Minas must have set it up. However big a rissole Minas of godforsaken Karystos was in Athens, the glory of Greece had passed away. Rome was the only place for any ambitious professional. Marrying off his sombre daughter to a Roman senator’s son must have been in the mind of the unscrupulous law teacher from the moment he grabbed his new pupil, fresh off the boat, and promised to make him a master of jurisprudence.

Demonstrating to the newlyweds how a good husband arrives home, whatever shocks await, I crossed the room sedately, then bent and kissed my dear wife’s cheek. In the style of a good Roman marriage, she was the companion who shared my closest secrets, so to demonstrate our private affection to Aulus and his bride, I murmured a love greeting in Helena’s neat ear. I managed not to nibble her lobe, though I considered it, which may have shown in my face.

‘Seems Albia may want to leave town,’ I then muttered. ‘I could vanish to Pa’s villa maritima for a few days. Call it executor business. Shall I take her away for some breathing space?’

Helena kissed me back formally like a matron who knows the father of the family is up to no good. ‘Let’s talk later, darling.’

In the style of a good Roman marriage, I took that as settled.

8

Toward nightfall, to escape the tantrums that were rattling shutters in my house, I went out to see Petronius Longus. He was on duty with the vigiles, at the Fourth Cohort’s secondary patrol house. It was a calm, masculine environment where only the grunts of criminals being brutally thrashed ever disturbed the tranquillity. July and August were always quiet. Members of the public used fewer oil lamps and cooking fires, so they set fewer of their tenements on fire. For the vigiles, nights became tedious. Patrols could be stood down. While they waited for emergencies, the firefighters liked to sit in their exercise yard telling one another moral fables. Well, that was one way to describe it. They were ex-slaves, a rough lot.

Petronius sat apart in a small office, wrestling with his latest unsolved case. Drink was barred on these premises, but he gave me a slurp from the beaker he had under the table. He hid it again in case the tribune dropped in, then we swapped gossip.

‘Helena is hopping mad at her brother, and our girlie is distraught.’

‘Albia’s how old? Seventeen?—Thundering Jove, was it that long ago you and I were in Britain during the Rebellion?’ That was when she must have lost her parents. ‘Did Aelianus touch her?’ We were fathers. We were paranoid with good reason. We had been lads in the army together, then dirty bastards about town. We knew what happens.