I shuddered. "I do have some standards. Does your British girl know Latin?"

"You are joking, tribune."

"No good, then. Look, I want a clean woman with experience of headstrong children, who would fit in with a young, upwardly moving family'

"You've got expensive taste!" His eye fell on my new gold equestrian ring. It told him my financial position exactly; his disgust was open. "We do a basic model with no trimmings. Lots of potential, but you have to train the hint yourself… You can win them over with kind treatment, you know. Ends up they would die for you."

"What and land me with the funeral costs?"

"Stuff you, then!"

So we all knew where we were.

I went home without a slave. It did not matter. The noble Julia Justa, Helena's mother, had the bright idea of giving us the daughter of Helena's own old nurse. Camilla Hyspale was thirty years old and newly given her liberty. Her freed woman status would overcome any squeamishness I felt about owning slaves (though I would have to do it; I was middle class now, and obliged to show my clout). There was a downside. I reckoned we had about six months before Hyspale wanted to exploit her new citizenship and marry. She would fall for some limp waste of space; she had him lined up already, I bet. Then I would feel responsible for him too…

Hyspale had not approved when Helena Justina abandoned her smart senatorial home to live with an informer. She came to us with great reluctance. It was made clear at our first interview (she interviewed us, of course) that Hyspale expected a room of her own in a respectable dwelling, the right to more time off than time on duty, use of the family carrying chair to protect her modesty on shopping trips and the occasional treat of a ticket for the theatre, or better still a pair of tickets so she could go with a friend. She would not accept being quizzed on the sex or identity of the friend.