'Just being realistic!'

Helena slipped from my side and into her chair before I could even consider how to say goodbye. She closed the half-door herself. The bearers were stooping to the carrying poles; I grasped at the door, wanting to hold her back. 'Don't!' she commanded.

'Wait-shall I see you again?'

'No; there's no point.'

'There is!' There had to be.

I gestured the bearers to stop but they would only take orders from her. As the chair lurched when they raised it, I glimpsed her expression. She was comparing me with Pertinax. Rejection by a husband who was too crass to know what he was doing had been bad enough; though since no senator's daughter has much say in the choice of her husband, Pertinax was simply a false entry in life's ledger that could be cursed and written off. To go straight from him to a cynical lover who left her after the most casual kind of usage was entirely her own mistake.

Of course, I could have told her it happens every day. Women who know they know better frequently cast themselves at treacherous men whose sense of commitment only lasts as long as the rascally smile that gets them into bed…

Unlike Helena Justina, most women forgive themselves.

•

Just when I was prepared to be totally honest in order to keep her, she dragged the window curtain right across and shut me out. I had no need to consult the Sybil at Cumae to realize my exclusion from Helena's life was intended to be permanent.

I stood there, still with my mouth open to tell her that I loved her, while the bearers sneered at me churlishly and carried their lady away.

HARPING IN HERCULANEUM

July

'Perhaps you may be expecting a troupe of Spanish dancers, Gypsy girls, with their wanton songs and routines…'

– Juvenal, Satire XI

XLII

The town of Herculaneum was very small, very sleepy, and if any interesting women lived there, they were hidden behind locked doors.

There was no rubbish in the streets. At Pompeii the town council had to provide stepping stones to help pedestrians cross the dubious substances which seeped and stagnated from their roads; the Herculaneum councillors believed in wider pavements-wide enough to hold a hot-piemen's convention, only it was a place which frowned on pies. And at Herculaneum rubbish never showed its face.

I hated Herculaneum. It had tasteful, well-scrubbed houses owned by people of little character who thought a lot of themselves. They lived in prim little streets. The men spent their days counting their money (of which they had plenty), while their good ladies were carried in closed litters from their own safe doorsteps into the homes of other respectable women, where they sat around plates of almond cakes and talked about nothing until it was time to go home again.

Unlike Pompeii, where we had to bawl to make ourselves heard, in Herculaneum you could stand in the Forum at the top of the town and still hear the seagulls at the port. If a child cried in Herculaneum its nursemaid dashed to gag it before it was sued for a breach of the peace. At Herculaneum the gladiators in the amphitheatre probably said 'I beg your pardon!' each time their swords did anything so impolite as landing a nick.

Frankly, Herculaneum made me want to jump on a public fountain and shout a very rude word.

We had left this hive of mediocrity until last because I despised it so heartily. Now our friend Ventriculus in Pompeii had informed me he would use up most of my lead on the orders we had already obtained. (The news came earlier than I calculated, though I was not surprised; I expected the plumber to cheat me a little, according to the customs of his trade.) So this was my last chance. We were here, with Nero and one last cartload of samples, hoping to prise out further details of Aufidius Crispus' plans (or even, if my luck took a special turn, to discover where the elusive sardine had parked his pretty ship).

I had no intention of visiting the magistrate Helena Justina had mentioned. I was sharp; I was tough; I was good at my job. I did not need a self-appointed supervisor. I would find my information for myself.

While I nosed round Herculaneum looking for it, I admitted to Larius that we had reached the limit of the expenses Vespasian would want to pay.

'Does that mean we have no money?'

'Yes; he's mean with failure.'

'Would he pay you more if you found something out?'

'If he thought it was worth it.'

Some people might panic; I felt shifty myself. But Larius uttered stoically, 'We'd better make sure we discover something quick!'

I liked my nephew's attitude. He saw life in simple terms. Once again I mused how his tenacious approach would make Galla's eldest an asset in my line of work. I mentioned it, as Nero approached Herculaneum's wide main street (it was called the Decumanus Maximus, which is what every two-goose town in Italy calls its main street). Larius responded to my careers advice by telling me about a wall painter Ventriculus had introduced who was offering him summer employment sketching figures on a frieze…

I knew nothing about this; I was highly annoyed. I told my nephew what I thought of artists. His chin jutted, with the irritating tenacity I had previously admired.

•

This particular Decumanus Maximus was the cleanest and quietest I ever saw. It was partly thanks to an immaculate vigilante who marched up and down there so respectable locals who needed to know if their dinner would be ready could ask him the time. His other method of serving the community was pointing out to layabouts like us that on the main boulevard at Herculaneum wheeled traffic was not allowed.

When he roared it out I had just noticed the bollards standing up like mileposts to block our way. We had been cruising towards the courthouse (I could see the sun glinting off a bronze charioteer outside this elegant basilica). There was an arch across the road ahead, which probably led to the forum, a row of shops alongside us, and a fountain which Nero was treating to a tentative sniff.

I hate disciplinarians. This one ordered us away from the Decumanus with the good breeding I expect from a country official, which was none. For a bone bodkin I would have told him where to stuff his swagger stick, even if it meant we were run out of town… Larius caught my eye.

'Just tell him we're sorry and we'll go!'

I could not altogether blame the man for abusing us. My nephew and I had made the mistake of buying cheap holiday haircuts, with the usual preposterous results. We had gone to an open-air barber by the gladiators' barracks in Pompeii, who had taken three hours of sombre snipping to turn us out like murderers. Also, we were now eating pilchards wrapped in vine leaves, which no one from Herculaneum would dream of doing in the street.

We turned downhill towards the port. There were side streets to either hand; Herculaneum was built on a pedantic Greek grid. To save me the trouble Nero chose a direction himself. It was a picturesque scene of overhangs and pilastered walkways; a basket-weaver dreaming on his stool, and an old woman who had been out for a lettuce who stood decrying modern society to another old baggage who had been out for a loaf. Into this maelstrom of the Herculaneum highlife our mad ox eagerly plunged.