"One of those puffed-up dignitaries is on my list. This seems a good opportunity to talk to a suspect..."

I tried to persuade Helena to wait for me at a streetside food-shop. She fell silent in a way that told me I had two choices: either to abandon her, and see her walk away from me forever (except perhaps for a brief return visit to dump the baby on me)—or else I had to take her along.

I attempted the old trick of holding her face between my hands, and gazing into her eyes with an adoring expression.

"You're wasting time," Helena told me quietly. The bluff had failed. I made one more attempt, squashing the tip of her nose

with the end of my finger while smiling at her beseechingly. Helena bit my playful digit.

"Ow!" I sighed. "What's wrong, my love?"

"I'm starting to feel too much alone." She knew this was not the moment for a domestic heart-to-heart. Still, it never is the right time. It was better for her to be abruptly honest, standing beside a flower stall in a narrow Corduban street, than to bottle up her feelings and end up badly quarreling later. Better—but extremely inconvenient while a man I wanted to interview was scuttling away amongst the ceremonial throng.

"I do understand." It sounded glib.

"Oh do you?" I noticed the same frowning and withdrawn expression Helena had been wearing when I found her outside the basilica.

"Why not? You're stuck with having the baby—and obviously I can never know what that's like. But maybe I have troubles too. Maybe I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of being the one who has to look after all of us—"

"Oh I expect you'll cope!" she complained, almost to herself. "And I'll be poked out of the way!" She was perfectly aware it was her own fault she was stuck on her feet in a hot noisy street in Baetica.

I managed a grin, then followed it with a compromise: "I need you! You've been summing up my job for me pretty accurately. How about being poked onto a seat at the theater next to me?" I gave her my hand again, and we hurried together the way the procession had gone. Fortunately I possessed skills which most urban informers lack. I am an expert tracker. Even in a completely strange city I know how to trace a Parilia procession by following the newly deposited animal dung.

My experiences in Baetica already warned me that when I caught up with the priest and magistrates I might detect an equally pungent smell.

* * *

I hate festivals. I hate the noise, and the wafts of lukewarm pies, and the queues at the public lavatories—if you can even find one open. Still, coming to Corduba on the Parilia could prove useful as a study of town life.

As we hurried through the streets, people went about their business in a pleasant mood. They were short and stocky, vivid evidence of why Spanish soldiers were the Empire's best. Their temperament seemed level too. Acquaintances greeted each other with a relaxed style. Women were not accosted. Men argued over curb-side space for tying up wagons in a lively, but nonviolent way. Waiters in wine bars were friendly. Dogs yapped, then soon lost interest. All this seemed everyday behavior, not some holiday truce.

When we reached the theater, we found events were unticketed because the religious stuff was public and the dramatic scenes had all been paid for by the decurions, members of the town council; they, the Hundred Men, had the best seats, of course. Among them we picked out Annaeus Maximus again, and from his position he was a duovir, one of the two chief magistrates. If Corduba was typical, the Hundred Men controlled the town—and the duovirs controlled the Hundred Men. For conspirators, that could be very convenient.

Annaeus was the younger of the two landowners I had met in Rome, a square-faced Spaniard with a wide girth, giving me maybe fifteen or twenty years. Coughing slightly in the wafts of incense as the pontifex prepared to slaughter the calf and a couple of lambs, Annaeus was the first to rush forward to greet the governor. The proconsul had arrived direct from his palace, escorted by lictors. He was wearing the toga I had seen him in, not a military breastplate and cloak; ruling the senatorial provinces was a purely civic office.

In fact his role, we soon saw, was as a figurehead on somebody else's ship. The cream of Corduba had welcomed him as an honorary member of their own tightly knit top-notch Baetican club.

He sat on his throne in the center of the front rows of seats around the orchestra, flanked by well-dressed families who gossiped and called out to each other—even shouting to the pontifex in mid-sacrifice—as if the entire festival was their own private picnic.

"It's sickening!" I muttered. "The Roman proconsul has been swallowed up by the ruling families, and he's become so much a part of the local clique it must be hard for him to remember that the Roman treasury pays his salary."

"You can see how it is," Helena agreed, only a little more mildly. "At every public occasion the same few men are in charge. The same faces cluster in the best positions. They're terribly rich. They're completely organized. Their families are linked intimately by marriage. Their ambitions may clash sometimes, but politically they are all one. Those people in the front-row seats run Corduba as their hereditary right."

"And in Gades, Astigi and Hispalis it's going to be the same— some of the faces will match too, because some of the men will be powerful in more than one place. Some must own land in several areas. Some will have taken rich wives from other towns."

We fell silent for the sacrifice. In acquiring foreign provinces, the plan was to assimilate local gods into the Roman pantheon, or simply add them to it if people liked to keep lots of options. So today at the Parilia ceremony two Celtic deities with unintelligible names received a lavish sacrifice, then Jupiter was allowed a slightly weedy lamb. But the Baeticans had been wearing Roman dress and speaking Latin for decades. They were as Romanized as provincials could be. And like the patricians of Rome, keeping a rigid grip on local politics through a small group of powerful families came as naturally as spitting.

"You can see it all," I muttered to Helena. "I bet the governor goes to all their private dinner parties, then when he holds a reception, this same crowd fills out the guest list. These folk will be at the Palace every week, munching dainties and sipping free wine. No one else gets a look in."

"If you live here, and belong to the charmed circle, you have to hobnob with the same suffocating group continually." That tedium was never going to afflict a dusty pleb like me—and Helena would have lost her own invitation the minute the proconsul read Laeta's letter about me.

"I'm just surprised the old man was as frank as he was!" I muttered.

Helena looked worried. "Do you regret making yourself known to him?"

"No; I represent Laeta; I had to report in. It's safe; the proconsul is one of Vespasian's men. But now I've seen what social obligations he has, I'll hold back from contact again."

The dramatic performances began. These consisted of brief scenes or tableaux which had been decreed suitable for public show on an occasion of organized celebration. There was little content, and less humor. I had seen more exciting theater; I had even written a better play myself. No one was going to wet themselves with outrage here.

We watched dutifully for some time. I had been in the army; I knew how to endure misery. Eventually Helena wilted and said she wanted to go home. "I can't see any point in waiting. Annaeus will never talk to you in the middle of all this."

"No; but since he's a duovir he has to keep a house within a mile of the town. He's bound to be there this evening. I could visit him then."

Helena looked depressed and I was not pleased at the thought of hanging around town all afternoon until my man made himself available. Still, I needed to tackle him about the cartel and see if I could establish a link between him and the dancing girl.