This sibyl could also be too shrewd for her own good: 'Is it his wealth you resent?'

'He can be as rich as he likes.'

'Ah! Is he still with the redhead?'

'I believe so.'

'Do they have children?'

'I believe not.'

'And he's still there twenty years later-so he does have some staying power!' Without intending to let her see a reaction, I ground my teeth. Helena queried thoughtfully, 'Do you think you inherited that?'

'No. I owe nothing to him. I'll be loyal to you of my own accord, princess.'

'Really?' Her light inflection belied the sharp whip in the insult. 'You know where he is, Marcus; you recommended him to my own father. Sometimes you even work with him yourself.'

'He's the best auctioneer in Rome. One of my professional specialities is recovering stolen art. I deal with him when I have to-but there are limits, lass.'

'Whereas,' she started slowly. Helena could use a word like 'whereas' not merely to shade her argument, but to add hints of moral stricture too. Her conjunctions were as piquant as anchovy. 'Whereas your brother seems to have worked with Geminus on a much more frequent footing: They were close, weren't they? Festus never felt the anger that obsessed you after your father left?'

'Festus never shared my anger,' I agreed bleakly.

Helena smiled slightly. She had always thought I was a broody beggar. She was right, too. 'The two of them had a long and regular partnership on a straightforward father-and-son basis?'

'It seems like it.' Festus had had no pride. Maybe I had too much-but that was the way I liked it.

'Don't you know, Marcus?'

'I am forced to that conclusion. Festus never mentioned it.' Sparing my feelings, I suppose. Mother's too. 'There was a hiatus in relations when my father was living out of Rome, but Festus must have resumed contact pretty soon afterwards.' Sometimes I wondered if they had even stayed in touch throughout the time when Father was hiding up in Capua. 'Certainly by the time Festus died they shared a lock-up in the antiques quarter, over at the Saepta Julia.' Where my mother could not see them. 'And then they were as close as two termites.'

'So your father will know about the statues and the ship that sank?'

'He should. If it was one of their joint ventures.' She had dragged the words out of me like crusted amber oozing from an old pine tree. Before Helena could capitalise on the achievement, I said sternly, 'I left him until last deliberately. I am going to see Geminus tomorrow.'

'I think you're afraid to face him.'

'Not true-but you have to understand, my father can be a very tricky customer. I wanted to assemble as many facts as possible before I tried talking to him.' She was closer to the truth than I admitted. I had never discussed family affairs with Father, and I hated the thought of starting now. 'Helena, just leave me to get on with it!'

Very manly. Asking for trouble, in fact. That glimmer in her eyes was quite dangerous now.

'All right.' I hate reasonable women. 'Don't scowl,' she complained. 'Anybody would suppose I interfered.'

'May I be eaten alive by ravens if I thought it: Is that the end of the marathon grilling?'

'No.'

I thought not. We still had Marina to upset our evening. The grilling had hardly started yet.

I made one last attempt to restore peace. 'I'm in serious trouble, sweetheart. I may be under arrest soon. Don't let's spoil our evening with any more home truths.'

Helena Justina listened almost demurely, her hands lightly folded in her lap. Anyone who had never met her might suppose she was a woman of quality interviewing a cushion-stuffer who was seeking outwork. I knew her better. She looked sad, which meant she was angry- more angry than if she had merely looked annoyed.

Soon she would be sad too.

'Marcus, when people are so eager to tell me that you seduced your brother's girlfriend, I would like to assure them I have already heard the full story from you.'

'Thank you,' I said, pretending to assume it was a compliment. The full story posed some problems. Only Festus knew that. 'To start with, Helena, if I did seduce my brother's girlfriend, Marina did not object to it-and as for Festus, it was probably his plan.'

'Maybe she seduced you?' suggested Helena, almost hopefully.

I smiled. 'No, that's your privilege.'

Then I told her about that long and dreadful night in Rome.

My brother Festus was thirty-five years old when he died. Frankly, we had not been prepared to lose him to a hero's death. An accident during a prank seemed more his style.

Being older, he had always seemed to me to belong to another generation, though by that time the gap between us was closing. People used to say how alike we looked. That was only because we had the same rampant curls and silly grins. He was shorter and more thickset. More athletic and with a sweeter temperament. More gifted in business, luckier with women, smarter, sharper, more easily accepted as a treasure by the family. It was always pretty clear to me that both my parents and most of my sisters made Festus their favourite. (However, I had my share of being spoiled; my childhood place was as the family baby since Maia, who really owned that position, would not stand for the fuss.)

Like a good Roman citizen who saw his chance to eat, drink and fart at the Empire's expense while using its unrivalled facilities for world travel, Festus enlisted in the legions as soon as he looked old enough.

'So he must have been in touch with your father,' Helena commented. 'He would need the signed release from his family.'

'True. Just one aspect of public life where having a missing father causes painful embarrassment.'

'You were in the army later. What did you do about that?'

'My Great-Uncle Scaro stood in as my guardian.'

'You liked him?'

'Yes.' Uncle Scaro, a friendly old scallywag, had always given me the place in the world that my father had taken away.

Entrepreneurs do well in the army. After all, regulations exist to exploit. Whereas I had had to serve five years in the bitter Northern provinces, Festus had easily wangled himself supremely cosy billetings: a brief spell in Spain, Egypt with the Fifteenth Apollinaris, then posted East with them once the civil war broke out in Judaea. This last could have proved a miscalculation, but since the whole Empire was about to erupt then, Festus would have been fighting wherever he was. With expert precision he had placed himself under the command of the future emperor, Vespasian. His legion was led by Vespasian's own son, doubly convenient as my brother had somehow made it to centurion, so was visible to Titus Caesar daily at his war council.

In the year that the Jewish Rebellion began, when Nero sent Vespasian to deal with it and the Fifteenth Legion were posted from Alexandria to help, Festus had come home on sick leave. He had organised one of the wounds in which he specialised: it looked vicious enough to gain a pass for convalescence in Italy, though once he set foot at Ostia he seemed able to do pretty well whatever he wanted, especially if it involved girls. Other people's girls, mostly. Festus believed it was non-combatants' patriotic duty to lend home-leave centurions their women. Women went along with this.

The army was less free and easy. With the legions being so stretched out in the desert, they needed every man. After six weeks in Rome, Festus was annoyed to receive an urgent recall to Judaea.

'Festus struck us as one of life's eternal survivors. None of us imagined he was going back to be killed.'

'Festus presumably imagined it least of all,' Helena said. 'Is this where I start feeling annoyed?'