Pompey sat beside a little table stacked high with scrolls. At my approach, he put aside the document he was reading. "Finder! I was surprised when the doorkeeper announced you. I didn't expect to see you again."

"And I didn't expect to be able to see you so soon."

"You happen to have come at the one hour of the day when I do not already have some prior obligation. Do we have unfinished business?"

"I came to ask a favour, Great One."

"Good. I always like it when I'm asked for favours, whether I grant them or not. It gives me a chance to live up to my name. What is it you want, Finder?"

"I understand that a part of the penalty against Milo will be the confiscation of his estate."

"Not quite his entire estate; I think we may allow him to take along a few personal slaves and such to begin his new life in Massilia. First, everything's to be liquidated to pay off his creditors, which number into legions. After that, we shall see how much is left for the treasury. The estate shall be picked quite clean before the scavenging is finished."

"I should like to be listed among his creditors."

"Oh? I have a hard time imagining that you lent him money, Finder. Or did you render services that were never paid for?"

"Neither of those things. I have a grievance against Milo. He was the man responsible for abducting me and my son and holding us prisoner for over a month. Since I last spoke to you, I acquired proof of this."

"I see. Practically speaking, you have no legal recourse against him. The man's been convicted and will soon be gone for good. He wouldn't be here to stand trial if you did bring charges against him."

"I realize that, which is why I came to you, Great One."

"I see. What is it you want?"

"I wish to be recognized by the state as one of Milo's creditors. I want a settlement from his estate."

"And what is the price for what you and your son suffered at his hands?"

"That can hardly be estimated. But there is an amount I'll settle for." I named it.

"A rather precise sum," said Pompey. "How did you come by it?"

"During the worst of the Clodian riots, my house was ransacked. A statue of Minerva in my garden was overturned and damaged. That's the cost to repair it."

"I see. Is that fair, asking Milo to pay for damage that was done by his enemies?"

"Not fair in a legal sense, true. But perhaps I could paraphrase something you once said, Great One."

"What's that?"

"'Stop quoting laws to us. We carry past-due-bills.' " Pompey found this richly amusing. "I like you, Finder. In coming years, I should like to think that you will be on my side." "I don't understand, Great One."

"Oh, I think you do. Very well, then, how shall we do this?" He called for a secretary, who composed a memorandum in duplicate. One copy was pressed flat and added to an already high stack in a cabinet against the wall. Pompey signed the other. His secretary rolled it tightly and applied a daub of red wax into which Pompey pressed his ring. "There, have that delivered to Milo's house. Good luck collecting it. There are quite a few rather important people ahead of you. On the other hand, yours is likely to be the smallest bill. Perhaps the estate will pay it off first, simply to get rid of it."

"Thank you, Great One."

"Certainly." He smiled, made a gesture of dismissal and strolled across the room. A moment later he turned back, surprised to see that I was still there. "What now, Finder?"

"I feel a certain conflict, Great One, between an oath I took, and a prior obligation to yourself."

"Yes?"

"Now that the trial of Milo is done, do you have any further interest in discovering what happened on the Appian Way?" "I'm not sure what you mean."

"If I were to tell you that Milo's men gravely, perhaps fatally, wounded Clodius, but that someone else-someone entirely removed from their mutual sphere of enmity – actually finished him off…"

"Are you saying that the final blow was delivered by a third party?"

"I have taken an oath not to speak of the details." "I see." Pompey considered this. "Then I suggest that you keep your mouth shut."

"Should I, Great One?"

"Yes. By all means, don't break an oath on my account. Clodius

is dead and burned to ashes. Milo is ruined and about to leave Rome for good. So much for those two. My next task shall be seeing to the punishment of the parties responsible for burning the Senate House:

The state must deal evenly with all disturbers of the peace, you see,

or there can be no law and order. Could this revelation of yours

have any effect on that?"

"I think not, Great One."

"Then it's irrelevant and of no interest to me. The murder of Clodius is old business. Do you understand, Finder?" There was a note almost of menace in his voice.

"Yes, Great One, I think I do."

The inside of Milo's house seemed oddly familiar, though I had never been there before. The mosaics on the floor, the pale ochre colour of the walls, as well as various objects in the foyer and what I could glimpse of the nearby rooms reminded me at once of Cicero's house. Having no sense for such things himself) Milo had slavishly emulated his great friend's impeccable taste.

The place also reminded me, in an odd way, of Clodius's great house on the Palatine, for it was clearly in a state of chaos. But where I had seen Clodius's house in the process of being decorated and refurbished, Milo's house was the reverse, in the process of being undecorated and dismantled. Paintings had been removed from the walls and stacked upright. Precious objects were being boxed up. Curtains had been removed from doorways and neatly folded on little tables.

Like Clodius's mansion on the night of his murder, there was an air of distraction and abandonment in Milo's house. Occasionally a slave would pass by on some errand, looking unhappy and hardly glancing at me. I began to think I had been forgotten. Finally, the slave who had admitted me returned and gestured for me to follow him deeper into the house.

Was I a fool, leaving Davus outside and going to face Milo alone? I braced myself for the confrontation. I was not sure how I would feel when I saw him. He had done me a great wrong, and I had every reason to despise him, and yet, oddly, the experience of my incarceration made me feel a kind of sympathy for him. It is a terrible thing, for a man to lose all his dreams, to have everything taken away from him except the bare means of sustenance. Milo had risen from obscurity to a position of great power. The consulship itself had been within his grasp – then his world had been shattered in a moment and his destiny had gone spiralling out ofhis control. He had played a dangerous game, and in the end had lost eveiything. Whether he deserved his fate or not, the totality ofhis ruin moved me. Nevertheless, I intended to tell him what I thought ofhis treatment of me, and to demand restitution.

The slave showed me to a room with a decidedly feminine atmosphere. The walls were painted with scenes of peacocks in full fan strutting across wildly blooming gardens. A low dresser was covered with little cosmetics boxes, jewellery cases, brushes and burnished hand mirrors all made of fine woods and metals inlaid with precious stones. Across the room, a riot of colourful gowns and stolas spilled from an open wardrobe. Dominating the room was a large sleeping couch with a diaphanous red canopy. The air was scented with jasmine and musk.

Sounds of splashing and laughter came from a doorway at the far side of the room, which evidently led to a private bath. I could hear both male and female voices. Where had the doorkeeper taken me, and why had he gone off without announcing me? I cleared my throat as loudly as I could.

The laughter and splashing stopped. There was dead silence. I cleared my throat again and called out, "Milo?" The response was silence, then a burst of laughter and splashing louder than before.