Lenia, whose instinct must have been to favour me, kept well clear of my tussle with the landlord. Smaractus paid her certain attentions which at present she was resisting because she liked her independence, but as a good businesswoman she kept her options open. He was foul. I thought Lenia was mad. I had told her what I thought; she had told me whose business I could mind.

Her restless gaze flickered again towards my companion.

“New client,” I boasted.

“Really! She paying you for the experience or you paying her for the treat?”

We both turned to survey my young lady.

She wore a fine white undertunic fixed along the sleeves with blue enamel clasps, and over it a sleeveless gown so generous in length it was bunched up over her girdle of woven gold threads. Apart from the wide bands of patterned embroidery at her neck, and hem, and in broad stripes down the front, I could tell from the narrowing of Lenia’s watery eyes we were admiring a quality cloth. My goddess had wire hoops threaded with tiny glass beads in each neat little ear, a couple of chain necklaces, three bracelets on her left arm, four on her right, and various finger rings in the form of knots, serpents or birds with long crossed beaks. We could have sold her girlish finery for more than I earned last year. It was best not to consider how much a brothel keeper might pay us for the pretty wench.

She was blonde. Well, she was blonde that month, and since she was hardly from Macedonia or Germany, dye must have helped. It was cleverly done. I would never have known, but Lenia informed me afterwards.

Her hair had been curled into three soft fat ringlets tied in a clump with a ribbon at the nape of her neck. The temptation to untie that ribbon niggled me like a hornet bite. She painted her face of course. All my sisters turned themselves out spanking with colour like newly gilt statues, so I was used to that. My sisters are amazing, but blatant works of art. This was much more subtle, invisibly achieved, except that running in the heat had left one eye very faintly smudged. Her eyes were brown, set wide apart, and sweetly without guile.

Lenia tired of looking long before I did.

“Cradle snatcher!” she told me frankly. “Tinkle in the bucket before you take her up.”

This was not a request for a medical sample because cradle snatching made Lenia diagnose me as unwell; it was a straight hospitable offer, with business overtones.

I shall have to explain about the bucket and the bleach vat.

A long time afterwards I described all this to someone I knew well, and we discussed what launderers use for whitening cloth.

“Distilled woodash?” my companion suggested doubtfully.