I found the administrative office easily. An hour later I had wormed my way up the queue to see a slinky-hipped clerk with long eyelashes. He might eventually spare time from telling coarse jokes to his neighbor, the rent clerk, and might discuss the dockets I needed to know about. Once I reached him, he buffed his nails on the shoulder of his tunic and prepared to fob me off.

We had a long wrangle about whether he was empowered to let me see dispatching details, followed by a fierce set-to over his claim that there was no customer called Calliopus.

I borrowed a tablet from the rent clerk, who had been observing my problems with a supercilious smirk. On it I wrote clearly: " ARX: ANS."

"Mean anything?"

"Oh that!" mouthed the beauteous king of the dockets. "Well, that's not a private customer."

"So who is this public one?"

"Confidential." I had thought it would be. "SPQR."

I stood on his foot, letting my boot studs press between his sandal straps, grabbed handfuls of his pristine tunic, and pushed his chest until he was squealing and leaning backwards.

"Spare me the secret passwords," I growled. "You may be the prettiest scribe at the snootiest old granary on the Embankment, but any tough nut with an ounce of good sweetbreads in his cranium can decipher that logo once he associates the words ‘grain' and ‘once a week.' Adding ‘S' and ‘P' and ‘Q' and ‘R' just shows you know some of the alphabet. Now listen to me, petal. The corn you supplied this week is poisoning birds. Think about that very carefully. Then consider how you will explain to the Senate and People of Rome why you refused to help me find who tampered with the corn."

I stepped back suddenly, loosening my grip on his tunic.

"It goes to the Arx," confessed the scribe in a terrified whisper.

"And the rest stands for ‘ Anseres Sacri,' " I told him, though he knew it well enough.

He was right to be anxious. The sack of corn that had poisoned the ostrich had been intended for the famous Sacred Geese.

Twenty-six

"DOWN,NUXIE!"

For a moment there seemed a good chance my scruff would end up in custody for goose-worrying. A priest of the Temple of Juno Moneta peered out from the sanctum suspiciously. Casual visitors were discouraged up here; the Citadel was no place to walk your dog.

Juno Moneta had in ancient times assumed responsibility for the Mint and for the patronage of Roman commerce-an early instance of the female sex taking over the housekeeping purse. Jupiter might be the Best and Greatest, but his celestial wife had grabbed the cash. I sympathized. Still, as Helena said so sensibly, it was useful for one person to control the home budget.

"Oh please, don't set them off!" The custodian of Juno's sacred guard birds seemed cheerful and relaxed. If Nux retrieved one of his charges for my cooking pot it would simply pose awkward problems of bureaucracy. "I have to call out the Praetorians if they decide to have a honk-not to mention filing an incident report as long as your arm. You're no marauding Gaul, I hope?"

"Certainly not. Even my dog has Roman citizenship."

"What a relief."

Ever since a monstrous army of Celts once raided Italy and actually sacked Rome, a permanent gaggle of geese had been given privileged status on the Arx, in honor of their feathered forebears who had raised the alarm and saved the Capitol. I had imagined that the big white birds led a pampered life. This lot looked a bit wormy, to tell the truth.

The geese were taking an aggressive interest in Nux. She barked once, then shrank back against my legs. I wasn't too confident I could save the little coward. As I bent to pat her reassuringly, I noticed I had stepped in some of the slimy green droppings that lay in wait all over the hillside at the top of the steps past the Mamertine.

Across the dip on the Capitol, the twin peak to the Arx, the restored Temple of Jupiter had begun to rise slowly. Destroyed by a catastrophic fire at the end of the civil war that brought Vespasian to power, the Temple was now being rebuilt in due magnificence as a sign of the Flavian Emperors' triumph over their rivals. Or as they would no doubt put it, as a gesture of piety and the renewal of Rome. Fine white dust drifted towards us on the misty rain, through which there was no diminution in the sound of stonemasons chipping at marble; they were, of course, secure in the knowledge that the Census property tax would be paying for their materials and labor at top rates. Once they had built the new Temple of Capitoline Jove, they would be moving on profitably to the Flavian Amphitheater, the new stage for the Theater of Marcellus, restoring the Temple of the Divine Claudius, then creating the Forum of Vespasian, complete with two libraries and a Temple of Peace.

An area near Juno's outdoor altar had been turned into a tiny garden for the Sacred Geese. They had a fine view over the roof of the Mamertine prison to the Forum, though their enclosure was rather rocky and inhospitable.

The custodian was a slight, elderly public slave with a wispy beard and bandy legs, clearly not chosen for his love of winged creatures. Every time a goose wandered too close to him he jeered, "Foxes!"

"It's a terrible place for them," he confirmed, noticing my polite concern. He sheltered in a hut under a stunted pine tree. For a man with easy access to goose egg omelettes, not to mention the occasional roast drumstick no doubt, he was oddly underweight. He matched his thin charges, though. "They ought to have a pond or a stream, with growing herbage to tear up. If I take my eyes off them, they wander off in search of better pasture. I go down and round them up with my stave-" He shook it in a listless manner. It was a splintered stick I wouldn't throw for the dog. "Sometimes they come home with a few feathers plucked, but normally nobody bothers them."

"Out of respect for their sanctity?"

"No. They can peck very nastily."

I noticed that although there was loose corn sprinkled on a bare patch of ground, the geese were foraging in a heap of faded grass clippings. Interesting. I cleaned my boot on some of the greenery that had been supplied to the hissing guard poultry. "I have to talk to you about your corn supply."

The custodian groaned. "Nothing to do with me!"

"The weekly sacks of grain?"

"I keep telling them we don't want so much."

"Who do you tell?"

"The drivers."

"And what do they do with the surplus?"

"Take it back to the granary, I guess."

"The geese don't eat corn?"

"Oh if I scatter some for them they toss it about a bit. But they prefer greens."

"Where do you get their green feed then?"

"The men at Caesar's Gardens; they bring me their clippings. It eases the load, given that they have to cart their rubbish outside the city. And some of the herbalists who have market stalls bring me unsold bundles when they're getting limp, rather than carry them home again."

This was classic bureaucracy. Some clerk believed that the Sacred Geese required a large supply of grain because his predecessors had left him a brief saying so. Nobody ever asked the keeper of the poultry yard to confirm what was needed. He probably did complain to the drivers, but the drivers didn't want to know. No chance they would report back to the suppliers at the Granary of the Galbae. The suppliers were being paid by the Treasury so they kept on posting out the sacks. If you could find the original order clerk it could be put right; but nobody ever did find him.

"What's the rationale for the corn then?"

"If the poor can have a corn dole, so can Juno's geese. They saved Rome. The city shows its gratitude."

"What; a hundred thousand skivers receive their vouchers for free corn-and one of the dockets is routinely made out to the Sacred Honkers? I suppose they get the best white loaf wheat too?"