Half an hour later we were moved to a corridor, which was full of tired people in limp togas hanging about. Proculus and Justus exchanged glances, thinking they would be stuck in this endless trail of ceremonial long after their watch was supposed to end. But immediately my name was called; minor flunkeys bustled us past the crowd; then we reached a cavernous antechamber where an elegantly spoken secretary inspected us like vermine while he crossed us off a list.

'This man was summoned an hour ago! What kept you so long?'

A major-domo produced Anacrites, looking sleek in a grey tunic; like a conjuror's tame dove-but not so cute. In contrast to me he was well bathed and barbered, with his straight hair slicked back in a way I disliked intensely. It made him look like the trickster he was. At the sight of him I felt crumpled and crusty-tempered, with a mouth like the bottom of a cementmaker's hod. He narrowed his pale, suspicious eyes at me, but at this stage I forwent the chance of insulting him. Next minute Proculus and Justus had been ordered to march me in.

When we first entered through the grand travertine entrance pillars, Anacrites was the trusted official and I the seedy hangdog, under guard and in disgrace. But no protocol that I knew said I had to go along with it. Two days in bruising leg irons made it easy to adopt a brave expression and a limp. Which meant the first thing Titus Caesar asked me was, 'Something wrong with your leg, Falco?'

'Just an old fracture, sir. I broke a leg last winter, on that job for your father in Britain; it bothers me when I'm cramped up without exercise...'

'Cut the pathos, Falco!' Anacrites growled.

Titus shot a sharp glance at the spy. 'Britain; I remember!' His tone was clipped. The work I did for his father in Britain was too confidential to be mentioned in detail, but Anacrites would know of it. I heard him mutter with annoyance. I also noticed the secretary, whose job was to take shorthand notes, hold his stylus discreetly at rest as confidential subject matter came up. His exotic oriental eye caught mine momentarily; finely tuned to atmosphere, he anticipated fun.

Then Titus gestured to a slaveboy. 'Didius Falco needs looking after. Will you bring him a seat?'

Even at that stage Anacrites had no real need to worry. I had never made any secret of my rampant republican views. Dealing with the Imperial family always caused me difficulty. The Chief Spy knew as well as I did what to expect. M Didius Falco was about to be rude, ungracious, and a fool to himself as usual.

Chapter XXXI

So there we were. Titus relaxed on a throne, with one ankle crossed on the opposite knee, crushing the braid-encrusted pleats of his purple overtunic. To the slaveboy it seemed natural to place my cushioned footstool near the only other person who was seated, so he carried it right up onto the plinth at the base of His Caesarship's throne. He helped me hitch myself up. Anacrites took a step forward, then suppressed the protest as he was forced to accept his Imperial master's courtesy to me. I refrained from smirking; Anacrites was far too dangerous. I perched on my footstool, occasionally rubbing my leg unconsciously, as if it was a habit when my poor cracked bones were distressing me...

Titus was thirty. Too happy to be called handsome and too approachable for his rank, though a grave sense of public duty had recently sobered him. Even those forced to endure existence in the provinces knew from the coinage that he had a less craggy version of his father's bourgeois face, and curly hair. While he was a boy that mop probably caused his mother to pass the same remarks as mine did, but had Flavia Domitilla still been alive she could have relaxed now: a circus of hairdressers kept her eldest trim, so he would not let the Empire down in front of foreign ambassadors.

Titus and I made a nice friendly group, up on his plinth. My letter was in his hand; he tossed the roll back at me. There was a glint in his eye. Titus was always so gracious I suspected a joke-yet the charm was genuine. 'This is a moving narrative!'

'Sorry, Caesar. I'm a spare-time poet; my style tends to lyrical excess.' Titus grinned. He was a patron of the arts. I was on safe ground.

It was the wrong moment to force the Chief Spy to watch us enjoying ourselves. Infected by my own wariness, Titus gave Anacrites the nod to approach and state his case.

Anacrites took the floor without bluster. I had seen him in action on other occasions so was prepared for the worst. He possessed the true bureaucrat's knack of sounding reasonable whatever lies he told.

In some ways I felt sorry for the unprincipled carbuncle. His was a classic case of career blight. He must have studied his craft under Nero, those crazy years of suspicion and terror, when prospects for intelligence agents had never looked more golden. Then as he reached his prime he found himself stuck with the new Emperor Vespasian, a man so irredeemably provincial that he did not really believe in palace spies. So instead of enjoying himself at the centre of some crawling network of undercover termites, Anacrites now had to devote every day to proving that his place on the payroll was justified.

No joke. Vespasian was tight with the salaries bill. One slip, one mistake in diplomacy, one door opening too suddenly to reveal him napping in his office when he had said he would be out on surveillance, and the Chief Spy would find himself selling catfish on some Tiber wharf. He knew it. I knew it. He realised I knew. Perhaps that explained some things.

I made no attempt to interrupt his speech. I wanted him to shoot all the dice from his cup. Out it poured, a subtle slime of misinterpreted facts, at the end of which he sounded like the honest professional whose superiors had lumbered him with a bungling outsider to work with. I emerged as a straightforward thief.

The facts were straightforward too: some ingots of lead from the Imperial mines had been stored in a warehouse. I knew they were there, forgotten by the Treasury. When I was sent to Campania I took the ingots with me, and sold the lead for waterpipes. I had never paid back the proceeds.

Titus listened with his hands linked behind his head. He himself was not a great speechmaker but he had served his time as a barrister before he came into higher tilings. Despite his impatient energy he knew how to listen. Only when he was sure Anacrites had finished complaining did he turn to me.

'The case against you was well put. The lead ingots belonged to the State; you took them without leave.'

'Anacrites is a good speaker; it was a good exercise in rhetoric. But Caesar, there's no case.' Titus shifted position. I had his full attention; he was leaning forwards now with both elbows on his knees. 'Caesar, I had a particular reason to respect those bars of lead; I probably hacked some of the ore from the seam myself,' I paused, to give those present time to absorb another reference to my mission in Britain, where I had been forced to disguise myself as a lead-mine slave. 'Harsh, Caesar-but necessary, for your father's sake. And when I used up the ingots, I was in disguise again. We were seeking a fugitive. Anacrites can confirm it was a frustrating task, one on which he himself had spent several fruitless weeks-' His jaw stiffened pleasingly. 'I was asked to try my own ingenuity. Unorthodox methods were, after all, why your father was augmenting his regular staff with me-'

'True,' said Titus to Anacrites pointedly.

'-acting as a black-market plumber helped me find the missing man. So the disguise worked, Caesar, as you know.'

In a silky voice Anacrites reminded Titus that the ingots I borrowed might have been needed as evidence in a conspiracy case.