At the end of December, as a Saturnalian treat, Rufrius Vitalis turned up looking prosperous with a hide whip pushed through a huge brown belt, to see if I had discovered enough to let me be pulled out. When he saw my dull-eyed state his honest face grew grim.

He extracted me from the furnace, then drove me some distance down the track, cracking at me with his whip for show. We crouched out of doors in a bank of wet bracken where we were unlikely to be overheard.

“Falco! It looks as if you need to get out quick!”

“Can’t go. Not yet.”

By this time I had slid into a sullen mood. I no longer believed in release. I felt my life for ever would be scrambling round the cupellation hearth in nothing but a loincloth with my shaved hair frizzling on my mucky head and my hands red raw. My only challenge was how many silver scratchings I could steal for myself. My mental and physical strength were both so depleted I had almost lost interest in the reason I was there. Almost, but not quite.

“Falco, are you cracked? Going on with this is suicide—”

“That doesn’t matter. If I pull out too early I won’t want to live with myself in any case. Vitalis, I have to finish it—” He was starting to grumble, but I interrupted urgently. “I’m glad to see you. I need to smuggle out information in case I never get a chance to make a full report myself.”

“Who’s this for?”

“The financial procurator.”

“Flavius Hilaris?”

“You know him?”

“I know of him. They say he’s all right. Look, laddie, there’s not much time. It will look suspicious if I hang about. I’ll find him. Just tell me what I have to say.”

“He should be at his villa near Durnovaria.” Gaius had promised to locate himself there, within reach if I managed to send messages. “Tell him this, Vitalis. There’s flagrant corruption all through the mine. First, when the rough ingots leave the smelt for cupellation, they are counted out by a weasel who can’t actually count. He scratches marks on a tally stick; sometimes he ‘forgets’ to make his nick. So what the contractor Triferus declares to the Treasury as his overall production is fraudulent from the start.”

“Hah!” Vitalis let out this exclamation like a man who assumes he has heard almost everything, but who is not surprised to learn of some new dodge.