"His "flickering floor'1, said the assistant proudly.

"North wing grunted the chief mosaicist again. Well, skilled repetition was his art.

"People will love it," I flattered them. "It you run out of work here, you can come to my house!" Being slow men, whose lives ran at the restrained pace of their work, they did not quip back the obvious retort. I said it for them: "I don't suppose I can afford you."

Nothing gave.

I tried again: "Not a lot for you to do around here at present."

"We'll be ready when they are." The chief spoke dourly.

"I can see you're a cut above the average. This client won't be fobbed off with apprentice work and a few preformed panels, cut in at the last moment." Again, he did not deign to comment.

"Your most important activity takes place before you're even on site," I mused. "Creating the design. Choosing the stones I assume it's to be mostly stone here, none of those glass fragments or sparkly gold and silver particles?"

He shook his head. "I like stone."

The too. Solid. Cut well, there will be plenty of light reflected back. You can achieve a gleam without gaudiness. Do you make the tesserae yourself?"

"When I have to."

"Done it in your time?"

"I use a team now."

"Your own? You trained them?"

"Only way to get good colour matches and consistent sizing."

"Do you lay your own screeds?"

He scoffed. "Not any more! Those days are behind us."

He had put down his beaker. His hands dipped automatically into the baskets of tesserae that littered his table, running the matt miniature tiles through his fingers like embroidery beads. He didn't know he was doing it. Some of these samples were minute, at least ten to the inch. Setting them would take for ever. He had a trial block in front of him, with a band of tight interwoven border in four colours- white, black, red and yellow- executed exquisitely.

"Audience chamber."

This was a fellow who saved himself. He let time pass by calmly; he would live long yet his joints would go, despite the use of padded kneelers, and his eyes must be doomed.

The younger man must be his son. He had the same body weight, face shape and manner. These were archetypal craftsmen. They passed their skills from generation to generation, developing their art to suit the times. Their world had a tight circle. Theirs was solitary work. Limited by a man's private concentration, constrained by the reach of his arm.

These were workers who, in the course of their daily life, rarely looked up at what was going on nearby. Apparently they lacked curiosity. They had an air of ancient, honest simplicity. But I already knew from my study of this oversized building scheme, the mosaic workers were a bugbear. They wasted time, kept no proper records of supplies and overcharged the Treasury more relentlessly than any other trade. The chief knew I was on to it. He defied me silently.

I, too, examined a bunch of black stones. I let them clatter slowly back into their basket. "Everyone else I have interviewed so far told me who they hate. So who annoys you?"

"We keep to ourselves."

"You come along at the end of the job, the last finishing trade and you know nobody?"

"Nor want to," he said complacently.

Loud guffaws sounded through the thin walls from the volatile fresco painters. I was starting to think they would be more fun. "How do you get on with them next door?"

"We work it out."

"Tell me when a room has an elaborate floor, something like your "flicker" design, then it needs quiet walls. You want people to admire it without distraction. And vice versa: when there is flamboyant painting or the occupants plan on using a lot of furniture the floor needs to be restrained, in the background. So who chooses the primary design concept each time?"

"The architect. And the client, I suppose."

"You get on with Pomponius?"

"Well enough." If Pomponius had kicked him in the privates and stolen his lunch-basket, this button mouth would never get excited about it to me.

"When they pick a style, do you have any input?"

"I show them layouts. They choose one, or a general idea."

"And is there conflict?"

"No," he lied.

If he completed his floors to the fine standard in his artwork, he was a high achiever. That did not alter the fact, this man was as surly as they come.

"Have you come across anyone called Gloccus or Cotta?"

He thought about it, taking his time. "Sounds familiar…" He shook his head, however. "No."

"What line are they in?" enquired the son. The father glared, as if it were a rash question.

"Bath-house construction." Pa's wonkily tiled Neptune had nothing in common with the cool sophistication that had been ordered up for the palace. "They do lay floors sub-contracted but nothing of your quality."

Reluctant to say that the last time I stood on a new floor mosaic, I had put a pick through it and then my father squelched his tool into a corpse, I ended the interview. It had hardly advanced my knowledge. Still, I had formed some thoughts about how I would like my dining room at home re laid

One day. One day when I was really rich.

XIX

when i came out from seeing the floorers, the fresco painters' hut next door now lay silent. I looked in.

It was the same kind of chaos, though more crowded since their best friend was a trestle. It had been given a home where the table would have been if these lads had been proud housekeepers. Instead, they ate squatting on the floor (I could tell from the mess) and had upended the table against a window, to give them more access to wall space. They wanted lots and lots of free area to cover with their sheer brilliant brushwork.

The last painters I had dealings with were a mad crowd of crooked, aimless semi-criminals from a wine bar called the Virgin; they wanted to bring down the government but had no money for bribes and no charismatic charm to fool the plebs. Most of the time they could hardly remember their own way home. They were connected with my father. Enough said.

These loud characters here were probably layabouts too. All gambling, drink, and high ideals about betting systems. What they possessed in abundance was talent. All over their hut were fantastic examples of mock-marble scumbling. Dainty purple flecks on red, with trickles of white. Wandering orange streaks. Two shades of grey, sponged in layers. A blank square patch of wall was satirically labelled 'lapis blue here', presumably because the jewelled paint was too expensive to waste in experiments. All other surfaces were daubed. Every time they came in for a break and a barney and a bite to eat, they must flick new paint around just for the joy of seeing different colours and effects. When they were feeling even more obsessive, they produced elaborate bands of wood-graining so perfect it seemed a tragedy that this crude hut with their experiments would one day be pulled down and burned.

There were paint pots everywhere, mostly with great wet glops sliding down them. Paint rings stained the floor. I kept well outside.

"Anyone home?"

No reply. I did feel saddened.