“Well, time to go, Falco.” Aelianus had the concentration of a gnat. “There’s nothing for us here.”

“That’s what they want you to think. The Master of your admired order has turned us inside out. Now I know how a skinned rabbit feels as its fur is peeled.”

“I stumbled across a ghastly domestic incident. Don’t you believe that?”

“Oh yes.”

“So the Master told us the truth.”

“Partially-probably.”

“He seemed perfectly open and reasonable.”

“A lovely fellow. But I bet he cheats at draughts.”

Four youths emerged from a side door. They wore matching white tunics, and all carried salvers.

Aelianus, who had been on the verge of abandoning any pretense of comradeship with me, turned slightly. Despite himself, he caught my eye. Once again, curiosity had won, and he was suddenly back in the game.

“Which was it?” I muttered.

He signaled to the third boy. I bounded across and grabbed him, whipped the salver away from him, dragged one arm up his back, and marched him into an alcove behind a statue. Aelianus blocked escape and confirmed aloud that this was the young man who ran away from questioning at the Grove earlier.

He was about thirteen. A few spots and stubbles. A pigeon-chested young lout who reckoned he could do as he liked and we had to put up with it. Aelianus wrinkled his nose. The pristine white uniform covered a body that shunned bathing in a routine adolescent way.

“Let me go! I have my duties at the feast-”

“This is the camillus with the runaway legs?” I asked Aelianus. “I wonder why? What’s he hiding?”

“Obviously something!” Aelianus leaned on the lad, squashing him up against the statue.

“Something bad, I’d say. What’s your name, Speedy?”

“Find out. I’ve done nothing.”

“Can you prove that? There has been a murder, clever. So what did you see of it?”

“Nothing!” He glared back, acting dumb. He was cocky, but I could play the official line. We were in somebody’s house, however; we might be discovered and thrown out at any minute. I had to act fast.

“What shall we do?” I mused to Aelianus. “The vigiles would be the nearest who own a set of thumbscrews, but it’s not my favorite district cohort. Why should they get all the fun? No, leave the esparto mat boys to comb the streets for arsonists. I reckon we’ll haul this little beggar to the Palace.”

“The Praetorians?”

“No-they’re far too soft.” Any lad in Rome would know the Praetorian Guard were vicious. “I’ll give him to Anacrites.”

“The Chief Spy?” Aelianus was playing along with me. “Oh, have a heart, Falco!”

“Well, of course he’s a brute; I can’t stand his dirty methods. Still, he’s got the best equipment. Speedy won’t last long in the underground torture cell.”

While Aelianus was shuddering dramatically, the boy squealed in panic. “I done nothing, I done nothing!”

One thing he had done was to make too much noise. I glanced over my shoulder, but despite his cries, the household staff were all absorbed in serving the first course at the feast. The Brothers were raising quite a din too, as they fell on their ceremonial hors-d’ oeuvres and gossiped with their mouths full about last night’s grim events. “Answer my questions then, son. A man was killed, rather unpleasantly. What did you see in the Sacred Grove of the Dea Dia?”

“I didn’t see him killed.”

“Well then? Do you know who he was?”

“One of the Brothers. They all look alike once they get dressed up. I don’t know all their names.”

“Did you see the corpse?”

“No. Someone else found it; one of the temple priests, I think. He went off sick today.” The priest’s own choice, or the Master’s decision? “I only saw the Master’s attendants taking the body away on a trestle, covered up.”

“What else?” asked Aelianus quietly. Without any training, he now fell into the role of the friendly, well-spoken interrogator-the less brutal one. I could live with that.

“I saw her,” gasped Speedy, gratefully turning to this more sympathetic fellow. “The woman who did it. I saw her.”

Suddenly he was less sure of himself, and looked more his age: a boy. An extremely frightened one.

“Will you tell us about her?”

“The men who were moving the body didn’t want people hanging about. I was having a good gawp, but they ordered me to move away. As I was going, she appeared in front of me.”

“Can you describe her?”

The camillus was too young to have started taking mental notes of women’s attributes. He looked helpless.

“What was she wearing?” I suggested.

“White. With her hair all tied up. White-but the front of her dress was covered with blood. That was how I knew she did it.”

“Of course. You must have been terrified,” Aelianus sympathized.

“I was all right,” he bragged, comforting himself in retrospect. He had probably had no time for real fear.

I stuck with the job in hand: “Was she a young woman?”

“Oh no.” To a boy his age that could mean anyone over twenty-five.

“A gray-haired granny?”

“Oh no.”

“A matron? Was she high class? Did she wear jewelry?”

“I don’t know-I was just staring at her. She had a wild look. And

…” He stopped.

“And what?” asked Aelianus patiently.

“She was holding a bowl.” The boy’s voice had dropped. This seemed to be the source of his hidden terror. “She was holding a bowl like this-” He demonstrated, miming the action of carrying a vessel lodged on the hip, with one hand on the far rim. We were silent. He struggled. “It was full of blood. Like in a temple sacrifice.”

“Dear gods!” Shocked himself, Aelianus set a hand on the boy’s shoulder to steady him. Aelianus had told his father and me that the dead man had a large throat wound. Now we knew why. He shot me a look, then drew breath carefully. “So what happened?”

“She did something horrible.”

“What?”

“Other people had seen her. I could hear them coming towards us, and I thought I was safe.”

“But?”

“Maybe she heard the people coming. She began to weep, crazily. She seemed to start awake from a dream, and she saw me. Then it was strange. At an altar, when they cut the beast’s throat and catch the blood, they have a boy to hold the ritual bowl sometimes. She seemed to think I was there for that.” The camillus braced himself. “She said, ‘Oh, there you are!’-and then she gave the bowl of the dead man’ s blood to me.”

XV

WE CROSSED THE hall in silence and were making our way from the house. A latecomer rushed up the steps towards us, a senator in full fig and to my surprise a man I recognized. “Rutilius Gallicus!”

“Falco! What brings you here?”

“I could ask the same, sir.”

He paused, catching his breath. “Duty.”

“Well, you can’t be one of the Arval Brothers, or you would be prettied up with corn tonight-This is Camillus Aelianus, by the waythe brother of Justinus, whom you met with me in Africa.”

Just in time Gallicus remembered not to exclaim, Ah, the one who ought to have married that rich Spanish girl his brother pinched! “I heard a lot about you,” he uttered instead. A mistake, as usual. Aelianus looked peeved. Embarrassed, Rutilius Gallicus dashed into his excuses for being here: “I may not have told you, Falco, I am a priest of the Cult of the Deified Emperors. I took over directly after Nero, actually-”

I whistled. This was a top-flight honor, with close imperial connections, which he would hold for life and then have carved very large on his tombstone. Even Aelianus forced himself to look impressed. “So you are attached to the Arvals after all, sir?”

“No more than I can help!” Gallicus shuddered, still at heart the straightforward north Italian. “I hold no brief for them, Falco. But in view of their role in praying for the health of the imperial house, I am automatically invited to their festivals.”