It seemed tactful to find a joke: “Up to my bootstraps in putrid gooseshit.”

He accepted it. “Nice, on their expensive marble floors.” I noticed his eyes narrow slightly. He had seen something. Without appearing to break off our casual banter, he told me, “Your ma has just turned the corner from Tailors’ Lane.”

“Thanks!” I murmured. “This could be a moment to nip off and officiate over some sacred beaks-”

“No need,” returned Petronius, in a changed tone, which carried real admiration. “Looks as if your important new role has just come to you.”

I turned to follow his gaze. At the foot of the steps that led wonkily up to my apartment stood a smart litter. I recognized its white-and-purple-striped curtains, and the distinctive Medusa head boss on the front: the same one that brought little Gaia yesterday.

Descending from it was a man in ridiculous clothing, whose snooty attendants and wincing demeanor filled me with horror. He wore a shaggy double-sided cloak and on his head a birchwood prong set in a wisp of wool; this contraption was held on by a round hat with earflaps, tied under his chin with two strings, rather like an item that my baby daughter used to pull off and throw on the floor. The cloak was supposed to be the garb of a hero, but the pointy-headed visitor belonged to a caste I had always reviled. In my new position, I would be forced to treat him with fake politeness. He was a flamen, one of the hidebound priests of the ancient Latin cults.

Two days in the job, and the bastards had already found out where I lived. I had known landlords’ enforcers who gave a man more grace.

V

AFTER A FEW words with the basket weaver on the ground floor, the flamen’s attendants preceded him up the decaying steps towards my apartment. Outside on the tiny landing where Gaia had broached me yesterday, Nux was now gnawing a large raw knucklebone. She was a small dog, but the way she growled stopped the cavalcade dead.