From streets below came the last bursts of Saturnalia revelry, but most homes were dark and silent now. A few carts were making late night deliveries, though all commerce had slacked off for the festival period, when schools and the courts were in recess and most trades closed down. When wheels did trundle along a street, the sounds carried the more clearly because the normal background racket was absent tonight. Closer to hand, dry leaves scratched on pantiles as they bowled across surrounding roofs. Other noises came to us from far across the city. Mule hooves and dog barks. The lazy tonkle-tonk of rigging equipment on ships moored beside the Emporium. A gust of cheering from a fight under the arches. The occasional scream of a raucous woman pretending to resist sexual advances, amidst cackles of encouragement from her ribald friends.

Petro and I were without wine for once. There had been plenty of times when we carried on carousing on this balcony all night, but we were grown up now. Or so we said, and so Maia and Helena hoped. I thought there was a still a chance we might end up picking the locks at Petro's apartment as we used to do back in the old days, when his wife, Arria Silvia, had locked him out and I had to help him gain admittance in search of a bed. That was on nights when we didn't just fall over and lie in the street… Somewhere in the city below must be Veleda. Did she sleep, tossing and moaning in fever? Or in the city of her enemies was she plagued by wakefulness, dreading the moment when her gods or ours would reveal her destiny? She had come from the endless forests, where a self-sufficient loner could ride for days without human contact, to this teeming place where nobody was ever more than ten feet away from other people, even if a wall stood in between. Here in Rome, whether a hovel or a palace was sheltering her, both luxury and poverty would be her close neighbours. Even outside the mad period of Saturnalia, noise and contention dominated. Some people had everything; many had not enough to live as they wanted; a few simply had nothing. Their struggles to live created what we who were born here called our city's character. We were all either grappling for improvement or striving to hold on, lest what we had – and with it any chance of happiness – should slip away. It was hard work and involved failure and despair for far too many, but to us, this was civilisation.

Veleda had once tried to destroy it. Maybe if the old German guards had managed to find her and control her as a figurehead, she could have tried again. Maybe she did not need them, but would try to defeat us by herself.

'What would we do, Lucius, if the barbarians really were at the gates?' 'They will be.' Lucius Petronius Longus had a morose streak. 'Not in our day, not in our children's day, but they will come.' 'And then?' 'Either run away or fight. Alternatively,' suggested Petro, sounding like a lad again, and interested in any dangerous concept: 'you become one of the barbarians!' I thought about that. 'You wouldn't like it. You're too staid.' 'Speak for yourself, Falco.' We remained there a while longer, with our arms crossed against the cold, listening and watching. Around us our city slumbered, except where desperate souls slunk through its shadows on unspeakable errands, or the last few fearless party-goers were making their way home shrieking – if they could only remember where home was. Petronius, who had lost two of his children to fatal disease, seemed despondent; I knew he never forgot them but Saturnalia, the damned family festival, was when he remembered Silvana and Tadia most keenly. December is never my favourite month either, but I was riding it out. It comes; if you manage to endure it without killing yourself, January follows.

Petronius and I knew how to pace ourselves, and not only with wine. Endeavour and action also have moments of high energy and recovery. We took some rest, here on the balcony of a decrepit apartment which held so many memories. This was a lonely place, a sordid place, a noisy, half-derelict, heartbreaking location – several blocks of filthy tenements around a clutch of cheating neighbourhood shops, a place where free men learned that freedom only counts if you have money, and where people who saw that they would never become citizens totally lost hope. But in this backstreet byway a man who lay low could be ignored by the world. That was our hope for Justinus. We had stashed our treasure as discreetly as we could. I stood up, working my spine stiffiy. It was time to go. Petronius stretched his long legs, kicking against the baluster with the great hard toes of his heavy boots. Since I paid the rent on this bolthole, I stood aside with a host's polite gesture to let him leave first through the wonky folding doors that led to the dreary interior. On his feet, Petronius had a last awkward stretch of his shoulders, then persuaded his tired limbs to move.

I stopped him. A sound had caught my attention, somewhere in the tangle of filthy alleys that twisted together like drab wool skeins in an old basket, six storeys beneath us.

Petronius thought I was a time-waster. Then he heard it too. Someone down there in the darkness played a few lonesome notes on a flute.

XXXVI

We never stood a chance of finding him. Whoever it was, moved off of his own accord. By the time we had careered down six flights of stairs in the dark and burst out at street level, all sounds had ceased. 'Sounded professional.' 'Bar musician going home after a night of touting around the tables for coppers.' 'Too good for that.' 'Bar musicians are bloody good. They have to be, to beat the competition. ' 'I want it to be the Quadrumatus flute boy.' 'You want it too much, Falco.' 'All right.' 'That's fatal.' 'I said all right – All right?' 'No need to get nasty.' 'Well don't make so much of things.' 'You sound like a woman.' 'We're drunk.' 'No, we're tired.' 'A woman would say that's what men say as an excuse.' 'She'd be right.' 'Right. ' So we said good-night. Petronius maintained he had to stay up on duty; he would go back to the party, I reckoned. I set off for home. I was looking out for the flute boy, but I never saw him. Nobody much was about. Even the bad people were at home these nights. Burglars celebrate with their families like anyone else. Criminals honour festivals enthusiastically. There had been a rash of thefts a week ago while the old lags worked hard to obtain cash for food, lamps and gifts. If you want a good December feast, spend Saturnalia with a thief Now the dark entries and alleys were still. I convinced myself! was more sober than a third party would think, and on the alert for anyone who slipped through the shadows.

It was a good theory. It worked so well that when I came upon Zosime from the Temple of Жsculapius, tending a patient by a flight of steps, I nearly fell over them. Zosime was working alone. She must have left her donkey nearby; she had a medical bag with her and when I arrived she had been bent over a motionless figure huddled on the steps. I scared her. She jumped up and almost tripped, hurriedly putting distance between us. I was shocked by her anxiety. 'Steady! It's me – Falco. The investigator.' The woman recovered fast. She seemed annoyed by my interruption, though perhaps she was annoyed with herself for jumping. She was competent and knew how to survive the streets at night so I would have gone on my way, but as she turned back to her patient she exclaimed under her breath. 'What's up?' She straightened abruptly. 'We get too many of these… The man is dead, Falco. Nothing I can do for him. I am disappointed; I had been tending him and thought he was recovering.'

I moved closer and inspected the vagrant. It was no one I recognised. I doubted anyone in Rome would claim him as friend or family. 'What killed him?'