Then there was a strong, heavy hand on my shoulder – not a dream, but real. I opened my eyes with a start. In the mirror I saw the face of a man abruptly roused from a deep dream, his jaw slack and his eyes heavy with sleep. I blinked at the reflected glare of a lamp held aloft behind me. In the mirror I saw a looming giant dressed like a soldier. His face was smudged with dirt, ugly and stupid looking, like a mask in a comedy. A bodyguard – a trained killer, I thought, instandy recognizing the type. It seemed cruelly unfair that someone in the household had already sent an assassin to murder me before I had even begun to make trouble.

'Did I wake you?' His voice was hoarse but surprisingly gentle. 'I knocked and could have sworn I heard you answer, so I came in. With you sitting up in the chair like that, I thought you must be awake.'

He cocked an eyebrow at me. I stared back at him dumbly, no longer quite sure I was awake and wondering how he had stumbled into my dream. 'What are you doing here?' I finally said.

The soldier's ugly face opened in an ingratiating smile. 'Marcus Crassus requests your presence in the library downstairs. If you're not too busy, that is.'

It took only a moment to slip into my sandals. I began searching in the lamplight for a suitable tunic, but the bodyguard told me to come as I was. Eco softly snored through the whole exchange. The day had worn him out, and his sleep was uncommonly deep.

A long straight hallway took us to the central atrium; winding stairs led down to the open garden, where the light of tiny lamps on the floor cast strange shadows across the corpse of Lucius Licinius. The library was a short walk up a hallway into the north wing. The guard indicated a door to our right as we passed and put a finger to his lips. 'The lady Gelina is asleep,' he explained. A few steps farther on he pushed open a door on our left and ushered me inside.

'Gordianus of Rome,' he announced.

A cloaked figure sat at a square table across the room, his back to us. Another bodyguard stood nearby. The figure turned a bit in his backless chair, just enough to give me a glimpse of one eye, then turned back to his business and gestured for both guards to leave the room.

After a long moment he stood, tossed aside the simple cloak he wore – a Greek chlamys, such as Romans often adopt when they visit the Cup – and turned to greet me. He wore a plain tunic of durable fabric and simple cut. He looked slightly dishevelled, as if he had been riding. His smile was weary but not insincere.

'So you are Gordianus,' he said, leaning back against the table, which was strewn with documents. 'I suppose you know who I am.'

'Yes, Marcus Crassus.' He was only slighd

tly older than myself, but considerably greyer – not surprising, considering the hardships and tragedies of his early life, including his flight to Spain after the suicide of his father and the assassination of his brother by anti-Sullan forces. I had seen him often in the Forum delivering speeches or overseeing his interests at the markets, always attended by a large coterie of secretaries and sycophants. It was a little unnerving to see him on so intimate a scale – his hair untidy, his eyes tired, his hands unwashed and stained from handling a rein. He was quite human, after all, despite his fabulous wealth. 'Crassus, Crassus, rich as Croesus,' went the ditty, and the popular imagination at Rome pictured him as a man of excessive habits. But those powerful enough to move in his circle painted a different image, which was borne out by his unpretentious appearance;

Crassus's craving for wealth was not for the luxuries that gold could buy, but for the power it could harness.

'It's a wonder we've never met before,' he said in his smooth orator's voice. 'I know of you, certainly. There was that affair of the Vestal Virgins last year; you played some part in saving Catalina's hide, I understand. I've also heard Cicero praise your work, if in a somewhat backhanded way. Hortensius, too. I do recognize your face, from the Forum I suspect.. Generally I don't hire free agents such as yourself. I prefer to use men I own.'

'Or to own the men you use?'

'You understand me exactly. If I want, say, to build a new villa, it's much more efficient to purchase an educated slave, or to educate a bright slave I already own, rather than to hire whatever architect happens to be fashionable, at some exorbitant rate. I buy an architect rather than an architect's services; that way I can use him again and again at no extra cost.'

'Some of the skills I offer are beyond the capacities of a slave,' I said.

'Yes, I suppose they are. For instance, a slave could hardly have been invited to join Gelina's dinner guests and to question them at will. Have you learned anything of value since you arrived?'

'As a matter of fact, I have.'

'Yes? Speak up. After all, I'm the man who's hired you.'

'I thought it was Gelina who sent for me.'

'But it was my ship that brought you, and it's my purse that will pay your fee. That makes me your employer.'

'Still, if you would permit, I should prefer to keep my discoveries to myself for a time. Sometimes information is like the pressed juice of the grape; it needs to ferment in a dark and quiet place away from probing eyes.'

'I see. Well, I shall not press you. Frankly, I think your presence here is a waste of my money and your time. But Gelina insisted, and as it was her husband who was murdered, I decided to indulge her.'

'You're not curious yourself about the murder of Lucius Licinius? I understand he was your cousin, and a steward of your property for many years.'

Crassus shrugged. 'Is there really any question at all about who killed him? Surely Gelina has told you about the missing slaves, and the letters scrawled at Lucius's feet? That such a thing should happen to one of my kinsmen, in one of my own villas, is outrageous. It cannot be overlooked.'

'And yet there may be reasons to believe that the slaves are innocent of the crime.'

'What reasons? Ah, I forgot, your head is some sort of dark casket where the truth slowly ferments.' He smiled grimly. 'Metrobius could no doubt come up with more puns on the same theme, but I'm too tired to make them. Ah, these accounting ledgers are a scandal.' He turned away from me to study the scrolls laid out on the table, apparently no longer interested in my reason for being there. 'I had no idea Lucius had become so careless. With the slave Zeno gone there's no making sense of these documents at all…'

'Are you done with me, Marcus Crassus?'

He was absorbed in the ledgers and seemed not to hear me. I looked about the room. The floor was covered with a thick carpet with a geometric design in red and black. The walls on the left and right were covered with shelves full of scrolls, some of them stacked together and others neady stored in pigeonholes. The wall opposite the door was pierced by two narrow windows that faced the courtyard in front of the house, shuttered against the cold and covered by dark red draperies.

Between the windows, above the table where Crassus laboured, was a painting of Gelina. It was a portrait of rare distinction, touched with life, as the Greeks say. In the background loomed Vesuvius, with blue sky above and green sea below; in the foreground the image of Gelina seemed to radiate a sense of profound equanimity and grace. The portraitist was evidendy quite proud of her work, for in the lower right-hand corner was printed IAIA CYZICENA. She made the letter 'A' with an eccentric flourish, tilting the crossbar sharply downward towards the right.

On either side of the table stood squat pedestals supporting small bronze statues, each about the height of a man's forearm. The statue on the left I could not see, for it was covered by Crassus's carelessly discarded chlamys. The one on the right was of Hercules bearing a club across his shoulders, naked except for a lionskin cloak, with the lion's head for hood and its paws clasped at his throat. It was an odd choice for a library, but the workmanship could not be faulted. The tufts of the lion's fur had been scrupulously modelled; the texture of fur contrasted with the smooth muscularity of the demigod's flesh. Lucius Licinius had been as careless of his art as of his ledgers, I thought, for it appeared that the scalloped fur of the lion's head had somehow begun to rust.