I negotiated a tough end change, tugging at the cane to keep the work taut. 'No doubt you bamboozled him. I repositioned the chair between my knees.

'I answered his questions.'

'And he blithely went away?'

Severina looked prim. 'Perhaps some people can see that without a motive, accusing me is illogical.'

'Perhaps the Praetor likes a holiday in August. I soothed my aching fingers on the wet sponge. 'Anyway, here's another bonus: so long as you can fend off this aedile of his, no one else will bother you.'

'What?'

I got up from my knees, righted the chair, and sat in it. That put me higher than her slight, neat, shawl-wrapped figure as she still hugged her knees on my stool. 'I'm off the case, Zotica. Pollia and Atilia have dispensed with my services.'

'Stupid of them!' Severina said. 'Anyone who cared about Novus would have let you carry on.'

'They always did seem strangely half-hearted.'

'I'm not surprised.' I suppressed any reaction. Whatever was to follow could only mean trouble. Still, with Severina that was nothing new. 'The fact they have dismissed you,' she continued, 'proves everything I say.'

'How's that?'

'Pollia and Atilia hired you to throw suspicion on me.'

'Why?'

'To disguise their own ambitions.'

'What ambitions would those be?'

Severina took a deep breath. 'There was serious friction between the three freedmen. Crepito and Felix disagreed with the way Novus handled their business affairs. Novus hated trouble, and wanted to end the partnership.'

Much as I distrusted her, this reminded me what Viridovix had said about sensing disagreement among the freeman following their dinner. 'The other two would lose badly if he broke with them?'

'Novus had always been the leader; he had all the initiative and ideas.'

'So he would take a large sector of their business away with him?'

'Exactly. Meeting me had not improved matters; if he married--especially if we had children--his present heirs would suffer.'

'Felix and Crepito?'

'Felix and Crepito's son. Atilia is obsessive about the boy; she was relying on an inheritance to found the child's career.'

'What about Pollia?'

'Pollia wants to plunder her husband's share of the cash.'

What she said was making sense. I hated that: having established in my own mind that Severina was a villainess, I could not bring myself to readjust. 'Are you claiming that the freedmen, or their wives, would go so far as to kill Novus?'

'Maybe they were all in it together.'

'Don't judge other people by your own perverted standards! But I have to agree, the timing of the murder-when you and Novus had just announced the date of your wedding--does look significant.'

Severina clapped her small white hands triumphantly. 'But it's worse than that: I told you Novus had enemies.' She had told me a number of things that were probably lies. I laughed. 'Listen to me, Falco!' I made a small gesture of apology, yet she kept me in suspense for a moment, sulkily.

'What enemies?'

'Apart from Crepito and Felix, he had also antagonised Appius Priscillus.

'Do I gather he runs a rival organisation with overlapping interests? Tell me about that, Severina. What was the form at last night's dinner?'

'A reconciliation; I've already told you. It was Priscillus I tried to warn you about before.'

'He was threatening Novus?'

'Novus, and the other two as well. That was why Atilia hardly lets her son out of her sight--one of the threats was to abduct him.' I knew Atilia took the child to school herself, which was highly unusual.

'So which of these multiple suspects are you fingering?' I asked sarcastically.

'That's the problem--I just don't know. Falco, what would you say if I asked to hire you myself?'

I'd call for help, probably. 'Frankly the last thing I want is a commission from a professional bride--especially when she's midway between husbands, and tends to react unpredictably--'

'You mean what nearly happened last night?' Severina coloured.

'We can both forget last night.' My voice sounded lower than I had intended. I noticed that she started slightly, so her shawl slipped back, revealing her flame-coloured hair. 'We were drunk.' Severina gave me a straighter look that I liked.

'Will you work for me?' she insisted.

'I'll think about it.'

'That means no.'

'It means I'll think about it!'

At that moment I was ready to throw the gold-digger downstairs. (In fact I was in two minds whether to give up my career altogether, hire a booth and take up chair mending ...) There was a knock; Severina must have left my outer door ajar, and before I could answer it was pushed open. A man staggered in, gasping. His predicament was clear.

He had just struggled up two flights of stairs--to deliver the biggest fish I ever saw.

Chapter XLI.

I stood up. Very slowly.

'Where do you want him, legate?' He was a small man. As he lurched in from the corridor he was holding my present up by its mouth because he could not get his arms round it: the fish looked almost as long as its deliverer was tall. It was wider than he was.

'Slap him down here ...'

The man groaned, leaned back, then launched the fish sideways so it landed across the small table I used to lean my elbows on sometimes. Then, being a game trier, he jumped up and down, each time hauling my slippery present further on. Severina bobbed upright, daunted by a tailfin the size of an ostrich feather fan, which stuck over the edge of the table a foot from her nose.

There was no smell. He was in beautiful condition.

The delivery man seemed to take sufficient pleasure from the drama his arrival had caused--but I decided for once to squeeze out the half-aureus I kept in my tunic for really serious gratuities.

'Thanks, legate! Enjoy your party...' He left, with a much lighter step than when he came.

'Party?' hinted Severina, looking coy. 'Are you going to invite me?'

I felt so weak I might have let her persuade me. it would have created a Mount Olympus of complications for myself.

Then the door swung open a second time, to admit someone who never reckoned to knock if there was half a chance of interrupting something scandalous, 'h.e.l.lo Mother!' I cried valiantly.

Ma raked Severina Zotica with the look she reserved for unpleasant squashy things found at the back of dark kitchen shelves. Then she glanced at my extravagant present. 'That fishmonger of yours needs a talking-to! When did you start buying by the yard?'

'Must be a mix-up: all I ordered was a cuttlefish.'

'That's you all over. Palace ideas on pigsty money...

You'll want a big plate!'

I sighed. 'I can't keep this, Ma. I'd better send him as a gift to Camillus Verus; do myself some good that way--'

'It's one way to show your respect for the Senator ...

Pity. I could have made a good stock from the bones.' My mother was still blocking Severina out of the conversation,but letting her know that I had influential friends. Redheads always upset my mother. And she generally disapproved of my female clients.

Ma made herself scarce so I could rid us of this inconvenience. 'Severina, I'll have to think about your offer.'

'Will you have to ask your mother?' she sniped.

'No; I have to consult my barber, look up the "black days" on my calendar, sacrifice a beautiful virgin, and peruse the internal organs of a sheep with twisted horns ... I know where I can get the sheep, but virgins are harder to come by and my barber's out of town. Give me twenty-four hours.' She wanted to argue, but I gestured at the turbot so she could see that I was serious about having things to organise.

My mother promptly reappeared, stepping out of Severina's way with insulting delicacy. Severina retaliated by giving me a much sweeter smile than usual before she closed the door behind her.

'Watch that one!' muttered Ma.

Via and I gazed sadly at the giant fish.

I'm bound to regret giving him away.'

'You'll never get another!'

'I'm itching to keep him--but how could I cook him?'

'Oh I dare say we can improvise ...'

'Camillus Verus is never going to approve of me, anyway --'

'No,' agreed Ma, obliquely. 'You could invite him to eat me of it.'

'Not here!'.

'Invite Helena then.'

'Helena won't come.'

'She never will if n.o.body asks her? Have you upset her?'

'Why do you a.s.sume it's my fault? We had a few words.'

'You never change!... So that's settled,' decided my mother, 'Just a family party. Mind you,' she added, in case this news had somehow cheered me up,'I always reckon turbot is a tasteless fish.'

Chapter XLII.

Sometimes I feared my mother must have led a double life. I resisted the thought, because that is not what a decent Roman boy wants to suspect about the woman who gave him birth, 'Where on earth have you eaten turbot?'

'Your Uncle Fabius caught one once.' That made sense. No one in our family had the nous to present a turbot to the Emperor; anything my relations got their hands on went straight in the pot. 'It was a baby. Nowhere near as big as 'If Fabius caught it, that was predictable!' Everything about Uncle Fabius was small: a family joke.

'You don't want him bitter. I'll take out the gills for you, volunteered mother.

I let her She liked to delude herself I still needed looking after. Besides, I enjoyed the thought of my tiny, elderly mother laying into something quite that big.

Ideally I would bake him in an oven. That called for a clay pot (no time to have one made), then entrusting him to the dopey rakemen at some public bakery. I could have built my own oven, but apart from having to lug the bricks home I was frightened of the fire risk and strongly suspected that any structure big enough to contain this turbot might cause my floor to cave in. .

'I decided to poach him. Flatfish only need gentle simmering I would have to find a huge pan, but for that I had had an idea In the roof s.p.a.ce at my mother's house, where members of the family stored unattractive New Year gifts, was a huge oval shield which my late brother Festus brought home. It was made of some bronzed alloy, and Festus maintained it was a pricey Peloponnesian antique. I upset him by swearing it had to be Celtic--which meant it was just another cheap souvenir my daft brother had won in a bet or picked up on the quay at Ostia. Festus would have been even more annoyed at me turning his dusty prize into a monstrous fishkettle.

I nipped off to mother's. When I clambered up to get the shield I found a nest of mice in one end, but I tipped them out and said nothing. The handle inside had already lost one securing bolt when Festus was larking about; the other was rusted fast with verdigris but I managed to shear it off (cutting open a few knuckles). The pointed boss on the front might cause problems. I reckoned I could suspend the shield on two or three steaming pans of water over braziers and just keep the fish going if I heated his liquor first. I spent an hour burnishing the metal, washed it at a public fountain, then carried it home. It was indeed big enough for the turbot--but too shallow. I put him in, filled up with water, and found it reached the rim of the shield before it fully covered the fish. The scalding stock would swoosh about. And turning the turbot over half-way through cooking time might be difficult.. .

As usual my mother let me devise my own solution, then sat at home brooding how my brilliant plan would fail. While I was still staring at the half covered fish in the shield she rattled into my apartment, almost invisible under a huge copper washtub from Lenia's laundry yard. We tried not to think what might have been trampled clean in it. 'I gave it a good scrub ...' The tub was shorter than the Celtic shield, but the turbot could be crammed in diagonally if I turned up his great triangular head and his tail. Ma had also brought some cabbage nets to lift him out after he turned gelatinous.

Now I was ready.

I invited my mother, my best friend Petronius and Petro's wife Silvia, with a couple of my relatives. At least my family was so large that n.o.body could expect me to entertain the entire tribe at once. I chose Maia, to thank her for the betting-token feat, and Junia, to repay her for the bed. I did not invite my brothers-in-law, but they came anyway.