"No, Master."

"You know nothing about riding?"

"Nothing, Master." Davus peered uncertainly at the ground on either side, like a man atop a rickety table.

"Then today you shall learn how to ride," I said. And tomorrow you will hardly be able to stand upright, I thought. What good would a bodyguard be, with saddle sores and wooden limbs?

The hone snorted. Davus gave a start and gripped the reins rightly. The stableman was greatly amused. "Don't worry! I tell you, these hones are the best. Trained to do all the thinking. Battle hones -keep their wits no matter what. Smarter than your average slave, that's for sure. The Great One even lets women ride them!"

Davus took this as a challenge. He wrinkled his brow, forced the queasy look from his face and sat upright.

We ambled away from the stables, letting the mounts get a feel for us. Eco was fretful, but not about Davus. "Do you think it was a good idea, bringing strangers into the house?"

"They're Pompey's men. Don't you think we can trust them?"

"I suppose so…"

"It was the only way. Well, perhaps not the only way…" In feet, for the time that Eco and I would be away, Pompey had offered to allow Bethesda, Menenia and Diana and whatever attendants they needed to take up residence in his old family house inside the city wall, in the Carinae district, on the western slope of the Esquiline. It made sense; they would certainly have been safe there, and the place was situated midway between Eco's house and mine. But I didn't want to slip quite so far, quite so quickly into Pompey's camp. Putting my family completely in his care would mean putting them completely in his power, and in a way that outsiders would surely notice. On the other hand, it was out of the question for me to leave Rome even for a few days without doing something to safeguard the family households, especially if Eco went with me, which he insisted on doing. The solution was to borrow a troop of bodyguards from Pompey as part of my fee, sufficient to protect both the house on the Esquiline and the house on the Palatine in our absence. Pompey was agreeable. His men had arrived at my house early that morning before Eco and I departed.

"I didn't like the looks of some of those fellows," brooded Eco.

"I think that's the point. They're frightening.''

"But can we trust them?"

"Pompey says so. I doubt that there's a man on earth better at keeping discipline in his own ranks than Pompey." "Bethesda wasn't pleased."

"Bethesda wasn't pleased about any of this. Her household is in chaos, her husband is traipsing off into danger again, and another man's gladiators are tracking mud into her house. But I suspect she was secretly glad to have the protection. Those men who ransacked the house and killed Belbo – that shook her more than she'll admit. And mark my words, by the time we get back, she'll have every one of Pompey's brutes trained to take off his shoes before he steps on the carpets and to ask permission before he goes to the privy."

Eco laughed. "Perhaps Pompey will take her on as a drill sergeant!" We rode on a bit. "Menenia was reasonable enough about the whole thing," he noted. The wistfulness in his voice made me suspect they had come to more than a mental understanding during the night.

"Menenia is the soul of reason," I said.

"And Diana-"

"Don't say it. I saw the way she was looking at some of those fellows. I'd rather not think about it."

Davus shifted uneasily and cleared his throat, but Eco pressed on.' "She's seventeen, Papa. She should get married soon."

"Perhaps, but how? A decent marriage means negotiations between the families, planning, announcements to friends – all the things we went through when you married Menenia. Can you imagine managing all that, with things as they are now?"

"The riots will pass, Papa. Things will get back to normal soon enough."

"Will they?"

"Life goes on, Papa. Things are bound to get better."

"Are they? This time I'm not so sure…"

There was not a person to be seen along the road, at least not any living person. Lining the way, as always along the major thoroughfares outside any city, were a succession of tombs and sepulchres, large and small. Burial within city walls is illegal, so the neighbourhoods of the dead begin just outside the walls. Crooked cenotaphs with inscriptions worn smooth by time stood alongside newly sculpted family portraits in marble and limestone. Among the grandest tombs were those of the Scipios, the family whose glory had dominated Rome in the age before my father's birth. They conquered Carthage and began the work of empire; now they were dust.

Equally grand were the tombs of the Claudii. The Appian Way was their road, or so they considered it, since it had been built by their ancestor. The dead Claudii in their ornate stone tombs were clustered thickly along the way, like jostling spectators at a parade. The Claudii continued to make their mark on Rome; Publius Clodius, affecting the plebeian variant of the name, had been the latest to hold sway. As Pompey had noted, his murder on the road of his ancestors had been a twist of fate of the sort so beloved by melodramatic playwrights and sentimental rhetoricians. The irony might some day provide a theme for schoolboy compositions: Appius Claudius Caecus built the Appian Way. Two hundred and sixty years later his descendant Publius Clodius was murdered there. Compare and contrast the achievements of these two men.

Beyond the tombs were great drifts and piles of rubbish and debris, bits of broken pottery and worn-out shoes, shards of glass and bits of metal and plaster. A city as vast as Rome produces a great deal of trash, and it all has to go somewhere. Better to cart it outside the walk and dump it in the city of the dead than to let it pile up among the living.

At the farthest edge of the city, where the tombs and trash heaps grew fewer and farther between and the countryside began in earnest, we passed the Monument of Basilius. I've never known who Basilius was or why his tomb, built like a miniature Greek temple atop a little hill, should be as grand as those of the Claudii or Scipios. The inscriptions are so old they can no longer be read. But the monument's prominence and location make it a landmark of sorts. The Monument of Basilius marks the farthest reach of the city's vices, or the farthest incursion of the countryside's menace, depending on your point of view. Bad types of all sorts congregate there. The vicinity is notorious for robberies and rapes. Thus the. commonplace warning to a friend setting out on the Appian Way: "Be careful passing the Monument of Basilius!" That morning, those had been Bethesda's next to last words to me. At the moment, the only vagrants to be seen were a few wretched figures huddled under coarse blankets against the monument's base, surrounded by empty wine vessels. They were probably as harmless and miserable as they looked; on the other hand, bandits are notorious for feigning such disguises.

I spurred my mount to a trot, eager to put the place behind us. But as we hurried on, all my inner senses told me I was getting closer to danger, not farther away. When I had insisted that Pompey supply guards for my family in my absence, he had offered to send more guards along with Eco and me. I had refused. His men were likely to be recognized. What was the point of sending me to find out what Pompey's men could not, if people could tell at a glance that I came from Pompey? Besides, I had reasoned, three healthy, armed men on horseback, offering offence to no one, should have little to worry about.

Bethesda's very last words to me that morning – with what glimmered suspiciously like a tear in her eye – had been "You are a fool" I hoped she was wrong.

Past the Monument of Basilius, the Appian Way stretches like a long, straight ribbon towards Mount Alba on the horizon. The land on either side is as flat as a table, dotted here and there with distant trees and houses. A man can see for miles. There was no one but us travelling on the road that morning, no slaves at work in the fellow fields. Except for a few plumes of smoke from hearth fires in scattered houses, there were no signs of life at all. This is one of the safest stretches on the whole Appian Way, since the topography affords no places for ambush. The fresh air, the smell of earth, the vast emptiness, the sun rising over the long ridge of hills to the west, all these things made me feel exhilarated, glad to be leaving the city and its madness behind me for a while. But one of us did not look happy at all.