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haunches next to him. ‘Of course you were looking at the cup and ball. Because you longed to have one of your own?’
    The child looked up at me. ‘I never had a toy. I had a sort of cart-thing once my father carved for me, but when he sold me to the pastry-cook . . .’
    My turn to nod. I too had been a slave, but only as an adult. My childhood had been a very happy one, full of dogs and horses and gambols on the cliffs and in the streams, with playthings and playfellows aplenty. What this child’s miserable existence must have been, I could only half imagine.
    ‘He was amazing,’ the boy added, with tearful eagerness, as if sharing a special confidence. ‘He kept the ball up all the time and never dropped it once. I got a thrashing when I got inside for watching him so long. I’m sorry if I should have noticed more.’
    ‘You did very well,’ I said, and he looked so grateful that it touched my heart. Praise was as rare as toys in his young life. ‘Here.’ I put a hand into my purse and pressed a sestertius into his hand. He looked incredulous. It would be taken from him, like as not, but I felt that some reward was due. ‘Tell your master you have been delayed by helping a Roman citizen to find a missing slave, and that I will be here in the morning to buy some honey cakes. Tell him to put half a dozen on one side for me. Here’s half a denarius to pay for them.’ With any luck, I reasoned, a lucrative order from a customer would be enough to soothe his master’s wrath.
    He flashed me an uncertain smile, and hurried round the corner with the coins and what little ash he’d succeeded in collecting up again. The others made no move to stop him going.
    ‘Very pretty,’ Cupidus jeered. ‘And you expect us to believe that the boy is not in your employ? Or in the pay of your bath-side friends? Well, let me tell you, this is my father’s area. He won’t take kindly to your bribing servants here to tell their confounded little lies for you.’ He shouldered up to me, more belligerent than ever, and made to seize me by the neck again.
    Aurissimus restrained him. ‘Cupidus, don’t be more stupid than you have to be. All right, you can’t recognise a cheating net man when you see one, but can’t you take in what’s right before your eyes?’ He turned to me. ‘You said the youth who came was Lyra’s messenger. Who’s Lyra?’
    I was about to protest that surely he must know who Lyra was, and then of course I realised that he did and he was testing me. I remembered the reaction to her name from the keeper of the thermopolium, and I said hastily, ‘I was in the town, looking for a silver cloak clasp for my wife. Lyra approached me and offered me her girls. She gave me an address – the street of the oil-lamp sellers – although I didn’t go there at the time.’ If the spy system in this part of town was half as good as that in the bath-house area, I knew that my movements could easily be checked. I didn’t mention Plautus. I was certain that part of the story would never be believed.
    Big-ears was looking at me with amused contempt. ‘But you went there later, did you? After dark.’
    I was reluctant to say anything which might be proved false. I compromised. ‘I never found it,’ I said truthfully.
    He laughed. ‘So you got lost and wandered round the bath-house area? Lyra’s wolf-house isn’t over there – it’s on this side of Venta, where all the soldiers go. No wonder you were followed. A thief, most likely, hoping for your purse. It’s a marvel someone didn’t cut your throat. They don’t like strangers in that part of town.’ He turned to his companions. ‘I don’t believe the man’s a spy at all. He’s just an idiot who can’t control what hangs between his legs. That’s why he wasn’t present at the games. Made some excuse and sneaked off in the dark, looking for the wolf-house. It all makes sense. That’s why the poor fool left his slave behind. I’ll bet he’s got a