for certain,” said Helena with some force. “Her grandparents will have been married by a strange old formal ceremony, and as they were the Flamen Dialis and the Flaminica, even their house itself had ritual significance. No child in such a home knows a normal upbringing. The daily life of the priest and priestess is proscribed by ridiculous taboos and rituals at every turn. It leaves little time for family matters. Even the children formally take part in religious ceremonies-presumably, Gaia’s father went through all that. And now Gaia, the poor mite, is being pushed into becoming a Vestal Virgin-”

“An escape, by the sound of it!” I grinned.

“She is six,” growled Helena. She was right. That was no age to be removed from home and subjected to thirty years of sanctity.

“Do I take it, Helena, you intend to investigate?”

“I want to.” She felt wretched, which always unsettled me. “I just don’t see how to go about it yet.”

She was broody all day, not ready yet to share her further thoughts. I applied myself to clearing up goose droppings. Helena had made it clear that this was a daily rite which ancient traditions decreed could only be carried out by the Procurator of Poultry.

Dinner that evening came as a relief. The one thing to say for the noble Camilli was that, despite their financial problems, they dined well. In that, they far excelled most Roman millionaires.

Their money was tied up in land (in order to protect their right to remain on the senatorial list), but a delicately poised tier of mortgages allowed them to live in a tolerable style. For instance, when they had invited us to dinner, they sent their carrying chair for Helena and the baby. We stuffed it full of presents and Julia’s toys. I carried the baby. Helena was bringing letters from her brother, a bright sprig called Quintus Camillus Justinus whom I knew fairly well.

Helena had two brothers, both younger than her and both heavily bossed by her when they strayed too close. The elder, Aelianus, had been betrothed to an heiress from Baetica in southern Spain. The younger, Justinus, ran off with her. I had gone to Tripolitania, funded by the senator, with a brief to find the eloping pair. I knew it was thought to be my fault that Claudia Rufina had decided to swap brothers. Untrue, of course: she fell for the one with better looks and a more attractive character. But I had been involved in first bringing her to Rome as a prospective bride for Aelianus, and the senator’s wife had long held the opinion that anything touched by M. Didius Falco was bound to go wrong. In that, Julia Justa was following the views of my own family, so I made no attempt to disprove her theory. May as well live with the grief you know.

Helena and I had found that under the stress of desert conditions the young lovers had fallen out, but we ignored their finer feelings and cobbled them back together. We persuaded Justinus to cut his losses and marry Claudia (and her money), first sending the couple on a visit to Spain in order to reconcile her wealthy grandparents.

Justinus had been searching for silphium, the extinct luxury condiment. He had hoped to rediscover it and make millions. Once that mad plan had failed, the only way I could prevent him running off to be a hermit was to lure him into replacing Anacrites as my partner. He had no qualifications, and since he had now gone off to Spain indefinitely, at my third attempt to find a partner I had stuck myself with one who knew absolutely nothing-and who was not even available.

Helena had decided we could all share a house (which might explain why she had told the Flamen Pomonalis that we lived on the Janiculan). Knowing her, she had probably bought a place already. Watching her work around to telling me would give me hours of secret fun.

You might think that securing a Baetican olive oil fortune and a pleasant wife for their talented boy would earn me laurel wreaths from Justinus’ parents. Unfortunately, it still left them with the problem of their disgruntled elder son. Aelianus had lost the money, lost his bride, and had to stand down from the senate elections for a year, all because his brother had made him look a fool. Whatever his parents felt about the resolution to his brother’s life, Aelianus was the one they now had sulking at home. A young man in his twenties, with no occupation and very few manners, can dominate a household even if he spends most of his time out on the town.

“It seems best to let him alarm the neighbors with his rowdy friends,” murmured the senator on our arrival. “So far he has not actually been arrested or brought home on a trestle covered in blood.”

“Is Aulus joining us for dinner?” asked Helena, using Aelianus’ family name yet trying to disguise the fact that she hoped not. The dutiful elder sister, she always wanted to be fair, but of the two boys, Justinus was much more like her in temperament and attitude.

“Probably not,” Camillus Verus, her father, replied. He was a tall, shrewd, humorous man with sprouting gray-tinged hair that his barber had still not successfully tamed. I noticed a hunted air when he spoke of his sons.

“At a party?” I asked.

“This may sound hard to believe, but I have been trying to get him into one of the priesthoods-give him some honors to his name. If he is where he is supposed to be, it’s the Sacred Grove of the Arval Brothers. This is the main day of their annual ceremonial.”

I whistled approvingly. It seemed the polite thing to do. The chosen clique presided over festivals and religious holidays, with an additional remit to pray for the good fortune of the imperial family. The Arval Brothers’ activities derived from the dawn of history, when they had prayed for the health and fruitfulness of crops-in token of which, they all wore chaplets of corn tied on with white ribbons. The thought of the rather gruff Aelianus bedecked with a corn-ear crown made a hilarious climax to a good dinner. But frankly, if a son of mine wanted to join the corn-dolly brethren, I would lock him in the broom cupboard until the fantasy sweated out of him.

“So-tell us your news, Marcus.”

I announced my elevation and brushed aside congratulations like a good modest Roman. “I warn you, sir, my conversation is limited nowadays to ways of worming poultry. My life is now fixed by the ritual events of the goddess Juno’s calendar.”

“What-no more informing?” I caught his eye briefly. Decimus, as I was sometimes emboldened to call him, was a close friend of Vespasian, and I never knew quite how much he knew about my official work.

“Stuck with the birds.”

He grinned frankly. “You deserve the status, but can’t you ditch the aviary?”

“I am supposed to feel honored.”

“Bugger that!”

Helena’s mother gave him a sad look, and decided to lead me to my dining couch before her rude husband infected her newly respectable son-in-law with disreputable views. Until now, I had been the dangerous republican and Decimus the conventional Curia hack. I felt slightly unnerved.

As we reclined, Julia Justa placed olive bowls and saffron prawns before me with her long beringed hands. Helena leaned over and stole the prawns. “Tell me, Marcus,” said her mother, resplendent in white and gold that glittered almost as much as her new, worrying friendliness. “I have always wondered-how exactly do they persuade the Sacred Geese to stay on their purple cushion when they are being transported in a procession?”