Later that morning I took the aedile to meet my mother’s younger brothers. They occupied a pair of houses at the Capena Gate, which sits in the old Servian Wall, just past the end of the Circus Maximus. Faustus and I walked down from the Aventine together in silence, but as we ducked under the dripping arches of the notoriously leaky Claudian Aqueduct, trying to cover our heads, I briefed him.

‘They are Aulus Camillus Aelianus, senior of the two, and Quintus Camillus Justinus. We’ll go in first to see Justinus then we’ll probably adjourn to Aelianus’ house.’ Faustus failed to ask why I preferred to start with Justinus. That saved me having to tell him. ‘Justinus is very much a family man; no one gets much quiet thinking done where he lives. His brother’s house is the opposite, as dead as an old tomb in a necropolis. He is on his third wife, but the marriage is failing.’

‘That’s sad,’ Faustus observed conventionally, steering me around some of the beggars who lurked under the aqueduct. ‘Children?’

‘Fortunately no.’ Aelianus, an awkward character, would probably have been a high-handed father. ‘Both my uncles are in the Senate, although it was a big financial struggle. I don’t know all the details, except that my father contributed.’

‘Generous.’

‘He had worked with both. Still does. You know how Roman families operate.’

Faustus nodded. He himself lived with an uncle; they shared business interests and perhaps other sins. ‘The Camilli are now a partnership?’

‘Yes, but on sometimes spiky terms.’ The pair had matured slightly when they hit their late twenties and came good as court prosecutors, which is almost a respectable career. But they were temperamentally different and Justinus had once eloped with Claudia Rufina, a Baetican heiress who had really come to Rome to marry his brother. Years later, it still rankled. The brothers were thirty-nine and forty now. Old enough to be consuls, though for them it would never happen. They lacked the right political friends. My father reckoned that was what made them decent and likeable.

‘Are they good, or just your uncles?’

‘They are good.’ They really were. He gave me a look. ‘Honestly, Faustus.’

‘And you work with them?’

‘Sometimes a case benefits from a woman’s touch.’

Yes, and sometimes those two casual lads were just too lazy to do the legwork themselves.

Camillus Justinus’ house looked half-painted; I could not remember any maintenance being done since my grandparents’ time. We were admitted by an age-old Janus who had rudely forgotten my name even though I had cursed him a hundred times before. A desultory housekeeper showed us to a salon where a sleepy serving boy just stared at us. Faustus and I exchanged glances; we were both thinking about slaves and their habits today.