"Just the two," I said and smiled. Adding for fun, "Well until the rest arrive."

pomponius spotted me at once. It cannot have been easy. The site meeting was the largest collection of men with tool-holsters and one-sleeved tunics that I had attended. Maybe this explained the problem. The palace project was too big. No one man could keep track of the personnel, the programme and the costs. But Pomponius thought he was in charge the way men who are losing their grip on a situation usually do.

I took against him immediately. The thick hair pomade gave him away; his vanity and studied vagueness clinched it. He was a distant man, too certain of his own importance, who behaved as if someone had waved a bowl of rotten shellfish under his nose. He had a deliberately old-fashioned way of looping up his toga, which made him seem an oddity. To wear a toga at all set him apart: we were in the provinces, and he was at work. One of his gaudy finger-rings was so bulky it must interfere when he was at the drawing board.

I found it hard to envisage him actually designing plans. When he did, it was a sure bet he would be so busy thinking up expensive decor, he would forget to include stairs.

The team he had assembled was dominated by the decorative trades. Cyprianus (the clerk of works) and Magnus (the surveyor) pointed out in undertones the chief mosaicist, the landscape gardener, the chief fresco painter and the marble mason before they got to anyone as sensible as a drains engineer, carpenter, stonemason, labour supervisors or admin clerks. There were three of the latter, for tracking the programme, cost control and special ordering. Labour was divided between local and overseas, each with a man in charge.

An obvious tribal dignitary, very proud of his torque, had cleared himself a substantial area right at the front. I nudged Magnus, who muttered, "The client's representative has graced us with his hairy presence!"

t Pomponius had decided to bar me. He spoke in a superior accent

that increased my loathing. "This meeting is for team members only."

Dark heads, bald heads and the one crown of flowing ginger locks on the client's representative all turned my way. They all knew I was there and had been waiting to see how Pomponius reacted.

I stood up. Tin Didius Falco." Pomponius gave no sign of recognition. I had been told by the imperial secretariat in Rome that the project manager would be warned I was coming. Of course, Pomponius might wish to keep my role a secret so I could observe his site incognito. That would be too helpful.

I was sure he had been sent a briefing. I could already deduce his irritation with correspondence from Rome. He was in charge; he would give no time to orders from above. Bureaucracy cramped his creativity. He would have glanced at the relevant memo, could not face the tricky issues, so forgot he ever read it. (Yes, I had previous experience of architects.)

He gave me two options: to be sidelined or to fight back. I could live with an enemy. I'll take it that my letter of authority has been mis-filed here. I hope that is not indicative of how this project is run. Pomponius, I won't delay you I'll spell out the situation to you when you're free."

Polite but terse, I strode to the front. Apparently leaving, I positioned myself in full view of everyone. Before Pomponius could stop me, I addressed them: "You will learn this soon enough. My brief is direct from the Emperor. The scheme is behind time and over cost. Vespasian wants lines of communication cleared and the whole situation rationalised." That implied what I was here to do, without using dangerous phrases like allocate blame or weed out incompetence. "I am not setting up a war camp. We are all here to do the same job: get the Great King's palace built. As soon as I'm established on site you will know where my office is-' That made it clear Pomponius had to give me one. "The door will always be open to anyone with something helpful to say- use the opportunity."

Now they knew that I was here and that I felt I had more authority than Pomponius. I left them all to mutter about it.

Right from the start, I had detected a bad atmosphere. The conflict was brewing before I spoke; it had nothing to do with my presence.

With all the prominent team members trapped at their meeting, I decided to inspect the corpse of the dead roofer, Valla. Wondering how to find it, I was able to appreciate the site at a quiet moment. A labourer humping a basket of spoil glanced at me with mild curiosity. I asked him to show me around. He seemed completely incurious about my motives, but quite happy to take time off from his duties.

"Well, you can see we've got the old house there, on the shore side'

"You're pulling it down?"

He cackled. "There's a big row about that. Owner likes it. If he gets to keep it, we'll have to raise all the floor levels."

"He won't be happy when you start in filling his audience suite and he has concrete up to the ankles!"

"He's more unhappy with losing the building."

"So who says he can't keep it?"

"The architect."

"Pomponius? Isn't his brief to provide what the client wants?"

"Reckon he thinks the client ought to want what he's told."

Some labourers are well-built specimens, their muscles and stamina suited to heaving stone and concrete. This was one of the wiry, pasty, strangely feeble-looking types. Perhaps he was happy on ladders. Or perhaps he simply started in the trade because his brother knew a foreman and fixed him up with work cleaning old bricks. Like most building workers he obviously suffered with his back.

"Did I hear you lost someone in an accident?"

"Oh Gaudius." I had meant Valla.

"What happened to Gaudius?"

"Swiped with a plank, knocked backwards in a hole. Trench wall collapsed and he was crushed before we could dig him out. He was still alive when we started clawing at the fill. Some of the boys must have trod on him as they tried to help."

I shook my head. "Horrible!"

"Then Dubnus. Dubnus got stewed one night. He ended up knifed in a bar at the canabae." Canabae were semi-official hot hies outside military forts normally; I knew them from my army days. There the locals were allowed to set up businesses servicing off-duty needs. This meant the flesh trade, with other offerings that ranged from dangerous drink to hideous souvenirs. It led to disease, birth pangs and illegal marriage- though rarely death.

"Life out here is tough?"

"Oh it's all right."

"Where are you from?"

"Pisae."

"Liguria?"

"A long time ago. I never like to settle down." That could mean he was fleeing a ten-year-old charge for stealing ducks- or that he really

I was a rootless bird who liked his boots on the move.

"Do the management treat you well?"

"We have a nice clean barracks and decent tuck it's fine, if you can stand living on top of nine other fellows, some of them right farters and one who cries in his sleep."

"Will you stay in Britain when the job's completed?"

"Not me, legate! I'm for Italy as quick as you like… Still, I always say that. Then I hear about some other scheme. There's always pals going, and the pay sounds rich. I get lured off again." He seemed content with this.

"Would you say," I asked narrowly, 'that this site is any more dangerous than others where you have worked?"

"Well, you lose a few fellows, it's natural."

"I know what you mean. I've heard that outside the army, more men are killed on building sites than in any other trade."

"You get used to it."

"So what are the casualty numbers like?"

He shrugged, no statistician. I bet this easy-going lamb was just as dozy over his pay.

No, I didn't. I bet he knew what he was owed to the nearest quarter as.