I tipped my head back and surveyed the place. Sunlight poured through the open roof, the floor had a mosaic pattern of rippling vines, and a quiet blue-tiled pool was sunk in the middle of the room. A carved nymph looked over her shoulder at me from the corner, and I’d been long enough without a girl that even her marble breasts looked tempting. I slung my pack on a marble bench and dropped to one knee, plunging my hands into the pool and splashing my face. I looked up to find a pretty little girl gazing at me, clutching a carved wooden horse and sucking her thumb.

“Hello, sprat.” She looked four or five, the same age as my own little sister. “Who are you?”

She gazed at me solemnly through a fringe of blond hair.

“Don’t suppose you belong to Senator Norbanus?”

She inspected her little thumb for a moment, then went back to sucking on it.

“Could you get me in to see your father?”

Sucking, sucking.

“Could you at least tell me where the lavatorium is? I could use a piss.”

“There’s one down the hall,” a voice said behind me.

I turned and saw another girl, this one about my own age. Thin, brown hair, blue dress. “I’m waiting for Senator Norbanus,” I said.

“There’s time.” She picked up the little girl, parting her gently from the thumb, and moved down the hall with that blind confidence all aristocrats seemed to have, not needing to look back to know that I would follow. I followed her to the lavatorium.

“There’s water if you want to wash,” she said, and I took the hint. Romans took a lot more baths than anyone in Britannia. I used a basinful of water and washed the shipboard grime off my face and neck.

“Better?” The patrician girl smiled as I came back into the hall.

“Much, Lady.” I tried my best bow, rusty since I hadn’t used it in a while. Not many baths in Britannia, but not many people to bow to either. “Thank you.”

She studied me a moment longer, then smiled suddenly. She had small teeth, a little crooked but nicely so. “Ah,” she said.

“What, ah?”

A sturdy blond woman in yellow silk came swooping down the hall, bearing a baby on her hip. “Sabina, have you seen—oh, there she is.” She swung the little girl up onto her other hip. “Faustina, you’re supposed to be with your nurse! Who’s this?” The woman gave me a distracted glance, juggling the two round-eyed children.

“This is Vercingetorix,” the girl in blue said tranquilly, and didn’t that give me a jolt. “He’s waiting to see Father.”

“Well, don’t keep him long,” the woman advised me. “My husband works very hard. Faustina, Linus, it’s time for your bath—” She moved off in a bright spot of yellow, the children crowing over her shoulder.