Somewhere behind the huge pile of wax tablets and a pyramid of scrolls sat Tiberius Claudius Philo. All these documents demanded his attention and they all required Icelus' signature; only Icelus was not around as usual. Luckily Philo had a workaround, having fashioned a copy of Icelus' signet ring which he used to stamp into the wax. This saved him the chore of searching the endless entertainment suites of the new palace trying to locate his boss.

It should be stressed that this was no fraud since Philo had put the idea to Icelus himself as a time-saving efficiency. Anything that enabled Icelus to spend more time with his masseur was warmly welcomed and Galba's official had eagerly embraced this innovation.

Quiet and studious, Philo had risen through the scribe ranks by sheer efficiency and intelligence to his current post as the emperor's private secretary's secretary. He'd worked briefly for Nymphidius Sabinus and before that far more happily for Epaphroditus, Nero's wily and devious advisor, a man whom he respected and admired above all others. Of Icelus, Philo, ever fair, was reserving judgement. The delights offered by the hospitality team had often turned men's minds from their duties. Icelus, he felt, would soon grow bored of all that banqueting and run out of fan boys to pleasure him.

It did not occur to him that some people will always prefer pleasure to duty and will wheedle out of any work given the opportunity, particularly if they have a very efficient and capable assistant. Philo's pleasures were few. He liked tidying things, he liked reading, and he was very fond of the spiced almond cakes his landlord's daughter Teretia baked for him each day.

He was nibbling at one of her cakes now, catching the crumbs in his cupped hand as he scanned the document stating Galba's progress. According to the author the emperor was now approaching the Alps. Philo swung round to check the map tacked to the wall behind his chair. He stood and traced his finger along Gaul until he located the town mentioned in the scroll.

"Hmm," he murmured, his mouth full of Teretia's delicious cake.

Two days riding perhaps? Nearer even. Time to check on the progress of Code Purple.

Code Purple was Philo's master plan for the arrival of Galba in Rome. Icelus, perplexed by the imperial court protocols, was more than happy to leave all of the arrangements to Philo. These dictated everything: the standing positions of slaves in alternately shaped rooms; the seating at every meal, be it a supposedly informal breakfast or large banquet; all the varied and particular greetings for the many ranks of slaves, servants, officials, and courtiers. Philo had applied his customary meticulousness to the task. He had spent days in the musty archives reading up on every previous ascension to emperor and the resulting grand events of thanksgiving.

He'd quizzed Icelus thoroughly on Galba's character in order to match his ceremonies to the new emperor's temperament. As he suspected, Galba was no Nero in his tastes. Code Purple was to be a dignified, official welcome. A show of loyalty from the palace staff to their new emperor.

Philo tucked his papers away in his battered leather satchel, his most prized and practical possession, swinging the strap over his head as he trotted off with his tick list.

The small antechamber that served Philo's office was located in what was generally referred to as the old palace. This was the palatial residence built by Emperor Tiberius, improved upon by Caligula, and then near burnt to the ground under Nero.

The destruction of the imperial family's living quarters had given the flamboyant Nero the excuse to build a new home. This residence, known to the staff as the new palace, to the plebs as the golden house, and to the senate as an unjustifiable waste of funds, took up one hundred acres of the city and was spectacular in its design. Yet it lay unfinished and indeed unpaid for, as demonstrated by the builders' huts still standing on the Oppian Hill side of the new palace grounds.

Such a grand scale of a project made it an irritatingly long walk from the old palace. Still, it was a trek Philo enjoyed since it allowed him time to formulate his thoughts. His concern was one particular paragraph in his Code Purple master plan. This detailed the movements of the empress, Statilia Messalina, and her attendants. They were to attend Galba's welcome banquet, involving a short walk from the empress' apartments in the new palace to the octagonal dining room in the summer pavilion where the feast was being held. However, to Philo's over-analytical mind this short passage was fraught with potential mishaps and he wanted to drill the attendants again. Really this should involve the empress and this was the point which was causing Philo a knot of anxiety in his stomach.

Empress Statilia Messalina was a very spiky woman. The fact she was still referred to as empress despite being merely Nero's widow attested to this. Nobody dared to address her by anything else. In a high fury that noble woman was known to fling her footwear at the source of her displeasure. When sanguine she was haughty to the point of rudeness and could reduce the most stoic of patricians to gibbering apologies by one hard glare from those wide-set eyes.

Her apartments, a rich array of rooms, lay in one of the new palace buildings. A separate building, it should be noted, from the emperor's suite which Icelus was minding. They were placed on opposite sides of the lake with their own gardens and private courtyard, a colonnaded walkway leading back to the main palace complex. Philo nipped along this path wondering whether he dared suggest to Statilia Messalina that she partake in his drill.

For thoroughness he felt it was necessary: Statilia's independent mind might have the whole party walking in the wrong direction. Her slaves would be unable to correct their mistress and they could wander the corridor all evening trying to locate the banquet. That wouldn't do. That would, thought Philo, be just awful.

He entered the building by a side door, passed the Praetorians on guard with a nod, and had just navigated round a corner towards the entrance to the empress' suite when he spied a large shape in a sludge-coloured tunic standing outside. Philo walked briskly back round the corner and pressed his back against the wall.

Straton. What was Straton doing in the empress' apartments? He was the last person Philo would have expected to encounter on this particular route; in fact he had taken this particular route to avoid bumping into the slave overseer.

He felt a familiar race to his heart and a tremble begin in his hands. He dared a darting glance round the brickwork in the forlorn hope that he had imagined Straton's presence, the result of the long hours he was putting in at work. But no, it was definitely the overseer. A man as large as Straton could not be imagined. A good six feet of bulk with huge muscled arms and a chest broader than three average-sized men. He was less of a man and more of an outbuilding: a granary or a summer house. Bristled hair matched the whiskers on his chin and beneath that a thick neck with a raised, white scar which dissected his throat. This injury had sliced at Straton's vocal cords and left him with impaired speech.

Philo, in common with everyone else in the imperial household, owned a healthy terror of Straton. It was not just his fierce...