At the heart of the home, a series of rooms crowded around a small tiled atrium, illuminated by a light well cut into the roof above. At the far side of the atrium a narrow passageway led them between larger rooms—an office, and a large, sumptuous-looking dining room—and out to a garden, surrounded on three sides by slender columns, and with a view to the south overlooking the city. The house itself was not large by the standards of Regina’s villa—but then this was Rome, and she understood how much more expensive space was here.

The garden, called a peristylium, despite a small fountain with a statue of some aquatic goddess, was not terribly impressive in itself. But what made it remarkable was that it had been entirely built on the roof of the apartment below. Brica poked at the grass with one sandaled toe, trying to find the concrete base beneath.

Amator met them in the little garden. “Welcome, Regina . . .” His voice was as deep and rich as she remembered, and she felt a deep and unwelcome flush work through her belly, as if her body kept its own memories. But she was shocked at the sight of him.

A few years older than her, he was now in his middle fifties. His thin frame was swathed in a purple-edged toga, no doubt worn to impress her, she thought. But he had grown gaunt. His face had lost its fullness, and his cheeks and chin showed sharp bones. And his head was now completely bald—in fact, she saw with surprise, his eyebrows were gone, too, though two lines of livid flesh showed where they had been.

His retainer, the perfumed boy, hovered at his elbow, looking uncertain and nervous.

Regina gave Amator her hand, and he buffed his lips against it. “I am glad to see you are prospering,” she said. “But you have changed.”

He pursed his lips, and she saw that his eyes were as black and deep as ever. “You’re talking about my hair? I can tell you’ve only just arrived,” he said dryly. “You sound so provincial! Whole-body depilation is quite the fashion now. Of course you can’t find a barber to do the job well these days. But Sulla here is an expert with his poultices of wax, if a little heavy-handed with the tweezers.”

“And perhaps you enjoy the little pains, do you?”

He arched his head, and a smile tugged at the corners of his small mouth. “You’ve lost none of your sharpness, little chicken.”

The retainer’s reaction to this exchange was complex. He had flushed when Amator referred to him personally, but now he was watching Regina with alarmed calculation.