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three-hour walk across the whole of Rome, or four hours if you stopped for refreshments. Which, in my opinion, you would have to do.
    That said, there was not much wrong with the place. Since Quadrumatus was a senator, he had a decent boundary thicket to stop sightseers watching his summer picnics in the grounds. These grounds were stuffed with shady stone pines and much more exotic specimens, jasmine and roses, topiary that must have been maturing since the time of his grandfather the consul, dramatic long canals, miles of triple box hedges, and enough statues to fill several art galleries. Even in December, the gardens were awash with groundsmen, so intruders looking for a priestess to snatch would be spotted long before they reached the house. If intruders came on foot, they would be weary anyway. I was, and my home was well placed for this adventure. I had only had to stroll along the Aventine embankment gazing at the muddy, swollen Tiber, nip across the Probus Bridge and head out through the Fourteenth District, the Transtiberina, which is the roughest part of Rome so you don't linger. I had passed the Naumachia on my left, the imperial arena for mock sea battles, then the Baths of Ampelidis on the right, and met the old Via Aurelia which travels into Rome by a shorter route than I had come on, passes the station house of the Seventh Cohort of Vigiles, and crosses the Tiber at the Aemilian Bridge, close to Tiber Island. I mention all that because as I surveyed the house on arrival I was thinking, I bet the old Via Aurelia was the way Veleda fled on her escape.
    The Villa Quadrumatus lacked imposing steps, though it had a white marble portico that fully made up for that, set with very tall columns on a circular centrepiece, covered by a pointed roof. Pigeons had behaved disrespectfully on the big finial. It was too high for the household slaves to get up there on ladders and clean off the revolting guano more than once a year. If the steward was safety conscious, he probably made them build a scaffold when they had to do it--which I guessed was when they held their annual party to celebrate the master's birthday and invited half the Senate for a feast at which, undoubtedly, they had a full orchestra and a troupe of comedians, and served their own vineyard's Falernian specially brought up from Campania in ten ox wagons.
    You see their style: Veleda, fresh from the dark forests of Germania, had been placed where she could witness the cream of Roman society in all their insane wealth. I wondered what she made of it. In particular, what she made of it once she realised these ostentatious persons would also one day be holding a glamorous garden party with two hundred guests, to celebrate the Ovation where she would be humiliated and killed...
    No wonder the woman took her chance and escaped.
    The door porter did not fail me. He was a thin Lusitanian in a tight tunic, with a flat head and a pushy manner, who spurned me before I had spoken a word: 'Unless you are expected, you can turn around and leave.' I gazed at him. 'Sir.'
    My cloak, being my smart one, hung on a big brooch with a red enamelled pattern, on one shoulder. I threw the material back over the other shoulder in a nonchalant gesture, barely tearing any threads of the cloak. This enabled him to see me stick my fists in my belt. My grimy boots were planted apart on the washed marble. I wore no weapons, since going armed is illegal in Rome. That is to say, I wore none the door porter could see, though if he had any intuition he would realise that there might be a knife or a cudgel somewhere, currently invisible yet available to whop him with.
    I had my civilised side. If he was a connoisseur of barbering, he would admire my haircut. It was my new Saturnalia haircut, which I had had two weeks early because that was the only time the decent barber at my training gym could fit me in. The timing suited me. I prefer a casual look at festivals. On the other hand, there was