There is a fine sense of freedom that comes from wandering about a familiar city with no particular destination in mind, with no one to meet, no duties, no obligations. My only concern was with certain men I wanted very much not to meet, Magnus chief among them. But I had a good notion of where a man like Magnus might or might not be found on such a fine afternoon, and as long as I stayed away from the familiar haunts to which those who knew my habits might direct a searching stranger, I felt relatively safe — almost a shadow, in fact. Or better, a man made of precious glass, as if the warm sunshine that beamed down on my shoulders and head passed straight through me, casting no shadow at all, and every citizen and slave I passed looked right through me. I was invisible. I was free. I had nothing to do and a thousand nameless, sun-drenched streets to do it in.

Cicero was right; my part in the investigation of the murder of Sextus Roscius was over. But until the trial was done, there was no way I could move on to other business, no way I could return with safety to my own home. Unused to having enemies himself (how soon that would change, with his ambitions!), Cicero expected me to hide myself away until all was clear, as if that were a simple thing. But in Rome one's path is never entirely clear of enemies. When even a perfect stranger could prove to be Nemesis, no man can protect himself completely. What point is there in cowering away in another man's house, behind the spear of another man's guard? Fortune is the only true protection against death; perhaps it was true that Sulla was followed everywhere by her protecting

hand — how else to explain his longevity when so many others around him, far less culpable and certainly more virtuous, were long dead?

It would have been amusing to surprise Rufus in the Forum; I imagined stealing up behind him in some dusty corner of some dusty clerk's library, humming a snatch of Metrobius's ditty from the night before — 'and the lady agreed, yes, the lady declared' — but the Forum was probably the most dangerous place for me to loiter, except for the Subura. Without a plan, I wandered northward towards the Quirinal Hill, into a region where the houses were shabby and the streets littered. I came to the edge ofthe Quirinal, above the Servian Wall; the street dropped off in a steep descent and the houses on either side drew back from the road, leaving a wide plaza with a patch of unkempt grass and a single straggly tree.

Even in the city of one's birth there may be undiscovered streets that open onto unexpected vistas, and the goddess who guides aimless wanderers had guided me to such a spot. I paused for a long moment, looking out at the quadrant of Rome beyond the city walls, from the sweep of the Tiber on the left, sparkling beneath the sun as if it were on fire, to the straight, broad Flaminian Way on the right; from the jumble of buildings massed around the Circus Flaminius to the Field of Mars beyond, hazy with dust. The sound and the odour of the city rose on the warm air like a breath exhaled from the valley below. For all its danger and corruption, for all its meanness and squalor, Rome still pleases my eyes more than any other city on earth.

I made my way south again, following a narrow footpath that skirted the backyards of tenements, crossed alleys and wound through patches of green. Women called out to one another across the way; a child cried and his mother began to sing a lullaby; a man roared in a drunken, sleepy voice for everyone to be quiet. The city, languorous and good-natured from the warmth, seemed to swallow me up.

I passed through the Fontinal Gate and wandered aimlessly until I rounded a corner and saw looming ahead of me the charred mass of a burned-out tenement. Blackened windows opened onto blue sky above, and while I watched, a long section of one wall fell crashing to the ground, toppled by slaves pulling long ropes. The ground all about was blackened with ash and tumbled with heaps of ruined clothing and what remained of household goods — a cheap pot melted by the heat, the black skeleton of a loom, a long jagged bone that might have been human or canine. Beggars picked through the sorry remains.

Because of the unfamiliar angle by which I had approached, a long, puzzled moment passed before I realized this was the same tenement that Tiro and I had watched go up in flames only a few days before. Another blackened wall came crashing down, and through the vacant space, standing in the street with his arms crossed and issuing orders to his foremen, I saw Crassus himself

The wealthiest man in Rome looked quite cheerful, smiling and chatting with those among his large retinue privileged to stand within his earshot. I stepped carefully around the periphery of the ruins and placed myself at the edge of the group. A rat-faced sycophant, unable to insinuate himself farther into the throng, was willing to settle for a conversation with a passing stranger.

'Clever?' he said, following my lead and turning up his rat's nose. 'Hardly the word for Marcus Crassus. A brilliant individual. No other man in Rome is so economically astute. Say what you like about Pompey being a brilliant general, or even Sulla. There are other kinds of generals in this world. Silver denarii are the troops of Marcus Crassus.'

'And his battlefields?'

'Look in front of you. What more carnage could you desire?' 'And who won this battle?'

'You have only to look at Marcus Crassus's face to know that.'

'And who lost?'

'The poor beggars in the street, picking through what's left of their belongings and wishing they still had a roof over their heads!' The man laughed. 'And the wretched owner of this wreck. Previous owner, I should say. Off on holiday when it happened. Not a very good strategist. So saddled with debts that they say he killed himself when he got word of the fire. Crassus had to deal with the grieving son, and certainly got the better of him. They say he gave up the property for less than the cost of a trip to Baiae. And you think that's merely clever! The man narrowed his rat's eyes and pursed his thin lips in an access of admiration.

'But he'll have to pay to have the tenement rebuilt,' I suggested.

The man arched one eyebrow. 'Not necessarily. Given the density of this neighbourhood, Crassus may leave the property undeveloped, at least for a while. That's so he can raise the rents on the tenement next door, and keep them up. He bought that property at the same time, off a panic-stricken fool who gave it up for a song.'

'You mean the building that barely escaped the flames? That one there, where people keep streaming out the door, assisted by those large men who look like brawlers from a street gang?'

'Those are employees of Marcus Crassus, evicting tenants unwilling or unable to pay the new rents.'

We watched together as a thin old man in a tattered tunic stepped cautiously out of the building next door with a large sack balanced on his back. One of the evictors intentionally stuck out his foot and tripped the man, causing the sack to slip from his shoulders and break open when it hit the street. A woman came running from an already loaded wagon, screaming at the enforcers while she helped the old man to his feet. The innocent guard turned red-faced and looked away in chagrin, but the culprit only began to laugh, so raucously that heads all around us turned to watch, including that of Crassus.

My new acquaintance seized the occasion of being in the great man's line of sight. 'It's nothing to bother you, Marcus Crassus,' he shouted, 'just an unruly ex-tenant blowing farts at one of your servants!' He let out a ratty little laugh. Crassus's eternal smile wavered a bit, and he stared at the man briefly with a perplexed expression, as if trying to remember who he might be. Then he turned away and resumed his business. The rat-faced man turned up his long nose in smug triumph. 'There,' he said, 'did you notice the way he laughed at my little joke? Marcus Crassus always laughs at my jokes.'