When he heard that the Emperor was coming to Britain to do some troop-raising, an idea had struck Thalius, a seed planted in his mind. The Emperor would receive audiences - and so why, then, shouldn’t Thalius himself be received, and make his doubts known? Any rational ruler would surely accept the ideas and viewpoints of those he aspired to rule. Why not Thalius?

But as soon as he conceived this thrilling idea he was plagued by doubt. Was he taking himself too seriously? Who was he, a member of a mere provincial curia, to comment on imperial policy?

That was when, casting around for a way forward, it occurred to Thalius to turn to the old family story of the Prophecy, the lost poem of the future. It was a forlorn hope that he might recover it, perhaps, but even in these days of bleed-you-white taxes Thalius was prosperous enough to afford to be able to indulge a fascination for family history. And in a time of such uncertainty, if the Prophecy really did contain a glimpse of the true future it was worth a try to find it. With its authority behind him - always assuming the Prophecy existed, and could be found, and was worth presenting - perhaps he would have an excuse to face an emperor and his court, and the courage to do it.

It was spurious, perhaps, and not even very logical, but it was a plan, a strategy, and he had followed it through this far. And after all it was the family story, passed down from long-dead Lepidina, that the Prophecy actually had something to do with the destiny of Christianity. If that was true - if he could decode it and apply its message, if he could relay its truth to the Emperor himself, Thalius told himself with a kind of breathless anticipation - he might do mankind a great service indeed.

His strength recovering, and as Tarcho had still not come back with the boy, Thalius felt a little restless. He put down his cup and, under Volisios’s uneasy stare, prowled around the room.

It was a working office heaped with paperwork. One pile of lawyers’ letters was weighted down with a bit of quartz shot through with gold, a pretty stone brought up from the earth no doubt at the cost of much human suffering. There were few personal touches, but there was a small lararium, a household shrine, with tokens to gods Thalius didn’t recognise. But in among this pagan clutter there was a rough Christian fish symbol, a brooch done in a bit of bronze wire. Such mixings-up of creeds were common. Despite the Emperor’s promotion of the faith Christianity wasn’t compulsory, paganism not a crime, and Rome’s cheerful pantheism was, for now, able to absorb Jesus as just another god.