“Sulla is just your bed warmer,” she said. “And evidently a reluctant one at that.”

“Oh, perhaps it started like that. But now . . .” He paced. “Can you understand, Regina? Have you ever loved?”

“I understand that you are a foolish and selfish old man,” she said coldly. “Your heart has been kept beating, and your cock hardened, by the soft body of this boy. But now he is growing away from you. And when he is gone, you will have nothing left.”

“My life is not complete,” he said, sighing. “Of course I have a daughter—Brica—but she is not mine and never can be. I understand that; I accept it. And I have no son . . . I have named Sulla as my sole legatee. Do you see? The boy is no longer a servant, but my lover, my heir. He is the best part of me. And now, yes, now I fear I am losing him.”

She shrugged, careful not to show any reaction to this news about his legacy. “I don’t know why you’re bringing this to me.”

He hung his head. “Whether or not you have brought this cow-eyed niece of yours between us deliberately, I ask you to give him back to me. There—I submit myself to you. You have beaten me, Regina. Are you happy?”

She made no reply.

When he had gone, she summoned Amator’s boy, Sulla, to her office.

Regina told him carefully that Amator was jealous and angry. That after tomorrow’s feast Sulla would not be allowed near Venus again. That Amator had been lying about his intentions regarding his legacy. That he saw the boy as useful for one thing only, his supple body, and that in future he planned not just to use Sulla himself but also to hire him out to some of his friends, for the sport of it. That Sulla would not be released from this servitude until he was too old to be attractive, or his body too damaged to be useful.

She told Sulla all this briskly, and turned away to her work, as if uncaring of his reaction.

Regina had quickly become central to the working of the Order. The skills she had acquired as an administrator for Artorius for all those years were essential here.

After she had met her mother at the Flavian Amphitheater, she and Brica had moved without regret out of their cramped apartment over the restaurant and into this grand house. Situated in an outer suburb beyond the ancient Aurelian Wall, it was a large complex of buildings in the traditional style, centered on an atrium and peristylium.