Lindsey Davis - Nemesis

Luckily for her, Anacrites appeared. She wondered if he had actually been watching her progress. He sent Albia back to the main part of the house. Being her, she disobeyed and dawdled. She heard Anacrites quarrel with the man. He shouted that now Nobilis had been seen by Albia, he had to leave; the only safe course was to go home to Antium. Anacrites said he would deal with the girl.

Albia did not wait to see what that meant. She ordered a little slave boy to tell his master she would seek sanctuary in the House of the Vestal Virgins – - the one place in Rome, she said, that not even the Chief Spy could invade. Then, although the spy's house was always heavily secured, our streetwise Albia found a way out.

Now she had to decide where to hide for safety. Coming home that night was out of the question; Anacrites would follow her. Helena did not tell me in the letter where Albia was, although she said she knew. Her mother, friend of a retired Vestal, had obtained curious inside information. The spy had turned up at the Vestals' House in the Forum, mob-handed with Praetorian Guards. The idiot tried to enter this sacred place that was barred to men. He outraged the Vestals, those revered women whose sanctum had been inviolable since the foundation of Rome six centuries ago (and just when, chortled Helena, they had settled down for the night with hot mulsum and dunking biscuits). When they caustically denied any knowledge of Albia, Anacrites refused to believe them. It was horrible to contemplate how severely the Vestals slapped him down in return. Only he would have taken on a group of vicious professional virgins who had six hundred years of training in how to reduce men to shreds. He retreated ignominiously.

All this had taken place before Helena and I realised Albia was missing. Next day – very soon after I left for Latium – Anacrites turned up at our house, alone, pretending to be concerned about her. Of course she was not there either. Helena showed him the door.

He tried my mother's house. This was another bad mistake and as a result he had now lost her previously unshakable goodwill. Ma was dozing in her chair – - anyone of sense would have tiptoed out again. He woke her. He was so het up, Ma could see he intended Albia no good. Despite her devotion to this worm whose life she had saved, Ma rallied; she might have been lukewarm about having Albia in the family, but in a crisis Ma always defended her grandchildren. Furious, she ordered Anacrites to leave, threatening to upend an onion casserole over his sleek head. Even he had to see their cosy relationship had ended.

Anacrites next convinced himself Albia must have run to Helena's father, to ask the senator to intercede with the Emperor. This was the spy's worst mistake. She was not there – never had been – but my winsome father-in-law became incensed when Anacrites forced a house search on him. Camillus Verus called for his litter and immediately had himself carried off to complain to Vespasian.

Not content with jumping into this vat of steaming dung, Anacrites stormed next door to the house where Aelianus now lived with his wife and the professor. Minas of Karystos was ecstatic at the outrage. Wielding a wineflask in one hand and a bread roll in the other, he rushed from a late breakfast to pronounce loudly on the rights of a citizen to live without interference. Unbeknown to us previously, he was a populist democrat, fiery on the subject. Even with omelette in his curly beard, he was good. He bounced outside into the street, seeing his big chance to advertise his hireable expertise to all the well-heeled inhabitants of that fine patrician quarter. Before a rapidly expanding crowd, Minas had already quoted Solon, Pericles, Thrasybulus the defeater of the Thirty Tyrants, Aristotle of course, and several extremely obscure Greek jurists, when aediles turned up to investigate the street disturbance. The aediles did nothing; they were so impressed by his luminary erudition and the interesting points he was making, they brought him half a barrel to stand on.

Anacrites did not find Albia. Officially, her whereabouts remained unknown.

As I read on in weary amazement, Lentullus crept up to me with his usual confiding manner. He burped shyly. 'Falco, I know where your girlie may have gone -'

I raised a finger. 'Stop! Don't say it! Don't even think about it, Lentullus, in case Anacrites can read your brain.' In fact not even the devious spy could untangle that ball of wool, but Lentullus sat down obediently by me on the bench, full of joy that we were sharing this Big Secret.

While he carefully kept quiet, I read the rest of Helena's letter. That was personal. You don't need to know.

Afterwards, I folded up the document and tucked it inside my tunic. We all sat a while longer, listening to the whispers of the dark ocean, each contemplating death and life, love and loathing, the long years of tragedy that had brought us here, and the hope that at last we were ending it.

A faint breeze had got up and morning was not far away, when we said our goodnights and for a few short hours all sought our beds.

A lot of things had happened in the past few days. I told Silvius what we could now deduce about Nobilis and his movements. Anacrites had ordered him to leave Rome; Nobilis must have obeyed, much at the same time as Justinus and I left. We could easily have encountered him on the road down here.

His killing of Demetria confirmed his arrival. He must have been doing that while we were in the marshes arresting Virtus. We knew Nobilis must have carried out the attack on his ex-wife alone, because both Pius and Probus had been in custody. With troops swarming everywhere, he was probably pinned down in the Antium area. We set up a search.

If he went into the Pontine Marshes, we had no hope. The wild bogs stretched for nearly thirty miles between Antium and Tarracina, and between ten and fifteen miles across. This great rectangle of terrain was impossible to monitor. Nobilis knew the marsh intimately, had roamed there since childhood, had lived there all his adult life. He could elude us forever.

Catching Nobilis quickly was now imperative. We had to hope that activity during the forest search had prevented him slipping away. The troop movements could have trapped him close to Antium itself, or forced him west. We searched the town – no luck. A polite house-to-house was set up among the handsome coastal villas. Of course we encountered resistance from their wealthy owners, who would rather put up with a depraved killer in their midst than let the military check their property. Each huge spread possessed innumerable outbuildings, any of which could be a hiding-place. Justinus and I spent half a day attempting to mediate with the rich and secluded; Silvius had reckoned us respectable (a senator's son and a man with his own auction house) so he assigned us the role of winning over the landed classes. For the most part, they saw it differently, though only one set the dogs on us.

We held a midday conference. Silvius had convinced himself that once Nobilis knew we had found the forest bodies, he would not just hunker down but would try to leave the area. Available roads were either north along the coast, taking the Via Severiana towards Ardea, Lavinium, and ultimately Ostia, or else the main road that skirted the northern edge of the marshes. That would take him over to the Via Appia, on the way to Rome. In Rome, could he still call on Anacrites for protection? Even if not, Nobilis could easily vanish into the city alleys as so many criminals had done. Ostia, if that was his choice, would give him access to ships bound for anywhere.

We pulled everyone off the property searches. It turned out to be the right choice. While we were still sitting around our lunch packs, coordinating our next moves, Lentullus edged up to Justinus and me. He asked if we wanted to know something funny about an ox cart that had just passed. The driver had seemed like any of the locals who pottered around. 'He looked all right – for a farmer, if that's what he is,' said Lentullus. Lentullus had come from a farm originally. 'And guess what – he had an ox that was just like Nero!'