“None of us will ever quite recover,” he acknowledged, sounding pretty hoarse himself. His face had shadowed too. While the governor Paulinus was frightening mountain tribesmen, this man had been prospecting for copper and gold. Now his job was finance. Below the governor he sat on the second highest administrative notch. But ten years ago, at the time of the Revolt, Gaius Flavius Hilaris had occupied a more junior post; he was the procurator in charge of the British mines.

It could be him! My weary brain kept telling me that this clever man with the clear-eyed smile could be the villain I had come to find. He understood the mines, and he could fudge the paperwork. No one in the Empire was so beautifully placed.

“You must be exhausted!” he exclaimed softly. I felt drained. “You missed dinner. I’ll send sustenance to your room, but do use our bathhouse first. After you eat I want to introduce you to my wife…”

These were my first dealings with the diplomatic middle class. Until then they had escaped me, for the simple reason that they led lives so lacking in deceit that they attracted nobody else’s unkind attention and never needed to employ me for themselves. I had come expecting to be treated like a servant. Instead I found myself lodged incognito in the procurator’s private suite, being offered a welcome more suited to a family guest.

Fortunately I had packed one set of decent clothes.

XXII

My billet was disturbingly cosy. I had a spacious room with a bed groaning under colourful quilts. Oil lamps flickered. Warmth filtered through the wall flues. There were seats with low square footstools, cushions, floor rugs, writing materials for my private use, late apples in a glossy ceramic bowl.

A dapper slave escorted me to the bath suite, another scraped me down, then back to find a pudgy boy struggling to unload a tray of silverware covering cold game and glazed ham. I packed in the victuals while I could. The boy waited to serve me; he seemed impressed. I winked at him—then looked away in case he got the wrong idea.

As a compliment to my host I combed my hair. Then I rooted out my best tunic, a limp off-white article which according to my clothes dealer had only been worn by one other person before me. (My mother says always ask what they died of, but so long as there are no visible bloodstains, I don’t. What dealer is going to confess that your predecessor had a flaky skin disease?)

Opening my baggage roll, I sucked thoughtfully at the remnants of ham that had trapped themselves between my teeth. It had been skilfully done, but during our talk in the study my props had been searched.