The evening seemed more melancholy after they had gone. Petronius said his respect for the navy had trebled on the spot.

•

We were leaving when Helena Justina remembered her friend. I wanted to abandon Fausta, but was overruled. (One reason why an informer should work alone: to avoid being dragged into good deeds.)

The lady was lurking in the atrium, weeping copiously. She had been at the amphorae. This would only seem a good idea to a wine merchant with sinking profits (if such a man exists).

All around her the caterers were tidying up, ignoring the dishevelled spectre sobbing on her knees. I could see Helena stiffening. 'They despise her! She's a woman, behaving stupidly, but worst of all, she has no man to look after her-'

Larius and Petro stepped back shyly, but Helena had already forced a slave to stop and explain. He said Fausta had made another indomitable foray into the villa, half-way through the meal. The banquet had been a racy one: all male, with all-female entertainment…

'And Aufidius Crispus,' cried Helena haughtily, 'was entwined with a Spanish dancing girl?'

'No madam…' The slave looked sideways at Petro and me. We grinned. 'Two, actually!' He was happy to go into details but Helena hissed through her teeth.

Evidently Fausta had simply crumpled and withdrawn, in the kind of abject grief that was her well-known speciality; Crispus probably never even saw her. Now she was stuck out here in an unoccupied villa, while the caterers had pushed all the empty amphorae off a jetty into the sea and were about to leave.

Helena made a lively fuss until someone brought the lady's chair. Fausta's bearers tonight were an ill-matched set of Liburnian slaves, one with a limp and one with a set of venomous neck boils. 'Oh, we cannot leave these ninnies in charge of her!' Helena declared.

Without admitting liability, Larius and I managed to insert Fausta into her chair. The slaves lurched her as far as the inn at Oplontis, but while we were discussing what to do next she slipped off and scampered onto the beach proclaiming a curse on men, naming the parts which she wished to wither and drop off them in such detail that it made me queasy.

I had had enough of her whole family. But to please Helena, I agreed to waste more of what could otherwise have been a pleasant evening and somehow deal with her

With luck, some bandit in need of a scullion to warm his broth would kidnap Fausta first.

I insisted on putting Helena in her own litter back on the road to the villa. This took quite a long time, for reasons that are nobody's business but mine.

By now most of the coast lay in darkness. When I returned to the inn Fausta had disappeared. Although it was so late, I found Larius talking poetry to the nursemaid Ollia on a bench in the inn courtyard; at least he had progressed from Catullus to Ovid, who has a better outlook on love and, more crucially, on sex.

I sat down with them. 'You been philandering, uncle?'

'Don't be ridiculous. No senator's daughter would enjoy being bedded on the bare ground among a lot of curious spiders with a pine cone in her back!'

'Really?' asked Larius.

'Really,' I lied. 'What coaxed Aemilia Fausta away from the sand hoppers?'

'A kind-hearted, off-duty watch captain. He hates to see noblemen's sisters sitting drunk on beaches.'

I groaned. Petronius Longus was always a soft touch for a sobbing girl. 'So he threw her over his shoulder, stuffed her into the chair while she declaimed what a nice man he was, then he marched off her pathetic entourage to Herculaneum himself?'

Larius laughed. 'You know Petro!'

'He won't even bother to ask for a reward. What did Silvia say?'

'Nothing-very pointedly!'

It was a beautiful night. I decided to hitch up Nero and meet Petro with transport home. Larius decided to keep me company; then, because they were young and illogical, Ollia came as company for him.

When we reached the magistrate's house the door porter told us Petronius had arrived with the lady but since she was none too stable in her party shoes, had helped her indoors. Rather than risk fending off suggestions for fun with Aemilius Rufus, we waited in the cart.

Petro, who was a long time coming out, seemed surprised to find us there. We were all napping, so he swung into the front seat and took up the reins. He was the best driver among us anyway.

'Watch that magistrate!' I warbled. 'His Falernian is decent but I wouldn't want to meet him behind a bathhouse pillar in the dark… His sister give you much trouble?'

'Not if you ignore the usual "Men are disgusting; why can't I get one?" stuff.' I said some hard words about Fausta, though Petronius maintained the poor little thing was rather sweet.

Larius was nodding off on Ollia's comfortable shoulder. I had a better woman to think about than some louse of a magistrate's fool of a sister so I huddled in a corner and went to sleep too, lulled by the cart's gently creaking motion through the warm Campanian night.

Ever good-natured, Petronius Longus hummed to himself quietly as he drove us all home.

LXVII

Two days later the magistrate tried to arrest Atius Pertinax. It was Petro's daughter's birthday so I had slipped down to Oplontis with a gift. After my spurning him, Rufus made no attempt to warn me. So I missed the action.

There was not much to miss. Rufus should have followed my advice: since the Villa Marcella was orientated seawards, the discreet approach was down the mountain from above. But when orders to apprehend Pertinax arrived from Vespasian, Aemilius Rufus grabbed a troop of soldiers and dashed up the main estate road, prominently visible to the house.

Marcellus gave him a frosty greeting and permission to search, then sat in the shade to wait for the idiot to discover the obvious: Pertinax had fled.

Once the furore had subsided, Helena Justina followed me to Oplontis with the tale.

'Gnaeus rushed off riding with Bryon. Bryon, in all innocence apparently, came back later with both horses, to say the young master had decided to go for a cruise-'

'He has a boat?'

'Bryon left him on Aufidius Crispus' yacht.'

'Does Crispus know there is an arrest warrant?'

'That's unclear.'

'Where was the yacht?'

'Baiae. But Bryon saw her sail.'

'Brilliant! So the illustrious Aemilius Rufus has flushed Pertinax onto the fastest thing between Sardinia and Sicily…'

Rufus was useless. I would have to charter a ship and look for the Isis Africana myself. It was too late in the day now, so at least I could enjoy one more evening with my lady first.

Silvana was the birthday girl (Petro's middle daughter; she was four), and tonight the children were joining our evening meal. We were delayed, however, because we had hit one of those joyful family crises without which no holiday is complete. Arria Silvia found the nursemaid Ollia in floods of tears.

Two brisk questions about Ollia's personal calendar revealed that my prophecy about the fisherboy must be correct. (He was still hanging around every day.) Ollia denied it, which clinched the verdict. Sylvia gave Ollia a slap round the head to relieve her own feelings, then instructed Petronius and me to sort out the inconvenient lobster catcher, now that it was too late.

We found the young gigolo preening his moustache by an old lead-stocked anchor; Petro got an arm up his back rather further than his arm was meant to go. Of course he claimed he never touched the girl; we expected that. We marched him to the turfy shack where he lived with his parents and while the youth sulked Petronius Longus put the whole moral issue in succinct terms to them: Ollia's father was a legionary veteran who had served in Egypt and Syria for over twenty years until he left with double pay, three medals, and a diploma that made Ollia legitimate; he now ran a boxers' training school where he was famous for his high-minded attitude and his fighters were notorious for their loyalty to him…