"Let me at least reimburse you for the expense," Orbilio said sleepily.

"No need," she replied.

Rugs? Gold medallions? Balm of Gilead? Ivory chairs? Cheap at half the price, she reflected, as the first bees began to buzz round the lavender.

The State understood grief. Accommodated the bereaved. Made allowances.

Thanks to one bright orange veil, a noisy procession and an ostentatious plighting of her troth, Claudia Seferius had two more fabulous years of freedom stretching ahead of her.

"Breakfast?" she said.

Damnum Fatale by Philip Boast The seventy years since the last story have seen the decline in the Roman imperial family through Tiberius and Caligula to Claudius and now Nero. It was during Nero's mad reign that the Christians began to make their presence known in Rome and that is the background for the following story, which has to be the ultimate Whodunnit. Philip Boast is known for his historical epics, especially those with a Biblical background, including Sion (1999) the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and City (1994), the story of a former Druid prince, baptised by Jesus, who returns to Britain with a terrible treasure.

Rome, AD 63 "Bar the door closed," he ordered. "Let them burn."

The flames kindled by the Guard erupted through the roof of the house, illuminating the tall apartment blocks standing around it against the night sky, setting the lower washing lines strung between them alight. Tunics left to dry overnight blazed like fiery ghosts, evil portents, as the wind gusted. He smiled while the screaming of the men and women trapped inside grew louder, more painful. Let their god save them now.

"Rebels." He inhaled smoke. "It's good to smell them burn."

But fire, as always, struck fear into the hearts of Romans, citizens or not, rich and poor alike. The horns blew, lamps were lit, children scampered for loot in the confusion and dogs yapped, but although it was an hour until dawn the municipal fire team turned out with buckets, organizing a chain from the fountain, dousing the flames before they took hold.

He watched without emotion, the winter gale tugging his cloak. It suited his purpose just as well. There would be survivors. The rebels would have hidden down in the cellar. They always did. Or even deeper, mired to their guts in the shitpit, praying their heads off.

"Sergeant," he ordered. "Fish me out a live one."

The Guard drew their swords and kicked down the door, setting the screaming off again. A couple of women were dragged out by their hair. The elder of the vicious creatures, Pedilla, recognized him and called out, "I forgive you. You do not know what you are doing."

"You're wrong, traitor." He gave her a broad grin from his scarred, seamed face. "I do know."

His grin widened, showing his blunt brown broken teeth, as a rebel was dragged to him between two soldiers. An intellectual; and not poor either, by his clothes. "If you kill me," the man quavered, stinking with dung, "I shall live forever."

"Kill you? It would be a waste to kill you today." Matrusus drew his sword. The blade glinted in the dawn light, razor-sharp. "I have something much better in mind."

He pressed the tip to the man's forehead.

"My name is Matrusus," he said. "You will remember me."

"Master," called her deep throaty voice from his bedroom, "How much longer must I warm your bed? I need sleep!"

"Go to your quarters, Omba," Quistus called absently, working at his desk. He wore a plain cream tunic, and was that age which is anywhere between thirty-five and fifty-five. Standing he would be tall for a Roman; sitting made him look a little awkward, his legs and arms too long. "I'm stopping," he lied. "You are released for this evening."

After a while she called, "It's morning. Your bath's cold too. Stop working for once, Septimus Severus Quistus!" "Mmm," he muttered, and forgot her.

It was a windy night outside the Villa Marcia. The shutters rattled, setting the candles flickering as he bent over the books. Fascinating. A new invention, far easier to read than scrolls. A whole new class of book-writers had sprung up almost overnight, seizing the new medium to air crazy personal views about - anything. Anything at all. Saving the world, eternal life, recipes for gustatio appetisers ("fry 5 dormice in Apicius's finest olive oil, sprinkle with honey and poppy seeds"), face creams ("take ten female dog roses"), revolting medical lotions ("insert finger slowly"), crackpot religious opinions, absurd political prejudices, amateur philosophy. The list was long. People who rarely bothered to read scrolls read these books avidly. That made them dangerous.

"Master!"

"Coming!" he called, realizing how low the candles had burned.

Books. Easy to hand round, quick to slip under clothes, small enough to be taken out and read aloud to men of the low sort, women, even slaves. Fashionable enough to impress the well-off, often written in the form of personal letters to increase the reader's sense of self-importance, of being party to a privileged communication. Letter to the Tarsans. Letter to the Jebusites. Knowledge, ideas, information. There was going to be trouble.

He jerked guiltily, his mind turning to more immediate trouble as he heard the bath-furnace roar, re-heating. Pots were clattered bad-temperedly. Omba was not the sort of slave to tolerate rebellion from her master. Quistus, Senator, always took a bath before bed, therefore he always must. Quickly he pushed the books in the drawer, turned the key, and hurried from his office to the marble bathroom. A pang struck him. This echoing room with its aquatic murals had comfortably contained his active, noisy young family of ten; one by one their happy calls and cries faded into his memory and there was only him. And, now, Omba.

"Master," the slave tutted massively, her gold ringlets and earrings and bracelets tinkling, flashing by lamplight as she waddled forwards. "You'll catch your death of cold when you get out of this water, don't you know it's January?" She took his sandals. "Anyway, bathing's an obscene idea at this time of night." Bathing was an obscene idea to Omba at any time of day or night; she avoided water like the plague, rubbed her skin with fruit oil, and gleamed like a Walrus of living jet. (Quistus had seen a fabled Walrus with his own eyes in the land of the Norvaaks, and been obliged to run from it for his life.) He said mildly, "The sight of naked men isn't obscene to your people. You encouraged them, I recall." He tested the hypocaust-heated pool with his toe, then hopped. "Ouch!"

"Master, you know we loved the sight of our naked warriors, male or female. But our lovely men weren't skinny and scrawny and fishbelly-white like you. Your nose is too big and your" - she gestured - "is too small." Omba studied her master critically. "You'd never make an Oromos. I'd be ashamed to have you in my tribe, Senator. We'd feed you up and make you a lusty fighter and seducer and father of fat babies." She shrugged: "Not a mere brain-thinker, a phisoloph . . ." she gave up on the word. "Whatever you call it."

"Logician." He relaxed sleepily. "Pupil of Epictetus. Himself."

"Thinking's an excuse for doing nothing. Boredom's exhausted you. You've retired from everything important, you don't even talk to your friends since your wife and . . ." Omba bit her tongue. "Anyway, bathing makes you unhealthy. You don't know where that's water's been."

"Piped very expensively from outside the city."

"Tastes of lead, Senator."

Quistus gazed up through the steam at the dark, gleaming mountain of his gold-encrusted slave. Omba had never forgiven him for his abrupt resignation from the Senate; she believed in rank, the higher the better. Three years ago, in Africa, he'd saved Princess Omba from a particularly nastily thought-out execution by the new queen in Kefa's palace, finding the enormously naked princess staked out on an anthill with her mouth held open by thorns, her tongue smeared with honey, and the ants getting busy. Princess Omba, eyes rolling, groaning, made her only possible choice, better to be a live slave than a dead princess; but after nineteen days alone in the desert with her, he'd appreciated why her tongue was the first part of Omba her enemies wanted silenced. Not once did she stop talking - not in the desert, not in Alexandria, not aboard ship, not during the shipwreck, not on the island, not in Rome, not once since he'd owned her and her Latin became horribly fluent had she stopped talking (except the time the Aryans tossed them both in the Black Sea with stones tied to their feet). It shouldn't be this way between master and slave. By Roman law everything that was hers was his: her gold, even her tongue, was his property - he had every right to steal one and cut off the other. It was tempting. But.

But Omba was Omba. Black as starless Nubian night, no shorter than he yet almost as wide as she was tall, she draped herself in ornaments of solid gold instead of clothes, except the loincloth of gold beads and fancy gold tassels swinging from her breasts. To have seized her gold and forbidden her ceaseless chatter would have killed her. He wouldn't harm a hair of Omba's head, had she got hair.

Quistus's life had been a bleak and terrible emptiness - a desert - since his wife was murdered and his son was (not dead, not dead!) was gone. Gone.

Then in the desert, the real desert, he'd found Omba. This dark, shining, exotic, magnificent, cruel, expansive creature with her endless booming gossip irritated him unbearably, yet filled his emptiness - or was, at least, the single light shining in the darkness of his despair.

Omba was nothing like Marcia. Noreminders, no echoes, no pain - He sat up, spraying water. "What?"

"You slept. You weren't listening to me. Someone at the door."

He rubbed his face. "At this hour? Who?"

"A girl."

He yawned. Omba would have given the prostitute a penny, a lecture, and sent her away. Instead she said: "She's waiting in the entrance hall. Something's wrong."

He scrambled to his feet, grabbed the towel. "You let a woman in my house?"

"You can't hide forever in books and scrolls. She's beautiful and she's crying. I was sorry for her. There's more."

She held out his toga, knowing when to say nothing for just one moment.

"What?" he said testily, adjusting the folds.

"When you see her, it'll tear your heart out."

He stopped. "My heart is already torn, as you know."

"I don't reckon," Omba said. "You look dog-tired, you've been up all night brain-thinking, wasting your time. Well, think this. Do some good. I'll take her to your office and bring you both some Kefa while you talk. It's just what you need, Master."

He sat, covering his shock at her appearance with an effort, as the young lady removed her cloak. Even for a Stoic forced since his schooldays to conceal his feelings, it was a big effort. He said quickly, "Please, sit down," before she fell down.

The stool would require cleaning. This room would require fumigation.

"Septimus Severus Quistus?" She half-collapsed, half-sat, dripping. Her eyes were blue, more than enough to make most dark-eyed Romans stare. A foreigner. Yet she struggled to bear herself with dignity, and her Latin was good. Perhaps even a Roman citizen, then, but not from Rome. "My name is Volusia Faustina. My mother is Pedilla Exuperata, and my father is Faustinus."

Provincial names: probably British. Her accent reminded him of his time in Britannia with Emperor Claudius, a river-crossing called Londinium. Hardly more than a wooden bridge and some army tents back then, but such places grew fast.

Gods, she stank.

He opened the window but papers blew off the desk. He closed the window and took breath through his mouth. "What brings you to my house in this desperate condition, Volusia Faustina?"

Like many women, she wore several layers of tunics one over the other, and a scarf over her head - very British. Now she put back the scarf. Volusia was indeed beautiful, once you got used to those eyes. But her face was splashed with blood and dung, her clothes saturated with slime. She looked like she'd spent the night in an abattoir.

She said: "I have come because you're the one man in Rome who is not afraid."

He said nothing for a while. This could be a very dangerous conversation. The Emperor Nero was subtle and devious and believed himself all-powerful; his mother had murdered his adopted father the Emperor Claudius, and Nero himself had murdered Claudius's young son, and then his own mother, then his wife. No doubt he had not stopped there. Any man in Rome with sense was afraid. "Am I unafraid?" he said. "Perhaps you know more than I do."

But she responded fiercely. "Everyone knows you are a lost man. You do not fear the Beast because you have nothing more to lose. You know what they call this house in the slums, in the Subura, the Cloaca? The ivory tower. Even the children know the story. Your life ended when your family was murdered. No one knows who did it. The Emperor's Guard. A street gang. Unknown. A terrible mystery. You live here alone, caring for nothing. A dead man breathing."

He covered his mouth, then said, "Go on."

"You alone can help me, Septimus Severus Quistus. You alone can understand, you alone will help. My family is . . . I escaped. I make no apology for running to you like this. Just by letting me into your house, you have implicated yourself. But I need you to see me as I am. This is my father's blood." She swayed, exhausted.

She had called the emperor the Beast. She was undoubtedly a rebel. Their lives were forfeit if they were overheard.

Omba came in with a tray. "Oh, you poor thing," she gushed, fussing over Volusia. "Here, this will perk you up."

She waved Quistus away, spoke low-voiced. "You can see what a state she's in. Whatever it's about, it's serious."

"I know. I also know that I should throw her out before I hear another word. It's your life too, Omba."

"At least let her wash. I'll find her something clean to wear."

"Let him see me as I am." Volusia would not be moved. "I'm not ashamed." Those fierce blue eyes, unblinking. "I won't change these clothes or wash until he's heard what I have to say."

Quistus sat again. "You should know I am no longer a politician in Nero's Senate. I have no powers or influence. I cannot offer you political help -"

"I do not care what you are not!" she burst out. "Only what you are."

"He still knows all the right people, don't worry." Omba pushed one of the small fatty balls of Kefa, or coffee, into the girl's hand. "Eat, it's my own recipe. Now, why don't you tell him what's on your mind?"

Volusia struggled to collect her thoughts. "I don't know where to begin -" She nibbled the coffee-ball and made a face, then continued in a stronger voice. "You see, I was born in Britannia, in Londinium. My father grew rich as a merchant trading goods with Hibernia where, as you know, there is much trade with Egypt. On his voyages my father became interested in the Egyptian religion, in fact fascinated. Baptized. My brother is an Hibernian priest, my elder sister has modelled her life on the Virgin."

Quistus nibbled his coffee. "The Egyptians worshipped many gods of their own once, but now they prefer obedience to the gods of Rome, and the Emperor who is a god, of course."

Volusia shook her head. "Some time ago the Egyptian traders took to the Jewish God, yet kept their ancient rituals of spring-birth and winter-death of Amen, their own most powerful god. Now the two religions have come together, fused. The Egyptians believe that the Jewish God has had a Son. They know."

"The Jews of Judea believe in one god, called God. Not two."

"The traders know the Son was born to a virgin of the Jerusalem Temple. About sixty years ago. He was educated in Egypt, just as Isaiah prophesied. They know He walked among us on this earth, in the flesh. It's proven - His sayings have been written down and are the Truth which guides us." She reached under her clothes, pulled out a slim book. "This is the gospel truth." She held it out.

Dangerous even to touch it.

Quistus reached out and took the book in his hand.

He leafed a few pages. Latin, but not in the difficult joined-up Roman style; this writing was presented in short verses for easy reading aloud, to a small circle or congregation perhaps. He chose a verse at random. " 'Blessed are you that you did not waver at the sight of me.' "

"From the Gospel of Mary Magdalene." Volusia leaned forwards, her eyes alight with devotion. "One day Paul hopes to assemble these many scriptures into one great Bible."

"Paul?"

"Our leader, a Roman citizen. So does Peter, too, plan a book of books, a Bible - but they argue about which gospel is truest."

He laid the book carefully on his desk. "The author of these sayings is the Son of God? What's his name?"

"The Jerusalem priests mocked Him as Yehoshua ben-Mary. But some Greeks, a few, reverence His name as Iesous Christos. In Latin, Iacimus Christus. But all mean Jesus Christ."

Quistus, bright-eyed, helped himself to another ball of coffee. "Fifteen or twenty years ago troublemakers, followers of someone called Chrestus, rioted in Rome. Is that the same man?"

"We are not troublemakers."

"But trouble follows you."

"We believe in peace, in love. We die rather than kill. Christ teaches us by His example. He allowed Himself to be crucified that we may learn how to live."

"So," Quistus said, "if your Christ is dead, and you're not troublemakers, what's the problem? There are hundreds of gods in Rome."

"Christ is not dead. He was crucified and entombed, yes, but He arose, resurrected, redivivus, after three days. Now Jesus Christ is alive inside me and inside everyone who believes in Him. In His own words He tells us" - she touched the book, but knew the words by heart - " 'Beware that no one lead you astray, ordering Go here or Go there! For the Son of Man is within you.' "

"Your god is inside you, so you need no public temple or statues?"

"We worship in small families of friends, in secret. Often underground, for safety, in private houses. But they find us even there."

"They?"

"The devils of the Beast."

"How many of you are there?"

"So many, Paul says, that because Christ is within each one of us we should call ourselves Christians. There are many Christians."

Omba said, "Sometimes I swear by Jupiter, but I'm not a Jupiteran. And Janus looks after every door in my master's house, but I'm not a Janusian."

"Christians have a new way of believing," Volusia said.

Quistus steepled his fingers thoughtfully. "New beliefs attract persecution from old beliefs."

"We Christians are given no peace. We are hounded from house to house by the imperial interrogator, Matrusus. Thug, bully, torturer, destroyer, he is the chief devil sent by Satan, the Beast, to try us."

"And this morning he found you?" Quistus said gently, "I cannot protect you from Matrusus."