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smoothly co-ordinated movement and formed an impenetrable barrier between the queen and us.
    Not to be outdone, half a dozen Roman soldiers seized Guthrie and Peterson, but, thank God, hesitated before doing the same to Van Owen and me. Markham, however, being neither female nor highborn, was hurled to the floor with a sword at his throat.
    No one had any idea what was happening and I was terrified they would kill us first and ask questions later. I was particularly anxious that Markham should be kept alive so I could kill him myself later.
    And then, amongst the spilled figs, something moved.
    Without stopping to think – again – I brought my sandal down on a small but very indignant snake.
    An asp.
    Markham very wisely didn’t try to speak – just signalling with his eyes. Two more snakes lay curled in the bottom of the bowl. Another was wriggling across the floor as fast as he could go, looking for cover, but not anything like fast enough because Guthrie pulled an arm free, seized my stick from me, and brought it down hard on the snake, instantly breaking its backbone. A substantial amount of snake blood and guts splattered across my pretty tunic. Mrs Enderby would be wanting a word with me. Again.
    Another one was heading for the garden and freedom, but a quick-thinking slave brought a flagon down on its head, picked it up with a stick, and tossed it into the pool. I never saw what became of it afterwards.
    A third Nubian had upended the bowl, trapping the two sleepier snakes beneath it. Their future looked nearly as bleak as ours did.
    That we were suspects was very apparent.
    Chaos cut in. Someone had attempted to assassinate either Caesar or Cleopatra or both of them. That it was deliberate, there could be no doubt. Six snakes do not accidentally find themselves in a bowl of honeyed figs. It seemed a safe bet that everyone here knew everyone else. In fact, there was only one set of strangers in the room and they were the idiots from St Mary’s who had chosen this one day of all others to observe Caesar and Cleopatra, and dropped themselves right in it.
    I let everyone else mill about, exclaiming and speculating. I stared at the sad little pile of squashed snake under my sandal and then I lifted my eyes and found myself staring straight at Caesar’s wife. Who stood quietly in the corner, as she always did. Unimportant. Unregarded. Unobserved. Unmoved.
    As if she felt my gaze, she turned her head slightly. We exchanged looks and I knew.
    Shouting men were stamping on already-dead snakes. Seeking to disassociate themselves from this shocking event, many more were stampeding towards the front doors. Scylla and Charybdis had disappeared and their place taken by a quartet of tough-looking soldiers. Another two guarded the side entrance. Calpurnia and I still stared at each other as if we were the only two people in the room. Which, at that moment, to all intents and purposes – we were.
    She had attempted murder. But of whom? The hated foreign woman? Or the husband who had made her live in his first wife’s house? Who had ordered her to give up her rooms to foreign guests? Who compelled her to serve his mistress? And when he became ruler of all the known world, he wouldn’t want her any longer. He would want the woman who was already a queen. Who already had a son by him.
    So which of them was the intended victim and did she even care?
    I knew what she’d done and she knew I knew. We were in a very great deal of trouble here. I’m not sure whether she had deliberately sought to implicate us. That had not been her original plan, I was sure of it, but the sudden appearance of a bunch of strangers who might not be what they appeared to be … she had given instructions we were to be admitted. She had presented us to the queen to put us in the front line. Never mind that we’d had no opportunity. No one would care about that. As long as the blame didn’t fall on them. Any minute now, Caesar’s men would start