"They have a Greek steward who can play the tibia."

"The double flute! We could get one. We wouldn't need a new nursemaid if we had him to put the babies off to sleep with his tootling."

"This one certainly soothed you into nodding off last night!" scoffed Helena.

"He's a rotten player. Anyway, I confess I had a drop too much to drink with Petro before dinner. I was trying to cheer him up." "You failed then, Marcus."

"Lucius Petronius is not a happy boy."

"Well he should be! He's going to the bad, isn't he? He chose to do it," Helena said crisply. "He damn well should enjoy it."

"Going bad was good fun when I tried it. I don't know why he's so incompetent…"

"Hasn't found the right ropedancer yet."

Helena was referring to an old girlfriend of mine. She had never even met the woman, but she never let me forget that she knew of my colorful past.

To retaliate, I closed my eyes with a smile of supposed blissful reminiscence. A mistake, of course. My thoughts really did stray in the wrong direction. Helena knew that. She whacked me with a cushion, right at the spot where my stomach was digesting its unsatisfactory British lunch.

Petronius had in fact now ceased to be a social embarrassment. He had completely disappeared. He had left me a rudely worded note to say he was going off alone. He did not say he was leaving the province, nor did he give me any clue where to contact him. I checked discreetly with the procurator's staff: Petro had been seen leaving the governor's residence, wearing what my prissy slave informant described as a very dirty tunic. (So at least he was not off screwing some carrot-haired woman he had left behind to marinade ten years ago.) I found all his usual clothes, still in his pack, under the bed in the guestroom he had occupied. When Petro went to the bad, he threw himself into it in sordid style.

I tried not to feel envious.

In Rome, I would have assumed he was on vigiles surveillance and thought nothing of it. Here, a continent away from his official patch, that explanation could not apply. For him to simply vanish without discussion troubled me; I wondered if he was even more unhappy than I had noticed.