“Drusilla thinks I should let Rufus buy one so I can practice at home,” she replies. “I’m not sure I’m ever going to be very good at it though.” She drinks the wine, feels its warmth spreading through her. “And after the music lesson we saw Primus. He was learning his letters in the garden.”

“Oh,” Philos exclaims. “I remember doing that as a boy. In the house where I was born.” The light is fading, but it is still bright enough for her to see he is smiling at the memory. He has stopped shredding the thyme.

“Were you once free?” she says, surprised into asking a personal question. She had been so sure that Philos was born into servitude.

“No, I’ve always been a slave,” he replies. “Just a well-educated one.” She stares at him, wanting to know more without liking to intrude. He smiles again. She realizes he is enjoying her curiosity; there is mischief in his gray eyes. He looks more how she remembers, back when they were truly friends.

“Tell me about a complicated man,” he says, switching to Greek. “Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy, and where he went, and who he met and the pain he suffered in the storms at sea.”

“You learned Homer?” Amara is surprised.

“A little bit of Homer,” Philos corrects her. “To be honest, that’s almost all I can remember. I barely got a few hundred verses into The Odyssey before the master’s children objected to me reciting it.”

“Why would they do that?” Amara asks.

“Because I was good at it,” he replies. She is expecting him to go on, but instead he looks uncomfortable, as if aware he has said too much about himself. “I’m sorry, I don’t . . .” He stops, not finishing whatever it is he wants to tell her. “I should go and ask Martha to save the dinner. Rufus said he will call on you as soon as he can. Maybe tomorrow. Goodnight.”

He gets up and hurries from the garden, disappearing into the dark atrium. Amara watches him leave, a heavy feeling in her chest. She isn’t sure if the ache inside is hunger or loneliness. It would have been more sensible to ask Martha to bring out some stew, no need for her to miss dinner simply because Rufus hasn’t turned up, but she is reluctant to call Philos back. A few months ago, she was a lower order of slave than anyone else here. Now they all have to wait on her. She can easily imagine what the others might say about their brothel-whore-mistress behind her back.