Parvo smiled his acknowledgement of what Pa called value for money and others might stigmatise as meanness. ‘Apart from that, a codicil is often a more flexible way of giving instructions.’

I braced myself. ‘So what usefully flexible orders has the old beggar left?’

Without comment, Parvo passed me a scroll, the ink so fresh and black it almost still smelt sooty. I read it. I raised my eyebrows and passed it to Helena, who read it too. We both looked at the lawyer.

‘Marcus Didius Falco, your father hereby makes a solemn request of you called a fideicommissum. That is a good faith undertaking.’ Filthy misnomer. Good faith did not come into this. ‘It affects any child of Marcus Didius Geminus, otherwise Favonius, which is born to him after the date of this codicil—including a child born posthumously. You are charged with treating any child that you know your father intended to acknowledge as your sister or brother, according to the terms of the will.’ Parvo knew what instruction he was handing me. A new female child must be given the same as my sisters’ annuities. A male child would halve my inheritance. ‘I shall leave you with that, Falco. Should you have any queries, anything at all, I gave your wife my address. Delighted to meet you, Helena Justina—and you too, Thalia.’

Being an experienced family lawyer, he fired the arrow then at once made off.

Helena and I turned to our old friend Thalia. Helena balanced her chin on her clasped hands, in silence. It was left to me: ‘Do I gather, Thalia, that you are pregnant?’

She eyed me ruefully. ‘Properly caught out, Falco.’

Thalia looked well-preserved. Across an arena she could pass for a lithe girl, but near to, I put her at approaching forty. Gracious Roman manners barred me from suggesting she was too old for this. Maybe she had thought so herself, while freely indulging in love play. That sexual promiscuity of an athletic kind had occurred was in no doubt. Thalia referred to her appetite for pleasure as consistently as she denounced as pitiful the brave men she bedded.

‘Would this have been on your Egyptian trip?’

‘I wondered why I was feeling so queasy all the time in Alexandria.’

‘Geminus believed he was responsible?’

‘Oh, he didn’t need persuading. The sweet duck was ecstatic,’ boasted Thalia. ‘It must have happened on the boat when we were going out to Egypt. We had a few cuddles to keep out the sea breezes.’

‘I’m rather surprised by the results!’

Thalia grinned. She was recovering her confidence. ‘I can’t say I’m happy to be a mother at my age—but when I told him the news, your dear father was just thrilled. He was so proud to find out his ballista was still firing missiles.’

I believed that. Pa—vain, foolish and ridiculous—would eagerly take the blame.