Two for the Lions

by Lindsey Davis

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries

Synopsis

This tenth novel featuring Marcus Didius Falco puts the tough private eye in the lions’ den to investigate an extraordinary case of murder.

Nothing’s certain except death and taxes. Catching tax evaders for the Emperor Vespasian looks like a plum position for Marcus Didius Falco, who has teamed up with his old boss, Anacrites, the crotchety chief spy of Rome. Soon, however, Falco is bogged down in bureaucracy, stuck at his stylus, and longing for a good murder to investigate.

He gets one when someone kills the lion Leonidas, the Empire’s official executioner. Feared by plebeians and citizens alike, Leonidas administered justice with a swift, sure blow. Then he ate the offender. Now this king of beasts lies stabbed to death in his cage.

Sniffing around for clues, Falco is soon led into the rowdy, decadent world of gladiators and bestiarii, fighters who specialize in contests against animals. Falco finds that it’s dark and dangerous in the tunnels under the arena—and even blacker in the desperate souls of those who must kill or be killed each time the games begin. Yet no one has a motive for slaughtering a lion after hours.

The unexpected slaying of the most glamorous gladiator in the city is another matter.

Now Falco has a high-profile crime to handle—and a domestic crisis brewing. His lover, the patrician Helena, reports that her disgraced brother needs help in Tripoli. Since Africa may well be the missing link between the murders of man and beast, Falco is quickly en route to those far shores … and heading toward a dangerous rendezvous with the raging lions that reside in the human heart, and one particular person who stalks his fellow man.

Release date: April 4, 2019

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 400

Sample

My partner and I had been well set up to earn our fortunes until we were told about the corpse.

Death, it has to be said, was ever-present in those surroundings. Anacrites and I were working among the suppliers of wild beasts and gladiators for the arena Games in Rome; every time we took our auditing note tablets on a site visit, we spent the day surrounded by those who were destined to die in the near future and those who would only escape being killed if they killed someone else first. Life, the victors’ main prize, would be in most cases temporary.

But there amongst the fighters’ barracks and the big cats’ cages, death was commonplace. Our own victims, the fat businessmen whose financial affairs we were so delicately probing as part of our new career, were themselves looking forwards to long, comfortable lives – yet the formal description of their business was Slaughter. Their stock-in-trade was measured as units of mass murder; their success would depend upon those units satisfying the crowd in straightforward volume terms, and upon their devising ever more sophisticated ways to deliver the blood.

We knew there must be big money in it. The suppliers and trainers were free men – a prerequisite of engaging in commerce, however sordid – and so they had presented themselves with the rest of Roman society in the Great Census. This had been decreed by the Emperor on his accession, and it was not simply intended to count heads. When Vespasian assumed power in a bankrupt Empire after the chaos of Nero’s reign, he famously declared that he would need four hundred million sesterces to restore the Roman world. Lacking a personal fortune, he set out to find funding in the way that seemed most attractive to a man with middle-class origins. He named himself and his elder son Titus as Censors, then called up the rest of us to give an account of ourselves and of everything we owned. Then we were swingeingly taxed on the latter, which was the real point of the exercise.

The shrewd amongst you will deduce that some heads of household found themselves excited by the challenge; foolish fellows tried to minimise the figures when declaring the value of their property. Only those who can afford extremely cute financial advisers ever get away with this, and since the Great Census was intended to rake in four hundred million it was madness to attempt a bluff. The target was too high; evasion would be tackled head-on – by an Emperor who had tax farmers in his recent family pedigree.

The machinery for extortion already existed. The Census traditionally used the first principle of fiscal administration: the Censors had the right to say: we don’t believe a word of what you’re telling us. Then they made their own assessment, and the victim had to pay up accordingly. There was no appeal.

No; that’s a lie. Free men always have the right to petition the Emperor. And it’s a perk of being Emperor that he can twitch his purple robe and augustly tell them to get lost.

While the Emperor and his son were acting as Censors, it would in any case be a waste of time to ask them to overrule themselves. But first they had to make the hard-hitting reassessments, and for that they needed help. To save Vespasian and Titus from being forced personally to measure the boundaries of estates, interrogate sweaty Forum bankers, or pore over ledgers with an abacus – given that they were simultaneously trying to run the tattered Empire after all – they were now employing my partner and me. The Censors needed to identify cases where they could clamp down. No emperor wants to be accused of cruelty. Somebody had to spot the cheats who could be reassessed without causing an outcry, so Falco & Partner had been hired – at my own suggestion and on an extremely attractive fee basis – to investigate low declarations.

We had hoped this would entail a cosy life scanning columns of neat sums on best quality parchment in rich men’s luxurious studies: no such luck. I for one was known to be tough, and as an informer I was probably thought to have slightly grubby origins. So Vespasian and Titus had thwarted me by deciding that they wanted the best value for hiring Falco & Partner (the specific identity of my Partner had not been revealed, for good reasons). They ordered us to forget the easy life and to investigate the grey economy.

Hence the arena. It was thought that the trainers and suppliers were lying through their teeth – as they undoubtedly were, and so was everybody. Anyway their shifty looks had caught the attention of our imperial masters, and that was what we were probing on that seemingly ordinary morning, when we were unexpectedly invited to look at a corpse.

Working for the Censors had been my idea. A chance conversation with the senator Camillus Verus some weeks before had alerted me that tax reassessments were being imposed. I realised that this could be properly organised, with a dedicated audit team looking into suspect cases (a category into which Camillus himself did not fall; he was just a poor coot with an unlucky face who fell foul of an assessor and who could not afford the kind of smooth accountant who might have dug him out of it).

Putting myself forward to direct the enquiries proved tricky. There were always scores of bright sparks in their best togas running up to the Palace to suggest wonderful ruses that would be the salvation of the Empire. Court officials were adept at rejecting them. For one thing, even wonderful ideas were not always welcome to Vespasian, because he was a realist. It was said that when an engineer described how the huge new columns for the restored Temple of Jupiter could be hauled up the Capitol very cheaply by mechanical means, Vespasian rejected the idea because he preferred paying the lower classes to do the job and earn themselves money to eat. Certainly the old man knew how to avoid a riot.

I did go up to the Palatine with my suggestion. I sat in an imperial salon full of other hopefuls for half a morning, but I soon grew bored. It was no good, anyway. If I wanted to make money from the Census I had to start quickly. I dared not wait in a queue for months; the Census was only supposed to take a year.

There was another problem at the Palace: my current partner was an imperial employee already. I had not wanted Anacrites to attach himself to me, but after eight hard years as a solo informer I had bowed to pressure from everyone close to me and agreed that I needed a colleague. For a few weeks I worked in harness with my best friend Petronius Longus, who had been temporarily suspended from the vigiles. I’d like to say it had been a success, though in fact his approach had been opposite from mine on virtually everything. When Petro decided to clean up his private life and was reinstated by his tribune, it had been a relief to us both.

That left me with a meagre choice. Nobody wants to be an informer. Not many men have the necessary qualities of shrewdness and tenacity, or decent feet for slogging the pavements, or good contacts for supplying information – particularly information that by rights ought to be unobtainable. Among the few who qualified even fewer wanted my company, especially now Petro was trumpeting all around the Aventine that I was a picky swine to share an office with.

Anacrites and I had never been soul mates. I had disliked him on principle when he was Chief Spy at the court and I was a backstreet operator with only private clients; once I started hacking for Vespasian myself, my dislike was soon enhanced by first hand knowledge that Anacrites was incompetent, devious, and cheap. (All these accusations are levelled at informers too, but that’s just slander.) When, during a mission to Nabataea, Anacrites tried to have me murdered I stopped pretending to be tolerant.

Fate took a hand after he was attacked by a would-be assassin. It was not me; I would have made a thorough job of it. Even he knew that. Instead, when he was found unconscious with a hole in his skull, I somehow ended up persuading my own mother to look after him. For weeks his life hung in the balance, but Ma dragged him back from the shore of the Lethe using sheer determination and vegetable broth. After she had saved him I came home from a trip to Baetica to find a bond between them that was as strong as if Ma had fostered an orphaned duck. Anacrites’ respect for my mother was only slightly less revolting than her reverence for him.

It was Ma’s idea to foist him on to me. Believe me, the arrangement would only stay in place until I found someone else. In any case, Anacrites was officially on sick-leave from his old job. That was why I could hardly appear at the Palace listing him as half my partnership: the Palace was already paying him to do nothing on account of his terrible head wound, and his superiors must not find out he was moonlighting.

Just one of those additional complications that keep life sweet.

Strictly speaking I already had one partner. She shared my problems and laughed at my mistakes; I was assisted in doing my accounts, solving puzzles, and even sometimes conducting interviews by my live-in love, Helena. If nobody took her seriously as a business associate it was partly because women have no legal identity. Besides, Helena was a senator’s daughter; most people still believed she would leave me one day. Even after three years of the closest kind of friendship, after travelling abroad with me, and bearing my child, Helena Justina was still expected to grow tired of me and flee back to her former life. Her illustrious father was the same Camillus Verus who gave me the idea of working for the Censors; her noble mother, Julia Justa, would be only too happy to send a chair to fetch Helena home.

We lived as subtenants in a dire first-floor apartment on the rough side of the Aventine. We had to wash the baby at the public baths and have our baking done at a pie shop. Our dog had brought us several rats as presents, which we reckoned she had caught pretty close to home. This was why I needed decent work, with healthy incomings. The senator would be delighted that his chance remarks had given me the idea for it. He would be even more proud if he ever found out that in the end it was Helena who obtained the work for me.

‘Marcus, would you like Papa to ask Vespasian to offer you work with the Censors?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘I thought not.’

‘You mean I’m pigheaded?’

‘You like to do things for yourself,’ Helena replied calmly. She could be at her most insulting when she pretended to be fair.

She was a tall girl, with a strict expression and a searing glance. People who had expected me to find myself some bonny piece with lambswool where her brains should be were still surprised at my choice, but once I had met Helena Justina I reckoned on sticking with her for as long as she would have me. She was neat, scathing, intelligent, wondrously unpredictable. I still could not believe my luck that she had even noticed me, let alone that she lived in my apartment, was the mother of my baby daughter, and had taken charge of my disorganised life.

The gorgeous armful knew that she could run rings around me, and that I loved to let her do it. ‘Well Marcus, darling, if you won’t be going back to the Palace this afternoon, could you possibly assist me with an errand on the other side of the city?’

‘Of course,’ I agreed handsomely. Anything to put myself out of reach of Anacrites.

Helena’s errand required us to take a hired carrying chair for a distance that made me wonder if the sparse coins in my armpurse would cover the fare. First she dragged us to a warehouse that my auctioneer father owned near the Emporium. He allowed us to use the back end to store things that we had picked up on our travels which were waiting for the day when we had a decent house. I had built a partition to keep Pa out of our section of the warehouse, since he was the sort of entrepreneur who would sell off our carefully chosen treasures for less than we paid for them, then think he had done us a favour.

On today’s escapade I was just a passenger. Helena made no attempt to explain. Various shapeless bales that were obviously none of my business were collected from store and piled on a donkey, then we skirted the Forum and headed over the Esquiline.

We travelled north for ages. Peering through the ragged modesty curtain of our conveyance I saw we were outside the old Servian Walls, apparently aiming for the Praetorian Camp. I made no comment. When people want to have secrets, I just let them get on with it.

‘Yes, I’ve taken a lover in the Guards,’ said Helena. Joking, presumably. Her idea of a rough entanglement was me: sensitive lover, loyal protector, sophisticated raconteur, and would-be poet. Any Praetorian who thought to persuade her otherwise would get my boot up his arse.

We went right around the Camp, and came on to the Via Nomentana. Shortly afterwards we stopped and Helena jumped out. I followed, in surprise because I expected to find her among the winter brassicas in some out of season market garden. Instead, we were parked at a large villa just beyond the Nomentana Gate. It looked substantial, which was a puzzle. Nobody who had enough cash for a decent house would normally choose to live so far outside the city – let alone within spitting reach of the Praetorians. The occupants would be deafened when all those big bastards were drunk on pay day, and the incessant trumpets and tramping would drive most folk demented.

The location was neither city nor country. There was neither hilltop panorama nor river view. Yet we were looking at the kind of high, blank walls that normally surround luxurious amenities owned by people who don’t want the public knowing what they own. In case we doubted it, the heavy front door with its antique dolphin knocker and well-tended urns of formally clipped bay, announced that somebody lived here who felt like quality (not always the same thing as actually being it, of course).

I still said nothing, and was allowed to stay helping to unload the bales, while my dearest skipped up to the forbidding portal and disappeared inside. Eventually I myself was led indoors by a silent slave in a firmly belted white tunic, then passed through a traditional short corridor to an atrium where I could hang about until required. I had been labelled a supernumerary who would wait for Helena as long as needed: true. Apart from the fact I never abandoned her amongst strangers, I was not going home yet. I wanted to know where I had come and what happened here. Left alone, I soon obeyed my itchy feet, and set off to explore.

It was nice. My word, it was. For once taste and money had combined successfully. Light-filled corridors headed in every direction to gracious rooms painted with decorous, slightly old-fashioned frescos. (The house seemed so quiet I brazenly opened doors and looked inside.) The scenes were architectural citiscapes or grottos with idyllic pastoral life. The rooms housed padded couches with footstools, side-tables positioned for convenience, elegant bronze candelabra; the occasional statuary included one or two busts of the old unnaturally handsome Julio-Claudian imperial family and a smiling head of Vespasian, apparently predating his accession as Emperor.

I reckoned the place had been built in my lifetime: that meant new money. The lack of painted battle scenes, trophies or phallic symbols, together with the preponderance of women’s chairs, made me guess it could be a wealthy widow’s house. Objects and furniture were expensive, though chosen for use rather than purely decorative. The owner had money, taste, and a practical outlook.

It was a quiet home. No children. No pets. No braziers against the winter coolness. Apparently almost unlived in. Nothing much going on today.

Then I caught a low murmur of female voices. Following the sound, I came to a colonnade of grey stone pillars forming an enclosed peristyle garden, so sheltered that the rampaging rose-bushes still bore occasional flowers even though it was December. Four rather dusty laurels marked the corners and a huge stone fountain bowl stood silent in the centre space.

Strolling out into the garden casually I came upon Helena Justina with another woman. I knew who she was; I had seen her before. She was just a freed slave, an ex-secretary from the Palace – yet potentially the most influential woman in the Empire today. I straightened up. If the rumours about how she used her position were true, then more power might be wielded on the sly in this isolated villa than in any other private house in Rome.

They had been laughing quietly, two straight-backed, civilised, unselfconscious women braving the weather as they discussed how the world worked. Helena had the animated look that meant she was truly enjoying herself. That was rare; she tended to be unsociable except with people she knew well.

Her companion was twice her age, an undeniably elderly woman with a slightly drawn expression. Her name was Antonia Caenis. Though a freedwoman, she was one of grand status: she once worked for the mother of the Emperor Claudius. That had given her long and close connections with the old discredited imperial family and she now possessed even more intimate links with the new one: she was the long-time mistress of Vespasian. As an ex-slave she could never marry him, but after his wife died they had lived openly together. Everyone had assumed that upon becoming Emperor he would shed her discreetly, but he took her with him to the Palace. At their age it was hardly a scandal. This villa presumably belonged to Caenis herself; if she still came here, it must be to transact business of an unofficial kind.

I had heard that it happened. Vespasian liked to appear too straight to permit backstage machinations – yet he must be happy to have somebody he trusted negotiate discreet deals while he kept his distance and apparently kept his hands clean.

The two women were seated on cushions on a low stone seat with lion’s paw feet. At my approach both turned and broke off what they were saying. I glimpsed mutual annoyance at my interruption. I was a man. Whatever they had been debating was outside my sphere.

That did not mean it had been frivolous.

‘Well, here you are then!’ exclaimed Helena, making me nervous.

‘I wondered what I was missing.’

Antonia Caenis inclined her head and greeted me without being introduced. ‘Didius Falco.’

She was good; I had once stood aside for her when I was visiting Titus Caesar at the Palace, but it was some time ago and we had never met formally. I had already heard she was intelligent, and possessed a phenomenal memory. Apparently I had been well catalogued: but in which pigeon-hole?

‘Antonia Caenis.’

I was standing, the traditional position for the servile element in the presence of the great. The ladies enjoyed treating me like a barbarian. I winked at Helena, who coloured slightly, afraid I might wink at Caenis too. I reckoned Vespasian’s dame would have handled it, but I was a guest in her house. Besides, she was a woman with unknown Palace privileges. Before I risked annoying her I wanted to assess just how powerful she was.

‘You have presented me with a most generous gift,’ said Caenis. That was news. As it had been explained to me some months ago in Hispania, Helena Justina was proposing a private sale of some purple-dyed Baetican cloth that would be suitable for imperial uniforms. It was supposed to bring in goodwill, but had been intended as a commercial transaction. For a senator’s daughter Helena possessed a surprising knack for bargaining; if she had now decided to waive payment, she must have a very good reason: something else was being brokered here today. I could guess what it was.

‘I should think you are fairly showered with presents nowadays,’ I commented daringly.

‘Rather an irony,’ returned Caenis, unperturbed. She had a cultured Palace voice, but with a permanent dry tone. I could imagine how she and Vespasian might always have mocked at the establishment; she at least probably still did so.

‘People believe you can influence the Emperor.’

‘That would be most improper.’

‘I don’t see why,’ protested Helena Justina. ‘Men in power always have their intimate circle of friends who advise them. Why should it not include the women they trust?’

‘Of course I am free to say what I think!’ smiled the Emperor’s mistress.

‘Forthright women are a joy,’ I said. Helena and I had exchanged views on the crispness of cabbage in terms that still made my hair stand on end.

‘I’m glad that you think so,’ Helena commented.

‘Vespasian always values sound opinions,’ replied Caenis, speaking like an official court biographer, though I sensed domestic satire much like our own was lurking underneath.

‘With his burden of work in rebuilding the Empire,’ I suggested, ‘Vespasian must also welcome a partner in his labours.’

‘Titus is a great joy to him,’ returned Caenis serenely. She knew how to misunderstand a tricky point. ‘And I am sure he has hopes of Domitian.’ Vespasian’s elder son was virtually co-Emperor and although the younger had made a few gaffes, he still carried out formal duties. I had a deep-running feud with Domitian Caesar and fell silent, brooding on how he charged me with bile. Antonia Caenis finally waved me to a seat.

In the three years since Vespasian became Emperor popular suspicion had it that this lady was enjoying herself. It was believed that the highest posts – tribuneships and priesthoods – could be allocated at her word (in return for payment). Pardons were bought. Decisions were fixed. It was said that Vespasian encouraged this trade, which not only enriched and empowered his concubine but bought grateful friends for him. I wondered about their arrangement for sharing the financial profits. Was it divided by a strict percentage? On a sliding scale? Did Caenis make deductions for expenses and wear and tear?

‘Falco, I am not in a position to sell you favours,’ she declared, as if she read my thoughts. All her life people must have made up to her because of her closeness to the court. Her eyes were dark and watchful. In the mad, suspicious turbulence of the Claudian family, too many of her patrons and friends had died. Too many of her years had been lost to painful uncertainty. Whatever was for sale in this elegant villa would be handled with scrupulous attention, not least attention to its value.

‘I am not in a position to buy,’ I replied frankly.

‘I cannot even make you promises.’

I disbelieved that.

Helena leant forwards to speak, so her blue stole slipped from her left shoulder and fell across her lap, its trim catching in one of the row of light bangles she wore to cover the scar from a scorpion bite. She shook the stole free impatiently. The gown below was white, a formal choice. I noticed she was wearing an old agate necklace that she had owned before I met her, subconsciously playing the senator’s daughter again. Pulling rank seemed unlikely to work.

‘Marcus Didius is far too proud to pay for privileges.’ I loved Helena when she spoke so earnestly, especially when it was about me. ‘He won’t tell you himself, but he has been sorely disappointed – and after Vespasian had made him a direct offer of promotion to the middle rank.’

Caenis listened with an air of distaste, as if complaints were bad manners. She had undoubtedly heard the whole story of how I went to the Palace to claim my reward. Vespasian had promised me social advancement, but I chose to ask for it one night when Vespasian himself had been out of Rome and Domitian was handling pleas. Overconfident, I brazened it out with the princeling; for that I paid the penalty. I held evidence against Domitian on a very serious charge, and he knew it. He had never moved against me openly, but that night he took his revenge by turning me down.

Domitian was a brat. He was also dangerous, and I reckoned Caenis was shrewd enough to see it. Whether she would ever disturb the family peace by saying so was another matter. But if she was prepared to criticise him, would she speak up on my behalf?

Caenis must know what we wanted. Helena had made an appointment to come here, and as an ex-secretary to the court, Caenis would naturally have obtained full briefing material before confronting supplicants.

She made no answer, still pretending not to intervene in affairs of state.

‘Disappointment has never made Marcus falter in his service to the Empire.’ Helena spoke again, without bitterness though her expression was austere. ‘His work has included several very dangerous provincial journeys, and you must be aware of what he achieved in Britain, Germany, Nabataea, and Spain. Now he wants to offer his services to the Census, as I outlined to you just now—’

This was received with a cool, noncommittal nod.

‘It’s an idea I conceived with Camillus Verus,’ I explained. ‘Helena’s father is of course a good friend of the Emperor.’

Caenis graciously picked up the hint: ‘Camillus is your patron?’ Patronage was the weft of Roman society (where the warp was graft). ‘So has the senator spoken to the Emperor on your behalf?’

‘I was not brought up to be anybody’s client.’

‘Papa supports Marcus Didius fully,’ interposed Helena.

‘I am sure that he would do.’

‘It seems to me,’ Helena carried on, growing fiercer, ‘Marcus has done as much for the Empire as he should do without formal recognition.’

‘What do you think, Marcus Didius?’ asked Caenis, ignoring Helena’s anger.

‘I would like to tackle this Census job. It poses a good challenge, and I don’t deny it could be very lucrative.’

‘I was not aware Vespasian paid you exorbitant fees!’

‘He never has,’ I grinned. ‘But this would be different. I won’t act on piecework rates. I want a percentage of whatever income I recover for the state.’

‘Vespasian could never agree to that.’ The lady was emphatic.

‘Think about it.’ I could be tough too.

‘Why, what sort of amounts are we discussing?’

‘If as many people as I suspect are attempting to fiddle their returns, the sums to be extracted from culprits will be enormous. The only limitation would be my personal stamina.’

‘But you have a partner?’ So she knew that.

‘He’s untried as yet, though I’m confident.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Just an out of work scrutineer my old mother took pity on.’

‘Indeed.’ I reckoned Antonia Caenis had discovered it was Anacrites. She might know him. She could dislike him as much as I did – or she could view him as Vespasian’s servant and ally. I stared her out.

She smiled abruptly. It was frank, intelligent, and startlingly full of character. There was no recognition that she was an elderly woman who should feel ready to relinquish her place in the world. For a moment I glimpsed what Vespasian must always have seen in her. She must be well up to the old man’s undoubted calibre. ‘Your proposition sounds attractive, Marcus Didius. I shall certainly discuss it with Vespasian if an occasion arises.’

‘I bet you keep a note tablet with a formal list of queries that you and he pore over at a set hour every day!’

‘You have a peculiar notion of our daily routine.’

I smiled gently. ‘No, I just thought you might pin down Titus Flavius Vespasianus in the same way that Helena tackles me.’

They both laughed. They were laughing at me. I could bear it. I was a happy man. I knew Antonia Caenis was going to land me the job I wanted, and I had high hopes that she might do more than that.

‘I suppose,’ she said, still being direct, ‘you want to explain to me what went wrong about promoting you?’

‘I expect you know what went wrong, lady! Domitian was of the opinion that informers are sordid characters, none of whom is worthy of inclusion in the lists for the middle rank.’

‘Is he correct?’

‘Informers are far less sordid than some of the musty gargoyles with clammy ethics who people the upper rank lists.’

‘No doubt,’ said Caenis with the slightest suggestion of reproof, ‘the Emperor will bear your strictures in mind when he reviews the lists.’

‘I hope he does.’

‘Your remarks could indicate, Marcus Didius, that you would not now wish to be aligned near the musty gargoyles.’

‘I can’t afford to feel superior.’

‘But you can risk outspokenness?’

‘It’s one of the talents that will help me screw cash from Census cheats.’

She looked severe. ‘If I were writing minutes of this meeting, Marcus Didius, I should rephrase that as “recovery of revenue”.’

‘Is there to be a formal record?’ Helena asked her quietly.

Caenis looked even more stern. ‘Only in my head.’

‘So there is no guarantee that any reward promised to Marcus Didius will be acknowledged at a future date?’ Helena never lost sight of her original aim.

I leant forwards abruptly. ‘Don’t worry. It could be safely written on twenty scrolls, yet if I lost favour they could all be lost in the archives by inattentive scribes. If Antonia Caenis is prepared to support me, her word is enough.’

Antonia Caenis was well used to being badgered for favours. ‘I can only make recommendations. All matters of state are at the discretion of the Emperor.’

I bet! Vespasian had been listening to her since she was a girl, when he was just an impoverished young senator. I grinned at Helena. ‘There you are. That’s the best guarantee you could want.’

At the time I really thought it was.