I found the booth, but not the drayman. Three days after his horse stumbled over the silver pig in the dark, he was dredged out of the Tiber by two men fishing from a raft. They took him to Tiber Island, the medical hospice at the Temple of Aesculapius. Most of their patients die. It didn’t worry the drayman; he was already dead.

Before leaving the island I leaned on the parapet of the old Fabrician Bridge and did some hard thinking. Someone approached in that all too casual way, the way that is never casual at all.

“You Falco?”

“Who wants to know, princess?”

“My name’s Astia. You asking about the man who was drowned?”

I guessed Astia was the drayman’s floosie. She was a thin, bleached waterfront shrimp with a tired, hard waterfront face. Best to know where you are: “You his woman?” I asked her straight out.

Astia laughed bitterly. “Not any longer! You with the Praetorians?” she spat at me.

I played down my astonishment. “Life’s too short.” I waited after that. It was the only thing to do, since I had no idea what I was waiting for. She seemed to consider whether I could be trusted, then after a moment, out it spilled.

“They came here afterwards. They didn’t care about him, they only wanted information.”

“Tell them anything?”

“What do you think! He was good to me when he had any money…I went to the Temple; I buried him myself. Falco, he may have been found in the river, but I know he didn’t drown. They told me at the Temple he must have tipped in when he was drunk. But when he was drunk—” that was probably quite often, but I had more tact than to ask—“he used to lie down in the cart and let the horse walk him home.”

“Anyone find the cart?”

“Left in the Cattle Market Forum, minus the horse.”

“Hmm. What did the Guards want, princess?”

“He had found something valuable. He wouldn’t tell me what, but it frightened him. He handed it in at the nearest lockup instead of selling it himself. The Guards knew he found it. They didn’t know what he had done with it.” So it was not the Guards who snatched young Sosia. Unlikely anyway; she would not have escaped so easily—she might never have escaped at all.

“I’ll have to speak to them. Any chance of a name?” Astia knew very little. Their captain, she told me, was called Julius Frontinus. As a member of an élite regiment, he undoubtedly possessed the full three names of a substantial man, but two were enough for me to pin him down. For the first time in my life I volunteered to face an interview with the Emperor’s Praetorian Guards.

XV