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Or are you being deliberately unhelpful?”
    “No, I’ll help all I can. But I don’t recognise the name.”
    “Surely you’re aware what Roman settlers are buying property in these parts?”
    “Many of them, yes. Especially if they’re unusually successful, or if they’re in trouble. But I haven’t a complete list. If an ordinary young man is quietly setting up as a trader, courting a native girl, and not attracting any special attention, I may not hear of him for years.”
    She looked ready to explode, but said only, “That is most annoying. I’m extremely disappointed.”
    “I told you this was a fool’s errand,” Horatius commented.
    She ignored him and continued to glare at me. “Well then, if you haven’t the information yourself, you can make enquiries for us, can’t you?” Her sharp eyes bored into mine. We both knew she wasn’t asking a question, she was giving an order.
    “Yes, I can ask around, certainly. My sister’s fiancé lives a couple of miles from here, beyond Oak Bridges. He’ll be likely to know about new settlers arriving between there and Eburacum. Of course it would help if you could offer a reward.”
    “Pay for information that leads me to him?” She sighed. “Very well. I suppose the days are gone when people will do one a service because it’s their duty.”
    Gone and good riddance. But I just said, “I’m sure your generosity will produce results. We’ll begin the search tomorrow. Albia’s young man is intending to visit us then, and if he doesn’t know of your son, I’ll send to the Chief Town Councillor.”
    “You have a town council here? I’d assumed you would come under the military administration at Eburacum.”
    “Oak Bridges has its own council. The Chief Councillor is Silvanius Clarus, and he’s a good friend of ours. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to help if he can.” He would, too, I was certain. As an important local magistrate with an eye to his town’s future, he’d do anything at all to earn the gratitude of people related to the Governor.
    “If the worst comes to the worst,” Sempronia said, “I’ll go out and search for him myself. We’ve come this far, and I can endure a few extra miles of travel, if the journey leads me to Decimus.” She rolled up her son’s scroll with a snap, and contemplated me sourly. “Oh well, I suppose that’s the best we can do for now. Thank you. That will be all.”

C HAPTER V
    We gave them a good dinner. I’d told the maids to arrange the private dining-room so that the guests could recline on couches with their food on small tables, as they would at home. I thought it suited them better than our usual arrangement of one long table with chairs and stools round it. The big table remained in the centre of the room for carving and serving. Once our slaves brought the food in, the guests’ own servants waited on them during the meal.
    They had smoked oysters and cold sausage to begin with, then roast pork with sauce made of apples, and a variety of winter vegetables including some delicious white carrots. The dessert course was fruits marinated in wine, and some of our own goat’s cheese. It was richer fare than we’d normally have had on a snowy winter evening, but luckily we’d just killed one of the pigs, which meant there was plenty of meat to go round, and the smoked oysters and preserved fruit were in the larder in preparation for Saturnalia.
    Despite the good food, washed down with some of our best Campanian red wine, it wasn’t a happy meal. The guests were no ruder than we’d come to expect, but they indulged in bouts of quarrelling, broken up by long tense silences. I was beginning to realise that Sempronia and Horatius argued almost as a habit, or a game, which neither of them took very seriously. But Horatius disliked Diogenes—and who could blame him?—and the nasty little weasel had some sort of grudge against Priscus. Whenever he addressed him his words were outwardly servile, but