He found the bakery eventually, only because, once he realised that he was being ignored, his enquiries ceased to be polite. The people of the city seemed more helpful if you towered over them with a threatening look, and eased your sword in your belt if they showed signs of trying to hurry by. He was directed to the street, but it was the smell that took him to the premises he sought, a whiff of fresh baking that somehow managed to overbear the odour of filth and packed humanity. The shop, with a small crowd outside, was a dark cavern at the bottom of a towering tenement in a street called the Via Tiburtina.

Aquila looked up at the narrow band of light between the two buildings on either side of the street, which seemed to be leaning towards each other the higher they went. Drying clothes hung from every balcony, women screeched at each other across the divide, their voices raised so they could be heard above the din from below, while naked children played in the doorways of walls covered in drawings and messages, some rude, others complaints. Beggars, blind or with missing limbs, sat against those walls, their knees raised to avoid the open sewer that ran down the middle of the roadway.

He called over the heads of those waiting to be served. ‘Is this the bakery of Demetrius Terentius?’

There were two women behind a table, one of middle years, bent, with a face ravaged by pain, the other much younger, both coated in flour, with hair stuck to their faces by perspiration. The bent woman, who seemed to be toothless, ignored him; it was the younger one who answered. The older woman spoke sharply and the young girl went back to serving her customers.