I got the picture. Alia was bright, bored and mostly unsupervised an only child, or the only one to have survived infancy. She roamed about, mainly content with her own company. Cyprianus, with his own busy concerns, had to ignore the fact she was at risk. There was no mention of a mother. That gave two possibilities. Either the woman had died or Cyprianus had joined up with a foreigner in some other exotic territory and now she stayed out of sight. I imagined her in their hut stirring stock pots having little in common with him or the places he brought her to and probably bemused by their solitary, highly intelligent, Romanised offspring.

"Want something to do? You could come and help me," I suggested.

"Your dog smells." My dog had saved her from a night in the open, maybe worse. "What would I have to do?" she deigned to ask.

"If I provide a donkey, can you ride?"

"A donkeyT I was in the land of the horse.

"A pony, then."

"Of coursed She was a bareback terror by the sound of it. Her father stood back and let me negotiate. "Ride to where?"

"Into Noviomagus sometimes to see a friend of mine. Can you write, Alia?"

"Course I can." Cyprianus, who had to be both literate and numerate, must have taught her. As she boasted, he was looking on with a mixture of pride and curiosity. They were close. Alia probably knew how much you had to pay per day for first-class plasterers and how long new root-tiles should be left to dry out at the clamps where they were made. One day she would run off with some layabout scaffolder, and Cyprianus would be heartbroken. He already knew it would happen, if I were any judge of him.

"Are you a good girl?"

"Never- she's terrible!" Cyprianus grinned, cuffing his roughneck fondly.

"Come and see me in my office tomorrow, then. I'm Falco."

"What if I don't like you?" Alia demanded.

"Yes you do. It's love at first sight," I said.

"You think a lot of yourself, Falco."

She might have been brought up entirely in a series of foreign provinces, but little Alia had the pure essence of any scornful Roman sweetheart at the Circus Maximus.

Back at the old house we ate outside again. I can't say it was warm, but the light was better than indoors. Tonight's food was lavish; apparently the King had visitors and the royal cooks had made a special effort.

"Oysters! Ugh. I like to know where my oysters come from," mouthed Camilla Hyspale.

"Suit yourself. British oysters are hymned by poets, the best you'll ever taste. Give yours to me then' I had my arm out to snaffle the rest when Hyspale decided she might try one after all. Thereafter she hogged the serving dish.

"That painter was here looking for you again, Marcus Didius."

"Wonderful. If it's the assistant from Stabiae, I was at his hut looking for him. What's he like?"

"Oh… I don't know." I had not yet trained Camilla Hyspale to provide a witness statement. Instead, she blushed slightly. That was clear enough.

"Watch him!" I grinned. "They are notorious for lechery. One minute they are chatting to a woman harmlessly about earth colours and egg-white fixers, the next they have fixed her up in quite a different way. I don't want any lout in a paint-stained over tunic getting the better of you, Hyspale. If he offers to show you his stencil stumping brush, you say no!"

While Hyspale was spluttering in confusion, some of us wondered hopefully if we could pair her off. Helena and I were diehard romantics… And leaving the nursemaid in Britain would be bliss.

H5The royal party must have dined formally, but afterwards some of the usual group with Verovolcus among them brought their wine, beer and mead into the garden. We never saw the King in the evening; his age must have condemned him to an early-night routine. When we had finished eating, I went over to the Britons to broach with Verovolcus the subject of the King's bath-house upgrade.

Before I mentioned it, I noticed a stranger. He seemed well at ease in company with the King's retainers, but turned out to be that evening's guest. I could hardly miss him because, unlike anyone else in this province, he was wearing a two-piece formal Roman dining suit a synthesis: loose tunic and matching over mantle the same shade of red. Nobody I knew ever made themselves look foolish with an old-fashioned twin set even in Rome. Only rich-boy partygoers of a certain eccentricity would bother.

"This is Marcellinus, Falco." Verovolcus had at last stopped calling me the man from Rome with every breath. However, if he did not need to tell Marcellinus who I was, my role must already have been discussed. Interesting.

"Marcellinus? Aren't you the architect for this palace, the "old house"?"

"The new house, as we called it!"

I remembered now that I had seen him before. He was the elderly cove who had turned up that morning to see Milchato the marble chief. He made no mention of it, so I held my peace too.

Like many in artistic professions, he cultivated a stylish air. His unusual clothes were outlandish in a casual setting, and his elite accent was agonising. I could see why he chose to stay an ex-patriot. He would have no place in Vespasian's Rome, where the Emperor himself would call a wagon a dung-cart in an accent that implied he once knew how to shovel manure. With a grand Roman nose and gracious hand gestures, this Marcellinus stood out above the commonplace. It did not impress me. I find such men a caricature.

"I admire your superb building," I told him. "My wife and I are greatly enjoying our stay here."

"Good." He seemed offhand. Put out, perhaps, that the scheme to which he must have devoted many working years was now to be superseded.

"Have you come to see the new project?"

"No, no." He cast down his eyes demurely. "Nothing to do with me." Was he disgruntled? I felt he deliberately distanced himself- but then he made a joke of it for my sake. "You must wonder if I am interfering!" Before I could answer, he continued charmingly, "No, no. Time to let go. I retired, thank goodness."

I don't allow autocratic men to brush me aside. "Actually I thought you might be here to mediate. There are problems."

"Are there?" Marcellinus asked disingenuously. Verovolcus, like a gnarled Celtic, tree-stump god, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, watching us.

"I feel the new project manager misjudges things." Falco the frank orator outfought Falco the man of guarded neutrality. "Pomponius is a narrow official. He sees the project as an imperial commission only forgetting that there would be no commission without its very specific British client. No other tribes are to be provided with a full scale palace. This scheme will far outlive our generation- yet it will always be the palace that was built for Tiberius Claudius Togidubnus, Great King of the Britons."

"No Togi, no palace. So what Togi wants, Togi should get?" His use of the crude diminutive in a serious discussion in front of the King's servants- jarred. Marcellinus was supposed to be on good terms with the King. His lack of deference sat poorly with the affectionate way Togidubnus had spoken of him in my hearing.

"I like a lot of what the King suggests. But who am I to comment on architecture?" I smiled. "But I suppose it is nothing to do with you nowadays."

"I finished my task. Someone else can carry the burden of this great project."

I wondered if he had ever been considered as project manager for the new scheme. If not, why not? Was being replaced by a newcomer a surprise to him? And did he accept it? "What brings you back today?" I asked lightly.

"Seeing my old friend Togidubnus. I don't live far away. I spent so many years out here," Marcellinus said, "I built myself a delightful villa down the coast."

I knew some provinces could win the hearts of their administrators, but Britain? That was ridiculous.