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The Doctor pricked up his ears. ‘Your horse?’ he said. ‘I’m afraid you’re out of luck. No fresh horses here.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Rufus. ‘It has all been arranged.’

The Doctor turned to stare at the proprietor. The unfortunate man cringed like Uriah Heep and begged the Doctor’s pardon again. They had received word that this gentleman was coming. The last horse had been reserved for him. The proprietor was so sorry if his earlier words had misled the Doctor, no disrespect had been intended.

‘I see, I see,’ said the Doctor mildly, taking a seat opposite Rufus and ignoring his unwelcoming stare. ‘You must be on very important business if you can’t even rest for the night,’ he said.

‘Of course.’ The newcomer sounded bored.

‘Life or death, great benefit to mankind, that sort of thing?’

‘My business is my own,’ Rufus said, and turned his head away in a vain attempt to stop the Doctor addressing him.

‘But you would tell me if it were life or death?’ the Doctor persisted.

The man’s hand clenched angrily around his cup as he drained his wine. He said nothing.

‘Well, I’ll take that as read, then,’ said the Doctor.

He stood up and walked over to Gracilis. ‘Catch me up if you can, and make sure he doesn’t have the stablehands beaten,’ he whispered in his friend’s ear. Then he casually wandered out of the front door, leaving Gracilis looking bemusedly after him.

A few minutes later, the sound of hoofbeats could be heard from the road outside the guesthouse, gradually fading into the distance. It took Rufus a moment to cotton on, and by the time he had followed the Doctor out, horse and rider were just a spot in the distance.

* * *

SEVEN

The Doctor arrived in Rome during the morning of the 19th – the Quinquatrus – and made his way through the streets to the Aventine Hill. He’d not passed Ursus’s cart during his night‐time ride, nor found any trace of him at guesthouses along the way, but he wasn’t letting that discourage him – he was hoping that the man was already in Rome.

First stop was the temple of Minerva – the patron of artists. There was a crowd outside when he arrived and the Doctor moved through it, chatting as he went.

‘Minerva’s great, isn’t she?’ he kept saying to various worshippers. ‘And by the way, you’re arty sorts, do you happen to know the sculptor Ursus at all?’

But none of them did. Oh, they knew of him – but Ursus clearly wasn’t the life‐and‐soul‐of‐the‐artistic‐community type. He didn’t join in the gossip or swap tips; he wouldn’t recommend suppliers or train apprentices. His sculpting abilities were praised – but his meteoric rise to fame hadn’t gone down that well. The glory he’d received in less than a year was not appreciated by those who had been serving their apprenticeships for many moons. They told of tantrums and threats, of snubs and sneers.

So, the Doctor found out quite a lot about Ursus – but not his location.

Refusing to be disheartened, he began a whirlwind tour of Rome. Any watcher would be hard put to decide if he was the most devout of men, visiting each temple in turn, or the most irreverent, bringing no offerings and showing little regard for custom. The Doctor also visited taverns and snack bars, demonstrating an indefatigable appetite for honeyed wine, hot pies and gossip. ‘I know a statue by Ursus,’ someone would say, and the Doctor would hare off across the city to find a marble Vesta or Flora – some astoundingly lifelike creation that filled the Doctor with fury. He was as certain as he could be of the nature of Ursus’s true ‘talent’. No sculptor could have created this many works of art in less than a year with just a hammer and chisel.

The evening was drawing in and the Doctor was no closer to finding Ursus, or Rose, or any clue at all. But he wouldn’t stop looking.

Then he spotted a shrine he hadn’t visited yet. It was small, not like some of the magnificent temples he’d seen earlier, but it was a shrine to Fortuna herself. Where better to find a statue of Fortuna than in her own temple?