“A smart slave can buy his passage to Gaul, if he survives your murderous foreman. Cornix diddles his tax-free bonus; the chain gangs have their sad little dodges; you organize a private racket of your own. How did these traitors from Rome lean on you—threaten exposure unless you cut them in?”

“Look, you clerks have to face facts!” For one last desperate moment Triferus continued to pretend. “Mining is a special case. It’s not like selling beer and oysters to the troops—”

“Don’t waste time on him, sir!” I snarled at the procurator. “Let me take him back to Rome. We have decent equipment there; he’ll squeal. After that, the Vatican Circus—lion-feed!” Releasing the torque as if the owner disgusted me too much to bother, I turned to Gaius with an irritable shout. “Ask him about the stamps. The ingots he steals himself are banged four times if they still contain silver—that’s one bar in four. The rest have been bled, but this enterprising bastard sells them as intact. How long before our political hopefuls spot his double-cross? I wouldn’t like to wear the boots of a man who bribes the Praetorians with counterfeit dosh!”

“Triferus, can’t you see they know!” For the first time the financial procurator spoke in a voice stripped of all pretence. “British ingots have been found loose in Rome. Unless we arrest the plotters before they get to you, you can kiss goodbye to much more than your tender for the lead franchise in the Malvern Peaks. Vespasian’s in for the duration, whatever you have been told. Save yourself, man, turn in whatever evidence you can to the state—it’s your only way to survive!”

Triferus took on a complexion like unpainted wall plaster.

He asked to speak to Gaius alone. He gave him two names.

Gaius wrote a letter to the Emperor, which I was to carry, though he refused to tell me what the two names were. I thought he was playing the pointless bureaucrat, though afterwards I understood why.

Gaius and I travelled coastwards to Durnovaria to his favourite villa, for me to ask his honourable niece Helena whether she was ready to travel home and if so, would she wish to be escorted through Europe by such as me. Gaius drove me down. We tripped a hundred miles at a pace so sedate I longed to wrench the reins out of his hand.

I have to admit I hankered for Helena Justina’s nippier driving style.

XXXII

Gaius came with me to his villa because he wanted to prune his vines. They were miserable specimens. He had lived in Britain so long he had forgotten what a vine was really like.