misfortune to meet and fall for me. After a few false moves we decided to live together. We intended to make it permanent. That decision made us, by strict legal definitions, married.

In real social terms we were a scandal. If the excellent Camillus Verus had chosen to make trouble over my theft of his noble daughter, my life could have been extremely difficult – Hers too.

Our relationship was our business, but Julia's existence called for a change. People kept asking us when we intended marrying, but there was no need for formality. We were both free to marry and if we both chose to live together that was all the law required. We had considered denying it. In that case our children would take their mother's social rank, although any advantage was theoretical. As long as their father lacked honorific titles to cite on public occasions, they would be stuck in the mud like me.

So when we came home from Spain we had decided to acknowledge our position publicly. Helena had stepped down to my level. She knew what she was doing: she had seen my style of life, and faced up to the consequences. Our daughters were debarred from good marriages. Our sons stood no chance of holding public office, no matter how much their noble grandfather the senator would like to see them stand for election. The upper class would close against them, while the lower ranks would probably despise them as outsiders too.

For the sake of Helena Justina and our children, I accepted my duty to improve my position. I had tried to achieve the middle rank, which would minimise awkwardness. The attempt had been a disaster. I was not intending to make a fool of myself again. Even so, everyone else was determined that I should.

The Censor's clerk surveyed me as if he were having second thoughts. `Have you completed the Census?'

`Not yet.' II would be dodging, it if possible. The, point of Vespasian's new Census was not to count heads out of bureaucratic curiosity, but to assess property for tax. `I've been abroad.'

He gave me the old they all say that expression. 'Military service?'

`Special duties.' Since he did not query it, I added,tantalisingly, `Don't ask me to specify.' He still didn't care:

`So you haven't reported'' yet? Are you head of a family?'

`Yes.'

`Father dead?'

`No such luck.'

`You are emancipated from your father's authority?'

`Yes,' I lied. Pa would never dream of doing anything so civilised. It made no difference to me, however.''

`Didius Falco, are you to your knowledge and belief, and by your own; intention, living in a valid state of marriage?'

`Yes.'

`Thanks.' His interest was cursory. He had only asked me to cover his own tracks.

`You should ask me the same question,' Helena sniped.

`Heads of household only,' I said, grinning at her. She regarded her role in our household as at least equal to my own. So did, I, since I knew what was good for me.

`Name of the child?' The clerk's indifference suggested that mismatched couples like us turned up every week. Rome was supposed to be a moral sink, so perhaps it was true – though we had never encountered anyone else who took the same risks so openly. For one thing, most women born into luxury cling on to it. And most men who try to lure them away from home get beaten up by troops of very large slaves.

`Julia Junilla Laeitana,' I said proudly. `Spelling?'

'J-U-'

He looked up in silence.

`L,' said Helena' patiently, as if aware that the man she lived with was an idiot, `A-E-I-T-A-N-A.'

`Three names? This is a girl child?' Most females had two names.

`She needs a good start in life: 'Why did I feel I was having to apologise? I had the right to name her as I chose. He scowled. He had had enough of whimsical young parents for one day.

'Birthdate?'

`Seven days before the Kalends of June '

This time the clerk flung his pen down on the table. I knew what had upset him. `We accept registrations on the naming day only!'

I was supposed to name a daughter within eight days of her birth. (It was nine days for boys; as Helena said, men need longer for everything.) Custom decreed that a family trip to the Forum for a birth certificate would be made at the same time. Julia Junilla had been born in May; it was August now. The clerk had his standards. He would not permit such a flagrant breach of the rules.

SIX

It took me an hour to explain why my child had been born in Tarraconensis. I had done nothing wrong and this was nothing unusual. Trade, the army and imperial business take plenty of fathers abroad; strong-minded womenfolk (especially those who regard foreign girls as a walking temptation) go with them. In summer most births in self-respecting families occur at fancy villas outside Rome, in any case. Even being born outside Italy is perfectly acceptable; only parental status matters. I did not intend my daughter to lose her civic rights because, the inconvenient timing of an investigation for the Palace had forced us to introduce her to the world at a distant port called Barcino.

I had taken all the steps I could. Various freeborn women had been present at the birth and could act as witnesses. I had immediately, notified the town council at Barcino (who ignored me as a foreigner) and I had made a formal declaration within the proper time limit at the provincial governor's residence in Tarraco. I had the bastard's seal on a blurred chit to prove it.

There was, an obvious cause for our problem today. Public slaves receive no official stipend for their duties. Naturally I had come equipped with the usual ex gratia offering, but the clerk thought that if he made things look difficult he could garner a more spectacular tip than usual. The hour's argument was needed to persuade him that I had no more money.;

He started weakening. Julia then remembered she wanted to be fed, so she screwed up her little eyes and screamed as if she were practising for when she grew up and wanted to go to parties that I disapproved of. She received her certificate without further delay.

Rome is a masculine city. Places where' a respectable woman can feed her young child modestly are rare. That is because respectable nursing mothers are supposed to stay at home. Helena disapproved of staying at home. Perhaps it was my fault for not providing a more alluring habitat. She also despised suckling the baby at the women's latrines, and seemed in no mood to proffer an entry to the women's baths. So we ended up hiring a carrying chair, making sure it had window curtains. If there was one thing that grated on me more than paying for a chair, it was paving for it to go nowhere.

`That's all right,' Helena soothed me. 'We can take a trip. You don't have to stand on guard outside feeling embarrassed.'

The child had to be nourished. Besides, I was proud of the fact that. Helena was high-mindedly feeding Julia herself. Many women of her status praise the idea but pay a wet-nurse instead. `I'll wait.'

`No, ask the men to carry us to the Atrium' of Liberty,' Helena ordered decisively.

`What's' at the Atrium?"

'It's where they store the overflow archive of the Censor's records office. Including notices of the dead.' I knew that.

`Who's died?' I had guessed what she was up to, but I hated being shoved into things.

`That's what you have to find out, Marcus.'

`Pardon me?'

`The hand that you and Petro found? I'm not suggesting you will be able to trace its owner, but there must be a clerk who can at least tell you the procedure when a' person disappears.'

I said I had had enough of clerks, but we were all carried off to the Atrium of Liberty anyway.

Like funeral directors, the clerks in the death notice section were a chirpy lot, a bright contrast to their surly colleague registering births. I knew a couple of them already, Silvius and Brixius. Informers are often sent to the Atrium archives by heirs or executors of wills. It was the first time I had shuf fled into their office with my stately girlfriend, a sleeping baby, and a; curious dog, however. They took it well, presuming that Helena was my client – a pushy one who insisted on supervising my every move. Apart from the fact that I would not be sending her an invoice, that was close.