Eco and I saw out the rest of our visit, but the days that followed Antonia's departure were melancholy. Lucius was moody. The slaves, always superstitious about any death, were restless. Davia was still shaken, and her cooking suffered. The sun was as bright as when we arrived, the flowers as fragrant, the stream as sparkling, but the tragedy cast a pall over everything. When the day came for our departure, I was ready for the forgetful hustle and bustle of the city. And what a story I would have to tell Bethesda!

Before we left, I paid a visit to Ursus and took a last look at the hives down in the glen.

"Have you ever been stung by a bee yourself, Ursus?"

"Oh, yes, many times."

"It must hurt."

"It smarts."

"But not too terribly, I suppose. Otherwise you'd stop being a beekeeper."

Ursus grinned. "Yes, bees can sting. But I always say that bee-keeping is like loving a woman. You get stung every so often, but you keep coming back for more, because the honey is worth it."

"Oh, not always, Ursus," I sighed. "Not always."

THE ALEXANDRIAN CAT

We were sitting in the sunshine in the atrium of Lucius Claudius's house, discussing the latest gossip from the Forum, when a terrible yowling pierced the air.

Lucius gave a start at the noise and opened his eyes wide. The caterwauling terminated in a feline shriek, followed by a scraping, scrambling noise and then the appearance of a gigantic yellow cat racing across the roof above us. The red clay tiles offered little traction to the creature's claws and it skittered so close to the edge that for a moment I thought it might fall right into Lucius's lap. Lucius seemed to think so, too. He scrambled up from his chair, knocking it over as he frantically retreated to the far side of the fish pond.

The big cat was quickly followed by a smaller one, which was solid black. The little creature must have had a particularly aggressive disposition to have given chase to a rival so much larger than itself, but its careless ferocity proved to be its down-fell-literally, for while its opponent managed to traverse the root without a misstep, the black cat careered so recklessly across the tiles that at a critical turning it lost its balance. After an ear-rending cacophony of feral screeching and claws scraping madly against tiles, the black cat came plummeting feet-first into the atrium.

Lucius screamed like a child, then cursed like a man. The young slave who had been filling our wine cups came running. "Accursed creature!" cried Lucius. "Get it away from me! Get it out of here!"

The slave was joined at once by others, who surrounded the beast. There was a standoff as the black cat flattened its ears and growled while the slaves held back, wary of its fangs and claws. Regaining his dignity, Lucius caught his breath and straightened his tunic. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the overturned chair. One of the slaves righted it, whereupon Lucius stepped onto it. No doubt he thought to put as much distance between himself and the cat as possible, but instead he made a terrible error, for by raising himself so high he became the tallest object in the atrium.

Without warning the cat gave a sudden leap. It broke through the cordon of slaves, bounded onto the seat of Lucius's chair, ran vertically up the length of his body, scrambled over his face onto the top of his head, then pounced onto the roof and disappeared. For a long moment Lucius stood gaping.

At last, assisted by his slaves (many of whom seemed about to burst out laughing), Lucius managed to step shakily from the chair. As he sat, a fresh cup of wine was put into his hand and he raised it to his lips unsteadily. He drained the cup and handed it back to the slave. "Well!" he said. "Go on now, all of you. The excitement's over." As the slaves departed from the atrium, I saw that Lucius was blushing, no doubt from the embarrassment of having so thoroughly lost his composure, not to mention having been got the better of by a wild beast in his own home, and in front of his slaves. The look on his chubby, florid face was so comic that I had to bite my lips to keep from grinning.

"Cats!" he said at last. "Accursed creatures! When I was a boy, you hardly saw them at all in Rome. Now they've taken over the city! Thousands of them, everywhere, wandering about at will, squabbling and mating as they please, and no one able to stop them. At least one still doesn't see them much in the countryside; farmers run them off, because they frighten the other animals so badly. Weird, fierce little monsters! I think they come from Hades."

"Actually, I believe they came to Rome by way of Alexandria," I said quietly.

"Oh?"

"Yes. Sailors first brought them over from Egypt, or so I've heard. Seafarers like cats because they kill the vermin on their ships."

"What a choice-rats and mice, or one of those fearsome beasts with its claws and fangs! And you, Gordianus-all this time you've sat there as if nothing was happening! But I forget, you're used to cats. Bethesda has a cat which she keeps as a sort of pet, doesn't she? As if the creature were a dog!" He made a face. "What does she call the thing?"

"Bethesda always names her cats Bast. It's what the Egyptians call their cat-god."

"What a peculiar people, worshiping animals as if they were gods. No wonder their government is in constant turmoil. A people who worship cats can hardly be fit to rule themselves."

I kept silent at this bit of conventional wisdom. I might have pointed out that the cat-worshipers he so offhandedly disdained had managed to create a culture of exquisite subtlety and monumental achievements while Romulus and Remus were still suckling a she-wolf, but the day was too hot to engage in historical debate.

"If the creature comes back, I shall have it killed," Lucius muttered under his breath, nervously eyeing the roof.

"In Egypt," I said, "such an act would be considered murder, punishable by death."

Lucius looked at me askance. "Surely you exaggerate! I realize that the Egyptians worship all sorts of birds and beasts, but it doesn't prevent them from stealing their eggs or eating their flesh. Is the slaughter of a cow considered murder?"

"Perhaps not, but the slaying of a cat most certainly is. In fact, when I was a footloose young man in Alexandria, one of my earliest investigations involved the murder of a cat."

"Oh, Gordianus, you must be joking! You're not saying that you were actually hired to track down the killer of a cat, are you?"

"It was a bit more complicated than that."

Lucius smiled for the first time since we had been interrupted by the squabbling cats. "Come, Gordianus, don't tease me," he said, clapping his hands for the slave to bring more wine. "You must tell me the story."

I was glad to see him regain his good spirits. "Very well," I said. "I shall tell you the tale of the Alexandrian cat…"

The precinct called Rhakotis is the most ancient part of Alexandria. The heart of Rhakotis is the Temple of Serapis, a magnificent marble edifice constructed on a huge scale and decorated with fabulous conceits of alabaster, gold and ivory. Romans who have seen the temple begrudgingly admit that for sheer splendor it might (mind you, might) rival our own austere Temple of Jupiter-a telling comment on Roman provincialism rather than on the respective architectural merits of the two temples. If I were a god, I know in which house I would choose to live.

The temple is an oasis of light and splendor surrounded by a maze of narrow streets. The houses in Rhakotis, made of hardened earth, are built high and jammed close together. The streets are strung with ropes upon which the inhabitants hang laundry and fish and plucked fowl. The air is generally still and hot, but occasionally a sea breeze will manage to cross the Island of Pharos and the great harbor and the high city wall to stir the tall palm trees which grow in the little squares and gardens of Rhakotis.