orgy they had organized.
"I seem to remember," I challenged Helena, "you always made out that you disliked the Bona Dea festival--why was that, beloved? Too staid for you?" I smiled, playing the tolerant type and turning back to Julia Justa. "So the Flaminica would have been a regular at the festival in her official capacity?"
"And her overbearing sister too," answered Julia Justa, with an unaccustomed smirk. "The sister, Terentia Paulla, was a Vestal Virgin."
"A Vestal presides, if rumor is correct?"
"Well, she tries!" Julia Justa laughed. "A group of women does not necessarily succumb to leadership as a group of men would--especially once the refreshments arrive." Out of control, eh? That confirmed the worst fears of our masculine citizenship. Not to mention suggestions that wine played a major part in the girls' giggling rites. "My mother, who was a shrewd woman--"
"Bound to be!" I grinned, including both Helena and Julia Justa in the compliment.
"Yes, Marcus dear." Marcus dear? I gulped back my disquiet. "Mama held that the Flaminica was very loose living."
"Oho! On what evidence?"
"She had a lover. Everyone knew. It was more or less open. She and her ghastly sister were always arguing about it. The affair went on for years."
"I am shocked."
"You are not," said Helena, flipping me with her dinner napkin. "You are a hard-bitten and cynical private informer; you expect adultery at every turn. Mind you, I am shocked, Mama."
"Of course you are, darling; I brought you up in a very sheltered way . . . Well, being Flaminica is a difficult role," Julia Justa returned. Like Helena, she could be fair. She was a sophisticated woman: nowadays she even managed to be fair to me. "The Flamen Dialis and his wife are selected from a very narrow circle--they have to fulfill strict traditional criteria. She has to be a virgin--"
"That's surely no trouble!" inserted Decimus satirically.
"They both have to be born of parents who have been married by confarreatio, the old-fashioned religious ceremony in front of ten witnesses, with the Pontifex Maximus and the Flamen Dialis present. Then, Marcus, they have to be married themselves with those ceremonies and can never divorce. The chances of them finding each other tolerable are remote to begin with, and if things go wrong they are trapped for life."
"Plus the pressure of constantly appearing in public together to carry out their official functions--" I suggested.
"Oh, anyone can go through the motions in public!" Julia Justa disagreed. "It would be back at home that the tension would show."
We all nodded sagely, while pretending to consider the concept of domestic disagreement as something remote from our own experience. As one does.
"So, what is the problem with the little girl?" asked the senator.
"Nothing at all, according to the family," I said. "The child herself told Helena she has been threatened with serious harm. She came to see us with this tale, and I confess, I failed to take it seriously. I should have asked more questions."
"If she really is earmarked as the next Vestal," Julia Justa commented, "hers are the kind of people who would glory in it. What could cause conflict? Is she playing up about being selected?"
"Overjoyed, apparently."
"I rather suspect," said Helena, "as my grandmother would say, Gaia must be glad of a chance to be taken away from her relatives."
"They do sound a grim lot."
"Fossils!" muttered Decimus.
* * *
We had insulted the Laelii for long enough. Since dinner was over Helena buzzed off with her mother to talk about what had happened in North Africa with Justinus and Claudia. Her father and I occupied the senator's study, a squashed glory hole full of scrolls that Decimus had started to read, then forgotten about. We lit lamps and threw cushions off the reading couch, trying to pretend there was room to recline in some elegance. In fact, although the Camillus house was spacious, its master had been allocated a poky nook, as he
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