'You've got a square face today,' she teased, using her fingers to demonstrate. 'Your eyes don't look so large and your mouth isn't so fierce, your lips-'

'You enjoyed kissing me.' He stretched forward.

'I always do! Ah no!' Claudia playfully pushed Murranus back against the tree. He stuck his tongue out at her, and she felt her throat constrict and the tears well. For a moment, for the briefest of moments, the playful gesture had reminded her of Felix, her brother, but that was all in the past. Felix was dead and life had gone surging on. The man who had murdered him then raped her, the ghoul who had haunted her dreams with his hard voice, that purple chalice tattooed on his wrist, had paid for his crime. Murranus had seen to that, taking the miscreant's life with his sword in the arena before a roaring crowd. Justice done, vengeance savoured. In the purple-draped imperial box above the arena, Constantinc, Helena and all the court had watched whilst the crowd bayed like a pack of savage dogs over that man, her enemy, dying on the sand below.

Claudia glanced away, turning her head as if to catch the breeze. Murranus studied her closely from under heavy-lidded eyes: her black hair, that sweet face, those sharp eyes. Was her skin olive or light ivory? He could never tell, but that was Claudia, she could change so quickly. She'd been an actress, part of a troupe, a very good one, wandering the roads of Italy. Eventually she'd returned to Rome to live with that scoundrel of an uncle Polybius, his pretty plump wife Poppaoe and all the lords and madams of Rome's underworld who made the She Asses tavern near the Flavian Gate their home, the centre of their lives. In a sense it was Murranus' home too.

He picked up the wine flask-Ind sipped the tasty juice. Claudia had brought him to this desolate spot, far away from the tumult of the tavern, so they could talk before the autumn games began.