It wasn’t easy. She turned her head and saw the car bouncing off the ancient stone walls of the quarter, following them down narrow alleys the wrong way. She knew this area. It was one of her favorites for its unexpected sights and the way the buildings ranged across the centuries, sometimes as far back as the age of Caesar.

He was going the wrong way and she knew it but they were there before she could tell him. The Vespa screamed to a halt in a dead-end alley sealed off by freshly painted black iron railings, a view point over the tangled ruins around the Pescaria, the imperial fish market that led to the vast circular stump of the Theatre of Marcellus, like some smaller Colosseum cut short by a giant’s knife. There was no road, only a narrow pathway down into the mess of columns and shattered walls.

They ran and stumbled across threadbare grass through the low petrified forest of dusty granite and marble. She could hear shouts behind and anguished cries in Polish. Then she heard a shot. The tramp’s strong hand grasped her as she tripped over a fluted portion of shattered column. Panting for breath, she found herself in the angry mass of traffic beneath the looming theatre. He dragged her into the mob of vehicles. Halfway across the road there was a young man on a scooter, long black hair falling out from beneath his helmet.

The tramp kicked him out of the seat, then screamed at her to get onto the pillion.

She didn’t need to think any more. She didn’t want to. They wound a sinuous route through the snarled-up vehicles, found the sidewalk on the river side of the road, roared over the cobbles, out to the Lungotevere. The traffic was just as bad there.

She dared to turn. Over the road, fighting through the cars, were three men, guns in their hands.

She swore. She prayed. And then they were through, on the Tiber side of the road, rattling down the steps that led down to the water and the long broad concrete of the flood defenses.

Two days before she’d walked here, wondering, thinking, trying to work out where she belonged. Not yet 20, born in a country that had forgotten her, without parents. And now, she reflected, without her uncle who had come to her rescue when she found herself orphaned. She clung on, tears in her eyes, determined they’d be spent before this man who had both rescued and kidnapped her would look into her face again.

After half a mile, they raced up a long walkway and returned to the road, riding steadily through San Giovanni, past the street where she lived. In her head she said good-bye to the few belongings she had there: a Bible little read; some photos; a few cheap clothes; a music case with some much-loved pieces.