Crassus curled his lip as if his wine had gone sour. 'The whole affair is perverse! To think it should come to this, that I should be scrambling for glory by pitting myself against a slave, a gladiator. The Senate won't even allow me a triumph in Rome if I win, never mind that Spartacus is a greater threat to the Republic than Mithridates or Jugurtha ever were. I'll be lucky if they give me a garland. And if I should lose…' A shadow crossed his face. He muttered a prayer of supplication, dabbed his fingers in his wine cup and tossed the drops over his shoulder.

It seemed a good time to change the subject. 'Was it true, the story that Dionysius told this evening, about the sea cave?'

Crassus smiled, as he had at dinner. 'Every word. Oh, I suppose it's become a bit embellished in the retelling over the years, given a nostalgic polish. In many ways those were terrible times for me, miserable months of anxious waiting. And grief He swirled his cup and studied its depths. 'It is a hard thing for a young man to lose his father, especially to suicide. His enemies drove him to it. And an older brother, assassinated only because Cinna and Marius were bent on destroying the best families in Rome. They would have wiped out the nobility altogether if they could have. Thank the gods, and especially Fortune, that Sulla rose up to save us.'

He sighed. 'Do you know, stuck in that miserable cave day after day, month after month, I made a vow to myself every morning: they won't get me, I said. They struck down my father, they struck down my brother, but I will not be struck down! And so far I haven't been.'

He swirled his cup and blinked, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them wide, looking weary but far from sleep. 'I did the right thing, you know, the pious thing. I honoured the gods and the shades of the dead. I paid my father's debts, though it left me with nothing, and I took up his cause, and when the times became more settled I married my brother's widow. I married Tertulla for piety, not love; even so, I have never regretted the choice. Not all of us can indulge ourselves in cheap sentiment, like Lucius Licinius. Or Mummius!' he snorted. 'Now Lucius is dead, and I – I am either the man of the hour, as Dionysius will gladly tell you, or else a man who is marching steadily and without the slightest hesitation towards his utter ruination at the hands of a slave. I would rather see my wealth vanish than to hear them whisper behind my back in the Forum: "He was brought low by a mere gladiator…" '

While I shifted uneasily in my chair, he paused to sip from his cup. 'You think I should spare the slaves, don't you, Gordianus?'

'If I can prove to you that they should not die.'

He shook his head sadly. 'All men are fated to die, Gordianus. Why does the idea fill them with such abhorrence? Wealth and possessions, joy and pain, even the body – especially the body – all these vanish in the well of time. Only honour matters in the end. Honour is what men remember. Or dishonour.'

Such a way of thinking sums up the difference between nobles and ordinary men, I thought; it excuses the most horrifying atrocities and lets go the simplest opportunities for charity and mercy.

'But you must have come here for a reason,' said Crassus, 'unless you were merely eavesdropping. Do you have something to report, Gordianus?'

'Only that we found the body of one of the missing slaves.'

'Yes?' He raised an eyebrow. 'Which one?'

'The old secretary, Zeno.'

'Where was he? My men supposedly searched every possible hiding place within a day's ride.'

'He was in plain sight. Or at least what was left of him. Somehow he ended up in Lake Avernus. We found his remains on the shoreline; most of his body had been eaten away. Fortunately, enough remained of his face for Olympias to recognize him.'

'Avernus! I know for a fact that before he left for Rome Mummius assigned a group of men to search the whole area around the lake, including the shore. How long had Zeno been there?'

'For days, at least.'

'Then somehow they missed finding him. Probably one of them saw a bit of mist in the shape of his dead wife, or the lake spat like a baby with colic, and the whole lot of them turned and ran, then they lied when they reported there was nothing to find. They will have to be disciplined; the time to make one's authority clear is long before the fighting starts. Just another of the endless details I shall have to attend to tomorrow!' He turned wearily toward the table and rifled among the documents until he found a wax tablet and stylus. He scribbled a note and tossed the tablet back onto the table. 'Where is the body of Zeno now, or what remains of it?'

'There was very little of him left, as I said. Unfortunately, my son Eco slipped in the mud while he was carrying the head along the shore; it fell into a boiling pool of water…' I shrugged. I was uncertain why I lied, except that I wanted to avoid calling attention to Olympias.

'You mean you have nothing to show me?' Crassus suddenly seemed to have reached the end of his patience. 'This whole business is absurd. Between you and Gelina and Mummius – really, it's been a very long day, Gordianus, and tomorrow will be even longer. I think you may go now.'

'Of course.' I stood and began to turn, then stopped. 'One other thing, if I may impose on your patience for another moment, Marcus Crassus. I see that you've been looking over Lucius Licinius's documents.'

'Yes?'

'I wonder if you've come across anything… untoward?' 'What do you mean?'

'I'm not sure. Sometimes a man's records can reveal unexpected things. There might be something among all those documents that might have a bearing on my own work.'

'I can't imagine how. The truth is, Lucius usually kept impeccable records; I required him to do so. When I was here in the spring I looked over his ledgers and found everything accounted for, using the methods I had prescribed. Now it's all a puzzle.'

'In what way?'

'Expenses have been entered with no explanation. There are contradictory indications of how often he used the Fury, and on what errands. Stranger still, it seems to me that some documents must be missing altogether. I thought at first that I could reconstruct and make sense of them by myself, but I think I shall be unable to. I'd have brought along my chief accountant from Rome if I'd known the state of things, but I had no idea that Lucius's affairs were in such chaos.'

'And do you find any of this suggestive?'

'Suggestive of what?' He looked at me quizzically, then snorted. 'With you, everything comes back to the murder. Yes, it suggests something to me – namely, that the old secretary Zeno had made such a muddle of things that Lucius decided to give him a sound beating, whereupon the hotheaded young stableman Alexandros exploded in a Thracian rage and killed his master, where upon the two slaves fled into the night, only to find themselves swallowed up by the Jaws of Hades. There, I've done your work for you, Gordianus. Now you can go to bed content.'

From the tone of his voice I knew that Crassus insisted on having the final word. I was at the door, reaching to open it, when my hand froze. Something had been not quite right from the moment I entered the room; I had felt an apprehension so vague that I had dismissed it as one blinks away a mote of dust. At that instant I knew what it was, and that I had seen it not once, but over and over as I had sat listening to Crassus and letting my eyes wander about the room.

I turned and walked to the little statue of Hercules in his lion hood.

'Marcus Crassus, was there a guard on this room during the day?'

'Of course not. My bodyguards go where I go. The room was empty, so far as I know. No one has legitimate business to come into this room except me.'

'But someone might have entered?'