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funny dance near one of the stalls as the merchant pulled its cords. A little monkey leaped up onto the merchant’s arm, clambering up to sit on his shoulder. A pretty little girl, perhaps seven years old, stood nearby watching the monkey in fascination.
    The merchant’s cart was stacked with marionettes, painted balls, hoops, tops and carved wooden soldiers. Aculeo watched as the girl slipped one of the colourful tops from the tray and tucked it under her belt when the merchant’s back was turned – clever little thief, he thought with a smile. She noticed Aculeo watching her and darted back to a nearby stall where two women, one with dark hair, the other fair, stood like exotic, beautiful birds as they examined bolts of gleaming Cosian silk. The women laughed and chatted with one another, pretending not to notice the countless men who watched them, captivated. Hetairai, Aculeo thought. The little girl attended to the dark-haired woman, holding a cloth parasol over her veiled head.
    Aculeo picked up one of the soldiers from the cart. The horse was painted bright yellow and had thick brown horse hair for its mane. The soldier’s arm moved easily, lifting his little sword up and down, and a silver shield fixed across his chest. “Wonderful craftsmanship,” said the vendor. “Only three asses.” Aculeo felt a pang of loneliness well deep inside like a hollow drumbeat as he thought of Atellus.
    He bought the toy. I’ll give it to you soon enough, he thought. I just need to find that cursed Iovinus and my troubles will be done with. He watched as the hetairai and the girl walked towards a litter and stepped within. The dark-haired one, gazing through the litter’s window, caught Aculeo’s eye for a moment, smiled, then the curtains closed and the enormous Nubian slaves lifted the litter and carried them away.

     
    The attendant at the public latrine near the fabric makers macellum readily told Aculeo the name of the fullery that had contracted to buy their waste. There was stiff competition for the golden liquid, as fullers, dye-makers, fruit-growers, even gold and silversmiths all found good use for it in their busy little shops.
    The fullery in question was only a few blocks away, tucked in the rear of a narrow alley off the main street. A painted owl stared down at him from the wooden plaque hanging over the doorway. The symbol of Minerva, Aculeo recalled, the fuller guild’s protective goddess. The fullery’s taberna was unattended so he walked down the short corridor into a bustling atrium. The fetid pong of ammonia mixed with rotting eggs was enough to make him cover his nose. Cone-shaped wooden drying frames wrapped with freshly laundered tunics and togas were set in rows about the fullery’s atrium, suspended over pits of smouldering sulphur fires to bleach the cloth. Clusters of slaves were hard at work in the nearby laundering pits.
    A toothless crone with a sweat-stained cloth knotted about her head spotted him and approached, offering a subservient, gap-toothed smile. “Help you, sir?” she asked in broken Greek.
    “I’m looking for a man named Pesach,” Aculeo said, gazing about the atrium, his eyes burning from the pungent air.
    “A man?” the crone asked in puzzlement.
    “A slave,” he said, the words curdling in his mouth even as he spoke them.
    The woman nodded towards a slave walking carefully through the yard, barely balancing a broad wooden yoke with bulging skins of stale urine slung from either end across his bony shoulders. Aculeo would normally have ignored such a wretched creature, but he recognized Pesach’s familiar features beneath the scruff of whiskers and greasy, greying hair. He was decidedly small and weak for such an onerous task, staggering under the weight of the yoke, trying not to spill the skins as he shuffled barefoot towards a pair of slaves working the treading vat in the corner. The slaves unhitched the skins from the yoke and poured their contents into a nearby