'No, I paid the surety; Helena has been seeing to your rent-' My heart sank at this rush of support from the women in my life. I knew I would have to pay for it, even if not in cash. 'Never mind about the money.' My mother's tone indicated that with a son like me, she kept her life savings continually to hand. 'Come home with me for a good dinner -'

She must be planning to keep me firmly in her custody; I planned on being my footloose self.

'I need to see Helena, Ma -'

Normally it would be unwise for a bachelor who had just been redeemed by his little old mother to suggest sloping off after women. But my mother nodded. In the first place, Helena Justina was a senator's daughter so visiting such a highly placed lady counted as a privilege for the likes of me, not the usual depravity mothers rant about. Also, due partly to an accident on a staircase, Helena had just miscarried our first child. All our female relations still regarded me as a reckless wastrel, but for Helena's sake most would agree that at present it was my duty to visit her at every opportunity.

'Come with me!' I urged.

'Don't be foolish!' scoffed my mother. 'It's you Helena wants to see!'

That news failed to fill me with confidence.

Ma lived near the river, behind the Emporium. We crossed the Forum slowly (to emphasise how Ma was bowed down by the troubles I caused her), then she set me loose at my favourite bathhouse, which lay behind the Temple of Castor. There I sluiced away the stench of prison, changed into a spare tunic which I had left at the gymnasium to cover emergencies, and found a barber who managed to make me look more respectable (under the blood he caused to flow).