Our object of enquiry was folded up in felt and roped around with hemp. Since the banker was watching us with frank Bithynian curiosity, Petronius gave me a hand to drag it out unwrapped. It seemed impossibly heavy. It was lucky we had borrowed a handcart from my brother-in-law the plasterer, who was out of work as usual. (My brother-in-law was not out of work because all the walls in Rome were sound and smooth. It was because people in Rome would rather look at bare slats than employ a boss-eyed, bone idle swine like him.) We staggered off with our trolley creaking under the weight. Petro let me do most of the work.

“Don’t hurt yourself!” Sosia had the grace to exclaim.

Petronius winked at her. “Not as puny as he looks. Does secret weight training in a gladiators’ gym. Use your muscles, blossom—”

“You must tell me some time,” I gasped in retaliation, “why my sister Victorina calls you Primrose.”

He said nothing. But he blushed, I swear he did.

Fortunately Rome is a sophisticated city. Two men with a girl and a handcart can crawl into a wine shop without causing comment. We moved down a shady side street and plunged indoors. I bagged a table in a dark corner while Petro laid on some hot pies. It took both of us to raise the precious object up onto the table with a thud. Cautiously we peeled back the felt.

“Shades of Hades!” Petronius let out.

I could see why Uncle Decimus did not want this new baby announced in the Daily Gazette.

Sosia Camillina had no idea what it was.

Petro and I knew. Both of us felt slightly sick. Petro, with his iron stomach, nevertheless leaned back on his joint-stool and snapped his teeth into a vegetable pie. Rather than surrender to unhappy memories, I bit into one too. Mine was basically rabbit, with chicken livers and, I think, juniper—not bad. There was a plate of pork titbits; we let Sosia chew on those.

“That lonely hole of a customs post,” Petro reminisced in horror. “Stuck on the Sabrina Estuary the wrong side of the frontier. Nothing to do but count the coracles floating in the mist, and keep one eye open in case the dark little men came over the river on a raid. Oh dear gods, Falco, remember the rain!”

I remembered the rain. The long, drear rain in southwest Britain is unforgettable.

“Falco, whatever is it?” Sosia hissed.

I said, relishing the drama, “Sosia Camillina, this is a silver pig!”

XII

It was an ingot of lead.

It weighed two hundred Roman pounds. I tried to explain once to a woman I knew, how heavy that was: