“What’s the fuss about?” I was now openly doubled up with mirth. “ These seem like prime delights from the world of contracting-and what’ s more, Pa found them!”

“Don’t mention your father!”

“Sorry.” I took a grip. “We can sort this.”

Helena was beginning to show her panic and despair. “Marcus, I cannot get anywhere with them! Every time I take them to task, they just admit they have let me down in an intolerable fashion, apologize cringingly, promise to apply themselves diligently from now on-then vanish from sight again.”

I had caught her eye. Relief at involving me was softening her tragedy. It was a mess, but now she could cry over it into my tunic braid. Just knowing that she could admit the truth to me was making her brave. “Good thing you live with a man who never beats you, Helena.”

“Oh, I am grateful for that. I would be happy if you restricted any teasing too.”

“Ah, no chance, sweetheart.”

“So I thought.”

Looking rueful, she let me caress her flushed cheek. She was wearing a dark red dress with a bevy of bracelets to hide her forearm, scarred where a scorpion had bitten her outside Palmyra. Due to our early start that morning her fine dark hair was simply tucked in the neck of her tunic; I reached around and started pulling it loose. More relaxed, Helena leaned her head against my hand. I gathered her close and turned her around to survey the property.

It was the hour of the morning when the sun’s heat first begins to strengthen as it fires up for a blazing day. We gazed at the fine twostoried house, with its satisfying rhythms of repeated arched colonnades below shuttered windows on the upper floors. The exterior facade was regular, and so fairly plain, with small red turrets on each corner and a porch with low steps and two thin pillars to break up the frontage.

A nervous white dove fluttered onto the pantiles; probably it had nested messily up in the warm roof space, though the roof in fact looked sound.

The grounds, in which the famous bathhouse was not being built, hosted a terrace with stone pines and cypresses, unkempt topiary dotted through a sloped area, and near the house the usual box hedges and trellises. Graveled paths, with most of the gravel missing, led in a determined way from gate to house and then wandered about the gardens, pausing now at the detached site of what Helena had planned as the bathhouse. What the property lacked in pools and fountains would provide plenty of scope for a schemer like me to design and install them (and tear them out again after a child fell in). It was very peaceful here.

I twisted my belt around so the buckle would not dig into Helena as I held her tight against me, looking over her shoulder and nuzzling her neck. “Tell me the story.”

She sighed. “I liked it as soon as I saw it,” she said, after a moment, speaking quietly and with the direct honesty I had always adored in her dealings with me. “I bought it for you. I thought it would delight you. I thought we would enjoy living here as a family. It was in decent condition, yet there was plenty we could do to make improvements in our own taste when we had time and the inclination. But I see it is a disaster. You cannot be so far from Rome.”

“Hmm.” I liked it too. I understood just what had made Helena choose this place.

“I can sell it again, I suppose. Build the bathhouse, then pass it on as a ‘newly renovated home of character-fine views and own baths.’ Somebody else can discover that Gloccus and Cotta have failed to install a working soakaway.”

“And that the new hypocaust leaks smoke.”

Helena squirmed around to look at me in horror. “Oh no! How can you tell?”

I shook my head sadly. “When boneheads like Gloccus and Cotta install them, they always do, love. And they will leave the wall flues blocked up with rubble-and quite inaccessible-”

“No!”

“As sure as squirrels eat nuts.”

She covered her face and groaned. “I can already see the scroll with the new owner’s compensation claim.”

I was laughing again. “I love you.”

“Still?” Agitated, Helena broke my hold on her and stepped back. “ Thank you very much-but that’s avoiding the issue, Marcus.”

I caught her slender hands in mine. “Don’t sell it yet.”

“I have to.”

“We’ll get it right first.” This suddenly seemed urgent. “Don’t jump too quickly. There’s no need to-”

“We have to live somewhere, Marcus. We need space for a nursemaid for Julia, and help in the house-”

“Whereas this house needs a whole cohort of slaves; you would have to send a troop down into Rome every day just to shop at the markets-I like it. I want you to keep it while we consider what to do.”

Her chin came up. “I should have asked you first.”

I looked around again at the gracious house in its sun-drenched grounds, overlooked by the worried white dove who could see we were people to reckon with. Somehow, it put me in a tolerant mood. “That’s all right.”

“Most men would say I should have consulted you,” Helena commented quietly.

“Then they know nothing.” I meant that.

“Nothing I suggest ever frightens you, or makes you lose your temper. You let me do whatever I like.” She sounded quite puzzled, though she had known me long enough not to feel surprise.

Doing what she liked had brought her to live with me. Doing what she liked had led us on greater adventures than most men ever share with their dull wives.

I winked at her. “Just so long as what you like is what you do with me.”

We stayed all day on the Janiculan. We walked around taking measurements and making notes. I made loose doors secure; Helena swept out rubbish. We talked and laughed a lot. If we were selling the place, it was theoretically a waste of our time. We did not see it that way.

Gloccus and Cotta, the keen bathhouse contractors, never showed.

XXIV

I WENT OVER to Ma’s house to tell her what I thought about the new house. (Helena came too, to hear what I said.) Trouble was waiting: the damned lodger was at home.

“Don’t make a noise! Anacrites is off-color. The poor thing is having a wee snooze.”

That would have been fine, but warning us woke him up. He emerged eagerly, knowing that I would rather have left without seeing him.

“Falco!”

“Oh look; every perfect day has its low point, Helena.”

“Marcus, you’re so rude! Good evening, Anacrites. I am sorry to hear that your wounds have been troubling you.”

He did look drawn. He had been suffering from a near-deadly head blow when he went out to Tripolitania, and the sword slashes he took while playing the fool in the arena were a further hindrance to his recovery. He had lost far too much blood in Lepcis; it had taken me hours to bind him up, and all through the trip home I had expected to find myself chucking his corpse over the side of the ship. Well, a boy can hope.

Ma fussed around him now while he tried to look brave. He managed; I was the one who nearly threw up.

He had forced himself to come off his couch still in his siesta wear-a bedraggled gray tunic and battered old slippers like something Nux might bring me as a treat. It was far from Anacrites’ normal sleek gear: a hideous glimpse of the man behind the public persona, as unsuitable as a domesticated lynx. I felt embarrassed being in the same room as him.

He scratched his ear, then beamed. “How is the new house?”

I would have given a good chest of gold to prevent him knowing my potential new address. “Don’t tell me you had your sordid operatives tail us there?”

“No need. Your mother always keeps me up to date.” I bet the bastard knew about the house before I did. Loyal to Helena, I bit that back.