Aelia Camilla was looking anxious over the way the young girl had stormed out. Hilaris gave his finger to the baby, which clasped hold of it while still asleep, kicking out haphazardly with one foot. Evidently he took a wry view of tantrums. Rather than grin too broadly, he concentrated on reattaching his baby’s tiny felt boot as he spoke. “Falco, my apologies! That is Helena Justina, my wife’s niece. I ought to have introduced you—I believe there is a suggestion you should escort our Helena home?”

I held his eye long enough to share the joke, then replied without commitment that I believed there was.

XXIII

I felt gloomy enough, without a confrontation with this angry witch Helena Justina. She would have a long trek home, across barbarian territory, so I understood why the senator was so keen to provide her with some sort of professional escort—although after the disaster of my involvement with Sosia Camillina, it seemed ludicrous that he had selected me. I wanted to be helpful to him, but now I had seen her, the prospect of close contact with his bad-tempered off-spring started to loom depressingly. Once, winning her over might have been a challenge. Now I was in too much pain from Sosia’s death to raise the energy. Only the fact that I liked Decimus Camillus Verus gave me patience to deal with this situation at all.

The night we met, Helena Justina’s finer qualities—if she had any—were lost on me. For reasons I could not begin to imagine, she held me in contempt. I could tolerate rudeness, but she even seemed insubordinate to her uncle and aunt.

She was not gone long. I suspected she could not bear to miss the chance of finding more to despise in me. When she barged back I ignored her. With hardened types it is the best way.

All the same, I was curious. Just because you give up women does not mean you give up looking. She had a brutal nature but a bonny figure, and I quite liked the way she twisted up her hair. I noticed the little Flavian girl ran back to her at once; not everyone can charm a child like that. So here she was: my lost soul’s famous cousin.

Their fathers were brothers but they were not at all alike. Helena Justina was by then twenty-something, yet she appeared completely self-possessed. She burned with a strong, calm flame beside which the immature Sosia would have seemed positively foolish. She was everything that Sosia had promised to be and could never now become. I hated her for that, and she knew I hated her. She bitterly resented me.