I have no intention of describing what happened next. It is private between me, the senator’s daughter, and the gardener’s horse.

XLVIII

It was two hours before morning and most of Rome lay asleep. All the waggons and carts had retreated to their berths. Late diners had braved ambush at street corners to straggle home; prostitutes and pimps were dozing on the rushes among their sordid snoring clients; the lights in the palaces and mansions were dim. It was cold enough for a fine mist to have curled among the valleys between the Seven Hills, but when I woke I was warm physically and felt the slow, strong, welling emotion of a man who had convinced himself the girl in his arms would be the woman in his life.

I stayed completely still, remembering. I watched her sleeping face, at once so familiar to me, yet in deep slumber strangely unlike itself. I knew I must not expect to hold her, or watch her sleeping, ever again. Perhaps that was what made me feel I could not bear to let her go.

She woke. Her gaze at once dropped. She was shy—not because of what we had done, but in case she found me changed. Her hand stirred against me, in a somewhat private place; I saw her eyes widen, startled, then she settled again. I smiled at her.

“Helena…” I studied her closed, cautious face. A sculptor might have quibbled, but to me she was beautiful. Anyway, if sculptors knew anything they’d take up a more lucrative line of work. “Nothing to say?”

After a time she replied, with typical honesty, “I suppose last night was how it is meant to be?”

Well; she had told me something about Pertinax. My answer was equally subdued.

“I imagine it must be.” Which, if she was interested in past history, told her something about me.

I started to laugh: with her, at myself, at life, helplessly.

“Oh Helena, Helena!…I learned some wonders about women with you last night.”

“I learned some about myself!” she answered wryly. Then she closed her eyes against my inner wrist, reluctant to let me see anything she felt.

Despite her restraint, or because of it, I wanted her to understand. “It’s like studying a foreign language: you pick up a smattering of grammar, some basic vocabulary, a terrible accent that just gets you understood; you struggle for years, then without warning everything flows, you grasp how it all works—”

“Oh don’t! Falco—” She stopped; I had lost her.

“Marcus,” I begged, but she hardly seemed to hear.

She forced herself on: “There’s no need to pretend. We found a comforting way to pass the time—” O Jupiter! She had stopped again. Then she insisted, “Last night was wonderful. You must have realized. But I see how it is: every case a girl, every new case a new girl—”