She sat on a couch, a little way from me. Tall and graceful, she had dressed in the style of a senator's daughter, adorned with favourite semiprecious jewellery over a long-sleeved white winter gown, formally wound with a voluminous dark red stole. Holding a note tablet, she looked like a high-class secretary – one keeping minutes for an empress who was plotting people's downfalls.

`I maintain the records of our enquiries, so my husband has asked me to begin.' She rarely called me her husband, though that was the state I had reported in my Census return. We lived together. It was accurate. But Helena knew it always gave me a shock.

She caught my eye and smiled slightly. I felt my lips twitch.

`Falco and Associates will shortly defend Metellus Negrinus. They intend to pre-empt the charge that he killed his father by showing that somebody else did so: Calpurnia Cara. This is hard for you – but I imagine it will not be a surprise.'

People began to speak, but I held up a hand and stopped them.

`At the trial we shall need to show motive and opportunity,' Helena continued. `Metellus provided a motive by his will: his connection with Saffia. It is very unpleasant, but the issue of adultery and incest will come out in court. So what about opportunity? We no longer believe,' Helena announced in her measured tones, `the story we have been given about when Rubirius Metellus died. All of you concurred in the fabrication – that he retired to his bed and killed himself, on the day that his body was witnessed by the seven senators. I have to be blunt. That is nonsense.'

For a quiet woman she could be acidic. When Helena spoke in that calm, unexcited way, it made the saliva dry under my tongue.

`Rubirius Metellus was presented to his seven friends, dead in his bed. But we know that the body had by then been lying somewhere else for days. So was any of your fable true?' She looked around the group. `Did Metellus really have a last lunch with some of you? Did he ever discuss suicide? Were you sent from the room, Birdy because you were upset? Were you there – or in Lanuvium? Did Calpurnia rush off in annoyance because Metellus changed his mind? And did you, Juliana, sit quietly alongside your father while he. passed away?'

Nobody answered.

`I think not!' Helena retorted scathingly.

There was complete silence.

It was my turn now.

I addressed Negrinus. `Our case against your mother will have two bases: your father was killed with hemlock, which was Calpurnia's idea and which was bought by an agent of her legal adviser, Paccius.' That did seem to surprise them. `Then she concealed your father's death for days – perhaps until you came home from Lanuvium – finally revealing the corpse in a staged deathbed scene. These details should condemn her and clear you. It will still leave that huge question: why ever did the rest of you, knowing about the fake deathbed, all go along with it?'

Birdy just looked depressed. It was Verginius Laco, the oldest man present, who said smoothly with authority, `It is reprehensible – but everyone decided to say that Metellus committed suicide so they could save the family money.'

`I am sure you regret that!' I commented. `Will you testify?'

`I have nothing to say in court, Falco.'

I had already judged Laco to be scrupulous. So was he ducking out of perjury?

Helena turned over a sheet in her note-tablet. `I should mention that we believe there will be little money to save.' Attention returned to her again. `Our prosecutor will emphasise how Saffia has taken possession of most of your fortune and that the rest passes to Saffia by the will. The court has to infer blackmail. We shall call her as a witness, though we cannot at present ask her how much she will admit.'

None of them spoke.

`The truth is bound to come out,' I threatened, sounding confident.

There was high tension in the room. Perhaps we might have shocked them into a revelation. But the silence was interrupted. A troubled slave entered, to say a midwife had arrived with an urgent message for Negrinus from his ex-wife. Then two women pushed in past the slave. One had a tiny, fair-haired girl clutching at her skirts, the other carried a wrapped bundle.

I stood up. That was a mistake. For, in the traditional manner of seeking paternal acknowledgement, she marched forward and laid at my feet a neatly swaddled newborn baby.

Helena Justina's fine dark eyes met mine, full of amusement at my discomfiture.

XXXVI

HELENA WAS the first to react. She laid aside her note-tablet and rose swiftly with a swish of her skirts. She came to me, stopped, and picked up the tiny bundle. I heard a feeble whimper. Handing back the child to the midwife, Helena announced crisply, `Wrong father!'

I sat down quickly.

Helena stood beside me, one proprietarily hand on my shoulder. `Try again,' she encouraged the woman, this time more gently. Rufus and Laco sat tight, trying not to look as though they were avoiding anybody's eye. Carina held out her arms to the small girl, who must be about two; she toddled across and climbed on her aunt's lap, clearly used to her, but then she buried her face and began to cry. Carina bent and reassured her in a low voice, one hand spread on her little head. I noticed she moved aside the hard links of her jewellery, a practised mother, ensuring the child's face was not bruised.

Metellus Negrinus had risen slowly to his feet. The woman with the baby fixed on him, hesitated, then went and placed the newborn once more on the ground between his feet. She stepped back. Negrinus did not move.

`Don't touch it!' warned Juliana, his elder sister. `You don't know who -' She refused to finish, though we all understood her meaning.

`It is a boy,' pleaded the woman who brought it, as if she thought that might make a difference. If Birdy refused it, the child would be taken and exposed on a madden. Someone might snatch the helpless bundle, either to bring up as their own or to bring up in drudgery. Probably the baby would die. `Saffia Donata begged us to bring the children to you,' quavered the midwife, looking around the room unsurely. `She is fading rapidly…'

It was Carina who looked up from cuddling her brother's tearful daughter and ordered, `Acknowledge your son, Gnaeus!'

Her brother took his decision as she willed him to act. With one fast movement, he bent down and scooped up the baby.

,It might not be yours,' wailed Juliana.

`It's mine now!' Clutching the child against his tunic, Negrinus gazed around at the rest of us, almost defiantly. `None of my trouble is my children's fault.'

`Well done,' murmured Carina, with a catch in her voice. Her husband, the austerely decent Laco, reached out and took her hand. Even Juliana nodded resignedly, though her husband looked furious.

Negrinus faced the midwife. `Is Saffia Donata dying?' His tone was harsh. `So why have you left her?'

`Your mother appointed me; I was supposed merely to observe – Saffia had her own women to help her. It took so long… I am afraid she has probably gone by now.' Relief brought more colour to the midwife's cheeks. `I am sorry to break in like this. I am sorry to bring you such news.' The woman was of obvious quality, slave-born, but probably now freed and working independently. I could see why Calpurnia Cara had chosen her to supervise the family interests. `Saffia Donata pleaded with us to bring the children to you. She was desperately anxious about them being looked after -'

`Have no fears for them,' Negrinus broke in. He was holding the baby like a man who knew which way up they go. When it let out a complaining cry, he jogged it gently. He still looked incongruously studious, yet had the air of some historic pioneer, facing hardship stoically across the land he worked. `So Saffia knew she was dying?' The midwife nodded. `Did she say anything else?' This time the woman shook her head. `A pity!' he exclaimed cryptically.