'I know that.' She smiled.

'If I don't agree, whom would you marry?'

'Burrus.' Claudia kept her face impassive.

Murranus burst out laughing. He leaned down and kissed her on the brow.

'In which case,' he whispered, 'it's time we talked about this business.'

Claudia looked away across the haunted heathland, the gorse and grass now shifting in the quickening breeze. The heat haze was thinning. She had got what she'd come for.

'It's time,' she murmured, 'it's time we went back.' She held her hand out warningly. 'Remember what I've said and what you have promised.'

Murranus seized her hand and they left; halfway down, Claudia paused and, standing on tiptoe, kissed him swiftly on the cheek. They continued along the dusty trackway on to the paved via which would lead round to the Flavian Gate. At first Claudia hid her pleasure and excitement by chattering to Murranus, but the day's heat was now dying and the traffic on the thoroughfare had increased, making conversation difficult. Time and again they had to stand aside to allow a cohort or maniple go swinging by under their hoarse-voiced officers. Farmers and peasants, their families bundled into the carts they'd left outside the city gates, were now returning to the countryside. Other wagons heaped with provisions were lumbering towards the city to take advantage of the imperial decree which allowed them in once night had fallen. Claudia watched them go and quoted from Juvenal's Satires, the poet's famous diatribe against the noise at night in Rome's busy streets. Murranus nodded in agreement.

Soon Claudia fell silent, doing something she loved: observing and studying what was happening around her. For a while she and Murranus walked with a group of tramping hawkers, each of whom had a tray of cheap jack goods slung around their necks ready to sell. Claudia bought a few hair pins, a comb for Poppaoe, a fine Egyptian knife for Narcissus and a set of bracelets depicting a Thracian facing charging boars for Oceanus, the one-eared former gladiator supposedly in charge of security at the She Asses.