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Our pottage came. It was good, in a hearty, harboury way. I had just mastered filtering it across my tongue to field the chunks of crab claw, when Laesus niggled slyly, 'Since you seem shy of telling me, I'll guess… You look like a spy.'

I was hurt. 'I thought I looked like a priest!'

'Falco, you look like a spy who's disguised as a priest!' I sighed, and we drank some more wine.

My new friend Laesus was a queer phenomenon. In a place where I had no reason to feel confidence in anyone, he seemed utterly trustworthy. Both his eyes were black and beady like a robin's. He always kept his sailor's hat on. It had a round, felted crown surrounded by a twirling brim so that it looked like an upturned field mushroom.

The company thinned out. We were left with two old seamen and a few travellers who like me had fled for the sleepy port. Plus a trio of young ladies called Gaia, Ipsyphille and Meroe, with faded personalities and low-slung frocks, who went to and fro a lot. In the absence of fresh grapes or roasted chestnuts, these squeezy fruits were available upstairs as dessert.

Gaia was surprisingly attractive.

'Want to try your luck?' Laesus asked, intercepting my gaze.

He had a generous attitude; he seemed eager to keep my place at table if I went off with one of the girls. I shook my head slightly, with a lazy smile, as if it was simply too much effort to shift. Then I closed my eyes, still smiling, as I remembered another handsome girl I knew-and her scathing look if she was to catch me considering a cheap thrash with a harbour whore. The elegant and dignified Helena Justina had eyes the rich, dark browny-gold of palm dates from the desert-plus a snort like a bad-tempered camel when her highness was annoyed…

When I looked up, the girl called Gaia had gone upstairs with someone else.

'Tell me,' I suddenly asked Laesus. 'If you come from Tarentum, did you ever encounter a senator called Atius Pertinax?'

He finished a mouthful. 'I'm not on boozing terms with senators!'

'He was a ship owner; that was why I asked. While I was riding through the Sila forests, it struck me that since Pertinax was born a southerner he might have had his ships built here-'

'I'm with you!' Laesus said. 'Is he in trouble?'

'Oh, the worst kind; he's dead.' Laesus looked startled. I gulped my wine callously.

'So,' he ventured, recovering. 'What was he like?'

'Couple of years short of thirty. Lean build, thin face, nervous temper-he had a freedman called Barnabas.'

'Oh I know Barnabas!' Laesus flung down his spoon. 'Everyone in Tarentum knows Barnabas!' I wondered if they knew he was a murderer now.

Laesus remembered that four or five years earlier Barnabas had been busy at Tarentum on his master's behalf, having two new merchant vessels built. 'Calypso and Circe, if I recollect.'

'Circe is right. She's impounded at Ostia.'

'Impounded?'

'Ownership inquest. Know any more about these two?'

'Not in my line. Did this Pertinax owe you money, Falco?'

'No; I've got some cash for Barnabas. It's his master's legacy.'

'I can make enquiries in Tarentum if you like.'

'Thanks, Laesus!' I did not mention the freedman's recent habit of roasting senators alive, since Vespasian wanted the political aspects hushed up. 'Listen, friend; I'm curious about these two for my own reasons. Were they popular locally?'

'Barnabas was an uppity ex-slave. People he cadged drinks from hoped Rome would give him his comeuppance.'

'Rome may yet! What about Pertinax?'

'Anyone who owns ships and racehorses can convince himself he's popular! Plenty of flatterers wanted to treat him like a great man.'

'Hmm! I wonder if he found Rome different? He was involved in a piece of stupidity; that could explain why-he wouldn't be the first small-town boy who went to show Rome how big he was, but his reception disappointed him.'

The people who had been sharing our table were leaving, so we both stretched our feet across to the opposite bench, spreading ourselves more comfortably.

'So who are you meeting here in Croton, Laesus?'

'Oh… just an old client.' Like all sailors he was highly secretive. 'What about you?' Laesus asked with a sidelong look. 'In the marketplace you called yourself a messenger-you mean to Barnabas?'

'No, a priest. Curtius Gordianus.'

'What's he done?'

'Nothing. I've just brought him some family news.'

'Spying,' he commented, 'seems a complicated trade!'

'Really, Laesus; I'm not a spy.'

'Of course not,' he answered, being very polite.

I grinned. 'I wish I was! I know one; all he does is office work and field trips to popular seaside resorts… Laesus, my good friend, if this was an adventure tale by some scurrilous court poet, you'd now exclaim, Curtius Gordianus-what a coincidence! The very man I shall be dining with tonight!'

He opened his mouth as if he was about to say it, paused long enough to milk every ounce of suspense-then collapsed.

'Never heard of the damned fellow!' Laesus declared agreeably.

XV

The sea captain Laesus was a wonderful find; though it has to be said that having rescued me, he took me to an eating house that made me horrendously ill.

I found my way back to the mansio, awash with saffron pottage, though not for long. There must have been a bad oyster in my soup. Luckily I have a finicky stomach; as my family often joke, when they decide they have waited long enough for their legacies, poisoning me is the last solution they will try.

While my fellow travellers were gnawing at the landlord's unspeakable boiled belly pork, I lay on my bed groaning privately; later I had a slow scrape in the bathhouse, then sat out in the garden with something to read.

About the time the meal ended, other guests straggled out to enjoy jugs of wine in the last light of day. I just had a beaker of cold water to aid my recovery.

There were plenty of tables in the recreation area; it saved the landlord, who was the usual idle scamp, from filling the spaces with flowerbeds that would require his attention. Most of these tables were empty. No one needed to invade my privacy, so when people did head towards me I froze into the character of a man who would rather give himself eyestrain over his holiday reading than look up and let strangers insist on making friends.

This had little success.

There were two of them. One was a bad dream on legs-the legs were like elm trunks, below a mass of well-organized muscle with no visible neck; his sidekick was a whiskery shrimp with a mean look and rickety build. Everyone else in the garden hid their noses in their wine beakers; I nuzzled my scroll short-sightedly, though without much hope. The new arrivals glanced around, then fixed on me.

The two of them sat at my table. They both had that knowing, expectant air which means the worst. An informer needs to be gregarious, but I tread warily with locals who seem so sure of themselves. The other customers studied their drinks; no one offered to help.

It is quite common in the south for tricksters to smile their way into a mansio, settle round some quiet group, then bully them out for an evening in the town. The travellers get off lightly if they escape with just a headache, a beating, the loss of their money, a night in a jail cell, and a sordid disease they pass on to their wives. A man on his own feels safer; but not much. I looked scholarly; I looked reserved; I tried hard to project the impression that the pouch on my belt was too empty to cope with a long night drinking sour red wine while a swarthy maiden with a tambourine danced at me.