After a short distance the tunnel turned to the left, and then rose steeply some six or eight feet and continued on. A little way further - it's hard to judge distance when you're crawling - the ceiling rose and it was possible to walk upright. There was a steady breeze blowing through the tunnel; I could feel it on my face, and it made the flame in my lamp flicker.

The tunnel went down again, and then turned to the left, and we could see light ahead of us. After a few moments we came to a room, octagonal in shape, perhaps twelve or fourteen feet across, lighted by a sort of covered skylight, so that light came in from the sides but not from directly overhead. There was a table in the room with a pitcher of water and a mug, and there, on a chair by the table, sat Julius Caesar. His toga was soiled, and his fringe of hair was dishevelled, but the resemblance was unmistakable. Several laurel wreaths hung from pegs on the wall.

"Don't kill me," Caesar screeched, throwing himself under the table and cowering as we entered the room. "Please don't kill me! It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my idea. Don't kill me!"

A quarter of an hour later we all stood before Vespasian and his son in the audience hall that the emperor - excuse me, the general - used for state business. "Secret passages," Vespasian said, "running all through the palace. Who could have guessed?"

"Apparently Nero had them constructed as the palace was being built," Quintilian told him. "He used workers from the far provinces and then sent them home again, so the work would stay secret. That's according to our ghost, here." He indicated the soiled Caesar, who was doing his best to stand straight and unafraid, despite the leather restraints with which he had been bound, still not convinced that he was not about to be beheaded.

Vespasian nodded. "I suppose, knowing Nero, I should have thought of something like that," he said.

"If you want to put stock in the sayings of the Sybil," Quintilian said, "you could take her first two lines: The past returns through the wiles of men It is not hard to die as referring to the hidden passages. 'It is not hard to die,' should remind us of the day Nero spent hiding in this palace, and we should have asked ourselves just where it was that he hid."

Vespasian nodded thoughtfully, and then turned his attention to the ghost. "I await your story impatiently," he said.

Caesar fell to his knees. "My name, so it please your honour, is Lysidamus. I am from the island of Crete. I was brought here as a child and sold to a company of touring actors. It was never clear which of them actually owned me, and I suppose it didn't matter. I was eventually given small parts to play, usually girls or women. When my voice changed, I played the insolent slave, or on occasion the young lover -"

"Let's get to the part where you're hiding in secret passages in this palace," Domitian interrupted.

"Yes, your honour. Of course, your honour. The emperor Nero saw me in a production of Plautus's The Boy From Carthage - I played the boy - and immediately purchased me and made me a freedman. I joined the imperial troupe of actors, and became Nero's voice coach. For when he played parts in Greek. He spoke Greek with a terrible Latin accent. I became adept at not quite telling him that."

"Get to the secret passages," Domitian said.

"Yes, your honour. The hidden corridors were used by Nero to spy on his enemies and, I suppose, his friends. There are tubes in the walls that can be uncapped and, if you put your ear to them, you can hear what is being said in the room outside. On that horrible day when the people turned against him, he hid at first in the secret rooms. I went with him, but when the next day he fled the palace, I remained behind. I have been living in these secret places ever since, coming out only for food and to, ah, borrow clean garments."

"Three, almost four, years?" Vespasian asked, incredulously.

"I believe so. One loses track of time in, ah, my situation." "Why did you stay?"

"At first through fear, I thought the subsequent emperors would just as soon eliminate all memories of Nero, and I was one of those memories. And then because I really had no place else to go."

"You've been listening to what goes on here for all that time?" Domitian demanded.

"Oh, no!" Lysidamus said, sounding shocked. "I never took the caps from the listening tubes. That wouldn't be right."

"And just when did you become a ghost?" Vespasian asked.

"It must be over a year ago now. I was, let's see, in the pastry kitchen, I believe. Someone walked in on me while I was gathering a few pastries to take back to my lair. I raised my arms in fright, and much to my surprise, he was more frightened than I. He raced from the room screaming that he'd seen a ghost - Great Caesar's ghost, to be precise. And, of course, when the others came in to see, I was back in the wall."

"Great Caesar's ghost?" Quintilian asked. "Even that first time?"

"That's what the man said - yelled. I did not realize how much I had come to resemble the great Gaius Julius with the passage of time. I still thought of myself as the young lover. But I decided to take advantage of this chance resemblance and never leave my hidey-hole without wearing an imperial toga and a laurel wreath, and dusting my face with a little flour."

Domitian glared at the sad little man. "Sneaking into the imperial palace," he said. "That's a serious offence."

"I don't know if we can get him for that," Vespasian said, smiling. "After all, he was here before we were."

"Yes? Well, what about that 'Ides of October' nonsense?" "I don't think he's responsible for that," Quintilian said. "Are you?" he asked Lysidamus.

"Well, I -"

"I mean you did it, of course, but you're not responsible for it."

"Yes," Domitian said, "but murdering that lad . . ." Quintilian turned back to Domitian. "Oh, that he didn't do."

"Then what did he do?"

"He was discovered," Quintilian said. "Weren't you?" He leaned over Lysidamus. "Weren't you?"

"Yes, yes."

"By whom?" asked Vespasian.

"I don't know his name. He caught me about a month ago, while I was making my nightly foray for a loaf of bread, and ever since I've been living in fear. He told me that, were he to turn me in, I would be instantly executed. But he said he had use for me. He explored the secret ways and found places for me to appear. He told me what to say. Last night, when a young lad almost caught me he - he took away the lad's little knife, and jabbed at him with a long stiletto that he kept concealed in his toga. I think he killed him."

"You don't know?"

"He told me to go back to my room. I went."

"He did kill the lad," Quintilian told Lysidamus.

The actor burst out sobbing and fell to the floor. "What a pity, what a pity," he cried. "And he was such a handsome lad!"

"Who did this?" Vespasian asked.

"I swear, I don't know his name," Lysidamus sobbed. "He wears a senatorial toga."

"His name is Marius Trabitus," Quintilian told Vespasian. "He is a senator."

"Trabitus?" Vespasian repeated. "Why, I know him. He told me he actually saw the ghost, I remember. He has been spending a lot of time in the palace. He knows of my intention to move, and has an interest in taking the building over to turn it into an I-don't-know-what. Some sort of forum, or such. Or so he told me."

"I think you'll find he's associated with one of the groups you mentioned that has its own ideas about who should be emperor," Quintilian said. "Perhaps he thought that if he made enough noise about the 'Ides of October', some superstitious guardsman or courtier would think the gods were giving him instructions?"

"And why do you name this Trabitus as the instigator?"

"And as the murderer of young Septius. He would have been better served by keeping the youth's body hidden. Ghostly appearances are one thing, who knows about ghosts? But a corpse lying in a room has to have arrived there somehow. I knew it was he when he told me of seeing bloody wounds on the ghost of Caesar; an obvious, ah, exaggeration. Why would he make such things up were he not involved? And then he told me that little knives are no defence against ghosts. But nobody knew that lad had a knife, since the sheath was concealed under his body until I turned him over. Bring Trabitus here and let our actor friend identify him."

"I shall," Vespasian said, and gave the order.

Trabitus was not found in the palace and, by the time a squad of the praetorian guard reached his villa, he had committed suicide by slitting his wrists in the bath. When Lysidamus was taken to look at the body, he identified Trabitus as the man who had caught him, and who murdered Septius.

It was about a month later that Vespasian created the Imperial Office of Teaching Rhetoric to the Young, and appointed my master Quintilian to be its head.

The highly regarded ignorant one will cleave the knot And Caesar shall create a school in his answer How does the Sybil know these things?

The Cleopatra Game by Jane Finnis This story is set during the prosperous and relatively peaceful reign of Vespasian when Rome could bask once again in its military glory and look back to its glorious past. The influence of Cleopatra lives on, a hundred years after her death, her flamboyant life as intriguing to the Roman as to us. Jane Finnis was for many years a freelance broadcaster for BBC Radio, and still undertakes occasional radio assignments but she now spends most of her time researching and writing about the Roman Empire. Her first novel, Get Out or Die, is a mystery set in Roman Britain. "Human nature hasn't changed much in two thousand years," she commented, "so the tensions and motives that generated murder and mayhem in the first century AD can strike a chord today, too."

I don't know why, but when you're unusually big and strong, people tend to think you're stupid. "All brawn and no brain," they say, and treat you like a mindless bull good for strength and courage, but no use for thinking.

My patron doesn't make that mistake about me though. Tadius Sabinus knows better. I'm head and shoulders taller than him, and I've been his bodyguard for years now, ever since he bought me as a slave in the Emperor Nero's time. After he'd owned me for a couple of months I saved his life, and he said to me, "Rufus, you've got a good head on those broad shoulders. Make sure you use it, that's all I ask."

That's why I stayed with him even after he gave me my freedom, and he became my patron instead of my master. He has other bodyguards now; I'm a kind of chief guard-cum-personal assistant, and I - but you don't want to know all that; I only mention it to explain what I was doing at a family banquet given by my patron's mother, the Lady Cornelia. She probably didn't like it, but she knew that if she invited my patron, she'd have to invite me too.

Of course I didn't sit near Sabinus - I was in a distant corner with the other freedmen - but before it all started, he took me aside. "Rufus, I want you to be on the alert tonight. I'm sure Cleopatra is up to mischief. She says she's planning a surprise for my brother, and I don't trust her. Keep an eye on her, will you?"

"It'll be a pleasure!" The young lady was well worth looking at. "I promise I'll watch her every move. And if you want me to sit near her and offer her my personal protection . . ."

He laughed. "I wish I could arrange it. I think you could control that little madam. I'm not so sure Marcus can," he added in an undertone.

Marcus, the patron's young brother, would soon be marrying this Cleopatra - no, of course that wasn't her real name, she was actually Chloe; but Cleopatra was what she insisted on being called. Ever since childhood - and she couldn't have been more than eighteen even now - she'd been fascinated by stories about the celebrated Queen of Egypt, and wanted to be like her. She was from Alexandria, and Marcus had met her there and fallen as completely in love with her as Mark Antony did with the famous queen. They'd come to Rome for the wedding, and this was the first chance his mother had to show off the bride-to-be to all the friends and relatives in the city.

It was quite a party - glittering I think is the word. The forty or so guests were in for a treat, and her ladyship wanted them to realize the fact as soon as they arrived at her house, which was a grand one just outside Rome. Rooms and passages were all decked out with vast bouquets of flowers and wreaths of laurel, and the big dining-room was as bright as day with dozens of silver lamps hanging from ornate carved stands; in fact there were so many lamp-standards they were getting in the way of the table-slaves, coming and going among the dining-couches with food and wine. The meal itself was wonderful (I remember the swans stuffed with peaches in saffron sauce were especially good), and the wine was the best, from Campania. There was some lively flute music played by nearly naked little girls, and between courses there were dancers, acrobats, and an Egyptian lad with a clever performing monkey. Glittering, as I say. But to me it was like a gaudy painting concealing a crack in a wall. It deceives your eye, but the crack is still there underneath.

This Cleopatra, like her namesake, was beautiful, intelligent, and charming when she chose; Marcus was handsome, romantic, and besotted; and both families were happy. Cleopatra's, who were rich but only equestrian in rank, were thrilled by a marriage into a powerful senatorial clan, and Marcus' dear mama, having met Cleopatra at her most charming, declared she was "just the right sort of girl to help his political career." Actually her father's fortune was the real attraction. The Tadius family were well-born but constantly short of cash; Cleopatra's could have built themselves a gold pyramid.

Sabinus was the only person who wasn't happy about the marriage. (Well, I wasn't either, nor were the slaves, but our views hardly counted.) "She has him running around like a puppy-dog," he complained to me, after she'd been in the house only a couple of days. "I don't like to see her taking advantage of him like that. And as for all this Cleopatra nonsense - it's a childish game, and it's time she grew out of it. Egyptian clothes and eastern perfumes are all very well, but going on about how she wants to live her life just as Cleopatra did . . . I keep expecting her to emerge from a rolled-up carpet one fine day!"

"That would spoil her fancy imitation-Isis hairstyle," I said. "She might try sailing up the Tiber in a golden barge, I suppose."

He didn't smile. "Oh, well, I expect he'll learn to stand up for himself a bit better once they're married."

But I doubted it. Marcus was a gentle young man affectionate, idealistic, wanted to be a poet - not over-bright, but then he didn't have to be; his family influence and the Egyptian money would get him into the Senate when the time came. Maybe he was a bit too soft, and I reckon that's what his mother thought, and Cleopatra was supposed to toughen him up.

The young madam lost no time in showing everyone how devoted was her adoring Mark Antony, as she called him. She bossed him about almost the way she ordered her slaves, only in a honey-sweet tone that he was incapable of resisting. "Oh, Markie dearest, I've left my stole in the garden. Would you just . . . ?" "Antony, sweetheart, my sandal's come undone. Would you be a dear . . . ?" And then the big one: "Marcus darling, I really need some new pearls to wear at the banquet your mama is giving for us. Won't you take your little Cleopatra shopping?" And whatever she asked, he did willingly, lovingly. Including buy her a lovely necklace, with pearls the size of walnuts.

But what even my patron didn't see was the way she laughed at Marcus in private, mocking his dog-like devotion, and boasting about the hoops she would make him jump through once they were married. I heard all about how she behaved from my own girl, Amanda. She was one of the slaves lent by Marcus' mother to look after the bride-to-be, who seemed to need three times as many servants as any other female in the house.

"She's evil," Amanda said to me on the day of the banquet. "She enjoys humiliating him, and he's such a sweet gentle boy. I wish there was some way we could stop the marriage, Rufus. Master Marcus deserves better."

I pretended to be annoyed. "You've always had a soft spot for Marcus, haven't you? Now he's found himself a beautiful girl, and you're jealous!"

She kissed me. "You really are a big stupid lump, sometimes."

"Stupid, am I?" I kissed her back.

"Only sometimes." For a while we were too busy for talking.

Eventually she said, "I'll tell you someone who is jealous of Lady Cleopatra. Her cousin Phoebe."

"Her cousin? Oh yes, the attractive dark girl. Some sort of poor relation, isn't she?"

"That's right. She's got looks, but no money. Her maid says she more or less threw herself at Marcus in Alexandria, but he ignored her. Still, if Cleopatra ever pushes her Mark Antony too hard, he won't have to look far for a sympathetic admirer."

The banquet began, and I can't deny Cleopatra looked truly like a queen, as she reclined on her couch next to Marcus. The necklace of pearls glowed against her lovely fair skin, and there was plenty of skin showing, because her white gown was cut fashionably low. She used face-paint, but it was very discreetly done, enhancing her big luminous eyes.

Her fair hair was bound with a sort of gold diadem. If the real Queen Cleopatra looked half as radiant, it explains a lot about the way Mark Antony carried on - not to mention old Julius Caesar.

Watching from my table in the far corner, I saw what Amanda meant about the cousin not being happy.Phoebe looked beautiful and she had expensive clothes and jewels; but her brittle smile and over-ebullient manner told anyone with half an eye that she was trying just a bit too hard. She was sharing Sabinus' couch, and he was doing his best to make her relax, but without much success. And she was drinking more than was either ladylike or sensible.

She wasn't the only one either. Antony and Cleopatra were knocking back the wine at a fair old rate. Well, why not? It was their party. Lady Cornelia didn't drink much, and neither did Sabinus - and neither did I. A drunken bodyguard is as useless as a wax javelin. And I knew I'd have a chance to make up for it later.

When everyone was suitably mellow, Marcus' mother signalled for quiet, and delivered a few well-chosen words of greeting and congratulation. They didn't go on for long, thank the gods. Young Marcus rose to his feet and read a love-poem he had written "to the Queen of my heart". Everyone applauded warmly - it wasn't a bad poem really - and then as Marcus sat down, his Cleopatra arose elegantly from her couch and started to speak.

"I'm overwhelmed by your kindness," she simpered. "Especially from my Lady Cornelia - my new mother to be! - and my darling Mark Antony. And tonight I'm going to prove just how great is my love, as great as the love that bound our famous predecessors."

She suddenly lifted the beautiful pearl necklace right over her head and held it out in front of her so that it gleamed in the lamplight. "This most wonderful gift is a symbol of our union. I'm sure you all know how the great Queen Cleopatra showed her feelings for Mark Antony - by providing him with the most costly banquet ever seen, and the most precious drink in the world." She looked down at her elaborate silver wine-goblet, half full of red wine. "Wonderful wine such as we have tonight - with just a little something added."

She gave a strong tug and snapped the necklace. There was a collective gasp - everyone realised what was coming. Everybody knows the tale of how Cleopatra had a bet with Mark Antony, and how she won it . . . But surely this silly child wasn't going to . . .

Marcus looked half-amused and half-baffled, as she held the broken necklace in one hand, careful not to lose any pearls. Then slowly, dramatically, she took five of them off their thin cord, and dropped them one by one into the silver goblet. The plop that each one made as it splashed into the wine resounded like a drumbeat in the horrified silence.

"And now," she cried out, triumph showing in every curve of her face and every syllable she spoke, "I'll drink a toast - to my darling Mark Antony, and to a love that will last forever!" She laid down the necklace, lifted up the goblet, and drank.

But she didn't drain the cup; she took a good swallow, and then lowered the goblet and turned to Marcus, smiling into his eyes. "Now you, my dear," she said. "Drink to me, and to our love."

Marcus was looking perplexed and rather hurt, as well he might. The pearls had cost him a consul's ransom; presumably he'd only been able to afford them on a promise of riches to come after the wedding, and he can't have expected his magnificent gift to be abused like this. A stronger man would have put a stop to the nonsense, but he wasn't the one to resist her now, in front of all the family. He stood up and took the goblet. "To our love, my Queen Cleopatra," he declaimed, and he drained the lot.

I caught a glimpse of his mother's face, disapproval written all over it, and Sabinus was looking furious. There'd be ructions in the family's private rooms tonight, for sure.

Marcus sat down, and a buzz of rather subdued conversation started up around the room. I felt a bit subdued myself, but at least I could relax now the surprise was over.

Suddenly Marcus began to choke. His whole body shook with it. Gods, I thought, perhaps he's swallowed a pearl. They would take some time to dissolve completely in the wine; maybe one had caught in his throat. He flopped back on the couch, dropped the wine-cup, and tried to throw up, but nothing came out. Then he doubled over, clutching his stomach. His face was a horrible grey colour, his eyes staring out of his head, still with a slightly baffled air. I jumped up to go to him, but by the time I reached him he was dead.

For a couple of heartbeats we were all statue-still. Everybody was appalled, his mother especially, half-risen from her couch, her features frozen in horror. Cleopatra looked amazed, and then terrified. She was the first to move; she bent over Marcus, straightened up again, and shrieked out, "No! Oh, no!"

She put her head in her hands and began to wail. Her cousin Phoebe was sobbing noisily, and before long half the women in the place were crying too.

"Rufus!" It was Sabinus, beckoning me a few paces away from his brother's body. "Rufus, did you see all that? What a ridiculous, outrageous thing to do! To make Marcus drink that concoction - surely she must have realized it might poison him? All that nonsense about Cleopatra . . ." He tailed off, too angry to speak, and then he growled, "By the gods, if she poisoned him on purpose . . ."

"I doubt that she did," I said. "Why would she? She was all set for marriage and living happily ever after. I don't like the lady, sir, any more than you do, but I can't see her killing your brother deliberately. Out of foolishness, now that I could believe."

He looked at Marcus' grey face, then went to him and closed his eyes. At the same time a couple of Cleopatra's maids appeared beside their mistress, and half-led, half-carried her from the room. Sabinus angrily watched her go, then turned back to me.

"Maybe he choked on one of the pearls?" he suggested. "They couldn't have dissolved in the wine that quickly, surely?"

"No, they couldn't." But I'd seen the way he had clutched at his belly. Still, easy enough to check. The goblet lay on its side under the table, and I bent to pick it up, but haste made me clumsy and it rolled away as I touched it, spilling out dregs of red wine and several pearls. They skittered across the mosaic floor, and as I tried to catch them, the performing monkey from the entertainment suddenly leapt past me and grabbed one in his small fist. His master was close behind, and snatched the animal up, holding him tight and making him drop the pearl.

" 'Scuse me, my lord," he murmured in his broken Latin. "Bad monkey! Not to touch!" He tapped the little animal sharply on the nose.

I swore at the pair of them as he darted away, and counted the pearls. Five. Marcus had not swallowed any.

"So the mixture itself must have killed him," I said. "I still don't think it was deliberate though." But deliberate or not, something about the mixture of wine and pearls had been poisonous enough to kill a grown man. Did that mean the legend about Cleopatra drinking her pearl to amuse Mark Antony was false? Surely Chloe believed it was true; she'd even swallowed some of the wine herself, before demonstrating to the world how easily she could make Marcus do any stupid thing she wanted.

There was a commotion at the Lady Cornelia's couch, and I saw that the old dame had fainted. Sabinus grasped my shoulder, pressing it hard. "I must go to my mother. Find out what happened here tonight, Rufus. I want to know if she did this on purpose, or if it was just a tragic stupid accident. So use that head of yours."

The next few hours were chaos. The old lady soon recovered from her faint, but she took to her bed, leaving my patron in charge of the arrangements for mourning his brother, the ritual cleansing that the priests had to carry out, and the hundred and one other tasks that need attention when someone suddenly dies. Soon the house resounded with the keening notes of the mourners. They grew louder as I made my way through the atrium, where the body was being laid out, and diminished again as I headed for the suite of rooms that Chloe and Phoebe and their entourage were using.

I must admit I wasn't looking forwards to the next step. "Find out what happened," Sabinus had ordered, but it was a great deal easier to say than do. I could talk to Chloe, and she couldn't deny that she had been the instrument of Marcus' death; we'd all seen him take the cup from her. But she'd presumably deny that she'd intended it, even if . . . I hesitated outside the door, trying to think of the best approach. Then fortune smiled on me; Amanda came hurrying along the corridor, carrying a tray with an earthenware flask and a small cup. She paused and smiled at me.