‘It’s where Orestes lives. He’s the king round here. Just had a new son.’ Paulos leered unpleasantly, and began picking the wax out of his ears.

Elissa was poking Silvius in the ribs, and hissed into his ear, ‘I don’t like him.’

‘I don’t like him either,’ said Silvius through his teeth.

But there was nobody else around who had a cart.

So a short while later, Silvius, Elissa and a very grumpy Ruffler were perching uncomfortably, jolting with the steady movement of the donkey’s hooves as it set out across the plain on the wide road, and trying not to breathe in the fishy stench that came from the pottery jars all around them.

Silvius could see the citadel of Mykenai rising up in the near distance, poised in between two mountain peaks as if it were the nest of some giant, terrible bird. These were Achaeans, Silvius remembered. The ones who had burnt his father’s city to the ground. And he was going right into the centre of their territory.

Yet it was so different from the wooden walls of Lavinium that Silvius couldn’t help gazing up in awe. His own city was so new, everything freshly hewn, buildings going up all the time. This place looked like it had been there since a time before the gods. Soon the stones of the walls themselves could be made out. They were massive – so massive that no human could have placed them there.

‘Who built the walls?’ asked Silvius.

‘The Cyclops, they say,’ answered Paulos.

Silvius imagined the giant one-eyed monster dragging stones across the plains. It must have been a fearsome sight.

The road was dusty and well-travelled, and there were one or two other carts going along it also. Paulos exchanged greetings with a few foot travellers coming from the direction of Mykenai. One of them said something that made him hesitate; as he started up again, he called back over his shoulder to them. ‘King’s exiled his own son, so they say.’ The memory of Aeneas struck Silvius forcibly. He’d disobeyed him. Would he be exiled when – if – he returned?

‘What for?’ Silvius turned round on his knees and leaned on the edge of the cart.

‘Trying to kill his own father, apparently,’ said Paulos, as if he were telling Silvius the way to the market. What kind of son would do that, he wondered?

‘They’re cruel, these Achaeans,’ Silvius said, adjusting his position so that he could see Elissa. She was tickling Ruffler’s head, and looking back at him with her eyes narrowed. ‘We must be on our guard.’

‘We don’t know if it’s true. We need to ask Orestes at the kinghouse.’ Elissa scratched Ruffler under his muzzle, and the little wolf shook himself free and went to curl up in a corner.

‘And so we will,’ answered Silvius. The news they had heard troubled him. But they had little choice.