Thanks to the market pickpocket, the empty pouch was true. Fortunately it was my decoy purse again; I kept my serious funds with my passport, round my neck. So far I still had them. But Vespasian's retainer was too puny to tantalize a tambourinist with grand ideas.

•

I stuck things out long enough to make a feeble point, then laid a piece of dried grass in my scroll to keep my place and tucked its baton under my chin while I rerolled what I had read.

Both my new cronies wore white tunics with green binding; it looked like household livery, and from their confident expressions must have been the livery of some minor town councillor who thought himself big in the neighbourhood. The large one was surveying me like a farmer who had turned up something slimy on his spade.

'I'd better warn you,' I tried frankly, 'I know when a stranger comes to town men of enterprise plunder his life savings in the high spots while sinful women tickle his chastity in low dives-' There was more hope of extracting a flicker of expression from a pair of archaic statues in a deserted tomb.

I drank my water thoughtfully, and let events take their course.

'We're trying to find a priest,' the large one growled.

'You don't strike me as devoted types!'

Taking my advice from Laesus about changing my appearance, I had snugged into an old dark-blue tunic after my bath. With my open-backed felt slippers, this indigo disaster completed a comfortable ensemble for a night staying in for a good read. I probably looked like a sloppy philosophy student who was thrilling himself silly with a collection of racy legends. Actually I was dipping into Caesar on the Celts, and any interruption was good news for my sore gut because the lofty Julius was beginning to enrage me; he could write, but his sense of self-importance was reminding me why my crusty ancestors so distrusted his high-handed politics.

It seemed unlikely these visitors wanted to discuss Julius Caesar's politics.

'Who's this priest you're after?' I offered.

'Some fool of a foreigner,' the big terrorist shrugged. 'Caused a commotion in the marketplace.' His small friend sniggered.

'I heard about that,' I admitted. 'Used a naughty word for liquorice. Can't imagine how. Liquorice is a Greek word anyway.'

'Very careless!' the strong man groused. He made it sound as if being casual with language was a crucifixion crime. That's one opinion though not mine and not, I thought, a debating point this monster himself chewed over by a roaring country fire on long winter nights. 'You've been asking for someone we know; what do you want with Gordianus?'

'What is it to you?'

'I'm Milo,' he told me proudly. 'His steward.'

Milo stood up. I decided Gordianus must have something to hide: his household steward was built like the door porter of an extremely shady gambling hall.

Croton is famous for its athletes, and the most famous of all had been called Milo. The Gordianus steward could easily have modelled for the souvenir statuettes I had resisted in the market. When Croton captured Sybaris (the original sin city, further round the Tarentine Bay), that Milo had celebrated by sprinting through the stadium with a bull across his shoulders, killing the beast with one blow of his fist, then eating it raw for lunch…

'Let's go inside,' this Milo told me, looking at me as if he quite fancied half a hundredweight of uncooked sirloin.

I smiled like a man who was pretending he could handle the situation, then let myself be led indoors.

XVI

Milo told shrimp-features to keep watch outside.

The steward and I crammed into my allocated cell; I certainly would have enjoyed myself more enduring a sleazy night out in Croton with some light-fingered, moustachioed dancing-girl. There was no doubt what was going to happen to me here; the only question was when.

There were three beds, but few tourists could face a summer excursion to Croton so I had the room to myself. At least it saved anyone else getting hurt. Milo filled most of the extra space. I found this Milo something of a trial. He was big. He knew he was big. He spent most of his time enjoying how big he felt crowding ordinary people in small rooms. His heavily greased muscles gleamed in the light of my rush. Close to, he had an oddly washed-out, antiseptic smell.

He pressed me down onto a three-legged stool with the effortless pressure of two massive thumbs which were itching to inflict more intimate pain. To worry me he prodded at my stuff.

'This yours?' he demanded, fingering my Gallic Wars.

'I can read.'

'Where did you steal it?'

'Auctioneer in the family. I get first pick of the secondhand stalls in Rome-'

I watched unhappily. The volume had seemed a real bargain, though I would have to sell it back to obtain the next scroll in the set. It had well-cut edges and cedar oil still protecting the paper, while one of the bosses on the roller retained traces of gilt. (The other boss was missing originally, but I carved a replacement myself.)

'Caesar!' Milo noted, with approval.

I felt lucky I was reading military history, not some soft subject like beekeeping. This oaf used his massive body for moral crusades. He had the cold stare of a brute who had convinced himself it was his private vocation to snuff out the lives of prostitutes and poets. Just the sort to idolize a dictator like Caesar-too stupid to see that Caesar was a proud snob with far too much money who would despise Milo even more than the Gauls (who at least had sensational rites of human sacrifice, druids, and Atlantic-going boats).

Milo set my Caesar down awkwardly, like a thug who had been house-trained not to damage expensive things-except perhaps when his master specifically told him to frighten some victim by smashing a priceless ceramic in front of his eyes.

'Spying pays!'

'I doubt it,' I told him patiently. 'It doesn't pay me. I'm not a spy; I'm a dispatch carrier. All I get is a sestertius a day and the chance to find out the hard way how the magistrates in Bruttium never repair their roads…'

Still mooning over Caesar, Milo turned away. I rescued my scroll, then winced as my oil flask cracked onto the floor when he tipped out my luggage from its two frugal mule panniers. He called himself a steward, but I would not have trusted him to fold a pile of tablecloths. Six snarled tunics, one distressed toga, two neck scarves, one hat, one sponge, one bathscraper and a box of writing stuff later, he found the knife I had worked into the wicker of one of the panniers.

He turned to me. Drawing my knife from its scabbard, he tickled my chin with it. I jerked uneasily as he yanked the thong round my neck so he could pull out my petty cash and travel pass. Then he had to put down the knife, to hold the pass with both his stubby paws while he slowly studied it.

›'M. Didius Falco. Why have you come to Croton?'

'Message for Gordianus.'

'What message?'

'A private one.'

'Spit it out.'

'It's personal; from the Emperor.'

Milo grunted. In Croton this probably passed for an elegant expression of logical thought. 'Gordianus won't see a hick courier!'

'He will when he knows what I've brought him.'

Milo rounded on me again. It was like being menaced by an overplayful plough ox who had just noticed that a hornet had stung him five minutes ago. Patiently I lifted my gaze to a shelf where the landlord had left some extra fleas nesting in rolled-up counterpanes. The shelf was close to the ceiling, which stopped you banging your head but meant you could waste a lot of time on a freezing southern night trying to find spare bedding in the dark. Up there now stood a fine porphyry vase, over a foot high and topped by a prettily fluted lid which I had secured with a spider's web of twine; knowing what was inside, I did not want the contents leaking out among my underwear.