'Aulus Curtius Longinus died in a fire at the Little Temple of Hercules. I'm saying, "Barnabas" lit the fire.'

I had never told Helena the details. She was shocked, yet remained acutely logical. 'Can you prove that?'

Pertinax finally troubled himself to interject unpleasantly, 'The lying bastard can't.'

'But Falco, if you wanted to pursue it,' Helena reasoned, 'there would have to be a trial-' You could tell those two had been married by the way that she ignored him. 'A trial would force recent events into the open-'

'Oh, plenty of adverse rumours will fly!' I agreed.

'Curtius Gordianus will be embarrassed over his priesthood in Paestum; Aufidius Crispus has been promised the past may remain confidential-'

I laughed softly. 'Yes; they lose any chance to back out of their plot discreetly! Helena Justina, if your ex-husband adopts your suggestion I might support him to the Emperor.' I would sooner have prepared him a legionary ambush: a ditch across his path some dark night, set with barbed stakes viciously peeled back like lilies… but producing him as a penitent would earn me greater favour. 'So now he has to decide what he wants.'

'Yes, he must.' Her eyes left me, and fell rather disparagingly on him. He looked at her without expression. Knowing his real identity, I understood why Helena felt so troubled. He was alive, minus his property. So he was demanding back the legacy he had bequeathed to her. At least that; perhaps much more.

I had a sense of them wrangling, though I may have imagined it.

Helena Justina climbed to her feet carefully, holding one wrist behind her as if she had backache.

'I should like you both to leave now.' She rang a bell. A slave came in immediately, as though when Pertinax was here swift service was expected.

'I'll go with you,' I said to him. I had no intention of letting him out of my sight.

'There's no need, Falco!' muttered Helena swiftly. 'He cannot leave the villa,' she insisted. 'He has no identity-nowhere to go.'

'Besides,' Pertinax weighed in, with a dreary attempt at nonchalance, 'your filthy associates harry me if I try!'

'What does that mean?'

'Don't you know?'

It was Helena who enlightened me in a troubled voice. 'Two men have been following Gnaeus everywhere. He went out riding yesterday and they prevented him from coming home all night.'

'What were they like?' I asked him curiously.

'One built like a gladiator, and a runt.'

'Means nothing to me. You managed to shake them off?'

'They were on commercial mules; I had a decent horse.'

'Really?' I did not tell him I had found the two mules here tonight on his father's estate. 'I work alone. I had nothing to do with it.'

If Helena thought I would leave a man in her bedroom she could think again. But Pertinax shrugged a goodnight to her almost at once, then sneered at me and went out onto the balcony.

I followed him as far as the folding door and watched him down the stairs and on his way, a thin figure strutting with a little too much confidence. From the far side of the garden court below he glanced back once. He would have seen me, a solid black shape in the doorway, outlined from behind by the bedroom lamps.

I came back in, fastening the catch on the folding door. With her servants now present, Helena and I were not free to speak openly, but I could see that sharing the secret was a heavy relief. I confined myself to commenting, 'I might have known he would be someone who makes a mess with his food, and has never learnt to close a door when he goes out!' She smiled wearily.

I said goodnight and went to my own room. There were people looking after her. Helena was safe tonight.

Not so true of Pertinax. When he looked back towards the house and scowled at me, he had missed something else: two dark figures emerging from the darkness beneath the balcony.

One like a gladiator, and a runt… They must have heard me up above them. And as they slipped across the courtyard like twisted shadows on a badly polished hand-mirror they must also have realized that I was bound to see them too.

When Pertinax set off walking again, they silently made after him.

LXII

Nothing else transpired, but it seemed a long night.

That resentful tick would never surrender quietly. Helena Justina had a high sense of duty; he still made her feel responsible for his plight. So sooner or later Pertinax and I faced a private reckoning.

As my initial shock wore off, I remembered what I had heard about their marriage. Helena had led a solitary life. She slept alone in that beautiful room while Pertinax had his spacious quarters in a different wing, with Barnabas as his confidant. For a young, ambitious senator, taking a wife was an act of state service which he endured to win fools' votes. Having done it, Pertinax expected his marital rights, but begrudged her his time.

No wonder senators' wives run after gladiators and other low life forms. Pertinax should count himself lucky that his had the good manners to divorce him first…

Next morning I ambled about the villa looking for something to happen. I found the ex-Consul in a large garden at the back of the house, discussing asparagus with one of the staff.

'Seen your son this morning?' I hoped Pertinax had had a heavy weight dropped on his head by the two intruders during the night. But Marcellus disappointed me. 'Yes, I have. Falco, we need to talk…' He said a few words about wilt to the gardener then we strolled, slowly because of the Consul's infirmity, among the formal flowerbeds. They had the usual profusion of urns, fountains, birdbaths and statues of Cupids with guilty expressions, though the Consul's landscape gardener was a passionate shrub man at heart. He had double quantities of box and rosemary planted out in scroll shapes; his trellises and stone borders were almost invisible under enthusiastic daphnes and rampaging quince. Everywhere lattices sagged under jasmine; huge mulberry trees were lovingly tended in formal parterres. Of the twelve species of roses, I counted at least ten.

'What are your intentions?' Marcellus asked bluntly.

'My instructions just don't cover this. The Emperor will expect me to consult before I act.' We had paused, staring into the sunlit depths of a lengthy fish-pool which placidly reflected his gaunt frame and my shorter, more sturdy one. I crouched down, admiring an unusual variegated periwinkle. 'Mind if I pull a shoot off this?'

'Take what you like.'

I jerked away a runner that looked ready to reroot itself; the Consul watched in amusement. 'Family failing, sir! So, about your son, I can't see you letting me rope him to a donkey's tail. Even if I did, it's pointless if the Emperor then tells me he cannot possibly offend such a prominent man as yourself by locking up your heir. Domitian Caesar plotted too. Treating your son less leniently would be illogical.'

That was a gamble, but the Emperor did prefer easy solutions and an offer of an amnesty might make Marcellus co-operate.

'And why,' he broached, eyeing me cannily down that massive nose of his, 'are you questioning an accident at the Temple of Hercules?'

'Because it was no accident! But I can count the beans in a pod. Any decent barrister should be able to convict Barnabas, but it will be hard to find a prosecutor able to stand up to the smooth-chinned, quicksilver lawyers who will rush to make their reputation defending a consul's son.'

'My son is innocent!' Marcellus insisted.

'Most murderers are-if you ask them!' The Consul was careful not to let his annoyance show. 'Sir, Helena Justina's suggestion seems the best plan to me-'