"Oh your under tunic mucky too, Marcus. You'll have to take it off and bathe."

I was already halfway through the motion of peeling down to bare skin when I realised that Hyspale had come into the room.

Helena flushed. "Hyspale, do knock, please!" I made sure I stayed decent. I can stand admiration from the wider public, but I rather liked Helena Justina deciding my body was her personal territory. She was shaking out the cream and blue dress. "Did you move this? Can we understand something, Hyspale – I would not allow my sister, my mother even, to borrow my clothes without asking me."

Hyspale glared at me as if she believed I had caused her reprimand.

"Where are the children?" I asked coldly. Hyspale stormed out. Actually, I had already seen the children safe in the doting care of fair haired, fair-skinned women from the King's household, who were entranced by my daughters' dark eyes and foreign good looks. The baby was asleep. Julia always behaved perfectly for strangers.

Helena and I looked at each other. "I shall deal with it," she repeated. "At least she's not beating or starving them. We just reached the stage where our servants are other people's useless gifts. Next, we shall choose our own- no doubt bungling it through inexperience. Then at last we shall move on to exactly what we want domestically."

"I'd like to miss out some stages."

"You like to rush everything."

I grinned salaciously.

I found my oil flask and strigil, selected clean clothes and went out to explore the King's baths. Helena then scurried after me, growling under her breath and needing to relax in the steam. In a private bath house owned by a royal master there is always hot water. At off-peak times, you can virtually guarantee no one else will turn up to be shocked by mixed bathing.

We found the bath suite was high quality. To one side of the entrance lay a room with a cold swimming pool. None of your shallow paddling puddles; this was more than waist deep with plenty of space for a good thrash, as Helena vigorously proved. I had never learned to swim. She kept threatening to teach me; a freezing pool in Britain did not encourage me to start lessons. I sat on the pink mortared bench and watched Helena for a while, though even she was gasping at the temperature. Slightly chilled, I wandered off to enjoy myself in not one but three different hot rooms, each of increasing temperature. She stopped showing off her stamina and joined me.

"You found the fresco painters this morning?"

"I found their hut. I saw the mosaicist." My solemn lack of logic had Helena giggling.

"Don't play up, Falco."

I gave her a cheeky smile.

Helena languidly went to a basin where she used a dipper to splash water over her shoulders. It ran down… well, where gravity was bound to take it. She came back to sit by me. That gave me the chance

noto trace the water streaks with my fingers.

"So," she asked me doggedly, 'what stage have you reached?"

"Are you supervising?"

"Wouldn't dare." Untrue. "We consult, don't we?"

"You consult and I confess…" She kicked me to encourage honesty. I sobered up to save my shins. "I've got the measure of the project architecturally. It's a good structure and the planned finish treatments are striking. I'm eyeing up the personnel; that's ongoing. Now I have to find an office '

"I have sorted out a room near our suite for you."

"Thanks! That's good not too close to the site managers. So next I take all the project documents into my new office and lurk there auditing. I know what scams I'm searching for. When I'm ready, I'll pull in your brothers to help. Meantime, both are placed in good spying positions." I omitted their seamy conditions. Their loving sister might storm off and rescue them.

Within the thick walls of the bath house, we were cut off completely from the outside world. Nobody knew we were here. Naked and peaceful together, able to be ourselves. Once you have children, such private moments are rare.

I gazed at Helena quietly. "Britain." I took her hand, winding my fingers among hers. "Here we are again!" She smiled slightly, saying nothing. I first met her in this dismal province both of us at a low ebb at the time… "You were a snooty, angry piece and I was a sour faced, hard beggar."

Helena smiled more, this time at me. "Now you're a snooty but mud stained equestrian and I'm…" She paused.

I wondered if she was content. I thought I knew. But she liked to keep me on edge. "I love you," I said.

"What's that for?" She laughed, suspecting bribery.

"It's worth saying."

I felt sweat trickling slowly down my neck. I had a vague scrape with my strigil. I had brought my favourite, which was bone. Firm, yet comfortable on the skin… like many fine things in life.

When I complained about the pain in my wrenched back, Helena eased it with some interesting massage. "Toothache as well," I whimpered pathetically. She leaned round from behind me and kissed my cheek gently. Flattened by the steam, her long straight hair fell forwards, tickling parts of me that decidedly liked being tickled.

"This is nice. No one using these smart facilities but us… Maybe

inwe should take full advantage, sweetheart…" I pulled Helena closer. "Oh Marcus, we can't -' "I bet we can!" We could too. And we did.

XXI

once you have servants, even rare moments of privacy are at risk. I fooled the woman, though. By the time Hyspale sought us out at the baths, Helena Justina was in the changing room, drying off her hair. I was coming out through the porch way newly clad in a clean tunic. With a mother like mine, I had long ago mastered the art of looking innocent. Especially after a hot dalliance with a young lady.

"Oh Marcus Didius!" Our freed woman podgy face glowed with satisfaction at disturbing me. "I've been looking for you- somebody wanted you!"

"Really." I was in a good mood, I tried not to let Hyspale dissipate that.

"I should have sent him here to you…"

She was determined to follow the cliche that men of affairs use the public baths to socialise with their lawyers and bankers, all dull creeps seeking dinner invitations. Not my style. In Rome, I patronised Glaucus, my trainer. I went to get my body fit. "I don't take the conservative line. When I'm at the baths, Camilla Hyspale, it's for cleanliness and exercise." All types of exercise. I managed not to smirk. "I don't want to be found."

"Yes, Marcus Didius." She was an old hand at using people's names as insults. Her meekness was a front. I had no faith in her to obey.

Helena came out behind me. Hyspale looked shocked. And she only thought we had been bathing together.

"Who was it?" I asked calmly.

"What?"

"Looking for me, Camilla Hyspale?"

"One of the painters."

"Thanks."

With a terse nod to the women of my household, loved and loathed, I strode off to be a man of affairs in my own way. The one I loved blew me a kiss suggestively. The freed woman was even more shocked.

H3-turned to the site.

V* rt {had a reel for it now. In some ways, it reminded me of the toured walled complex of a military tort. With the same, slightly sid /.angular layout, the palace would be almost half the length and re(Vdth of a full legionary base. They house six thousand men, two brion bases double that. Like a small town, a permanent fort is fjfrimed with magnificent buildings, dominated by its Praetorium, cr;e administrative headquarters and the commandant's home. The nag's new palace was about twice the size of a standard Praetorium. K too, was designed primarily to impress. It Activity in a far corner caught my interest. I made the diagonal

vite march over there. Pomponius, the project manager, was in rcWvy debate with Magnus, Cyprianus the clerk of works, and another n4ijn, whom I soon deduced was the drainage engineer. In this part of n* site, where the level was natural, labourers had gone ahead with the stylobate platforms that would front each wing. They were laying the first courses of supporting blocks on which colonnades would