`Where have you spent your life, Falco?'

I started to take a reluctant interest. Aelianus was showing off, explaining the judges' qualifications. `Freeborn, in good health, over twenty-five and under sixty-five, has to be a decision or other local official, and has to have a modest property portfolio.'

I was shocked. `Good gods, I could end up on a panel myself'

`Feign sickness or madness, Falco.'

`Think of his tombstone,' Helena ruled. `Aulus, I want my husband to have a whole list of dead-end, pointless positions, running off his alabaster slab.' Alabaster, eh? She seemed to have planned it already. Mention of dead-end positions reminded me to visit the Sacred Geese again. `Marcus, be a judge but make sure every time in court, you go for acquittal. Go on the panel, but build up a reputation as a soft bastard, so you don't get picked for cases.'

`The jury decides verdicts,' I protested.

`The judge directs the course of the trial,' Honorius argued, in a hollow voice. He was definitely nervous. It might perk up his advocacy. But it made me tense.

Honorius did not like the judge Paccius first chose. There was no reason, but on principle Honorius would not take the first offer. We objected.

We made another suggestion. Paccius refused our name. Apparently this was normal.

Then began several days of negotiating the published lists. The album of approved judges was laid out in three panels. First, two of these had to be eliminated. It was quick. Paccius rejected a panel, then we did. I could not see what grounds they had – guesswork, perhaps. I noticed that Paccius acted out a charade of deep thoughtfulness, chewing a stylus as he lengthily pondered; Honorius glanced down with an air of confidence before making a swift selection as if it hardly mattered.

That thinned the lists to a third. The remaining panel was subjected to intense scrutiny, as each side removed one name at a time alternately. We were using a panel with an uneven number of names, so we had first pick; had it been an even panel, Paccius would have started. In either case, the intention was to allow the defendant 'to make the final rejection. We all had to keep going until one name was left.

There was no time limit, except that if we spent too long debating we would look amateur. Hasty research was conducted. Both sides were steered by their private advisers. Paccius had a whole group of spindly specialists who looked like clerks with chest diseases. Falco and Associates were just asking my friend Petronius. He had one great advantage: he had appeared in front of most judges.

`Do you want a cretin or a meddler?'

`Which is better for us?'

`Whoever gets the larger backhander.'

`We won't pay. We are going for probity.'

`Can't afford true justice, eh?'

Nobody knew the judges in this court well. At first I thought the opposition were proceeding in some clever manner; then I spotted them off guard one day when I was half concealed behind a pillar, and I could see that where we were facetious, they were frantic. As the names were whittled down, they threw up their hands. Even with Petro's guidance, we were not removing judges on the basis of what we knew against them, but leaving them in because we had never heard of them. There was one exception. One name stayed there even though Petro and I both knew the judge. Both of us were amazed that he survived the process. We both thought it was funny; as the women who loved us sometimes remarked, Petronius and I had never grown up.

By the last three names, we had the man we knew, plus two others whom Petro said were a foul-mouthed liar and a bully (these were milder than some of his comments on others). Honorius rejected the liar. Paccius struck out the bully.

`So! Our judge is called Marponius.' Paccius turned to Honorius. `Do you know anything of him?'

`Actually, no.'

`Me neither.'

Petronius and I hid quiet smiles.

Though on opposite sides, Paccius and Honorius had spoken as colleagues who now faced a common enemy. Their frank exchange included a trace of contempt, for these two nobles knew from a mark against his name that the judge was an equestrian.

We knew more than that. At least we knew what we were getting; that was why we had kept quiet. Petronius Longus had had many a run-in with Marponius in the murders court. Marponius and I had clashed a few times too. The man was a duff encyclopaedia tycoon, a purveyor of cheap knowledge to the rising classes, who had made money and used it to advance himself from the stews on the lower Aventine to the temple-topped crest of the hill. Being on the panel of approved judges was the height of glamour for him. He was ambitious, nasty, narrow-minded and famous for spouting bigoted drivel. He sat in his court like a warm geyser in the Wholegrain Fields, belching foul volcanic air – a risk to all the wildlife in his neighbourhood.

As he left us, Petronius said he was sure we would all find the arbiter in our coming trial to be full of talent and humanity.

`I hope not!' muttered Honorius. `We don't want some damned interventionist.'

I told him that Marponius was famous for his innovative directions to juries. Paccius overheard me. He and Honorius glanced at each other and winced.

This was typical of Marponius. He had not even met them, yet he had upset the legal teams on both sides.

XXXVIII

MARPONIUS WAS loving it. We were informed that he was so thrilled to preside over a prestigious case (instead of bath-house stranglers and brothel batteries), he had bought himself a new toga – and forgot to request a price discount. Petronius seemed to have access to the judge's house; he knew so much about his reactions, it sounded to me as if the vigiles must be crouching under his pillow like bedbugs as the judge put himself to sleep every night with his beaker of hot camomile tea and scroll of Cicero…

In fact Marponius, a childless widower, lived a life of moral austerity. That was one reason Petro and his men hated him. There was nothing to work with when they wanted to influence a case in the right direction.

So keen was Marponius to feature in the Daily Gazette's legal reports and to have the masses in the Forum wonder who in Hades he was, he brought Calpurnia's trial forwards and rushed through the jury selection. Marponius apparently had more influence than we supposed; he then somehow wangled himself use of the Basilica Julia. It was normally reserved for the Court of One Hundred, which dealt with inheritance. Appropriate – though Marponius probably just knew the right court official. Since the centumviral court actually had a hundred and eighty judges and occasionally sat in full session, there would be plenty of room for onlookers, though I thought Marponius was going overboard.

It was a cool day when I strolled down the Vices Auguries, walked under the Arch of Tiberius, and entered the historic end of the Forum near the Capitol. The Basilica stretched between the Temple of Saturn and the Temple of Castor, in a dramatic and lofty group of monuments. Overlooked by the great temples on the hill above, that part of the Sacred Way was rich in ancient sites. I came out on a corner, by the Lake of Servilius – some antique hero who once gave a horse a drink here (or maybe it was the name of the thirsty horse). Ahead were the orators' rostra adorned with prows of captured ships, the so-called Umbilicus of the City, and the mysterious Black Stone. Very historic. Somewhere for loafers to tell their friends to meet them. I found the rest of my own party gathered in the shadow of the towering statue plinths that lined the Sacred Way.

We mounted the steps in the centre. For once I noticed the elegant symmetry of the double-height rows of arches that faced us. There must be nearly twenty – I had no concentration to count them – and they are entirely constructed of expensive marble. Inside, some cutbacks occurred; there the piers are simply made of cheaper travertine with white marble veneers. The long rectangular hall, roofed in wood over a fifty-foot span, has a double row of colonnades on each long side, paved with more glittering slabs, so a ponderous chill strikes the bones in winter and an important hush lies everywhere, except when barristers are arguing among themselves in the side aisles. The colonnades have upper galleries, where people can observe proceedings, eat nuts, then throw down pistachio shells into the toga folds of the legal teams.