“Why should she? Bloody Lollius has not had a fight with a lion.” Now Famia was dead, Lollius probably ranked as the most horrendous of my brothers-in-law. He was a Tiber boatman, a foul bubble of riverbank scum. His one redeeming feature was his knack of keeping out of the way. It saved me having to think up new ways to be rude to him.

“Unfortunately not. But you know bloody Lollius is bloody useless, and even when he gives her any money Galla cannot be called a deft budget manager. Their children don’t deserve to have been born to such terrible parents-but Ma drags the whole worthless crew through life as best she can. Look, Pa, Maia now has to find the rent, food, plus school fees for at least Marius, who wants a career in rhetoric-and she just found out that Famia never paid his funeral dues, so she even has to pay for a memorial to that scoundrel as well.”

Pa drew himself up, a broad, gray-haired figure with slightly bandy legs; forty years of fooling art purchasers helped him look convincing, even though I knew he was a fraud. “I am not unaware of your sister’s position.”

“We all know it, Pa-Maia most of all. She says she will have to work for that short-arsed tailor again,” I told him gloomily. “I always thought the leery wretch had his eye on her.”

“Time he retired. He doesn’t do much; he never did. He has all those girls who weave for him, and half the time they serve in the shop as well.” After a brief distraction while he felt jealous of the tailor’s alluring young loom girls, Pa became thoughtful. “Maia would be perfect at running a business.”

He was right. I felt annoyed that he had first seen it-and Maia, who loathed Pa even more than I did, would have to be led extremely gently towards any idea which came from him. Yet we now had the answer, and to my surprise Pa actually volunteered to persuade the old tailor that he wanted to be bought out. Best of all, Pa offered to provide the cash.

“You’ll have to make the fellow think it’s his own idea.”

“Don’t teach me how to do business, boy.” It was true that my father was extremely successful; I could not avoid knowing it. A brilliant talent for bluff had made him far richer than he deserved.

“Well, tomorrow is a public festival day, so you can shut up your shop-”

“I can’t believe I heard that blasphemy! I never close for footling festivals.”

“Well, do it this time and buzz off to strong-arm the tailor.”

“You coming with me?”

“Sorry; prior appointment.” I refrained from admitting I would have to maneuver fractious Sacred Geese. “He won’t let it go cheap, Pa.”

“Oh, I’ve got funds-since you’ve spurned me!” (Pa had once offered to find me the money to support my bid for middle-rank status; there was no way he would ever appreciate that it was a measure of character when I earned the cash myself.) “Leave this to me,” declared my incorrigible parent, throwing himself into being magnanimous as eagerly as he had once fled the family coop. “You just enjoy yourself playing at being a gooseboy!” The bastard had just been waiting to thrill himself with this insult.

“Don’t forget,” I retaliated. “Keep everything in your name for when some new chancer takes Maia’s fancy. You don’t want to wake up one day and find yourself financing Anacrites!”

Well, that brought him up short.

NEXT DAY WAS the Kalends of June. There were celebrations for Mars and the Tempestates (goddesses of weather). It was also the festival of Juno Moneta. The day the geese were carried out in state to see the watchdogs crucified.

I prefer not to dwell on details of this bloodthirsty fiasco. Suffice it to say that when I came to make my report to the Palace as Procurator of the Sacred Poultry it would recommend extremely strongly that:

To avoid cruelty to the animals and distress to very sensitive observers, the condemned watchdogs should be pacified with drugged meat before any attempt to nail them up.

To prevent the Sacred Geese escaping from their ceremonial litter while acting as an audience, they too should be pacified with a dose of something, then tied down with jesses (which could be hidden beneath the purple cushions on which the geese traditionally sat).

To clinch it, bars or a cage should be added to the litter.

On the day before the Kalends, it should be the responsibility of the gooseboy to ensure that the wings of all Sacred Geese who would be taking part in the ceremony were adequately clipped so that they definitely could not fly away.

Dogs from good homes (for instance, Nux) should be permitted to roam the Capitol in the control of authorized persons (say, me), without risk of being rounded up and held in custody under threat of being made part of the crucifixion ceremony.

Innocent dogs who were accidentally apprehended should be returned to the charge of their authorized persons without having to be made the subject of a two-hour argument.

The entire ritual of crucifying the “guilty” guard dogs should be allowed to fall into abeyance as soon as possible. (Suggestion: to pacify die-hards, the cessation of this very ancient ceremony could be excused in our modern state as a compliment to the Celtic tribes, now that Gaul was a part of the Empire and the barbarians were no longer likely to attempt to storm the Capitol except in the form of tourists.)

Every time the Procurator of Poultry attended the festival of Juno Moneta, he should be entitled to a serious drink allowance, at official expense, immediately afterwards.

NEXT DAY-FOUR before the Nones of June, droned my calendar of festivals-happened to have no religious ceremonies assigned to it, and was a day on which legal transactions could occur.

I had an urgent message from Pa, to say he had persuaded the tailor to sell up, but the decision might prove temporary (or the price might go up) unless we pinned the man down and got his signature on a contract that very day. Pausing only to hope that when I folded my own informing partnership I would not be bludgeoned into it by an entrepreneur like my father, I fell to and took myself to my sister’s house: Pa had decreed that convincing Maia she wanted to do what we had planned for her would be my task.

Her immediate reaction was suspicion and resistance. “Olympus, Marcus, what’s the hurry?”

“Your erstwhile employer may consult his lawyer.”

“Why-are you and Pa cheating him?”

“Of course not. We are honest lads. Everyone who deals with us says so. We just don’t want to give him leeway to turn around and cheat us.”

“Everyone who deals with the pair of you says ‘Never again!’ This is my life you weasels are organizing, Marcus.”

“Don’t dramatize. We are giving you a healthy livelihood.”

“Can I not have at least a day to think this over?”

“We, the strong, benevolent males who are heads of your household, have done your thinking for you, as we are supposed to do. Besides, Pa says the next opportunity for legal business is days away, and we dare not wait. His legal assistant has drawn up a nice scroll, and Pa wants to hear that you are happy for him to go ahead.”

“I don’t want anything to do with Pa.”

“Excellent. I knew you would come around.”

Pa was right (I looked it up on my calendar). Thanks to the fine Roman attitude that lawyers are sharks who should be given as little encouragement as possible, there are usually only four or five days a month in which they are allowed to bamboozle clients. (Other nations might consider adopting this rule.) (Lawyers like it too, the lazy bums.) June offered particularly caring protection for the nervous citizen-though this was a trifle inconvenient if you were in league to do some bamboozling yourself. If we missed this chance, our next contract-signing day would be well after the Ides. I sent Marius to tell Pa that Maia was delighted.