An insipid quarter-moon hung limply in the black sky, dimly lighting the way. In silence they kept close to the stinking central gutter to avoid worse piles of refuse that littered their way. ‘Where will we sleep?’ the youngest asked fearfully as they passed a gloomy alley. ‘I’ve no idea,’ snapped his older brother. Sensing the seven-year-old’s abject misery he relented. ‘The father of my friend, Lucius, says he sleeps in the cattle market whenever he stays in Rome. We’ll find a place there.’ Clasping his brother’s hand, the younger child shivered. His loose tunic barely warded off the chill. ‘Are we nearly there? At the cattle market?’ he enquired hopefully. Quintus groaned, having heard a variant of the same question at least a hundred times that day. ‘Yes, Sextus, soon we’ll have somewhere warm to rest, after we’ve had a bite to eat.’ They were travelling to their uncle’s brick manufactory in the north of Rome, on the Pincian Hill, and they were hungry and exhausted following a dawn departure from their village.
