This being Britain, much of the time we were at Durnovaria Helena Justina had had a ferocious cold. While she stayed in her room with her head buried in a jug of steaming pine oil it was easy to forget she was there. When she emerged, and dashed off somewhere in a pony cart, I became curious. She was out all day. She could hardly have gone shopping—I knew from my own attempts there was nothing much to buy. When my friend the steward brought me some leeks in wine sauce to tempt my appetite (which was heartily improved, and I come from a market-gardening family so I love leeks), I asked where their young lady had gone. He didn’t know, but chaffed me about my well-known reluctance to travel with her.

“She can’t be as fearsome as all that!” he remonstrated.

“The honourable Helena Justina,” I stated callously, spooning away at the leeks like a true market gardener’s grandson, “would make Medusa’s snakes look as harmless as a pot of fishing worms!”

At that moment, Helena Justina whipped into the room.

She ignored me. That was normal. She looked deeply upset. That was not. I was certain she had heard.

The steward absconded rapidly, which was all I could expect. On my invalid couch, I sank into a nest of tasselled cushions. I waited for the tidal wave to break.

Helena had taken a ladylike chair. Her feet perched on a footstool, her hands lay in her lap. She was wearing a dull grey dress and an expensively tasteful necklace of tubular agate beads in a mixture of red and brown. For a moment she seemed lost in some grave, introspective mood. I noticed something: when she was not crackling at me, the senator’s daughter could transform her face. To anyone else she might have appeared a calm, competent, thoughtful young woman, whose good birth made her go pink doing business with men, yet perfectly approachable.

She roused herself.

“Feeling better, Falco?” she demanded derisively. I lay on my couch and looked pale. “What are you writing?” Changing the subject with a cool look, she caught me off guard.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be so childish; I know you write poetry!”

With an exaggerated gesture I laid open my wax tablet. She jumped out of her chair and marched across to look. The tablet was blank. I did not write poetry any more. I felt no obligation to tell her why.

Disconcerted myself, I waded in: “Your uncle tells me you’ll be leaving Britain soon?”

“No choice,” she clipped tersely. “Uncle Gaius is insisting I take the Imperial post with you.”

“Take the post by all means,” I remarked.

“Are you saying you won’t act for me?”

I smiled slightly. “Lady, you have not asked.”

Helena bit her lip.

“Is this because of the mines?”