In the sticky summer heat unruly desires stir the blood . . .

For Catullus, the brilliantly witty and outrageous young poet, and Clodia, his older, married lover, a borrowed villa in Rome is a secret, illicit meeting-place. When they are apart, Catullus burns with desire for 'his girl', while Clodia goes her own way among his rivals. Other passions simmer in the heat: the streets threaten to erupt in political violence, hearts sour and contemplate murder, and love and hate are dangerously entwined. Catullus' jealousy grows as toxic as hellebore or hemlock. Poisoning is a Roman art, and there is poison everywhere ...

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Watch a video of Dan Stevens reading an extract from Counting the Stars.

One

This is how it begins.

In the bolt-hole Manlius lent us: you remember it, of course you do. Your blank, blind stare doesn’t fool me for a second. You didn’t think much of it.

‘What a dump,’ you said that first time, looking around the room while my heart thudded with the terror of having you there. Cold fire ran over my skin. My hands trembled. Metal clanged in my head as if someone were beating out a sword there. It was so loud that I could scarcely hear the words you said, let alone speak to you.

Manlius’ little villa looked out of place next to the apartment blocks that towered on either side of it. It was a piece of the country in the city, a remnant of family history from long ago. It’s gone now. There was a fire – a very convenient fire – when the slave janitor happened to be absent on his master’s business. So no more villa, just a tasty, smouldering piece of land that was immediately snapped up by a property developer. Manlius probably took a rock-bottom price from him, not realizing the value of the plot, and never suspecting that his steadfast old slave might be pocketing a backhander.

That’s Manlius’ world. Slaves are treated well, and in return they offer loyal service. Wives are discreet, faithful and fertile. He’s only broken the rules once in his life, when he married a girl who ‘wasn’t really one of us’.

You are such an innocent, Manlius. They’ve already thrown up a five-storey building on the site of your villa, to match the apartment blocks on either side. I don’t need an abacus to reckon up the profit that the developer made. As usual the new place has a handsome fac¸ade, and not much behind it. It’s built on air, held up by a few beams here and there and a random scattering of brick. It’ll fall down in a decade or two but until then it’ll hold dozens and dozens of juicy tenants. They’ll be squeezed until the profit gushes like blood. They’ll be crushed flat like bedbugs when the floors collapse, or burned alive when fire traps them on the top storey. That’s how we build in Rome these days. Manlius’ little villa was planted in the earth, like an olive tree knotted into its soil, taking flavour and colour from it. No one had lived there for years, apart from the old slave. The fountains were dry, and there wasn’t a single flower growing in the courtyard.

‘We’ve got nowhere to go,’ I’d said to Manlius one day. ‘She can’t come to my place. I can’t go to hers. It’s driving me mad. Sometimes I think I’d rather not see her at all than carry on like this.’

Manlius had the villa opened and cleaned for us. The slave brought in bundles of bed linen, wine, a basket of cakes, a basket of figs, and then he was told to clear off for the day. Even ancient hobbling slaves can run fast enough to the market-place with a ripe piece of gossip. Manlius knew I wouldn’t want the janitor around when you arrived.

You weren’t quite as thrilled as I’d hoped when I told you about Manlius’ offer. You weren’t used to poky little villas in the wrong part of town. You stipulated that a separate room must be prepared for you to bathe, dress your hair and restore your make-up afterwards.

Afterwards! That’s my girl. Always so practical. You would never go back to your husband smelling of another man, with the carmine smudged on your cheeks and your hair in a rope down your back. No, you played your part in the game which had nothing to do with concealment and everything to do with appearing to have made the proper effort to conceal.

You didn’t come alone. With characteristic discretion, you brought Aemilia, not in the litter with you but scurrying along behind in full view. She was quite recognizable, Aemilia, with her strange eyes and loud laugh that went off like a fart at all the wrong moments. I think she laughed like that because she was afraid. She had plenty to be afraid of, didn’t she? Your husband finding out, for example, and whipping her flesh to ribbons for her complicity, or having her tortured to squeeze out the details of what you’d been up to.

– Or indeed your fury if she used the wrong colour eyeshadow on your lids.

But I think Aemilia was afraid of the whole set-up, where she had nothing to do but cower in the next room with her hands over her ears, waiting for us to be finished. She knew right from the start that none of it was a game. We were in earnest: deadly earnest, you might say. Up to our necks. You’d have to admit that much, wouldn’t you?

Manlius put a roof over our love. Aemilia connived, tittered, dropped things and made the place smell of fear. In fact, when I look back, the only one who wasn’t afraid and who behaved with perfect naturalness at all times was you.

That first time, I was pacing up and down the bedroom before you arrived. Yes, really pacing, like an actor in a bad play. It may be a cliche´ but it’s what your body makes you do when you’re wound up so tight with love and fear that you have to keep moving, up and down, up and down, because something in that rhythm stops the choking of your heart in your throat. I heard my own footsteps, but all the time I was listening for the heavy slap of your slaves’ feet.

At last they came. I heard the shuffle of their sandals as they steadied the poles of the litter to let you down. I imagined you stepping out quickly, wrapped in your cloak. You wouldn’t want anyone to see you as you flitted to the door.

I stood still in the bedroom and heard your footsteps. The tap and echo of your toes and heels on the stone. It’s bad luck for the bride’s feet to touch the threshold.

You’d already been a bride. I didn’t want to think of your wedding, of your husband waiting to lift you into his arms while the torches flared and the crowds shouted and sang, and children scattered to grab the nuts that were thrown to them. In a rush of air your husband had lifted you out of your old life and into the new. Your feet in their saffron-gold bride’s sandals never touched the threshold on your wedding night. Your husband is a man of tradition. He’d have made sure that everything went as it should.

Tap and echo, tap and echo. Your steps were quick and firm as you entered Manlius’ villa.

‘The bearers had a hell of a time finding it,’ you said, staring round with your eyebrows raised. ‘Aemilia couldn’t keep up; I hope she hasn’t got lost. What a hole.’

‘Aemilia?’

‘Yes, Aemilia,’ you said impatiently. ‘She’s a genius with hair, but she’s got no sense of direction.’

Your hair looked as if you’d reached up your hands and knotted it casually at the nape of your neck. Natural; perfect. Bunches of curls dropped from the knot. I hadn’t yet seen Aemilia’s fingers at work, making nature what it should be. Your hair shone. The shallow curve of your cheek was as perfect as a shell.

You burned so brightly in Manlius’ villa. I could barely look at you.

‘You don’t seem very pleased to see me,’ you said, unfastening the pin to take off your cloak. Before I could answer, Aemilia arrived, panting and apologizing. She’d had to run to keep up with the litter, but even so she’d lost sight of it and taken a wrong turning.

She dumped a big basket on the floor, and you frowned and said, ‘Carefully, Aemilia,’ in the way I would come to know well. Harsh, but intimate. Aemilia knew every crevice of your body. She knew everything you did.

Aemilia was sweaty and out of breath. She looked like a clod of earth, next to you. You let your cloak slip off your shoulders without even glancing behind you to see if she were there to catch it. She caught it, folded it and laid it over one arm while she picked up the basket in her free hand. She vanished into the little room that led off the bedroom.

I thought that the gods had infused your clothes with your own grace. Your cloak could not help falling into exquisite folds, even in Aemilia’s hands. You could not help being beautiful. The hours you spent with saffron, carmine, chalk and antimony had nothing to do with it.

You taught me all your arts in time. ‘This is the brush for eyeshadow, but foundation has to be blended in with the fingertips.’ I would lounge and watch you, not wanting to miss a grain of powder as it fell from the brush – and yet at the same time I was bored, bored, exquisitely bored, bored to death – yes, really aching all over with it –

True boredom is next door to desire. It stretches you out and makes you ache until you’ll do anything to stop the pain. That’s before you learn that the pain doesn’t ever stop, it only changes. I was alone with you and I was afraid to look at you.