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echoing cries of the mountain birds. I do not know what I had intended, other than to be away from people, and away from the house. But now, seized by rage, I punched my fist into the nearest tree trunk, and cried out long and loud, calling on Mars the Avenger to see me and remember.
    My lone voice echoed down the valley. The startled birds scrambled from the trees. And then the only sound was my breathing, and the beating of my heart.
    Caecilius arrived half a month later, in a lavish painted carriage with curtains of scarlet-dyed leather, drawn by two Gaulish mares with decorated harnesses, attended by liveried outriders.
    I waited outside the house to greet him, as my mother had asked, and beside me stood the assembled house-slaves and the farmhands, washed and got up in their best, standing primly with their hands folded in front of them, as they did at the shrine on the festival days when my father offered something to the gods. We had had plenty of time to arrange ourselves there, having seen an hour before the gaudy vehicle lumbering up the steep winding track from the plain.
    It might have been suitable for the easy roads close to Rome. It did not suit Praeneste.
    But in time the carriage drew up, and my uncle clambered out.
    He was wearing an expensive fine-combed woollen tunic, cream- white, bordered with leaping stags picked out in red; and on his feet new calfskin boots. He had put on weight, and his hair was blacker than I remembered, stark against his puffy white face, like a blackbird’s wing against marble.
    He looked along the line of waiting farmhands, passing over me until I remembered to step up and speak the formal words of greeting.
    He peered at me. I had pulled on a clean tunic, but otherwise I looked no different from the slaves and farmhands. But then he seemed to know me.
    ‘Why, Marcus,’ he cried in a booming voice, ‘look at you. Brown as a nut, and surely you have grown. I was expecting the same timid child, not a handsome youth.’ He laughed and glanced around. ‘But where is your mother?’
    I told him she was in the house, waiting to greet him.
    ‘Then let us go inside,’ he said. He snapped his fingers at one of the liveried outriders and said, ‘See to my things,’ and then, as we took the short path to the house, ‘I have done much useful business in Rome, and soon I hope—’ He broke off with a curse and swatted a dragonfly aside with an irritated swipe. From the corner of my eye I saw one of the young farmhands suppress a smile. Even they could see my uncle did not belong in the country. ‘Well,’ he continued, looking warily to where the hovering insect had relocated itself, ‘we can talk of all that in due course. And,’ he added, taking me confidentially by the elbow and pulling me to him, ‘you must learn to start calling me father now, not uncle.’
    I do not know what decency dictated, or what passed for right behaviour in Rome. I had assumed he was only paying a short visit, for the sake of form. But next day wagons loaded with his possessions came labouring up the hill-track: caskets, chests of clothing, even ornaments and furniture. I realized he had come to stay.
    The marriage took place before month end. There was a brief ceremony. No guests came. I was glad of that, for in my mind it was no marriage, just a contract, and a sordid one at that.
    That night I lay in bed and pictured him with my mother. I drove the thoughts away, fearing madness. I rose before dawn, and went climbing on the hillside. I sat on the rock ledge, and watched the sun rise over the mountains.
    The formal adoption happened soon after. The words were spoken, and I became, as far as the law was concerned, Caecilius’s son and he gained the power of a father over me.
    How true it is, that one perceives what one has only by losing it.
    At once he began to make changes. The little festivals and banquets we held for the farmhands and their families to signify the motions of the seasons and to