I wondered what the flamen had expected. What he got was the girl I had left at home a few minutes before I met Petronius: a fairly domesticated treasure-with a volatile, rebellious streak. She had kissed me good-bye with a sensual hug and beguiling lips. Only her faraway eyes had revealed to a man who knew her well that she would like to see the back of me; she was dying to read some scrolls Pa had brought for her last night, lifted from an auction in which he was involved. By now she would have delved around in the scrollbox and been happily unrolling the first discovery. She would be furious when the priest interrupted.

She would see he was a flamen. The cap and prong were unmistakable. Senators’ daughters know how to behave. But informers’ wives say what they think.

“I want a man named Falco.”

“You are in his house. Unfortunately, he is not here.” Under her naturally pleasant approach, I could tell she had immediately taken against him.

Helena’s accent was more refined than the flamen’s. He spoke with unattractive vowels, which were pretending to be better than they were. “I shall wait.”

“He may be a long time. He has gone to see his mother.” Despite the fact that I had dodged Ma in Fountain Court, telling her about Famia was indeed supposed to have been my errand.

If he had heard I was an informer, the flamen probably thought Helena was a hangover from some past adventure of mine. True. He would have assumed he was trying to contact a hard man in a squalid location whose female accomplice would own all the wrinkled charm of an old shoestrap. A bad mistake.

He would be realizing now that Helena Justina was younger, fiercer, and more refined than he had expected.