Caecilia, in fact, was unable to join us; the eunuch Ahausarus explained that the interview with Sextus Roscius had exhausted her. Though she was indisposed, she gave us the use of her servants, who scurried about the peristyle moving furniture out of the sun into the shade, fetching cool drinks, and doing their best to make us comfortable. Rufus was lisdess and on edge. I approached him again about the party to be held the following night at the house of Chrysogonus.

'If you're seriously uncomfortable about going,' I said, 'then don't. I only thought that you might be able to get me into the house, through the slaves' entrance perhaps. There are a few details I'm not sure I can discover otherwise. But of course I have no right to ask it of you—'

'No, no,' he murmured, as if I had caught him daydreaming. 'I'll go. I'll show you his house before we leave the Palatine; it's quite nearby. If only for the sake of Cicero, as you said.'

He called for one of the servants and asked for more wine. It seemed to me that he might already have had too much. When the wine came he drank it in a single draught and called for another. I cleared my throat and frowned. 'Surely the dictum reads, all things in moderation, Rufus. Or so I'm sure Cicero would insist.'

'Cicero,' he said, as if it were a curse; and then said it again as if it were a joke. He moved from his backless chair to a plush divan and splayed himself among the pillows. A mild breeze moved through the garden, causing the dry leaves of the papyrus to rattle and the acanthus to sigh. Rufus shut his eyes, and from the sweet look on his face I was reminded that he really was still only a boy, despite his noble status and his manly ways, still dressed in a boy's gown with its long modest sleeves, the same way that Roscia was no doubt dressed at that very moment, unless Tiro had already pulled the garment from her body.

'What do you think they're doing right now?' Rufus suddenly asked, opening one eye to catch the startled look on my face.

I feigned confusion and shook my head.

'You know whom I mean,' Rufus groaned. 'Tiro is taking an awfully long time to fetch his stylus, isn't he? His stylus!' He laughed, as if he had just caught the joke. But the laugh was short and bitter.

'Then you know,' I said.

'Of course I know. It happened the first time he came here with Cicero. It's happened every time since. I was beginning to think you hadn't noticed. I was wondering what sort of finder you could be, not to notice something so obvious. It's ridiculous, how obvious they are.'

He sounded jealous and bitter. I nodded in sympathy. Roscia, after all, was a very desirable girl. I was a little jealous of Tiro myself.

I lowered my voice, trying to be gentle but not patronizing. 'He's only a slave, after all, with so little to look forward to in life.'

'That's just it!' Rufus said. "That a mere slave should be able to find satisfaction, and for me it's impossible. Chrysogonus was a slave, too, and he found what he wanted, just as Sulla found what he wanted in Chrysogonus, and in Valeria, and all the rest of his conquests and concubines and wives. Sometimes it seems to me that the whole world is made up of people finding one another while I stand alone outside it all. And who in all the world should want me but Sulla — it's a joke of the gods!' He shook his head but did not laugh. 'Sulla wants me and can't have me; I want another who doesn't even know I exist. How terrible it is, to want only one other in the whole world and to have your longing go unanswered! Have you ever loved another who didn't love you in return, Gordianus?' 'Of course. What man hasn't?'

A slave arrived with a fresh cup of wine. Rufus took a sip, then set it on the table and stared at it. It seemed to me that Roscia was hardly worth so much agony, but then I was not sixteen. 'So blatantly obvious,' he muttered. 'How long are they going to be at it?'

'Does Caecilia know?' I asked. 'Or Sextus Roscius?'

'About the lovebirds? I'm sure they don't. Caecilia lives in a fog, and who knows what goes on in Sextus's head? I suppose even he might feel obliged to muster a little outrage if he found out that his daughter is cavorting with another man's slave.'

I paused for a moment, not wanting to ply him with questions too quickly. I was thinking about Tiro and the danger he might be courting. Rufus was young and frustrated and highborn, after all, and Tiro was a slave committing the unthinkable in a grand woman's house. With a word Rufus could destroy his life forever. 'And what about Cicero — does Cicero know?'

Rufus looked me straight in the eye. The look on his face was so strange that I couldn't account for it. 'Cicero know?' he whispered. Then the spasm passed. He seemed very weary. 'About Tiro and Roscia, you mean. No, of course he doesn't know. He would never notice such a thing. Such passions are beneath his notice.'

Rufus slumped back against the pillows in utter despair.

'I understand,' I said. 'Though you may find it hard to believe, I do understand. Roscia is of course a fine girl, but consider her situation. There's no honourable way you could openly court her.'

'Roscia?' He looked baffled, then rolled his eyes. 'What do I care about Roscia?'

'I see,' I said, not seeing at all. 'Oh. Then it's Tiro whom you….' I suddenly confronted a whole new set of complications.

Then I realized the truth. In an instant I understood, not by his words or even by his face, but by some inflexion just then remembered, some disconnected moment set next to another in memory, in that way that revelations sometimes come to us unprepared for and seemingly inexplicable.

How absurd, I thought, and yet how touching, for who could help being moved by the earnestness of his suffering? The laws of man strive for balance, but the laws of love are pure caprice. It seemed to me that Cicero — staid, fussy, dyspeptic Cicero — was probably the least likely man in Rome to reciprocate Rufus's desires; the boy could not have chosen a more hopeless object for his infatuation. No doubt Rufus, so young, so full of intense feeling, steeped in the Greek ideals of Cicero's circle, thought of himself as Alcibiades to Cicero's Socrates. No wonder it infuriated him to think of what Tiro and Roscia were enjoying at that very instant, while he burned with an unspoken passion and all the pent-up energy of youth.

I sat back, perplexed and without a word of advice to give him. I clapped and waved to the slave girl and told her to bring us more wine.

21

The stablemaster was not pleased when he saw the farm horse I came riding in place of his beloved Vespa. A handful of coins and assurances that he would be amply rewarded for any inconvenience satisfied him. As for Bethesda, he informed me that she had sulked throughout my absence, that she had broken three bowls in his kitchen, ruined the needlework she had been given and had driven both the head cook and the housekeeper to tears. His steward had begged for permission to beat her, but the stablemaster, true to my demands, had forbidden it. He shouted at one of his slaves to go and fetch her. 'And good riddance^' he added, though when she came striding imperiously out of his house and into the stables, I noticed that he couldn't take his eyes off her.

I pretended to be disinterested. She pretended to be cold. She insisted on stopping by the market on our way home so that we would have something to eat that night. While she shopped I wandered about the street, absorbing the squalid smells and sights of the Subura, happy to be home. Even the pile of fresh dung that we had to bypass on the climb up did not dampen my mood.

The stablemaster's slave Scaldus sat on the ground before the door, leaning against it with his legs outstretched. At first I thought he slept, but at our approach the colossus stirred and rose to its feet with alarming speed. Recognizing my face, he relaxed and grinned stupidly. He told me that he had taken turns with his brother so that the house had never gone unguarded, and that no one else had been there in my absence. I gave him a coin and told him to be off, and he obediently began loping down the hill.