I grinned. “Dear me. Laelius Scaurus received an innocent, priestly upbringing. This will be a terrible shock. He will think you are arresting him.”
“So he will!” Rubella grinned evilly.
I had no idea what good this could possibly do, but anything unexpected can shake people up to good effect. To have the Fourth Cohort of vigiles explain his legal rights and responsibilities would certainly alarm Scaurus.
However, I was not sure I wanted to be in Rubella’s shoes when this influential family complained with shrieks of outrage to the Prefect of the City that one of them had been subjected to an unfair arrest. The Laelii were more than just influential. They were being treated with elaborate care by the highest authorities-and I still did not know why.
INCREDIBLY IT WAS still eight days before the Ides of June. Dusk had fallen, but this was the same day that I rose at dawn and went to the House of the Vestals, trying to meet Constantia, followed her to Egeria’s Spring, was sent for by Rutilius Gallicus, and gained entrance to search the Laelius house. Now I had endured a visit to the Golden House as well. This was as long a day as I ever wanted to endure, but it was not over yet.
“You take the litter. Go home and rest,” said Helena. She sounded wan.
“Where’s Julia?”
“I managed to find Gaius.” When my scruffy nephew could be deterred from totting in the backstreets, he made a dedicated nursemaid (if we paid him enough). “I told him to sleep in our bed if we were late.”
“You’ll regret that. He’s never clean. What are you up to, as if I don’t know?”
“I had better walk over to my father’s house and break this news about my brother’s fate.”
I went with her, of course.
The senator lent me his barber, and they gave me more to eat. While I was being cleaned up and pampered, I had a lot to think about. It did not really concern the Camilli and their dead traitor. For me, Publius Camillus Meto was a closed case. His relations, however, would never be free of him. Memories for scandal are long in Rome. A family could have scores of statesmanly ancestors, but biographers would dwell on their one ancient traitor.
When I rejoined the party, they were all absorbed in frantic debate over their new suffering. Aelianus saw me appear in the doorway; he rose and led me to an anteroom, asking for a private word. The conversation in the salon behind him dropped slightly, as his parents and Helena watched him draw me aside.
“Aelianus, you have to ask your father for the details.” My situation had always been difficult; I badly wanted to avoid anybody finding out that I had disposed of Publius down a sewer.
“Father told me what happened. I was abroad. I came home and found my uncle gone, and what he had done settling on us like blight. Now I am stuck with the results, it seems. Falco, you were involved-”
“Anything beyond what your father has told you is confidential, I’ m afraid.”
“So I am being shafted, yet I cannot be told why?”
“You know enough. Yes, it is unfair,” I sympathized. “But a stigma was inevitable. At least there were no wholesale executions, or confiscation of property.”
“I always rather liked Uncle Publius.” That aspect must frighten his parents, though I did not tell Aelianus so. They feared he might yet follow his uncle in temperament. He too was restless and impatient with society. Like his uncle, Aelianus might lose patience with the rules and seek out his own solutions, unless he was handled just right in the next few years. An outsider. Latent trouble.
For a moment, I wondered whether this was the kind of trouble the Laelius family had gone through with Scaurus.
“Your uncle seemed quite hard to get close to.” To me, he had had a cold, almost gloomy outlook.
“Yes, but he was supposed to have lived a wild life; he spent all that time abroad; he lived on the edge. He had an illegitimate child too-and I heard that she was killed in peculiar circumstances.” Aelianus stopped.
“Sosia,” I said reproachfully. “Yes, I know how she was killed.”
“She was just a girl. I don’t really remember her, Falco.”
“I do.” I stared him down, as I fought back a tear.
Aelianus still wanted to press me for information. He was out of luck. I was sinking under the effects of a long, depressing day. I had two choices now: to collapse and sleep, or to keep alert in the search for little Gaia by tackling some new activity. This was what I had been brooding on, while the barber grazed my neck. As I lay still, while I tried to avoid having my throat cut, my body had rested and my mind cleared. My thoughts had had time to concentrate, as they had not done all that afternoon while I was bound up in physical effort at the Laelius house.
Now I knew what was needed next. I also knew I required help. The best person would be Lucius Petronius, but in fairness to him I could not ask. He had already nearly lost his job over his dalliance with the gangster’s daughter. What I planned was far too big a risk.
