We tired of playing games. I flopped on a couch and Helena knelt to help pull my boots off. She was simply dressed for home in a long white tunic, with plaited hair just wound in a circle and secured with one long bone pin. My real wealth lay in the love in her eyes. I knew that.

Albia was still moping; she had stopped throwing perfume bottles at the wall, though she had taken to disappearing out of the house for long periods. Perhaps she went walking by the river, wafting along like a water sprite wronged by some heartless god. When she did come home, Helena suspected she was writing screeds of tragic poetry. ‘I blame myself, Marcus; I gave her the education. Is this to be the Empire’s heritage: putting barbarians at a social disadvantage—yet equipping them to complain?’

‘Any further visits from Aelianus to inflame things?’

‘No; he’s busy. Father decided that now both Aulus and Quintus are married, it is make or break time to put them up for the Senate.’ That was all I needed: electioneering. Helena grimaced too. ‘I mentioned that it would be inconvenient for you, just when you are tied up with the legacy and need them to assist in your casework. But Papa is giving them one last chance to become respectable—he hopes to inveigle Minas of Karystos into a financial contribution.’

I scoffed. ‘We know Minas better than that, I think!’

‘Yes, he is as much use to Aulus as an in-law as he was as a professor. I suppose it has struck you,’ Helena murmured warily, ‘that you are now in line to be badgered for money, Marcus.’

‘What? Everyone always supposed I wanted your father to pay my debts. Can the senator now be hoping to sponge off me?’

‘I believe he may try to talk to you,’ Helena admitted, smiling.

Thank you, Geminus. Now I was a plebeian-born, middle-class upstart who had to play banker to his aristocratic relatives. ‘Will it cause a family crisis if I say get lost?’

‘Not from me,’ said Helena. ‘Neither of my ridiculous brothers is fit to govern a beanfield, let alone the Empire.’

‘Then they will sail into the Senate. Perhaps I should make an investment, then demand political favours from them? If a bunch of ex-slaves living on frogspawn can have friends in high circles, why not me?’

‘You don’t need favours from anybody, Marcus.’

I kept my head down for a few days. Life ran its usual furrow in the Aventine, though his tribune was back, so Petronius Longus had too much work at the station house. Invigorated by the sea air of Positanum, Rubella started sniping because Petro kept nipping off to the Forum Boarium, the riverside cattle market, to scrutinise any animals that came in. ‘Just in case Nero turns up.’