Free A Whispering of Spies by Rosemary Rowe

after him, my sandals squelching damply in the mud, and we walked on in silence to the northern gate. The sentry on duty watched us pass, openly astonished at this incongruous pair, and I felt his amused eyes upon us as we hurried through the archway and on into the town.
    The forum, when we reached it, was filling up again after the passing storm – customers and people with business with the council or the courts were emerging from their shelter under temple porticos. Here, too, it had clearly been raining heavily: there were muddy puddles on the paving-stones outside the shops, and most of the bedraggled stalls now stood in little pools, although the live fish-market (a building with an open pond which did not mind the rain) seemed to be doing a substantial trade. The stone steps of the basilica were still slippery with wet, but there were already clusters of councillors and clerks standing in earnest conclave here and there, and an excited crowd was gathering below to hear the reading of a will. We wove our way amongst their babbling, up the flight of steps, and into the basilica itself.
    Though I had often been to the basilica before, I had never seen the inner council room where committees of the curia – or town council – met. Like every other citizen, I knew exactly where it was: not in the main section of the building, which was given over to the great public assembly area, with its towering pillars, fine floors and enormous vaulted aisle, but in the centre of the range of rooms across the rear. All the same, I had never been inside, so I was curious to see it when my escort led me in.
    It was a chamber between the central
aedes
, where the imperial shrine was set, and the smaller offices of clerks and copy-scribes, and despite the musty smell of damp and candle-wax, it was much more spacious than I had supposed. It had a row of window-spaces high up on the wall, three tiers of wooden benches set on either side, and an imposing dais for the presiding magistrate. There was a large mosaic in the centre of the floor: an ambitious design of flowers and deities, though there was evidence – in places – of indifferent workmanship.
    But there was no time for professional assessments of that kind. There were people in the room. Three members of the curia were sitting in a row beside the wall – all purple-stripers, naturally, indicating that they were men of rank – while Florens, whose toga bore the widest stripe of all, was standing on the dais, resting his elbows on a fine carved speaker’s stand, with the expression of a man who has been kept waiting far too long.
    He looked up and saw me. He said, without a smile, ‘Ah, citizen Libertus, there you are at last. Thank you, Servilis, you may leave us now.’ There was a moment while the messenger bowed himself away, then Florens turned to me. He was a plump and portly little man, with a fringe of wispy hair and faded pink-rimmed eyes. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’ He raised a podgy hand to indicate the other councillors. I was not sure if he intended me to sit as well – and to do so uninvited would be worse than impolite – so I bowed in their direction and remained standing where I was.
    ‘Sit down, sit down, citizen,’ the youngest of them said. ‘This is just a friendly meeting, not a formal trial.’
    Until that moment I had not imagined that it was, but suddenly I began to have real feelings of unease. This was constituted rather like a court, and it did not look friendly – despite what had been said. Florens was forbidding and his tone severe, and the other magistrates were looking just as grim. However, as I walked across to take my place – painfully aware of my heavy sandal-nails on that expensive floor – I noticed with relief that two of the others were people I had met: the tall, thin man was Gaius Flavius, while the fatter one with acne was Porteus Tertius, both occasional dinner guests at my patron’s house.
    I essayed a timid smile.