I lay back and breathed slowly. Around us were the noises of a domestic district at nightfall. Here on the Aventine, there was always a sense of being high above the city and slightly aside of the centre. Occasional sounds of traffic and trumpets came from a very great distance. Closer to, owls hooted from the gilded roof trees of very old temples. There were all the normal wafts of grilled fish and panfried garlic, the rumpus of angry women berating tipsy men, the weary wails of sick or unhappy children. But this was our hill, the hill where Maia and I grew up. It was a place of augury, foliage gods and slaves’ liberation. It was where Cacus the hideous caveman once lived and where the poets’ association traipsed about singing silly odes. For us the flavours were subtly distinct from every other Rome region.

‘Better start at the beginning,’ I told Maia in a quiet voice.

‘He came this morning.’

‘If I am to evaluate what this bastard is really up to,’ I said quietly, ‘then start right at the beginning.’

Maia was silent. I gazed across at her. Normally you think of your sister as she was at eighteen. Tonight, by the flicker of a pottery lamp, every year was etched on her. I was thirty-six; Maia was two years younger. She had survived a wearisome marriage, births, the death of one daughter, a cruel widowhood and ensuing financial hardship, then a couple of crazy dalliances. There were at least a couple; I was her brother, what would I know? Her worst mistake was when she let Anacrites home in on her.

‘You never really told us: was it serious?’

‘Not for me.’ For once Maia was so unnerved she opened up. ‘I met him, you know, after he was hurt and you took him to Mother’s to recuperate.’ Maia was the kind of daughter who was always popping into Ma’s house to share a cabbage—keeping an eye on the old tyrant. ‘After Famia died, Anacrites turned up one day. He treated me respectfully—that was a change after Famia using me as a boot scraper for all those years . . .’

‘You liked him?’

‘Why not? He was well dressed, well spoken, well set up in an official position—’

‘Did he tell you about his work?’

‘He told me what it was. He never discussed details . . . I was ready,’ Maia admitted. ‘Ready for a fling.’

I could not resist my next question. Be honest, legate, you would have begged to know too: ‘Good lover?’ Maia merely stared at me. I cleared my throat and played responsible. ‘You made it clear all along that you wanted nothing permanent?’

‘At first it could have gone anywhere.’ I controlled a shudder. ‘But I soon felt he was pressing too close. There was something about him,’ Maia mused. ‘Something just not right.’

‘He’s a creep. You felt it.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Instinct.’