'He's gone, Falco.'

I doubted that; Pertinax was too desperate for cash. I dragged Bryon with me and hurried indoors. But the attendants assured me no one had visited Marcellus. I strode into the sickroom, making Bryon come too.

'Tell the Consul what happened to you, Bryon!'

For a moment this vigorous outdoor type hung back in the presence of an invalid; then he rallied. 'I came on the young master and warned him the Emperor's agent had scuppered whatever he had planned. I told him he should stop running and face the charges against him-'

'So he jumped you, battered you, and then locked you up? Did he ask about his father's health?'

'No. But I told him the Consul had had a bad attack, and I told him,' stated Bryon in the same level voice, 'the Consul had been calling out for him.'

'You made sure he knew-but he left?'

'Oh yes,' said Bryon quietly, not looking at the Consul. 'He left. I've heard him clatter off in a fury on that roan of his often enough.'

I rounded on the bed where the Consul lay motionless, with his eyes closed. 'Better face facts, sir! Atius Pertinax has given up on you. Give up on him!'

Seeing him lying there, we lost all sense of his immense height. His commanding presence seemed to fade even as I watched. Even his huge nose shrank from its ludicrous domination of his old, lined, suffering face. He was one of the wealthiest men in Campania, but everything he valued had now gone. I signalled to Bryon, and we quietly left the room.

The ex-Consul would make no more attempts to redeem Pertinax. Illness and betrayal had succeeded where I had failed.

•

Pertinax was an excellent rider, and he knew this location. I took a horse out myself to warn the magistrate's searchers to watch closely for the roan, but he must have already slipped through. We had no idea where he might be heading-Tarentum possibly. We had lost him. I returned to the house.

When your nearest relations are spiking you so callously, the last thing you want and the first thing you get is inquisitive neighbours on a social call. Aemilius Rufus was now in with Marcellus, paying his respects. His sister, who had come with him, was walking on the terrace.

She was wearing black, with heavy veiling folded back while she patrolled the colonnade alone and gazed sadly out to sea.

'Aemilia Fausta! I'm sorry about Crispus. I would tell you it ought never to have happened, but that makes the tragedy worse. There was nothing I could do.'

I felt she had expended all her grief on her reluctant lover while he was alive; now he was dead she accepted my condolences decisively. I said in a low tone, 'In future, when you read some court poet's bucolic account of how the crowds at Misenum and Puteoli turn out every year to cheer the incoming grain ships, you can smile to remember what no one ever says: in the consulship of whichever two nobles are holding office this year, the transports' annual arrival went unmarked…'

'Is it all over?'

'Ships in the night! There may be stragglers still to come, but Vespasian can look after them once I've made my report.'

She turned to me, as she drew her black mantle into a closer frame for her fair-skinned face. 'Crispus was a man with special gifts, Falco. You will be proud to have known him.'

I let that pass. After a moment I smiled, 'Strong colours suit you.'

'Yes!' she agreed, with her new capable laugh. 'Didius Falco, you were right. My brother offends me, I won't live with him now. Perhaps I shall marry a rich old man, and when he's gone enjoy myself as a widow, in strong, dark colours, being over-demanding and shouting at people-or playing the cithara very badly by myself.'

I suppressed the thought that this honourable lady had been strolling here in the Consul's stately portico reckoning up the value of his fabulous estate.

'Aemilia Fausta,' I responded gallantly, 'on my word as a harp teacher, you play very well!'

'You always were a liar, Falco,' she said.

•

She married the ex-Consul; we arranged it the next day. Curtius Gordianus took the auguries and concocted the usual lies about 'good omens for a long contented partnership'. Grief and ill health made Caprenius Marcellus incoherent so it was me who interpreted his marriage vows. No one was so impolite as to ask what occurred on the wedding night; nothing, presumably. Naturally the bridegroom altered his will, leaving everything to his new young wife, and any children they might have. I helped him write his will too.

I never saw Aemilia Fausta again, though I heard of her from time to time. She lived a blameless, vigorously happy life as a widow, and died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Before then Fausta had nursed Marcellus devotedly. He managed to live long enough to know that his estates and the honour of his famous ancestors were both secure: nine months after they were married Aemilia Fausta gave birth to a boy.

I saw her son once, years later. He had survived the volcano and grown into a strapping youth. Someone pointed him out. He was in a chariot, leaning on the front rail with one elbow while he waited patiently for a hold-up in the road ahead to clear. For someone with more money than anyone deserves, he looked a decent lad. He had brown hair, a broad, calm brow and an untroubled expression which seemed vaguely familiar.

His mother had named him Lucius; after Crispus, I suppose.

There was one other event which I cannot omit. It was Bryon who broke the bad news to me. The day after the wedding, I was preparing to leave when Bryon confessed. 'Falco, I know where Pertinax may be.'

'Where? Spit it out!'

'Rome. We had Ferox and the Sweetheart entered in their first race, at the Circus Maximus-'

'Rome!' Rome: where I had sent Helena Justina to be safe.

'I had a word with the new mistress,' Bryon went on. 'She seems to know her mind! Ferox is still to be sent for the race. She also told me, the Consul is making a special bequest to you; he likes you, apparently-'

'You amaze me. What's the gift?'

'Little Sweetheart.' I never have much luck in life, but that was ridiculous. 'Her ladyship says, will you please take him with you when you go?'

Every citizen has the right to decline inconvenient legacies. I nearly declined this.

Still, I could always sell the nag for sausage meat. For all his faults of character, he was well fed and free from visible disease; there were plenty of hot-piemen selling worse things from trays along the Via Triumphalis and in front of the Basilica.

So I kept him and saved my fare home, struggling all the way up the Via Appia on this cock-eyed, knock-kneed, self-willed, pernickety beastie who now was my own.