Ovid

I began the long trek round the walls, looking for a convenient spot to shin over. Zilch for most of the way. Then, when I'd just about given up, I found the perfect ladder: a beech tree with a long overhanging branch. Getting up and dropping down on the other side would be easy-peasy.

I took off my cloak, clambered up the trunk and along the branch, then dropped down on the villa side of the wall. There was no one in sight as I walked quickly through the rose garden, past the fishpond and over the lawn to the main building. I'd almost reached it when a young slave came out carrying a folding table. We stared at each other. Then, still carrying the table, he turned back the way he'd come.

Hell. I had to do something fast.

'Hey, you!' I bellowed. 'Yeah, you with the hair on!'

There's something to be said for a rigidly-enforced class system and good old tortured patrician nasal vowels. The kid skittered to a halt and drew himself up to attention.

'Yes, sir?'

'Where's your master?'

'In the north wing solar, sir.'

'Take me there now.' And when he dithered: 'Come on, lad! I haven't got a fucking room plan! And you can leave the furniture behind. I'm not a bloody money-changer.'

He dropped the table as if it were red hot. 'Yes sir. No sir. I'm sorry sir.'

'Just do it, okay?'

He swallowed. 'Yes, sir. If you'd care to follow me, please..?'

It was certainly some place, and I've seen some places in my time. We walked along a Parian marble colonnade, then across a courtyard with a fountain in which two rampant satyrs were doing things with a nymph that I couldn't believe. I wondered who the artist was and whether he was still around to take commissions or if he'd been packed off somewhere for gross indecency. Finally the lad stopped outside a door and stood aside to let me pass.

'Here we are, sir,' he said. 'Just go straight in.'

Junius Silanus was feeding an African parrot chained to a perch. That is, the parrot was on the perch. Silanus was sitting in a high-backed chair beside it. He was a little rat-faced bastard well into middle age. I disliked him on sight.

The feeling was obviously mutual. The guy glared at me like I was something the parrot had deposited in his dinner.

'Who the hell let you in?' he snapped.

'And I'm delighted to meet you too, sir,' I said. 'What a nice garden you have. Especially the fountain.'

Silanus turned to the youngster who had brought me and who was standing goggle-eyed in the open doorway. 'Lucius, go to the front entrance and fetch Geta. Tell him we have an intruder.'

The kid shot me a quick, scared look, bowed and left.

'Come on, Silanus!' I said. 'This isn't necessary.'

'Corvinus, isn't it?' He held up a melon seed. The parrot took it gently in its beak, turning it round and round to crack the outer shell. 'I believe you were told that I wasn't at home. Common politeness demanded that you take the hint and leave. Please do so at once before I have you forcibly ejected.'

Pompous bastard. I hadn't met Latin like that since my teacher beat me through Cicero. 'Look, it's no big deal,’ I said. ‘I just want to ask you some questions, right?'

'Your wants are immaterial.' The parrot spat out the fragments of shell and Silanus held out another seed. 'This is my house and you are trespassing.'

'Okay.' There was a stool by the door. I sat on it. 'Just tell me about your affair with Julia and I'll go.'

Silanus stared at me open-mouthed. Then he laughed. 'Young man, I may be out of touch with high society nowadays but I doubt if it's become the norm to walk into someone's house uninvited and question them about who they've been to bed with.'

'Fair enough.' I leaned back against the wall and folded my arms. 'So let's talk about your so-called ‘exile instead. Where were you? Athens? Pergamon? Alexandria, maybe?'

'All of these places. And a few others.' Silanus fed the parrot another seed. 'Not that it's any business of yours. Please close the door as you leave. My porter will show you out.'

The guy was really getting up my nose. 'Hardly the back of beyond, right? Very civilised and enjoyable. No little shit-holes like Trimerus or Tomi, and a hell of a lot better than what Paullus got.' I paused. 'And speaking of Paullus, where does he fit in? Or don't you want to talk about that either?'

I'd finally got through to him. If looks could've killed I would've been a little smoking pile of ash on his Carrara marble floor.

'You're being offensive,' he said slowly. 'I was never formally exiled. I could go where I liked.'

'Quite right, sunshine.' I smiled. 'Why should you be punished after all? None of it was your fault. You weren't the guilty one, were you?' I could hear running feet somewhere in the interior of the house, coming towards us. Lucius, probably, with the man-mountain Geta in tow. I didn't have much time left and I had to make the most of it. 'In fact I think it was pretty noble under the circumstances to leave Rome at all. Not to mention giving up a promising political career.'

Silanus had heard the footsteps too. His narrowed eyes were shifting back and forward between me and the door.

'How do you mean, noble?' he said. 'I had no choice in the matter.'

They were almost here now. I could distinguish between the pitter-patter of Lucius's fairy feet and the pounding of the porter's heavy nail-studded boots along the wooden corridor outside. God knows what the cost of repairing the flooring would be. Not that Silanus gave a toss about that. So much was obvious from his expression. The guy's first priority was to get me out, and fast, which was interesting. I went for the throat and prayed that I'd guessed right.

'Maybe you didn't have a choice,’ I said. ‘Maybe you just had to do as you were told. That doesn't matter. But it was pretty noble, wasn't it, to take the rap for something you never did in the first place.'

His head came round as if I'd slapped him; and simultaneously the door burst open and I found myself grabbed by two huge hairy arms and hoisted off my feet. I didn't much care because I had what I'd come for. The unmistakable look of guilt on Silanus's face told me I'd hit the bull’s-eye.

'You didn't screw Julia at all, did you, you bastard?' I shouted at him as the porter hustled me towards the door. 'Nobody did! It was a put-up job!'

Silanus had risen from his chair. He was white as a sheet, with fear or anger or both. Beside him the parrot was screaming, dangling from its perch by the chain around its legs, its clipped wings beating frantically. I thought of the old woman's chickens in the Subura.

Silanus spoke quietly; so quietly I could hardly hear him over the noise of the parrot.

'Geta! Get him out of here!'

The porter's huge hand was pressing against my mouth and his other arm encircled my ribs in a painful bear-hug. My feet left the ground and I was suddenly being carried kicking and struggling through a chain of richly-decorated rooms, past knots of gaping house slaves and across the front courtyard to the main gate.

And that, when Geta had pitched me outside onto my ear, was when things began to get too interesting for comfort.

11

I was on my way back for my cloak when the bastards hit me; four of them, and not Silanus's goons either, unless he employed a private army. These guys were professional knifemen.

Running was pointless — there was nowhere to go out here in the sticks — and I knew I could yell my lungs inside out before any of Silanus's slaves came to help. I reached for the knife at my wrist. Only after the general shake-up of the last few minutes the knife wasn't there any more.

Bugger it. I wished I wasn't a betting man. You find yourself working the odds out almost without thinking, and I'd've put mine at fifty to one easy. With odds like that even if the Cumaean Sibyl herself had appeared with all nine of the Books of Prophecy under her arm and given me the thumbs-up I still wouldn't've backed myself short of a place in the first five.