"No, Fulvia, it's not protectors I'm looking for. I only want two small boys who reside at your Alban villa. Brothers; their names are Mopsus and Androcles."

"What, the stableboys?"

Sempronia smirked. "Is that how your tastes run, Finder? Clodia must be telling the truth when she says that you've never tried to touch her, despite all her rubbing up against you."

I bit my tongue. I sighed and shrugged. "I can only say that I intend to put the boys to better use than you have, Fulvia. Did you realize that they saved your son's life when Milo and his men stormed the villa?"

"What, because they happened to be in that secret passageway with him and managed to keep from blubbering?"

"Is that how your son explained it? I think neither of you give the boys enough credit."

"They're only stableboys, Gordianus."

"Perhaps, but I'll wager that they grow up twice as clever and resourceful as anyone else in your household."

Fulvia raised an eyebrow. "If you want the two slaves as part of your payment, Gordianus, you may have them."

"Good. Shall I make my report?"

"Yes."

"Marc Antony had nothing whatever to do with your husband's death."

"As simple as that?" "You have my word."

"Your word?" said Sempronia icily. Fulvia began to pace before the open windows.

"What else can I offer you? Certainty is a strange thing. Aristotle showed that no man can prove that a particular thing did not happen.

I carried your question with me everywhere on the Appian Way, Fulvia, and into the pit where I resided for forty days, and even to Antony himself in Ravenna. I travelled back to Rome beside him, making my own judgment. Antony is completely innocent of spilling your husband's blood, despite his feelings for you."

Sempronia looked disgusted. "The scoundrel seduced you, then, as well!"

Fulvia glared at her. "Leave the room, Mother."

Sempronia made a great show of gathering up her blanket and straightening her weary limbs. She did not deign to look at me as she left.

For the first time, I found myself alone with Fulvia. I sensed a difference in her at once. When she stopped her pacing and turned towards me, her face seemed to belong to a different woman, younger and more vulnerable. "You're sure of this, Finder?"

"Antony is innocent, of this crime at least."

She smiled, but there were also tears in her eyes. What emotions raged inside her, always held in check to keep others from seeing? "There's hope, then. I may have a future, after all."

"With Antony? But he's already married, to his cousin. Does he intend to divorce Antonia?"

"No, that's impossible. A divorce now would destroy him. He's suggested that I consider marrying Curio instead."

"His boyhood friend?"

"His boyhood lover. You can say the word. I think of the two of them as fabled Greek warriors, like Achilles and Patroclus."

"But would you settle for being Briseis?"

She looked at me blankly. The allusion escaped her, and so failed to insult her. She was not the literary type.

"Are you thinking of marriage again so soon?" I said.

"Curio and I shall wait until an appropriate time."

"But such a marriage -"

"Why not? The two of us love Antony and always have. And Antony loves the two of us, more than anything else. Certainly more than he loves Antonia."

"But Clodius -"

"Clodius is dead," she said grimly, "and I intend to see him revenged. But Antony is alive. And Curio is alive, and unmarried. I have to think of the days to come. Who knows what the future will bring?" Her smile was gone. So were her tears. "Do you want your payment now?"

"Yes, thank you."

"I'll have the silver brought up and counted. And the two stableboys?"

"I'll collect them at my leisure."

I left Fulvia's house in high spirits. It was the ebullience of being free again after having been captive, of being back in the city where I was known and others had need of me. The heft and jingle of new silver in my purse also helped, as did the satisfaction of having acted on pure impulse when I requested the two boys from Fulvia. I felt quite content with myself and with my place in the world at that moment.

My mood changed abruptly when I saw that Clodia's litter was gone.

Her haughty, handsome young slave remained, along with a sufficient bodyguard to see me safely home. "I hope you won't mind walking," he said, practically sneering.

"But where is Clodia?"

"She remembered more pressing business."

"But I had things to tell her. Things she wanted very much to hear."

"I suppose she decided they weren't so important after all." The slave was absurdly patronizing. "Shall we be going? You can manage the walk, can't you? Or shall I send someone to hire a litter?" Now he was being deliberately insulting.

I considered giving him a friendly lecture. He was young and beautiful now, and he had his mistress's favour. But for how long? Had he seen what became of the long line of those who had pleased his mistress before him?

But what was the point? The slave was simply deluded. What he took to be my humiliation, Clodia's abrupt departure, was precisely the opposite. I had wounded her after all, so badly that she fled. I, Gordianus, had hurt Clodia. It was a triumph, I told myself; and answered myself, yes, of the sort that Pyrrhus was famous for. The light inside the litter, the warmth of her body, that elusive, unforgettable scent – something told me I would never experience these things again.

Oyer the next few days, as had been the case all through the period of our absence from Rome, there were continual contios in the Forum at which the radical tribunes railed against Milo. I myself stayed safely bolted behind the doors of my own house, but Eco, who made a point of attending these contios, assured me that they were peaceable affairs, kept that way by the presence of Pompey's troops.

"I don't know which would dismay me more," I told him, "seeing a contio erupt into a riot, or seeing Roman citizens being cowed by Roman soldiers."

"Papa, something had to be done about the violence."

"Then we might as well have a king. That's what it feels like now, seeing soldiers in the streets – it's like being in Alexandria, where you see King Ptolemy's men everywhere you go."

"Well, let's hope Pompey's soldiers do a better job of keeping the peace," said Eco. "Really, Papa, you sound almost nostalgic for the good old days of blood in the streets."

"I'm not sentimental about the past, Eco, only fearful for the future."

"Meanwhile, Papa, the rest of us are living in the present. Nobody else objects to seeing a few soldiers in the Forum." "Not yet."

When I told Bethesda about my acquisition of Mopsus and Androcles, she took the news that there would soon be two more mouths to feed – children, no less, and boy-children, at that! – with more equanimity than I expected. Did I seem so frail that she felt obliged to indulge me, no matter what madness I came up with? Had the spirit of Minerva entered her when the statue fell and broke, making her permanently serene?

Her own explanation was simpler. She had always enjoyed Eco and Meto when they were boys, she said. If the Fates had led two more boys to my household, then she would do her best to welcome them. Managing to feed the household had always been a challenge – especially at present, since Davus seemed to eat even more than Belbo had – but she would manage.

Diana's reaction was even more surprising. She had hated it when Eco and Menenia's twins supplanted her as the baby of the family, but she had matured a great deal since then, and I had no intention of making her accept Mopsus and Androcles as little brothers; they would simply be household servants. Still, I anticipated that Diana might be diffident or even averse to the idea. I had no idea that it would cause her to break into tears and run from the room.