He would be realizing now that Helena Justina was younger, fiercer, and more refined than he had expected. His pinched nose must register that he stood in a small but scrupulously clean room (swept daily by Ma while we were abroad). It was typical of the Aventine, in that despite an open shutter it smelled of baby, pets, and last night’ s supper, but through it that morning was issuing a richer, more exotic, much more expensive perfume from the rare balsam on the warm skin beneath the light dress that Helena wore. She was in blue. Without paint, without jewelry. Needing neither. When completely unadorned she could startle and trouble an unwary man.
“I need to speak to the informer,” he whined again.
“Oh, I know that feeling!” I could imagine how Helena’s great brown eyes were dancing as she stalled the priest. “But his specialty is dodging. He will turn up in his own time.”
“And you are?” the man demanded snootily.
“Who am I?” she mused, still teasing. “The daughter of Camillus Verus, senator and friend of Vespasian; the wife and partner of Didius Falco, agent of Vespasian and Procurator of the Sacred Poultry; the mother of Julia Junilla, who is too young to have social relevance. Those are my formal definitions. My name, should you be keeping a daily diary of the interesting people you meet, is Helena Justina-”
“You are a senator’s daughter-and you live here?” He must be looking around at our bare decorations and furniture. We coped. We had each other. (Plus various tasty artifacts waiting in store for better days.)
“Certainly not,” Helena rattled back promptly. “This is merely an office where we meet members of the public. We live in a spacious villa on the Janiculan.” First I heard of it. Still, I was only the head of the household. With a practical young woman in charge of my private life (and in possession of her own bank box), if my home address changed overnight I would be the last to be notified.
Helena was picking on the prong-bearer now. “I see you are a flamen. Obviously not the Flamen Dialis.” The top man, Jupiter’s priest, wore an even more ludicrous uniform and kept the public at a distance with a long wand. “The Flamen Quirinalis is my father’s second cousin.” As far as I knew, this was pure invention. Being related to the priest of Quirinus, the deified Romulus, would place Helena in high circles, if true, and was designed to intimidate. “The Flamen Martialis is ninety and renowned for groping women.” Not many people would know the unsavory habits of the priest of Mars. “I believe the Emperor is very concerned about how to deal with it…” Incorrigible girl. “So you are not one of the patrician group,” Helena’s cool voice concluded, insulting the man if he was at all sensitive about his status. “Which, then, shall I tell Falco has called on him?” she cooed.
“I am the Flamen Pomonalis.”
“Oh, poor you! That’s the lowest of all, isn’t it?” Excluding the novelty newcomers who honored the deified emperors, there were fifteen priests in the College of Flamens, three culled from the aristocracy to attend the major deities, and the rest, who sacrificed to gods most people had never heard of and who were recruited from the plebeian ranks. No one I knew had ever been selected; you had to be a pleb whose face fitted. “Do you have a name?” demanded Helena.
“Ariminius Modullus.” I could have guessed it would be an awkward mouthful.
“Well, if this is about the goslings, Falco has the matter well in hand.”
“The goslings?”
“The Flamen Dialis has some objection to small birds, I believe.”
This made little sense to Pomona’s pointy head. He sounded so wound up that his birchwood prong must be shooting right out of his bonnet. “I have come about Gaia Laelia!”
“Well, so I assumed.” Helena knew how to reply to an overexcited supplicant with maddening calm. “The child came here with an intriguing complaint. You need to know what was said.”
The flamen must be biting his lip as he worried about what had been discussed yesterday.
“And you want to know what Didius Falco is intending to do,” Helena added ominously. If the child really were being threatened at home, it would do no harm to let her people know that we were aware of it. “Is Gaia Laelia a relation?”
“I am her uncle-by marriage.” Where, I wondered, were Gaia’s parents in this? Why had they sent this rather stiff mediator? Distracted, I leaned my head sideways, to try to discourage Julia from eating my earlobe.
“And you are acting for Gaia’s parents?” Helena asked, barely hiding her skepticism. I dried Julia’s dribble off my ear, using my tunic sleeve. She burped, messily. I wiped her face on the same bunch of sleeve.
