What saved them was that although Caesar, dramatically outlined against the white building behind him, was shouting for them to be seized, he had no personal bodyguards with him, so no one was quite sure who should be seized and who should be doing the seizing. People were looking around them for some sort of tangible threat – the Parthians, or maybe the Celts again – some sort of barbarian invaders, anyway – and while they were doing so, the St Mary’s contingent were quietly melting away. Although not without a great deal of complaint.

‘We’re going to miss it.’

‘Fine, you stay here, then. The bloke is going to be very messily dead in five minutes. Want to guess who’ll get the blame?’

‘Good point.’

One of the two men in front of them turned, saying quietly and in English, ‘Trouble?’

Markham nodded. ‘Yep.’

‘Go. We’ve got this.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Good luck.’

Like it or not, Luke and Jane were hustled along with St Mary’s.

‘But . . .’ said Jane. ‘We’re not . . .’

No one was listening. The trick is not to run headlong. Running always attracts attention. As swiftly as they could, they made their way down the temple steps. The two men moved smoothly into the space opened up. The crowd milled around, but the two men must have been foreigners, confused by what was going on around them, and were completely failing to get out of the way when ordered to do so. Worse, their inability to understand what was going on was directly responsible for allowing the strangers to get away.

Caesar, surrendering to the exhortations of those around him, smiled brightly, and with one last wave, took a friend’s arm and strode into the Curia. At that point he had less than a minute to live.

St Mary’s, never once looking back, and shepherding Luke and Jane whether they wanted to be or not, strode briskly down two or three streets and then, at Markham’s instruction, down an alleyway and out of sight. A narrow space between the backs of two buildings provided a handy shelter for them to pause and discuss what to do next. Squeezing themselves together, they became unpleasantly aware that providing a venue for workplace conferences was not its usual function.

‘Sticky,’ said Van Owen, lifting a sandal.

‘Yuk,’ said Max, peering at something dubious on the wall. ‘Right. Regroup, everyone. How far back to our pod?’

‘From here? Some considerable distance,’ said Markham. ‘We’re parked in the Aventine.’

‘Where exactly are we now?’

‘Well,’ said Peterson, hoisting his toga out of something unpleasant, ‘if we orient ourselves to the north . . .’