The loss of my sister, even the one I had had least time for, brought my brother's absence to the surface again too.

'What was all that with the legionary, Ma? Plenty of people knew Festus, but not many of them turn up on the doorstep nowadays.'

'I can't be rude to your brother's friends.' No need, when she had me to do it for her. 'Maybe you shouldn't have evicted him like that, Marcus.'

My turning out Censorinus was what she had plainly intended from the moment I arrived; yet I was getting blamed for it. After knowing my mother for thirty years the contradiction was predictable. 'Why didn't you give him the twiggy end of a besom yourself?'

'I'm afraid he'll bear a grudge against you,' murmured Ma.

'I can handle that.' The silence carried ominous overtones. 'Is there a particular reason why he might?' My mother remained mute. 'There is!'

'It's nothing.' So it was serious.

'You'd better tell me.'

'Oh: there seems to be some trouble over something Festus is supposed to have done.'

All my life I had been hearing those fatal words. 'Oh here we go again. Stop being coy, Ma. I know Festus, I can recognise one of his disasters from a hippodrome's length away.'

'You're tired, son. I'll talk to you in the morning.'

I was so weary my head was still singing the rhythms of travelling, but with some doom-laden fraternal mystery hanging in the air there was little hope of sleep until I discovered what I had come home to-and probably no sleep then.

'Oh cobnuts, I'm tired all right. I'm tired of people dodging the issue. Talk to me now, Mother!'

IV

Festus was three years in the tomb. The writs had mainly dried up, but promissory notes from debtors and hopeful letters from abandoned women still trickled back to Rome from time to time. And now we had a military interest; that might prove harder to deflect.