Petronius and I ambled gently from the patrol house. I was enjoying my return. I threw back my head and breathed in the last heat of a warm city day. I heard the low buzz of voices from families and groups of friends, eating, chatting, gathering to enjoy those quiet hours of the day before they resumed their usual habits of fornicating with each other’s wives and cheating each other at business or dice. Strings of shrieking garland-girls were going home; nobody would buy dinner flowers now. Sounds of flutes and a drummer vied with the clatter of crockery from an alley, obviously the back door to several bars. Wafts of frying food, swum in oil and enlivened with thyme and rosemary, floated just above street level.

I had missed Rome. Petronius pointed out with a grin that I had only been away three days, during which I should have been happy, since at Pa’s villa I had all those expensive new possessions to count. Always generous, Petro bore no grudge for my good fortune. Like me, perhaps he did not yet take it seriously.

On descending the Aventine, to cross to the Palatine we had a choice of passing around the Circus Maximus at the starting-gate end or hoofing down past the apse. The racetrack was absolutely in our way. Even if Petro could have used influence to get inside and cut straight across, there was no point because then we would have had the Palatine’s vertical face ahead of us. Since we both grew up on the Aventine, we were used to this inconvenience. Sometimes we detoured one way, sometimes the other. Either by-pass was long and frustrating. As it was his meeting tonight, I let him choose; he opted for the starting-gates, then wending gently through the Forum Boarium. It stank of raw blood and butchery but gave us a clear run at the Palatine via regular approaches. Petronius was not in a mood to slide through a back door and get lost in the pernicious maze of corridors.

He presented himself to the Praetorian Guard, managing not to be rude to those braggarts. If I stood on my rights with the Guards when they threatened to push us around, Petronius would shrug and dump me. I followed my friend’s lead meekly.

Neither of us had any idea at that moment, but we were beginning an adventure that would be as difficult and dangerous as any we had ever attempted. And its connection with the Palatine overlords would be much more than simple bureaucracy.

12

The tall vaulted corridors of the old Palace had their usual evening hush. This was the time I liked to come here. The crowds of jabbering petitioners had given up and gone home, leaving residual odours of garlic sausage and sweat. People were about, but the daytime tension relaxed. The night shift was efficient, but unexcitable. They put anything important or awkward on hold for the day shift.