One Virgin Too Many by Lindsey Davis Read Free Book Online Page B

they now had sulking at home. A young man in his twenties, with no occupation and very few manners, can dominate a household even if he spends most of his time out on the town.
    "It seems best to let him alarm the neighbors with his rowdy friends," murmured the senator on our arrival. "So far he has not actually been arrested or brought home on a trestle covered in blood."
    "Is Aulus joining us for dinner?" asked Helena, using Aelianus' family name yet trying to disguise the fact that she hoped not. The dutiful elder sister, she always wanted to be fair, but of the two boys, Justinus was much more like her in temperament and attitude.
    "Probably not," Camillus Verus, her father, replied. He was a tall, shrewd, humorous man with sprouting gray-tinged hair that his barber had still not successfully tamed. I noticed a hunted air when he spoke of his sons.
    "At a party?" I asked.
    "This may sound hard to believe, but I have been trying to get him into one of the priesthoods--give him some honors to his name. If he is where he is supposed to be, it's the Sacred Grove of the Arval Brothers. This is the main day of their annual ceremonial."
    I whistled approvingly. It seemed the polite thing to do. The chosen clique presided over festivals and religious holidays, with an additional remit to pray for the good fortune of the imperial family. The Arval Brothers' activities derived from the dawn of history, when they had prayed for the health and fruitfulness of crops--in token of which, they all wore chaplets of corn tied on with white ribbons. The thought of the rather gruff Aelianus bedecked with a corn-ear crown made a hilarious climax to a good dinner. But frankly, if a son of mine wanted to join the corn-dolly brethren, I would lock him in the broom cupboard until the fantasy sweated out of him.
    "So--tell us your news, Marcus."
    I announced my elevation and brushed aside congratulations like a good modest Roman. "I warn you, sir, my conversation is limited nowadays to ways of worming poultry. My life is now fixed by the ritual events of the goddess Juno's calendar."
    "What--no more informing?" I caught his eye briefly. Decimus, as I was sometimes emboldened to call him, was a close friend of Vespasian, and I never knew quite how much he knew about my official work.
    "Stuck with the birds."
    He grinned frankly. "You deserve the status, but can't you ditch the aviary?"
    "I am supposed to feel honored."
    "Bugger that!"
    Helena's mother gave him a sad look, and decided to lead me to my dining couch before her rude husband infected her newly respectable son-in-law with disreputable views. Until now, I had been the dangerous republican and Decimus the conventional Curia hack. I felt slightly unnerved.
    As we reclined, Julia Justa placed olive bowls and saffron prawns before me with her long beringed hands. Helena leaned over and stole the prawns. "Tell me, Marcus," said her mother, resplendent in white and gold that glittered almost as much as her new, worrying friendliness. "I have always wondered--how exactly do they persuade the Sacred Geese to stay on their purple cushion when they are being transported in a procession?"
    "I'll find out for you. I suspect they make them hungry first, then a man walks alongside with a fistful of grain to bribe them to sit still."
    "Like taking a child to a party," said Helena. Her mother looked approvingly at ours, who was sitting quietly in the arms of a slave, chewing her pottery rattle; she had even tactfully chosen to gnaw a toy her grandparents had bought for her.
    Planning her moment. Little Julia knew how to disrupt mealtimes. She had learned new skills since the estimable Camilli last had a chance to dote on her.
    "Isn't she good!"
    Helena and I smiled the shameless public smiles of experienced parents. We had had a year to learn never to confess that our cute-looking dimpled baby could be a screaming troublemaker. We had dressed her nicely in white, combed her soft dark hair into a sweet