So the door flew open. Someone strode in. Caenis looked up. She scowled; the man frowned.

"Here's somebody—Sabinus!" he called back over his great shoulder as he loomed in the low doorway. The fat spattered dangerously beneath the girl's spoon.

"Juno and Minerva—" Caenis coughed, as she was forced back from her pan while the flame lapped sideways across the charcoal brazier in a palely fluttering sheet. "We'll all go up in smoke; will you shut that door!"

A second man, presumably Sabinus, came in. This one wore a senator's broad purple stripe on his toga's edge. "What have you found for us?"

The fat went wild again. "Oh for the gods' sake!" Caenis swore at them, forgetting their rank as she was nearly set alight.

"A bad-tempered slavey with a pan of sausages."

He had the sense at last to close the door.

* * *

They were lost. Caenis guessed it at once. Even the open spaces and temples among the homes of imperial family members above the Circus Maximus were deserted. The public offices on the Forum side of the Palatine were closed. Stupid to come today. With no guards to cross spears in their faces, these two had blundered down a wrong passageway and ended up bemused. Only people who wanted to indulge in sad habits alone were lurking in corners with their furtive pursuits. Only eccentrics and deviants, misers and malcontents; and Caenis.

She was one of the group of girls who worked with Diadumenus, copying correspondence for the lady Antonia. Today he had ordered her to remain quietly out of trouble; later she must go to the House of Livia, where their mistress lived, and ask whether any work was required. Caenis was junior but capable; besides, Diadumenus had really not anticipated that anything significant would occur. In most respects Caenis was, like everyone else, on vacation.