‘We are in the East,’ Helena soothed me. ‘They say the pace of life is different.’

‘Always a good excuse for foreigners’ ghastly incompetence.’

‘Don’t be bitter.’ Helena rolled into my arms and snuggled, becoming once more comfortable and comatose.

I had a better idea than sleeping. ‘We are in the East.’ I murmured. ‘The beds are soft, the climate balmy; the women are sinuous, the men obsessed with lust -’

‘And don’t tell me, Marcus Didius - you want to put a new entry on your list of “cities where I have made love”?’

‘Lady, you always read my mind.’

‘Easy enough,’ suggested Helena cruelly. ‘It never changes.’

This was the life. We were in the East. We had no pressing business and breakfast would go on being served all morning.

I knew the arrangements for breakfast because Fulvius had told me. As a man with a past he never talked about, who was engaged in trades he kept mysterious, my maternal uncle tended to be terse (unlike the rest of our family), so he imparted vital information with unsparing clarity. His house rules were few and civilised: ‘Do what you like but don’t attract attention from the military. Turn up for dinner on time. No dogs on the reading couches. Children under seven to be in bed before dinner starts. All fornication to be conducted in silence.’ Well, that was a challenge. Helena and I were enthusiastic lovers; I was eager to see if it was feasible.

We had left my dog in Rome but had two children under seven - Julia, approaching five, and Favonia, two. I had promised they would be exemplary house guests and since they were fast asleep when we arrived, nobody yet knew otherwise. With us too was Albia my foster-daughter, who was probably about seventeen, so sometimes she attended formal meals like a very shy grown-up or sometimes she stormed off to her room with a murderous scowl, taking all the sweetmeats in the house. We had found her in Britain. She would be a poppet one day. So we told ourselves.