They strode unhurriedly along the edge of the Boarium and left by the wide street that passed between the Palatine Hill and the Capitoline. To their right the edifices of the imperial palace complex covered the hill; torches and braziers lit the columns and statues that looked down on the rest of Rome. On the left loomed the mass of the Temple of Jupiter, built on a rock with sheer sides in places and accessed by a wide ramp that zigzagged up to the temple precinct. They entered the Forum and crossed in front of the senate house. A party of finely dressed youths came the other way, talking loudly as they boasted of their ambitions for the night’s entertainment. They quietened down a little as they passed the two soldiers and the imperial agent then continued as before when they were a safe distance beyond. On the far side of the Forum another street led past the Temple of Peace and up into the Subura, one of the poorer quarters of the city where crime was rife and the buildings so poorly constructed that hardly a month went by without one of the ramshackle tenement blocks collapsing or burning down.

‘Narcissus isn’t putting us up in the bloody Subura, I trust,’ Macro said quietly to Cato. ‘Had enough of it the last time we had to stay in Rome.’

Septimus glanced back. ‘It’s not far now. On the edge of the Subura, as it happens. So that it’s convenient for you to get to from the Praetorian camp. Don’t worry. The apartment is in one of the better tenement blocks. At least that’s what the landlord said when I took it.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘Doesn’t concern me. I don’t have to live there.’

The street began to incline and they passed between the first of the tall brick structures where most of the city’s inhabitants lived. The tenements crowded the street and towered high above so that the dim gloom of the night sky provided almost no illumination. A few lamps burned in the entrances to the buildings but the streets were in darkness. Which was no bad thing, Cato reflected as the foul air filled his nostrils. He did not want to know what he was stepping in. Around and above them, they could hear voices. Some laughter, some quiet conversations, occasional angry shouts or the crying of infants and the splatter of slops being emptied into the streets.