‘Then you won’t break him,’ Helena said.

We ourselves were starting to dread that. We had learned that he had been ready for the ordeal. He had put himself into a state of passivity. His background must be bad. His past experience hardly showed physically; there were no old marks or scars. We could not deduce what his previous life consisted of, though we could tell he knew humiliation and deprivation. When we made threats, he knew that situation too. He was in many ways quite ordinary, a face in any crowd. He was like us, and yet unlike us.

Helena had come with a prepared speech. Petro and I stood at rest and heard her out.

‘I have only agreed to what you have been doing because Anacrites is so dangerous. I am horrified by what you have done to this man. You have toyed with him, teased him, tortured him. You have obliterated his personality. This is inhumane. It goes on for days, he never knows what will happen in the end—Marcus, Lucius, can you explain to me what difference there is between your mistreatment of this man, and the way that the killers of Julius Modestus abducted and abused him?’

‘We have not used knives on him,’ said Petro bleakly. The urge to keep up pressure on the agent got the better of him: ‘Well—not yet.’ He gestured to the hideous collection we had taken from our abductee. ‘Those are his. Assume he carried them to use.’

It was an instinctive response, not the real answer. I knew Helena, loved her, respected her enough to find a better reply: ‘There is a difference. We have a legitimate purpose—the general good. Unlike the killers, we don’t relish this. And unlike their victims, this man can easily stop what is happening. All he has to do is answer us.’

Helena still stood there rebelliously.

‘He has a choice,’ Petronius reinforced me.

‘He looks half dead, Lucius.’

‘That makes him half alive. He is better off than a corpse—by a long way.’

Helena shook her head. ‘I don’t approve. I don’t want him to die here in my house. Besides, you are running a huge risk. Surely Anacrites could burst in to rescue him any minute?’

The man on the bench had opened his eyes; he was now watching us. Had mention of Anacrites revived him? Or did Helena’s spirited speech awaken hopes he had not known he harboured?

Helena saw the alteration. She moved closer, inspecting him. His light-skinned, now heavily stubbled face had a faint scatter of liver spots or freckles. His nose was upturned; his eyes were pale, a washed-out hazel colour. He could be, as he had told us, from Italy, though he looked different from true dark-eyed Mediterraneans.

In a much lower voice, Helena spoke to him directly. ‘Anacrites will not be coming for you, will he? For some reason he has abandoned you.’