"What started the fight? The old business about Fulvia? But you say that was six years ago…"

Caelius shrugged. "Who knows? Clodius and Antony are both famous for long memories and short tempers."

"How did we ever get started on the subject of Marc Antony, anyway?" said Cicero.

"Fulvia must have been feeling nostalgic when Gordianus visited her this morning," said Caelius. "Did she discuss all her former lovers with you?"

"No," I said. "And neither did Clodia." The grin froze on Caelius's face. Cicero gave him an unsympathetic glance. I pulled myself upright on the couch. "An excellent meal, Marcus Cicero. Perfect for the middle of the day – not too light, not too heavy. I might say the same for the conversation. Now I think that my son and I must be on our way."

"Why did you bring up Marc Antony?" asked Eco on the short walk back to my house.

"Antony was the reason Fulvia wanted to see. me. He's offered to help prosecute Milo. She's not sure whether to trust him. She has a suspicion that he was involved somehow in Clodius's death. Or it may be her mother who suspects Antony, and Fulvia wants to prove him innocent."

"Did she tell you that she and Antony used to be lovers?"

"No. And just because Cicero and Caelius say so, that doesn't mean it's true."

"But she did tell you about the chase across the Field of Mars last year?" "Yes."

Eco nodded. After a moment he laughed. "That was amazing, the way you handled them." "Who?"

"Cicero and Caelius."

"Was it? I'm sure they thought it was they who were handling me. I probably told them more than I should have. And now, for a few scraps of information about Antony, they'll act as if I owe them the world."

"But the way you talk to them sometimes – practically insulting them to their faces!"

"Yes, well, it's a strange thing, but people like Cicero and Caelius like to be insulted." "Do they?"

"That's been my experience. I needle them, they needle me back. They know they have nothing to fear from me; nothing I might say can really hurt them. They enjoy my needling, the way one sometimes enjoys having a mosquito bite – the itch gives them something to scratch. Not like a bee sting; not like the bloody sores I've seen Cicero inflict on his enemies with a barbed word or two."

Davus let us in. From the look on his race I knew that something was up. Before Davus could speak, a voice rumbled behind him. "The master of the house, home at last!"

He was a big man, probably a gladiator or a soldier, despite the richly embroidered fabric of his grey tunic and dark green cape. His nose had been broken, maybe more than once, and each of his hands was the size of a baby's head. His own head was as bald as a baby's, and almost as ugly. He had the look of a man who could walk through a dangerous place without being bothered.

"A visitor," said Davus, unnecessarily.

"So I see. And who sent you… citizen?" I said, noting the iron ring on his finger. He was probably someone's freedman.

"The Great One," he said bluntly. His voice was like gravel in a sluice.

"You mean -"

"That's all I ever call him. It's how he likes to be addressed."

"I'm sure. And what does the Great One -"

"The honour of your presence, at your earliest convenience."

"Now?"

"Unless you can make it earlier." "Davus -" "Yes, Master?"

"Tell your mistress that I have yet another errand. This one will take me outside the city walls, I imagine." "Do you want me to go with you?"

I looked to the man I'd decided to call Baby Face, who smiled and said, "I brought a whole troop of bodyguards with me." "Where are they?"

"I told them to wait across the street, down the Ramp a ways. I figured there was no need to bother your neighbours with a lot of traffic."

''You're more discreet than some of my callers today." "Thank you."

"Eco, will you come with me?"

"Of course, Papa." Eco had never met the Great One either. I noticed that my stomach was suddenly churning. I couldn't blame Cicero's cook.

So I set out for the third time that day, thinking again of the old Etruscan proverb. But this was not a downpour. This was a deluge.

The law forbids any man with an army under his command to enter the city walls. Technically, Pompey was such a commander, though his army was off in Spain; he had seen fit to delegate its operation to lieutenants while he stayed close to Rome to keep watch on the electoral crisis. He resided at his villa on the Pincian Hill not far outside the walls. As Pompey was unable to come to Rome, Rome went to Pompey, as the mob had done when they ran to his villa to offer him the consular axes, or as Milo had done when unsuccessfully seeking an audience, or as Eco and I found ourselves doing that afternoon.

Baby Face and his troop of gladiators closed ranks around us like an armoured tortoise for the walk down the Ramp, across the Forum and through the Fontinalis Gate. We crossed the traditional boundary of the city as we stepped through the gate, but the Flaminian Way was just as crowded with buildings outside the wall as within. Gradually the buildings became smaller and fewer until we came to an open area. The disused public voting stalls were off to our left. Up ahead to the right was a high, guarded gate that opened at our approach.

The paved path led up through terraced gardens, sometimes sloping, sometimes in steps, switching right and left as it ascended. The grounds on either side were mantled with winter greys and browns, the dreariness of the naked trees and bushes relieved here and there by statues in marble or bronze. A regal swan that might have been Jupiter courting Leda graced a small circular pool. We passed a low wall where a slave boy sat pulling a thorn from his foot, painted in such lifelike colours I might have mistaken him for flesh and blood except that he was naked under the cold sun. I saw no gods or goddesses in the garden, until we came upon the requisite Priapus, guardian and motivator of growing things, occupying a stone alcove set into a high hedge, grinning lasciviously and displaying an erection almost as large as the rest of him. The crown of his marble phallus had been rubbed shiny-smooth by passing hands.

We came at last to the villa, where more gladiators stood guard before a pair of tall wooden doors with bronze fittings. Baby Face told us to wait while he went inside.

Eco tugged at my sleeve. When I turned there was.no need to ask what he wanted to show me. The view was spectacular. Tangled branches and treetops hid the path we had just ascended, as well as the Flaminian Way and the voting stalls immediately below us, but above and beyond the treetops the whole Field of Mars lay open before us. The ancient marching grounds and equestrian training courses had all but vanished in the course of my lifetime, filled up by cheap tenements and jumbled warehouses. Dominating everything else was the great complex built by Pompey in his consulship two years back, a sprawling mass of meeting halls, galleries, fountains, gardens and the city's first permanent theatre. Farther on, like a great arm curving around the Field of Mars, was the Tiber, its course marked by a low, thick blanket of river mist that allowed only glimpses of the gardens and villas on its other bank. Clodia's garden villa, where the stylish young men of Rome used to swim nude for her amusement, was somewhere on that distant bank. The whole scene was like a painting done in muted winter hues of rust-red and grey-green, bone white and iron blue.

Eco tugged at my elbow again and nodded towards the south. The mass of the villa blocked the view of most of the city proper except for a narrow glimpse of the temples on the Capitoline Hill and a jumbled cityscape beyond. Far away, perhaps on the Aventine Hill, a plume of smoke rose like a vast marble pillar into the still air. Whatever chaos reigned at the base of that pillar, it was too far away for us to see or hear. Did a man begin to feel remote and uncaring, looking down on Rome from such a high place? Or did he become even more acutely aware of buildings burning out of control and chaos in the streets, surveying Rome from such a godlike vantage point?