*You had better come here, Drusus my boy.'

I thought, *What now?'

But as he closed the study door, he said gravely, *I have received news of your father. I think you should sit down.'

He tried to spare me, in his heavy-handed way. The details I got long after.

The emperor Constans, when my father had arrived at the imperial palace at Trier, had refused even to admit him to his presence. Eventually there was a trial. Even before it began, everyone knew the outcome.

*I never thought it would come to this,' Balbus kept saying, his voice wavering. *He died with dignity. I am sure he died with dignity.' In the end, releasing us both, he said, *Well, I expect you want to be alone.'

I nodded and walked away. But at the door I turned.

*Was it from the bishop that you heard this?' I asked.

*The bishop? Why no. It was my friend Ambrosius the cloth-merchant; he has an agent in Trier, and can be trusted.' He paused and frowned. *But why the bishop? What has he to do with this?'

*He said he could save my father.'

*He did?' Balbus's eyes widened. *Who told you this?'

*He told me himself.'

He began to speak, but thought better of it. Then he said, *Still, it is odd that you should mention him now.'

*Why is that, sir?'

He scratched his head and looked uneasy. *I daresay it is nothing, it is just that your aunt Lucretia tells me . . . But now is not the time.'

*Uncle, please. What is it?'

He gave a reluctant sigh. *It is just talk, and perhaps she is mistaken. But it seems the emperor has granted your father's property to the Church.'

My hand had been on the door-latch. I released it and turned to face him. There was a ringing in my head. Time turned slowly. Somewhere outside, I could hear Lucretia railing at the maid.

*What?' I whispered. *But how?'

He spread his hands. *I cannot say. I ought not to have mentioned it, not now, not today. It is said the bishop has friends at court . . . or perhaps, after all, your father decided in his willa"' He broke off and shook his head. *But no, not that. To tell the truth, I do not believe your father had much time for Bishop Pulcher.'

I did not weep. I felt hard and unmoved. I surveyed the wreck of my life, and some part of me blamed my father for it. But Sericus wept; it was the first time I had ever seen him do so.

Even this did not move me. I stood silently beside him, my hand on his trembling shoulder, remembering that my family had been everything to him. He had tutored my mother when she was a girl, and had come to my father's house when they married. Now both were dead, and he was too old to begin afresh.

Eventually he eased me from him and said, *Perhaps we shall find a way to return, even so.'

I shook my head. There was no use in hope. *No, Sericus,' I said, and told him how our property had been confiscated, and who had gained by it.

I had seen him angry before, or thought I had. His tears ceased. His red-rimmed eyes flashed. In a slow voice taut with fury he said, *Then your father has been robbed, and so have you. I do not know who lies behind this injustice: but look who gains, and you cannot be far from the mark.' He looked sharply into my face, then said, *Tell me, did you go to the bishop? Did you give him what he asked?'

I shook my head and said, *No.'

*Good then, for he would have said your father had willed it, and you were the proof. He has taken what is yours because you cannot fight to keep it. Remember that.'

I nodded and said, *I will remember.'

When, soon after, Lucretia summoned me to her private room and asked how, in the absence of an allowance from my father, she was expected to keep me, I answered that her friend the bishop had lately grown rich at the cost of one she knew, and perhaps I should go to him for alms.

For all her goading I had never spoken to her thus. She caught her breath, and clutching at the beads around her neck cried that I was a wicked, evil boy. But when she complained to Balbus he said, *Calm yourself, my dear. We shall easily find for him. He has been useful, and we cannot abandon him now.'

Sericus's cure was study, and he worked me at my lessons: grammar and arithmetic, the poets, prosody and history.

A grim determination had settled upon him. I should not let trivia fill my life; it was time, he said, that I worked on my mind, before I became stale and humdrum.

*Balbus sees no point in it,' I said.

*I do not care what Balbus sees. You are your father's son, not Balbus's. Do you know what a gentleman is, Drusus?'

*A rich man,' I said.

He told me sharply not to talk nonsense, saying, *That is what the vulgar may tell you, because they know no better.'

*What then?' I asked.

*A gentleman prefers what is true to what is easy. He is not content with small things. He knows what he is, and what he can be. Do you understand?'

*Not really, Sericus.'

*Then all the more reason for you to learn. It is a lifetime's work, and time is short.'

He obtained books from somewhere a" from a friend he had made in the teaching quarter, he said a" and in the pages of those scrolls and tomes he stretched and challenged and exercised my mind. We read of old battles, old generals, old virtues a" but never of what was happening across the water in Gaul: there were no books to tell me that a" for no one dared write one.

But what the historians would not tell, I heard from Sericus. The old emperor Constantine, having seized the empire by force, had divided it upon his deathbed among his three sons, like a barbarian chieftain carving up the spoils of war. To one son a" also named Constantine a" he had given the provinces of Britain, Gaul and Spain; to another a" Constans, my father's murderer a" he gave Italy and Illyricum; and to the third, Constantius, went Thrace and all the rich provinces of the East.

But, not content with what had been allotted to them, they had quarrelled. There had been civil war; and in the end only two sons remained, Constans in the West and Constantius in the East, ruling the empire between them.

*That,' said Sericus when he told me, *is where our troops went. They were summoned to go and fight in this needless war. And now, though the war is over, I doubt they will return.'

Constans had purged the Western court at Trier, exiling or beheading the most able of his conquered brother's generals and advisers.

As for my father, he had never cared for court intrigue. He had served under the old emperor Constantine, and had retained his position under his successor. When Constans had taken over in the West, he had offered to resign, or stay, as the new emperor required.

But even this had been taken as a sign of disloyalty. At Trier, the sycophants and schemers had whispered day and night into Constans's ear: yes, my father claimed he was loyal a" but loyal to whom? Gaul, having been ravaged by years of barbarian incursions, was weak. But the British province was prosperous, well garrisoned, and had a history of independent action. Who could say, they insinuated, with so many troops at their disposal, what the leading men of Britain might do? Was the emperor prepared to take such a risk?

Constans, when it was put to him in such a way, decided he was not. So he had summoned my father, who had been foremost among those leading men; and, one day in winter, when the clouds hung low over the bleak imperial residence at Trier, he had signed the order for his execution.

Balbus announced he had business in York. He would be gone for the winter, visiting his contacts and clients, and asked me to see to a few matters at the office while he was away.

It was a kindness of sorts. He had no power in the house, where Lucretia ruled; but the office was his own domain. I saw him off, walking with him to the northern gate, where his carriage was waiting. The journey would have been easier by sea; but like everyone else that year, he was avoiding the coastal route, in case of Saxons.

Next morning, Lucretia's attack began. I was in my room, dressing, when there was a tap on my door. It was Claritas the housemaid, to say the Mistress wished to see me, and was waiting in her private sitting-room.

I finished dressing a" without hurrying, I confess a" and went downstairs.

I found her pacing in front of her new turquoise couch a" a recent gift from Balbus, an expensive item imported from Italy, with fine worked ends inlaid with ivory, and dainty silver stag's feet at the base.

*Ah yes, Drusus,' she said, not meeting my eye. *I saw Bishop Pulcher yesterday. He wishes you to call on him.'

I looked at her in disbelief.

*Please tell him, madam, that I have more important business to attend to.'

She ceased her pacing and spun round. Her beads and bracelets jangled.

*Important business? Listen to you, boy! Do you set yourself above me now? You will do as I ask.'

*He wanted me to join his cult. I will not.'

Her face stiffened. I had spoken sharply back at her, without the fawning she took for proper deference. Even so, no one had told me the Christians disdain the word cult, which they reserve for followers of other gods than theirs a" of Mithras or Isis or the Great Mother.

*You may have gulled your uncle,' she snapped, *with your melancholy air, and your fine aristocratic manners, but I am not such a fool. The bishop is a friend of mine and a great help to our family; I will not have him treated with disrespect.'

*He asked me to make a choice. I have made it. That is all.'

*And who are you,' she said in a low, venomous tone, *to set yourself against the Church?'

It was a question I should never forget, and on which I spent many years brooding and formulating an answer. But then I merely said, *I am not his slave, madam, nor anyone else's.'

*We are all slaves before God,' she retorted. But the force had gone from her voice. I saw her long neck redden, and knew that in our war this battle was mine.

*I trust,' she continued, turning from my gaze and fingering the ivory rosette on the couch-end, *you will reflect on your position here, and reconsider. Now leave me. I will not be treated with contempt in my own home. You may be sure my husband will hear of this, when he returns.'

And so I left her.

She may have been a slave before her god, but she was mistress of the house, and made sure the servants felt it.

The cook, a burly Spaniard, was her constant enemy and the only one of the staff who dared speak back to her. She would have dismissed him, but she knew good cooks were hard to come by, and liked to impress her friends with the elaborate dinners he prepared. He knew it too.

*What is for dinner?' she would demand.

*Roast kid with figs, lady, and woodcock and goose eggs.'

*I don't want that.'

*Then you will have to make do with a dish of beans and dripping.'

*We will have the roast kid.'

And so, between them, there was an uneasy bristling truce.

The slave Patricus, who was so infirm he should have been laid up with a nursemaid of his own, she sent out on the smallest whim in any weather a" to take a note to a friend; to inspect a newly arrived shipment of linen at the forum and return with samples; or to run petty errands for Albinus. To her maids she was sharp and violent and bullying. At the least slip she would scream abuse, slap them, and send them sobbing to their bedchambers at the back of the house beside the woodstore.

I was spared the worst of this. I believe, behind her disdain and hatred, she actually feared me.

On appointed days each month, and on certain holy days, she attended gatherings with other Christians, and sometimes afterwards I would glimpse her mumbling invocations to herself, kneading between her fingers a string of little black beads. But I never saw a sign of the fearsome rituals the farm-lads had scared me with a" dismembered human victims, blood-drinking, or the kissing of dead men's bones; and, in time, I came to suppose these must after all be the inventions of ignorant minds, as Sericus had told me.

One day, when she had called me to her rooms on some matter, I noticed a thing that had not caught my eye before. Half-hidden in an alcove behind the silk hangings there was the faded fresco of a youth, his delicate hands outspread, his dark eyes looking calmly across the crowded opulence. Though it was striking, I wondered she had not had the image painted over, for it was old naive work, almost jarring to the eye after the fashionable clutter. There was something about this solemn figure with his sad eyes and knowing smile that stayed in my mind, and later I asked Claritas the housemaid about it.

My question seemed to amuse her and she even smiled. She knew at once what I was speaking of. He was, she said, the chief hero of their religion, and for my aunt to paint over him would be thought an impiety.

By such small things did I come to understand Lucretia.

There were certain virtues which she set much store by. One of these she called humility, a strange word to make a virtue out of, reminiscent of lying in the dirt, but which the Christians had taken for their own. This particular virtue was something, she told me, that I lacked; and, after I had refused to obey her and see the bishop, she took it upon herself to teach me. She gave instructions that I was to eat my meals alone, so that I could reflect upon my selfishness; and she ordered the cook to serve me slops.

Suffering is a great teacher, she informed me. But I did not go hungry. The cook tossed the slops to the dogs, and instead served me with choice portions of meat or spiced fish, intended for Lucretia's table. And the house-slaves, seeing we shared a common enemy, became my friends and allies.

So much for my instruction in humility. But chief among my aunt's virtues was what she called purity, or chastity. The purest act of all, it seemed, was to renounce marriage and live alone in some wild place, or in selfchosen exile shut up with other Christians. I heard this first from Albinus and, amazed, I asked, *But who will give the farmers sons, or breed soldiers for the army?'

*Salvation lies in the death of the body,' he primly answered.

I gave him a sidelong look, to show I knew he was lying. He was always trying to deceive me with such absurd stories. I knew him better by now than to let him make a fool of me.

Soon, however, I was to hear more about chastity.

I was woken one morning by a scream of rage coming from Lucretia's rooms. I bolted upright in my bed; the noise came again, ringing through the house, followed by Albinus's wheedling voice, strained and high-pitched.

They were quarrelling. I went down to find my friend the cook, who would be sure to know what had happened. But before I reached him, there was a hiss from behind a storeroom door.

*Hello Albinus,' I said smiling. *You are up early. Couldn't you sleep?'

*Shut up,' he snapped, pulling me by the elbow. *Come with me, I want to speak to you.'

He led me with many a backward look through the rear courtyard and out by the servants' door at the back, into the narrow alleyway behind. Then he turned to face me.

*What have you told her?' he demanded.

I said I did not know what he was talking about.

He eyed my face suspiciously, then cried, *So it was that gossiping bitch Volumnia, after all. I knew it!'

I had seen Volumnia often at the house; she was one of Lucretia's most frequent visitors, a bony middle-aged woman who wore wigs of straw-coloured hair shorn from German slave-women. She and Lucretia talked together of the Church, when they were not reviewing in hushed, glowing-eyed whispers the wrongdoings of their friends.

*What has she done?' I asked. But he just ignored me, and stood frowning, with his finger in his mouth, biting his nail.

A fine drizzle had started to fall and I did not have my cloak. It was cold, and I was in no mood for his riddles. I turned to go inside.

*All right, I'll tell you,' he cried.

So I turned back, cocked my head, and stood leaning against the brick wall with my arms folded. By the time I had heard him out the drizzle had turned to rain and my tunic was wet through. But it was worth it, for what I heard.