'Papa, what is a Minotaur?'

'A Minotaur?' I laughed at the abrupt change of subject. 'So far as I know, there was only ever one, the Minotaur. A terrible creature, the offspring of a woman and a bull; they say it had a bull's head and a man's body. It lived on a faraway island called Crete, where a wicked king kept it in a place called the labyrinth, a great maze.'

'Amaze?'

'Yes, with walls like this’ I wiped the tablet clean and set about drawing a maze. 'Every year the king gave the Minotaur young boys and girls to eat. They would make the children enter here, you see, and the Minotaur would be waiting for them here. This went on for a very long time, until a hero named Theseus entered the Labyrinth and slew the Minotaur’

'He killed it?'

'Yes’

'Are you sure?' 'Quite’

'Completely sure?'

•Yes’

'Good!'

'Why do you ask about the Minotaur?' I said, anticipating the answer.

'Because Meto has been saying that if I'm not good, you'll feed me to it. But you've just said that it's dead’ 'Ah, so it is’

'So Meto is wrong!' She rolled out of my lap. 'Oh, Papa, I almost forgot! Mama sent me to fetch you. It's important.'

‘Yes?' I raised an eyebrow, imagining some dispute with the unskilled slaves who were overseeing the kitchen in Congrio's absence.

‘Yes! There's a man who's come to see you, a man on horseback all the way from Rome, all covered with dust.'

It was not one man, but three. Two of them were slaves, or more precisely bodyguards, to judge from their size and the daggers at their belts. The slaves had not entered the house, but stood outside with their horses, drinking water from a jug. Their master awaited me just inside the house, in the little formal courtyard with its fishpond and flowers.