'I want to know what you are doing here?' Silvia broke in.

'My fugitive is on a boat that was spotted in this neighbourhood-'

'Spotted where?' she insisted.

'Oplontis actually.'

'So,' Silvia deduced inexorably, 'our staying at this disgusting village is no coincidence!' I tried to look suave. 'What will you do when you find the boat, Falco?'

'Row out to speak to him-'

'You don't want my husband for that.'

'No,' I said, cursing inwardly. I can row. But I had envisaged Petronius doing the hard work while I jumped off at landing stages and steered. 'Unless,' I started with a cautious glance, 'you can spare him to come to Pompeii to help me unload a cargo of ingots I'll be using for my disguise?'

'No, Falco!' Silvia raged.

Petronius made no attempt to speak. I avoided his eye.

Arria Silvia shot me a look that was as poisonous as aconite. 'Oh, what's the point asking me? You'll both do as you like!'

It seemed a smart idea to take Larius upstairs to inspect the accommodation and unpack.

This did not delay us long. We found our rooms up a dark corridor. We were hiring two stuffy cubicles with crumbling wattle walls. The beds had uneven softwood slats where they had lost their suspension ropes. Larius and I bent up our pallet to look for bugs but there was nowhere a bug who liked his comforts could make a nest, just a coarse cover, waxy with ancient dirt, which held together a few matted lumps of straw that would poke into our backs like mountain scree.

I changed my boots for sandals and headed downstairs, intending to suggest that we left Ollia with the children while the rest of us went out to eat. Larius was fiddling secretively in a satchel; I told him to follow me. At ground level I stopped, waiting to bawl up at him when the absent-minded sparrow forgot to come.

Across the courtyard Petronius Longus sat where we had left him, with his head back against the pergola, his long legs stretched out, and a pain-free expression as he absorbed the evening peace. He hated quarrels, yet could let them slide over him. Now he had finished driving he was, despite everything, starting to enjoy himself. His familiar brown hair looked more ruffled than usual. His wine cup lolled at an angle; it was obviously empty, its weight in his hand merely comforting. His other arm was crooked casually round his wife.

After five years suffering the hazards of marriage these two managed in private with less fuss than their public mask implied. Arria Silvia had edged in beside Petronius. She was weeping, reduced to a disappointed young woman who felt exhausted beyond her strength. Petro was letting her snuffle on his great shoulder while he went on dreaming to himself.

Just when I had impressed myself with this clever dissertation on marriage, Silvia dried her eyes. I watched Petro rally his attention and wind her in closer. I had known him for years, and had seen him kiss more women than his wife would want to hear about; I could see the old reprobate was taking much more trouble now than a mere peck to keep the peace. Afterwards he said something to her, very quietly, and she answered him. Then they both got up and walked out towards the road with their arms round each other and their heads close.

I felt an internal wrench that had nothing to do with lack of food. Larius appeared. I told him I had changed my mind about dinner, then dragged him back indoors.

One aspect of my nephew's difficult phase, I noticed, was that wherever anyone took him the young curmudgeon looked as if he wished he had stayed at home.

XXIV

Next day the sun was shining; in my mood, this came as a surprise.

I strolled out to take stock; to the right and left the two arms of the Bay lay shimmering in a fine grey haze. Ahead, Capri was entirely hidden by mist, and when I glanced back over my shoulder the cone of Vesuvius loomed as a mere blur too. But even at that early hour the light off the sea was beginning to dazzle; this soft, all-pervading haze would precede a hot, blue, brilliant day.

I felt dismal. My nephew had slept soundly, despite our rocky mattress. Petronius snored. So (I discovered) did his wife.

'Falco looks jaded. We must find him a girlfriend!' Arria Silvia chirruped brightly at breakfast, piercing a peach with her vixenish front teeth. I told myself that at least we had not been away long enough for people to collect stomach disorders and start comparing notes on them while we ate.

'Give him five minutes in Pompeii,' quipped Petro, 'and he'll find one for himself…' For a moment I thought he meant a stomach ache.

I could not concentrate on pointless domestic chat. I felt thoroughly preoccupied. Here I was in Campania in the holiday season. As we drove in yesterday I had sized up the laughing faces on all sides-frank young women in the pink of condition, relaxed and plumped up in the warm seaside air, each one wearing very little and just looking for a reason to take it off… So here was I, a handsome devil in a nearly-new mustard tunic (a snip from a second-hand stall, jollied up by my mother with two rows of crinkled braid). And if a woman who looked like a Venus of Praxiteles had jumped out of a fountain straight into my lap wearing nothing but a pair of fancy sandals and a smile, I would have tipped her off and stomped away to brood on my own.

Breakfast was water and fruit. If that was not what you were used to at home, you could omit the fruit.

We men slunk off to Pompeii the same day.

Just out of town at the mouth of the Sarnus lay a small harbour which also served the larger centres at Nola and Nuceria. We left the cart at the port; the Marine Gate was too steep to take it up. Larius wanted to stay watching the boats but I could not face telling my sister that her firstborn had received a rude awakening on the River Sarnus quayside from a barrel-waisted bosun, so we dragged him along with us. Petro and I went through the pedestrian tunnel on the left of the Gate; there was a separate slope for pack animals, which Larius pointedly scuffled up by himself. As we waited at the top, we could hear him muttering scornfully.

Pompeii had wine, grain, wool, metalwork, olive oil, an air of thrusting prosperity, and ten smart watchtowers set in vigorous city walls.

'A place that intends to last!' One of my sharper remarks.

All right; I do know what happened at Pompeii-but this was eight years before Mount Vesuvius exploded. Any student of natural science who did notice their local mountain was shaped like a volcano deduced it was extinct. Meanwhile, the Pompeian playboys believed in art, Isis, Campanian gladiators, and ready cash to purchase gorgeous women; few of the flashy bastards were great readers of natural science.

At that time Pompeii was famous for two events: a riot in the amphitheatre when the Pompeians and Nucerians set about each other like hooligans, leaving quite a few dead: then a devastating earthquake. When we visited, eight years after the quake, the whole place still resembled a building site.

The Forum was rubble and ruins, mainly because the townsfolk had made the mistake of commissioning their architects to rebuild it on a grander scale. As usual, given this excuse, the architects dreamed and spent their fees, oblivious of the years that passed. A freed slave who was out to make a name for himself reconstructed the Temple of Isis and the citizens had propped up their amphitheatre in case they ever wanted to beat up their neighbours again. But the Temples of Jupiter and Apollo stood shrouded in scaffolding with their statuary stored in the crypt, and it was hard work forcing a path round the contractors' wheelbarrows to get ourselves up past the provision markets, under one of the ceremonial arches, and on into town.