I stepped back. 'What else can we tell about him? You say he looks rather heavy about the middle, Meto, but to me he also looks rather gaunt in the chest and limbs and buttocks, like a heavy man who has suddenly lost weight. He looks unwell'

'Papa — the man is dead!' Meto rolled his eyes.

I sighed and found myself missing my elder son, who would already have grasped all that I had observed and been far ahead of me. But then, Eco had begun his life as a child of the streets and had learned to use his wits of necessity long before I adopted him. Meto had been born a slave in a rich man's villa and had always been rewarded more for cleverness than cunning. I only hoped he would grow into a decent farmer, for a Finder he would never be.

Still, I persevered. 'What can we tell of his place in the world, Meto? Slave or free?'

Meto studied the body from head to foot. 'He's not wearing an iron ring,' he offered.

'Indeed he is not. But that really tells us nothing. A citizen's iron ring is easily removed, and the opposite — to slip such a ring onto a slave's finger — would have been just as easy. Nemo might be a patrician for all we know, whose gold ring has been pilfered. However, sometimes an iron ring does leave a stain or a band of paler flesh on its wearer's finger. I see none, do you?'

Meto shook his head.

'Still, inconclusive. Certainly he wasn't the field slave of some cruel master — there are no shackle marks on his wrists or ankles, no scars on his back from being whipped, no brand marks on his flesh. All in all he looks well taken care of) and not used to hard labour. See, there are no heavy calluses on his hands or feet, and his fingernails and toenails are well groomed. Nor did he spend much time outside — his skin is not much darkened by the sun. If only we had his head, we could tell much more…'

There was a sudden rustling behind us. I gave a start, but it was only Diana running towards us through the straw. A moment later Bethesda appeared in the doorway. Bright sunlight silhouetted the stray tendrils of her coiffed hair and the long, loose stola belted beneath her breasts and again at her waist. She paused in the doorway and then walked resolutely forwards like a woman expecting the worst. When she saw the body her nostrils dilated, her eyes grew wide, and she pressed her lips together until all the colour was gone from them She clutched at her stola and stamped her foot. Bethesda's manner is often imperious or brusque, but I have seldom seen her truly angry. It was a sight to make even the staunchest Roman turn to jelly.

‘You see!' she cried. 'Even here! You said that life would be different in the country. No more mobs, no more murders, no more lying awake at night wondering if my children were safe! Ha! All lies!' She spat upon the corpse, then turned and swept out of the stable, hitching up her stola to protect it from the dung.

Meto staggered back, agog. Diana began to cry. In the sunlit doorway, motes of dust swirled in Bethesda's wake. I then turned my gaze to the corpse, clenched my fists, and muttered a curse against the gods. Meto must have overheard, for when I looked up, he had turned as pale as the headless body at my feet.

Later, I would tell myself that I should have kept the discovery of the body from Bethesda. Life would have been simpler that way. But that was never an option, of course; Diana would have told her sooner or later, and why not? After such a shock the child needed to be reassured and comforted by her mother. Diana could not be expected to keep such a momentous and terrible discovery to herself.

It did seem best, if at all possible, to keep the slaves from knowing. Such an incident would inflame their superstitious natures and undermine my own authority, making them unwieldy at best and at worst unreliable or even dangerous. Cato would probably have got rid of the whole lot after such a shock to the household, selling those he could and setting any others free to starve along the roadside. For me, such drastic measures seemed both impractical and cruel, and besides, the slaves might know things I did not. If any of them had betrayed me, I needed to discover why, and for whom If they had not betrayed me, they still might have seen more than they knew. I might ultimately need their knowledge and their help. Something terrible had been unleashed, and I could see neither where it came from nor where it might lead.

I had to confide in someone, and I chose Aratus. He was, after all, my steward. I swallowed my mistrust, telling myself that I had probably been unfair to him all along. Besides, if he was somehow complicit in the appearance of Nemo, perhaps I could read it in his eyes. When Meto brought Aratus to the stable, the shock on Aratus's race looked quite genuine.

Aratus knew nothing, had seen nothing; so he assured me. He would tell none of the other slaves; so he vowed. I told him to take a few slaves from their work on the north wall and to dig a hole for the body amid the brambles in the secluded southwest corner of the farm, where the stream cut through the ridge.

'But what reason shall I give them?' he asked.

"Think up a reason!' I told him 'Or give them no reason at all. You're the foreman, aren't you? I leave it to you to handle the slaves. But not one of them is to know of this, do you understand? And if any of them seems to have any knowledge of it, report to me at once!'

That afternoon, after the trench was ready, I instructed Aratus to set the slaves to some task at the far corner of the farm. Meto, Aratus, and I wrapped the corpse in a sheet and tied it to a cart, then pushed the cart over the rocky soil to the place where the hole had been dug. It did not take us long to cover the body with the moist soil, and then to scatter rocks and uprooted brambles over the torn earth. It would have been unseemly to consign even a naked, anonymous, and headless corpse to the earth without some monument, and it would have been unwise to bury any man without properly propitiating his shade, lest we invite his lemur to haunt the farm forever. So I made sure that black beans were buried with the corpse, and as head of the household I threw a handful of the same beans over my shoulder onto the grave when we were done.

Many days later, I returned to the place and drove a slender stele made of marble into the gravesite, which was almost hidden by thorns. On the stele, reading downward, were inscribed these letters:

N E M O

The artisan in the village had complained that it was an odd request, engraving a stele for Nobody, but he had accepted my silver readily enough.

The feverish spell of lovemaking between Bethesda and myself was definitely over, as I discovered that night. She turned her shoulder to me when I came to bed, and when I tried to talk to her about the body in the stable, she pulled a pillow over her head.

‘I complained that the circumstance was not of my devising; that I knew no more about the body and how it came to be there than she did; that I would do all I could to protect her and the children. She made no answer. Eventually I heard her snoring. Insulted and angry, I left the room.

I paced for a long time in the formal courtyard, circling the pond over and over. I paced for so long that I was able to watch the moon shadow of the roof slide slowly across the paving stones. Half the world was black shadow and the other half a soft, hazy silver, and I strode back and forth between the two.

At last I left the courtyard. I looked in on Meto and Diana in their little rooms and found each of them sleeping soundly and apparently without dreams.

I followed the short hallway to my library. I lit a lamp and hung it above my writing table. I spread a piece of parchment before me and pulled the inkstand nearer. I dipped a reed into the ink and began to write. Aratus did most of my letter writing; my hand was clumsy and I made a number of spots on the parchment before I got the reed to flow properly. I wrote: