'I can listen to that.'

She said it. I listened. She added some details, which cheered me up slightly. Helena Justina had a convincing grasp of rhetoric. 'So what's wrong, Marcus?'

'Maybe if we were married I would be sure you belonged to me.'

'I'm not a set of wine jugs!'

'No. I could scratch my name on a jug. And also,' I continued doggedly, 'you would then be certain that I belonged to you.'

'I know that,' she said, smiling rather. 'Here we are. We live together. You despise my rank and I deplore your past history, but we have foolishly chosen to share each other's company. What else is there, love?'

'You could leave me at any time.'

'Or you could leave me!'

I managed to grin at her. 'Maybe this is the problem, Helena. Maybe I am frightened that without a contract to honour I might storm off in a temper, then regret it all my life.'

'Contracts exist only to make arrangements for when you break them!' Every partnership needs someone sensible to keep its wheels in the right ruts. 'Besides,' Helena scoffed, 'when you do run off, I always come and fetch you back.'

That was true.

'Do you want to get drunk?'

'No.'

'Maybe,' she suggested, with a hint of asperity, 'what you do want is to sit in your shabby apartment, alone, scowling over the unfairness of life and watching a solitary beetle climb up the wall? Oh, I do understand. This is what an informer likes. To be lonely and bored while he thinks about his debts, and lack of clients, and the scores of scornful women who have trampled all over him. That makes him feel important. Your life is too soft, Marcus Didius! Here you are sharing a small but tasty dinner with your rude but affectionate sweetheart; it obviously spoils your act. Maybe I should go, my darling, so you can despair properly!'

I sighed. 'I just want four hundred thousand sesterces-which I know I cannot get!'

'Borrow it,' said Helena.

'Who from?'

'Someone else who has got it.' She thought I was too mean to pay the interest.

'We're in enough trouble. We don't need to expire under a burden of debt. That's the end of the subject.' I tightened my arm around her and stuck out my chin. 'Let's see if you're a woman of your word. You've been rude to me, princess-now how about being affectionate?'

Helena smiled. The smile itself made good her boast; the sense of well-being it brought to me was uncontrollable. She started tickling my neck, reducing me to helplessness. 'Don't issue a challenge like that, Marcus, unless you are sure you can take the consequences:'

'You're a terrible woman,' I groaned, bending my head as I feebly tried to avoid her teasing hand. 'You make me have hope. Hope is far too dangerous.'

'Danger is your natural element,' she replied.

There was a fold at the top of her gown which gaped slightly from her brooches; I made it wider and kissed the warm, delicate skin beneath. 'You're right; winter's dreary. When clothes come back from the laundry, people put on too many of them-' It did provide entertainment when I tried taking some of them off her again:

We went to bed. In winter, in Rome, with neither hot air in wall-flues nor slaves to replenish banks of braziers, there is nothing else to do. All my questions remained unanswered; but that was nothing new.

XXXV

Gaius Baebius had not exaggerated how many records of incoming ships we would have to scrutinise. I went out with him to Ostia. I was not intending to stay there, only to provide initial encouragement, but I was horrified by the mounds of scrolls that my brother-in-law's colleagues happily produced for us.

'Jupiter, they're staggering in like Atlas under the weight of the world! How many more?'

'A few.' That meant hundreds. Gaius Baebius hated to upset people.

'How many years do you keep the records for?'

'Oh we've got them all, ever since Augustus dreamed up the import duty.'

I tried to look reverent. 'Amazing!'

'Have you found out the name of the agent Festus used?'

'No I haven't!' I barked tetchily. (I had forgotten all about it.)

'I don't want to find myself having to read this mountain twice-'

'We'll have to ignore that aspect and do the best we can.'

We settled that I would run my thumb down looking at the ships' names, while Gaius Baebius slowly perused the columns of whoever had commissioned them. I had a nasty feeling this method of splitting the details was likely to lose something.

Luckily I had left instructions with Helena that I would return home for any emergency-and to define 'emergency' liberally. Only next morning word came that I had to go back to see Geminus.

'Sorry. This is a fiendish nuisance, Gaius, but I must go. Otherwise I'll be breaking the conditions of my bail-'

'That's fine, you go.'

'Will you be all right carrying on for a while?'

'Oh yes.'

I knew Gaius Baebius had decided that I was flicking through the documents too casually. He was glad to see me depart, so he could plod on at his own dire pace. I left him playing the big man among his gruesome customs cronies while I fled back to Rome.

The request to visit Geminus was genuine. 'I would not send a false message when you were working!' cried Helena, shocked.

'No, my love: So what's the urgency?'

'Geminus is afraid the people who disrupted that auction are planning to strike again.'

'Don't say he's changed his mind and wants my help?'

'Just try not to get hurt!' muttered Helena, hugging me anxiously.

As soon as I reached the Saepta, I had the impression the other auctioneers were greeting my appearance with knowing looks. There was a disturbing atmosphere. People were gossiping in small groups; they fell silent as I passed.

The rumpus had happened, this time right in the warehouse. Overnight intruders had vandalised the stock. Gornia, the chief porter, found time to tell me how he had discovered the damage that morning. Most of it had already been cleared up, but I could see enough smashed couches and cabinets to guess the losses were serious. Potsherds filled several buckets on the pavement, and glass fragments were rattling under someone's broom. Bronzes stood covered in graffiti. Inside the wide doorway, what had been a garden statue of Priapus had now, as they say in the catalogues, lost its attribute.

'Where's himself?'

'In there. He should rest. Do something with him, will you?'

'Is it possible?'

I squeezed between a pile of benches and an upturned bed, stepped over some bead-rimmed copper pans, knocked my ear on a stuffed boar's head, ducked under stools hung lopsidedly from a rafter, and cursed my way to the next division in the indoor space. Pa was on his knees, meticulously collecting up pieces of ivory. His face was grey, though he applied the usual bluster once I coughed and he noticed me. He tried to stand up. Pain stopped him. I grabbed him with one arm and helped him ease his stocky frame upright.

'What's this?'

'Kicked in the ribs:'

I found two feet of free wall he could lean on and propped him there. 'Does that mean you were here when it happened?'

'Sleeping upstairs.'

'Helena said you were expecting a racket. I could have been here with you, if you had warned me earlier.'

'You have your own troubles.'

'Believe me, you're one of them!'

'What are you so angry for?'

As usual with my relatives, I had no idea.

I checked him over for ruptures and fractures. He was still too shaken to stop me, though he did protest. There was one monstrous bruise on his upper arm, a few cuts on his head, and those tender ribs. He would live, but he had taken all he could. He was too stiff to make it to the office upstairs, so we stayed there.