People were looking out of windows and doorways. The disturbance brought Polycarpus’ wife down.

‘Dromo – come. With your cudgel, fool!’ Faustus finally went along with me. I calmed down. Better he decided to help me than I rushed off by myself. I knew from experience he made a good ally.

Polycarpus must be out but, assuming responsibility on his behalf, Graecina produced a carrying chair. It must be Mucia’s, sent back by the Temple of Ceres after the slaves ran off. It had been kept in a lock-up while attempts were made to clean Nicostratus’ blood off the seat. Not very successfully, I noticed.

The steward’s wife also gave us a lantern-carrier, a callow lad who worked for her, and a cloak of her own – I was shaking – which Manlius Faustus bundled around me, a practical man, ignoring how angry I had been with him. He noticed I was on the verge of tears and murmured, ‘Don’t go jittery. This is not your fault.’

‘I don’t jitter. Let me go. I need to go.’

‘I am coming with you. Get in – go, go!’ He was shouting not at me, but the Camillus slaves who would be carrying the chair containing me.

Thank the gods it was downhill to the Capena Gate. It felt as if we were travelling across half Rome, a rough journey at the speed they ran, and I was so keyed up I soon felt sick. We had to scramble from the Fourth district, past the Fifth, across the Second and into the Twelfth. At least it was not as far as the Aventine.

It was a quiet evening by Rome’s standards. The streets were negotiable. The Rabirius gang had done their worst for one night. Nobody attacked us.

When we arrived, the men took the chair right into the house and I fell out of it in the atrium, almost before they were stationary. Someone gestured to a room. Quintus, stripped and sporting livid marks, was lying on a couch.

Aulus was attending to his brother. He had rejected the family doctor, a freedman they kept for dosing the children, who had tried to use lambswool for cleaning the wounds, only to be ordered away in case fibres killed Quintus with an infection. The doctor was still maundering on about this, while Aulus explained his reasons through gritted teeth, apparently not for the first time.

Aulus used a sponge. He must have already spent some time cleaning Quintus up. Several bloody bowls of water stood on the floor around the couch. Even so, I could see no sword or knife wounds, only bruises and scrages where dark blood welled but only to the surface. The damage was extensive. He would hardly be able to move tomorrow. But he would safely have a tomorrow.