‘Is he sniping at your legacy?’

‘You guessed. Is Virtus still living in the same place?’

‘Who knows? We don’t always update our records unless some name bobs up in a new offence.’

I said that in addition to Volusius’ mother I would visit Virtus, but Petronius would not reveal the address. He would meet me for lunch after a few hours’ rest, then we could go together. I promised to round up one of the Camilli, or both, to accompany us. Lunch could be at my house; Flora’s had lost our custom.

‘We should go armed. These bastards collect spears. The Urbans carry swords and knives—why don’t we ask Silvius for back-up?’

Petronius Longus was a vigiles man and he would never change. Despite the supposed joint operation with Silvius, he assumed a vague expression. ‘Let’s you and I just take a quiet recce first.’ He was as keen on inter-cohort co-operation as a fifteen-year-old boy thinking about purity.

‘Fine. We’ll tiptoe up like cat burglars . . . I could knock on the door for a horoscope—but I don’t want Virtus to look into my future and see when he and his stinking brother Nobilis will be arrested.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Lucius Petronius had no faith in clairvoyance. ‘He won’t even be able to foresee what he’s getting for lunch.’

‘Right. What’s your star sign, by the way? You’re under the Virgin, aren’t you?’

‘Believe that, Marcus, if it gives pleasure to your childish mind.’

50

I sent a runner to tell Aulus and Quintus to come over for lunch. Meanwhile, I went alone to find the teacher’s last known address.

It was a dismal mission. I found the apartment, in a tangle of narrow lanes on the way to the Esquiline Gate; indoors, as she generally must be, was the ancient, widowed mother. I guessed she had lost her husband young. Perhaps there had been a legacy; the rental where she lived—where she had brought up her only son Volusius—was cramped but just about tolerable. She was the proud kind, to whom poverty must be perpetually shameful. She had scrimped to get her boy an education, investing all her own hopes in his obvious potential. Although he became a teacher, because of his experience at Antium only disappointment followed. She was now half-blind, but taking in tunics to mend, to keep from starving.

Volusius was dead. His mother said he had never recovered from his fright that day at Latium. It affected him so badly he could no longer teach. He lost his job at the local school, then failed to find other work. He moped around as a loser, became mentally disturbed and committed suicide—threw himself in the river just after the second anniversary of being abducted.

‘Did he talk about what had happened?’

‘He could never bear to.’

‘You went there to fetch him home afterwards. Was he in a bad state?’