The brain can play strange tricks, late at night in an unfurnished house.
Gornia and his porters had already departed; Geminus went ahead of me. I stepped into a reception room to collect my crumpled toga; when I came out I was rubbing my eyes from weariness. The lamplight was dim, but I half noticed someone in the atrium-one of the slaves, presumably.
He was looking at the statue.
In the moment when I was turning to close the door of the room behind me, he disappeared. He was a light-haired, slender man of about my own age, with sharp features that reminded me of someone I had once met… Impossible. For one chilling moment I thought I had glimpsed the ghost of Atius Pertinax.
I must have been brooding too much lately; I had a fertile imagination and was overtired. Thinking about dead men all day had turned my brain. I did not believe that dispossessed spirits ever returned resentfully to stalk their silent homes.
I strode to the atrium. I opened doors but failed to find anyone. I returned to the bronze figure and stared at her boldly myself. Only her face showed, above the hem of the carpet I had earlier furled round her.
'So it's you, me and him; sweetheart. He's a ghost, you're a statue, and I'm probably a lunatic…'
The grave image of the young Helena looked back at me with bright, painted eyes and the suggestion of a smile that was ethereal, sweet and true.
'You're all woman, princess!' I told her, giving her carpet-wrapped posterior another playful spank. 'Thoroughly unreliable!'
The ghost had melted into some marble panelwork; the statue looked superior. The lunatic shivered, then hurried out after Geminus on his way home.