I was in a predicament, but the whole adventure was crazy. There was no going back. I tried standing in the shadows and letting out a low whistle to see what it produced, but the lighthearted hum just continued as before. I went and fetched the ladder which had brought me down over this side of the wall. I brought my toga too, though it was hardly a disguise.

The ladder was a very long one; upright, it swayed dangerously overhead. Inching the heavy contraption into place, I strained to make no sound as I lodged it carefully below the lit window. It took a few difficult moments to find a level place to stand it. Once I could let go, I collapsed against the rungs, breathing throatily. My heart raced. This certainly was the most stupid thing I had ever done.

I had climbed halfway up before disaster struck. My boot, still slimy from the pool, slipped on a rung. I managed to regain my footing, but made too much noise. I froze and clung on, motionless.

I thought all was well, until I heard the window open wider. Light flooded down. Looking up, I made out a woman’s shape, with the stiff, high diadem all Vestals wore. I heard a stifled sound, which in other circumstances might have been giggling. Then a voice whispered facetiously, “Oh darling, I thought you would never come!”

Joking. Well, I hoped she was.

Anyway, I had no time to argue, as the revered Constantia reached down with both arms, grabbed me by the back of my tunic, hauled me up over the windowsill, and dragged me inside.

XLIII

“NICE PLACE!”

“Thank you.”

“Constantia?” Vestals are generally known by only one name, though she presumably had two.

“That’s me. And you?”

I tried to inject some formality. “Marcus Didius Falco.”

“Oh, Falco! I have been hearing about you. You’re a chancer! What would you have done if I had screamed?”

“Pretended I was a shutter-painter on night work, and yelled very loud that it was you who had attacked me.”

“Well, it might have worked.”

“I won’t test the theory. I hoped it was you up here. I’ve been standing in the garden trying to tell if the sweet soprano tones I could hear were the same ones that grunted ‘Balls!’ this morning.”

“Oh, you heard that,” she commented, matter-of-factly. “Have the couch. Do excuse me while I slip off the uniform.”

Her slim fingers were unfastening the Hercules knot beneath her white-clad bosom. I gulped. For one startling moment, I thought I was about to be treated to a live impersonation of Aphrodite Undressing for the Bath. But as well as the spacious boudoir I had tumbled into, Constantia apparently had been allocated a dressing room where any slipping off of her white robes could be done decently. She saw me panic, though. Throwing me a wink, she vanished into the inner cubicle. “Sit tight. Don’t you go away!”

This wasn’t the time for a brave boy to start crying for his mother. I perched on the couch as ordered. There was only one. I wondered where Constantia intended to sit when she came back.

It was an elegant piece of furniture in some exotic foreign hardwood, padded and covered with fine-woven wool. My boots discovered a matching footstool. My elbow sank sideways into a tasseled cylindrical bolster. Looking around, I saw that the room was a model of taste. Red and black architectural wall paintings, with roundels depicting simple urns. Light bronze tripods and lampstands. Discreet deerskin rugs. It was equipped with scroll-boxes that probably held romantic Greek novels. Well, you could not expect the girl to sit in here night after night, playing endless games of Soldiers against herself.

In no time I was rejoined by my hostess. I took a good look, while pretending not to. She knew I was inspecting her.

Closer to twenty than thirty, she was now looking a stunner in a flowing gown of mobile ocher material and dainty gold mules which showed her toes. Gripped under one arm were a decorated hand mirror and what looked like a cosmetics box. She had discarded the diadem and, as we talked, she untied various ribbons and shook out her traditionally plaited braids until her hair flowed loose. Gleaming in the lamplight, it was a rich chestnut, the long locks probably never cut since she first came to the Vestals’ House.

Bending up one small foot under her, she dropped onto the couch at the other end, with space between us. She balanced the mirror on her knee. Then she proceeded to light a small brazier, using the wick in one of the lamps.

“I see you’re used to handling fire!”

Despite my pang of disquiet, the brazier was for neither witchcraft nor anything religious; it was to heat her curling iron. So there I was, illegally inside the House of the Vestals, watching a very much off-duty Virgin while she dipped her comb in a basin of water and restyled her hair.

“Yes, we are allowed relaxation,” she commented, at my bemused look. Her hands twisted the hot iron with great competence. “Our free time is entirely our own. Nobody bothers us, so long as the Chief Vestal never notices any loud music or perfumes that have disturbingly erotic Parthian undernotes.”

“So the simple, celibate life doesn’t bother you?”

Her eyes, which were midbrown and well set, glinted. “It has a few disadvantages.”

“Not many visitors?”

“You’re my first, Falco!”

“Lucky me. My friend Petronius reckons all the Virgins must be lesbians.”

“Some may be.” Not this one, I decided.

“Or that really they have secret lovers scampering in and out all night.”

“Some may do.” She gave little away, but added some more suggestions: “Or that we are all crabby, dried-up frights who want to dispossess men-or that simplicity of life means black teeth and body smells?”

“Yes, I believe those are other popular theories.”

“From time to time I expect they all apply. Why generalize? Any group of six people would contain all kinds of characters. What do you think, Falco?”

I thought a lot that I was not prepared to say. For instance, I liked the way she had made cheeky little ringlets to hang in front of her ears. “You sound as if you were born on the wrong side of the Sacred Way. A token plebeian, right?”

Constantia shrugged. Her ringlets bobbed. Her accent was in fact perfectly neutral, but of course she would have been trained to speak acceptably. It was her outspoken, sprightly attitude that had given her away. “You feel I don’t fit in?” I nodded. “Wrong, Falco. This is my career, and I am proud of it. Oh, I never expect to become Chief Vestal, but you won’t find me skimping the duties or dishonoring the gods.”

“No doubt your salt cakes are impeccable.”

“Exactly. I am planning to open a cake stall after I retire.”

“I would have thought you would take the imperial dowry and get married?”

Constantia looked at me sideways as she twirled a lock of hair free from the iron. “That will depend on what is on offer at the time!”

I thought not many men would feel up to taking on this lively character.

Applying her curler to the heat again, she wiped off smuts on a soft cloth, then wound a new strand of hair around the metal bar.

“If you have the iron too hot, all your hair will snap off.” She gave me a look that made me retract. “Well, so I have been told. I assume you have to be braided up again demurely tomorrow to attend the lottery?” Constantia paused, realizing that this was what I had come to talk about. I handed her the mirror so she could check the progress of her coiffure. “I have been searching for the lost child.”

“But you failed to find her.” It was a blank statement, one that put me in my place.

“Ah, you know? I suppose as the virginal liaison point, you have been receiving hourly reports?”