Are you staying or what?" demanded my sister. She and I came from a large, loud, quarrelsome family whose members spent much effort avoiding each other.

No, we've taken a holiday apartment, just the other side of the Decumanus," I reassured her. Maia did not want us cluttering up her already busy household, but she went into a huff. Suit yourselves!" Petronius came back from stabling Helena's luggage cart. It looks as if you've come for the rest of the season by the amount you have brought!" he said.

Oh it's holiday reading." Helena smiled calmly. I was rather behind with the Daily Gazette, so my father has lent me his old copies."

Three sacks of scrolls?" Petro asked her, in disbelief. Clearly he had poked through Helena's luggage without shame. Everyone knew that the strange girl I had chosen would rather have her nose in literature than tend to her two little daughters or walk to the corner market for a mullet and some gossip like a normal Aventine wife. Helena Justina was more likely to neglect me because she was deep in a new Greek play than because she was having a fling with another man. She did tend our daughters in her own fashion; Julia, at three, was already being taught her alphabet. Fortunately I liked eccentric women and was not afraid of forward children. Or so I thought so far. Helena fixed her gaze on me. The news all looks rather dull at the moment. The imperial family are at their country estates for the summer, and even Infamia has taken a holiday." Infamia was the pseudonym of whoever compiled the salacious scandal about senators" wives having affairs with jockeys. I happened to know that Infamia was shifty and unreliable, and if he really had taken a holiday, he had forgotten to clear the dates with his employers.

If there's no scandal," Maia announced crisply, then there's absolutely no point in reading the Gazette." Helena smiled. She hated me being devious and was trying to force me to say what I knew. Infamia must have a hotspot villa somewhere. Think of all his payoffs from people who don't want their secrets told. What do you think, Marcus?"