These were two out of nine. I had had enough of this investigation and genuinely thought it would go nowhere else, not on the meagre evidence. I needed them to clarify things. Amaranta was bright; she knew it.

I gazed at her. She had spent a lot of time intricately plaiting her hair. Her nimble fingers would work busily, accurate even without a mirror and without help. I bet she thought things out while she did that. She created her own hairstyle. She lived for herself.

I seriously wondered about her pairing up with Daphnus. She was almost thirty; he was eighteen. Though he had told me cockily that he hankered after her, he was far too young. Love has no barriers, but I was realistic. Whatever he thought was going on here, Amaranta knew different. If she had let him believe he was in luck, it was for calculated reasons. Any bond they had forged while in refuge would last until they obtained the freedom they wanted, maybe a while longer. Eventually, she would drop him. I could even foresee that Onesimus, Mucia’s steward who was still in Campania, might reappear and Amaranta would claim him.

‘You two devised the details of the cover-up, admit it.’ I spoke tersely.

‘Is it worse for us?’ asked Daphnus. ‘If we admit something—’

I knew Rome. ‘In this city, under our present emperor, helping a prosecution succeed is highly prized.’ I did not say that under Domitian this was prized even if the proffered evidence was invented.

‘Well, you do that, don’t you, Albia?’ Amaranta risked a sideswipe at me. ‘You give information. What’s the difference?’

None. That was why my profession has a very bad reputation in some quarters … I stared her down, showing I knew it and would not be cowed by criticism.

Daphnus kept glancing at Amaranta. He wanted to play the strong male role, but was confirming with her everything he said. She was definitely the leader. Their partnership today held interesting tensions.

Daphnus was tall, which gave him a presence, but since I first saw him, so brash in his amulet and secondhand shoes, he had lost his lustre. It was about two weeks since the slaves sought refuge, since when they had in effect been prisoners. The layabouts, Diomedes and Amethystus in particular, were taking it well, since they were idle by nature. Daphnus was feeling restless and, I guessed, bored with captivity.

Amaranta, by contrast, kept her self-confidence. She wanted to extract terms, because if she was to live, she must act decisively, act now, and screw whatever she could out of a damning situation. She would be methodical. She would be ruthless if necessary.

Daphnus thought Amaranta would protect him too, but he might learn otherwise.