“They are. And I’ve seen details coming down from the fort to peer around. I imagine they are hampered by the fact ingots look identical: how can they tell whether what they are shown even contains silver or not?”

“How can anyone tell?”

“Ah! The ingots that are stolen before cupellation are specially stamped: ‘T CL TRIF’ four times.”

“Falco, you’ve seen it?”

“I’ve seen them here—and tell the procurator Flavius, I’ve seen one like that in Rome!”

It was still lying in Lenia’s bleaching vat.

Rome! I lived there once…

Our snatched conversation was about to be disturbed. My present life had taught me to smell trouble on the wind like a forest deer. I touched Vitalis on the arm to warn him, and our faces closed guardedly.

“Io, Vitalis! Has that punk admitted anything?”

It was Cornix.

This Cornix was an obscene bully of a foreman, a real specialist in administering tortures to slaves. A slab-shouldered sadist with a face marbled like a side of beef by his depraved life. He had picked on me mercilessly from the moment I arrived, but owned just enough working ooze in his chickpea brain to be wary in case one day I went back to some previous life and talked.

Vitalis shrugged. “Nothing. Tight as a virgin’s apron string. Shall I leave him a bit longer? Is he any use to you?”

“Never was,” Cornix lied.

Quite untrue. They had worn me to a runt by now, but I had been well fed and sturdy when I first arrived. I scowled at the ground while Vitalis and Cornix pretended to negotiate.

“Take a thorough squint at him,” Rufrius Vitalis urged the foreman scornfully. I stood there looking pitiful. “Another few weeks of fog and frost up here and he’ll be pleading to go home. But I won’t get much back for him in his present state—can’t you fatten the bastard up a bit? I’d be willing to go halves on any reward…”

On this welcome hint, Cornix promptly agreed he would have me transferred to lighter work. When Vitalis left, with a curt nod to me as his only possible goodbye, I had ended my stint as a picker, and was about to be made up to a driver instead.

“Your lucky day, Chirpy!” Cornix leered unpleasantly. “Let’s go and celebrate!”

Avoiding the privilege of being selected as Cornix’s partner in sexual dalliance had so far occupied a lot of my ingenuity.

I told the brute I had a headache, and was violently kicked for my pains.

XXVII

Driving seemed quite straightforward. We used mules rather than oxen, because of the hills. A cartload comprised four ingots. They were a dead weight and transporting them was fiendishly slow.