"The thrills in Noviomagus Regnensis had best come very cheap."

"You can't afford their sleazy women, that's for sure. So I can tace your beloved Claudia with a clear conscience."

He made no comment on his beloved Claudia. "So what am I after, Marcus?"

"Find out what's here. I heard they have the usual canabae bound to be dire, but unlike your brother you can at least come home to a clean bed. Watch yourself. They use knives."

He gulped. Justinus had plenty of bravery, though he rationed it. On his own, he would never venture into bad situations. I had been out with him in Germany, in his patch as a tribune in the First Adiutrix legion; he had stuck to the approved military drinking dens, which he left discreetly when the gamblers and guzzlers started duffing I

people up. He knew how to cope in worse places too; I had taken him

H

to a few of those. "Am I looking for Gloccus and Cotta?"

"We all are, all the time. In between, I want to discover the story on a dead Gaul called Dubnus. He was stabbed in a drunken fight recently. And look out for people going out the back of bars to buy pinched materials from the building site. Or bent subcontractors who might be offering stolen goods to the site managers. I also want to identify any disaffected workmen."

"You know such people may exist?"

"Apart from Dubnus, it's guesswork. Mind you, I've seen the amicable atmosphere on site! Most of them dislike each other, and they all loathe the project manager. And I was briefed in Rome that the scheme is rife with corrupt practices."

Justinus bit his thumb. He was probably excited at his task. Cocky about it, even. But those deep brown eyes, whose warm promise had lured Claudia Rutina from Aelianus almost without either brother noticing what was on her mind, were now pondering how to approach this. He would be planning his wardrobe and rehearsing his script as a disaffected young aristocrat far from home. He was weighing risks too. Wondering whether he dared take a weapon- and if so, where to hide it. He realised that once he wandered into the local canabae on a gloomy British evening, there would be no simple escape route and no handy officials he could call upon for help.

As I sat alone with him now- especially without his bickering brother I was remembering how secure I always felt when I worked with Justinus. He had excellent qualities. Quiet good sense, for one thing.

He needed that. What I had just asked of him was no idle game. Time was, if anyone had to infiltrate the dark hovels of a native cantonment, there would be no option: I would go myself. Sending a lad in my place would never have occurred to me.

Perhaps he could see my thoughts. "I will take care."

"If in doubt, retreat."

"That's your motto, is it?" A smile flashed easily.

There was one good reason for sending him instead of me. I was middle-aged nowadays, with the air of a well-married man. Justinus was about twenty-four; he carried his wedded status lightly. He might not think of himself as handsome, but he was tall, dark, slim and very slightly self-deprecating. He struck strangers as easy-going; women found him sensitive. He could talk himself into anyone's confidence. There would be naive teenage barmaids queuing up to talk to him. I knew, and I was certain he remembered, that the golden-haired women of the northern world would readily let themselves be persuaded that this grave young Roman was wonderful.

How my conscience would square that next time I saw his Claudia (a shy brunette, incidentally) could be dealt with in due course.

Much more difficult was how I would handle Helena, if anything should happen to her favourite brother.

XVIII

when i stuck my head around the door of his site hut, the mosaicist looked up from his steaming mug of mulsum and immediately rapped out, "Sorry. We're not taking anybody on." He must think I wanted work.

He was a white-haired man with a trimmed white beard and face whiskers, who had been talking quietly to a younger fellow. Both wore similar warmly layered tunics, belted in and with long sleeves; presumably, they could grow shivery as they spent hours crouched at their meticulous work.

"I'm not looking for employment. I have enough intricate puzzles of my own."

The chief mosaicist, who had seen me earlier at the site meeting, started to remember me. He and his assistant were each leaning their elbows on a table, holding hot mugs between their hands. The same look of detached wariness occupied both faces. It seemed to be routine, not caused by me especially.

"Falco," I explained myself to the assistant, inviting myself in. "Agent from Rome. Troublemaker, obviously!" Nobody laughed.

I found a place on the opposite bench. Between us lay sketches of Greek keys and elaborate knots. I could smell the low-grade mulled wine, its vinegar base mildly spiced with aromatics; none was offered to me. The two men were waiting for me to take the initiative. It was like facing a pair of wall plaques.

We were in a fenced-off area of site offices, outside the main plot, in the north-west corner near the new service buildings. Today I was tackling decor. The mosaicists neatly inhabited one of a double set of temporary hutments, the other of which was the chaotic province of the fresco painters. Here they could all work on drawings, store materials, try out samples and while they waited for the builders to give them rooms to decorate- they could sup beverages and think about life. Or whatever interior designers fill their brains with when the rest of us would be forgetting work and dreaming of home make overs

In the other hut, the painters had been having a loud argument as I passed. I might have barged in, hoping this was evidence of problems on the site, but I could hear it was all about chariot racing. I left the raucous painters for later. I was feeling limp, after the effort of moving my family here at short notice yesterday. Halfway through unpacking last night, Verovolcus had dropped in on us; he was aiming to inspect my women but they knew how to vanish and leave me to entertain him. Now I was nursing a headache, just from weariness. Well, that was my story.

Inside here, the mosaicists' quiet refuge, all the wall space was hung with drawings, some overlapping haphazardly. Most were mosaic designs in black and white. Some showed complete room layouts with their interwoven borders and tiled entrance mats. Some were small trial mo tits They went from the simplicity of plain corridors with straight-line double edgings, to numerous geometric patterns composed of repeated squares, cubes, stars and diamonds, often forming boxes within boxes. It looked simple, but there were elaborate crenellations, interlinked ladders and latticework such as I had never seen before. The profusion of choice argued huge talent and imagination.

The plan was for every room in the palace to be different, although there would be an overall style. Two large floor designs stood out as special, prominently nailed up in clear wall space. Among the few in colour, a preliminary mock-up had a fabulous complex guilloche of intertwining threads, which formed a centre roundel. That was currently blank. No doubt some handsome medallion was planned- with the King's choice of mythological subject still to be supplied. Within the twined border ran a ring of rich, autumn-tinted foliage, eight-petalled rosettes and elegant tendrils of leaf predominantly in browns and golds. Outside, the corners were in filled with alternate vases and, for some reason, fish.

"North wing," said the chief mosaicist. Bleating so expressively almost finished him. He did not explain the marine life. I was left to theorise that it was to decorate a room for fish suppers.

The other grand design was fully worked out. This was black and white, a stunning carpet of dramatic squares and crosses, some of its patterns devised from arrowheads, compass rosettes and fleursdelys. The images had been put together so the effect was three dimensional, but I realised that irregularities made the patterns seem to shift. As I moved position, the perspective changed elusively.