Amara has always thought of her master as a thug, but she is forced to acknowledge the charm, as well as the threats, he deploys in his money lending. Clients visit, not noticing the small bent figure in the corner recording their conversations, and Felix treats the men to wine, using jokes and flattery, drawing out their hopes and their secrets. “There’s no such thing as useless information,” he tells her, after one client leaves having lamented about his mother-in-law for half an hour.

He is meticulous with his accounts, all the prostitution money gets ploughed into the loan-sharking, and he takes very little out for pleasure. In fact, pleasure seems to rank low in his life altogether. He hangs out with cronies in bars some evenings, probably the same men she saw that day at the Palaestra, but she is unsure how much he likes anyone, or if he has any real friends.

She tries to let go of her hatred for a while, to study him the way she has watched him study other people. If he were a stranger what would she notice? His love of money, his determination, his cruelty, his surprising fascination with the thoughts and feelings of others. His total lack of compassion. The last, she almost cannot admit to herself: his loneliness.

She is trying to work out the interest payments on a loan, setting it against the information Felix has gleaned about the debtor’s assets, when she realizes he is looking at her.

“Have you still not fucked the posh boy yet?”

“No.”

“Cold-hearted bitch.” There is laughter in his voice, and she knows the insult is meant as a compliment. “I wouldn’t leave it too long. The novelty of rejection wears off after a while. And you’re a whore, not a wife.”

He has read her own anxieties as if they were branded on her body. “I’m afraid of him,” Amara lies. “I think he might enjoy violence.”

“You’ll manage,” Felix says, going back to his accounts. “Not like you haven’t had plenty of practice. And I can charge more if it’s anything extreme, so make sure you tell me.”

“Now who’s cold-hearted?” Amara asks, raising her eyebrows. “What if he killed me?”

“I’d be sorry to lose such a valuable whore.”

“How sorry?”

“Don’t beg for crumbs,” he says with a look of distaste. “It doesn’t suit you.”

His words bring back painful memories of Pliny, of her abject pleading with him to buy her. That has surely cured her of ever being tempted to beg again. She steals a look at Felix’s desk. The scroll of Herophilos is still sitting on it, no doubt left there deliberately to torment her. She has never given him the satisfaction of asking if she can read it.