But my smile stiffened when we reached the top of the Ramp and I saw what was in front of my house.

"Belbo, I must be seeing things. I hope so."

"What do you mean, Master?"

"Do you see a group of idle bodyguards lounging outside my front door?"

"Yes, Master."

"And do their faces look familiar?" "They do, Master. An ugly lot."

"And is that not a litter in their midst, set against the wall while the bearers relax in the street?" "It is, Master."

"And does the litter not have red and white striped curtains, drawn back so that we can see that the box is empty?" "That is so, Master."

"Do you know what this means, Belbo?" He quailed at the realization. "I think so, Master… " "Cybele, spare my manhood! Clodia is in my house-and so is Bethesda."

One of Clodia's bodyguards had the temerity to challenge me outside my own front door. Fortunately the man's captain recognized me. He berated his underling and then actually had the manners to apologize to me. Not all of Clodius's gangsters were completely uncivilized, but every one of them looked capable of killing a man without blinking. Seeing them gathered outside my house set my teeth on edge.

Once inside, I drew aside a slave girl who was passing through the foyer. "Is your mistress here?"

"Yes, Master. In the garden."

"Shhh. Keep your voice down. Do I have a visitor?" "There is a visitor, Master, yes."

"Tell me that your mistress is napping in the garden, and that my visitor is quietly secluded in my study."

The slave looked at me, perplexed. "No, Master. The mistress is entertaining the visitor in the little garden at the back of the house." "Oh, dear. Has the visitor been here long?"

"Quite some time, Master. Long enough to have finished the first ewer of wine and sent for another."

"Have you heard… shouting?" "No, Master." "Harsh words?"

She frowned. "Please, Master, I never eavesdrop."

"But you'd notice if your mistress had, say, strangled the other woman, or vice versa?"

The girl looked at me strangely, then managed an uneasy laugh. "Oh, you're making a joke, aren't you, Master?"

"Am I?"

"Shall I go tell the mistress that you're home?"

"No! Just go on about your business, as if I'd never come in."

I quietly made my way to the back of the house. It was possible, from a little passageway off my bedroom, to look through a screen of ivy into the small private garden where Bethesda and Clodia were sitting. They were not alone. Chrysis sat on a pillow at her mistress's feet. Diana was seated next to her mother, holding her hand. Their voices were low, hardly more than a murmur. Their tone was somber. They seemed to be deep in serious discussion. That was the last thing I had expected. What on earth could these women have in common?

I reached out with my forefinger and pushed aside an ivy leaf to get a better look at Clodia. Even in an unassuming stola of soft gray wool she was stunningly beautiful. At least she'd had the sense to put on decent clothing before she came calling at my house. I looked at Bethesda, expecting to see jealousy on her face. Instead her expression was pensive and melancholy, mirroring that of the other women.

Clodia's voice was so low that I had to strain to hear.

"With me, it was an uncle, not blood-kin, but one of my step-mother's brothers. Like you, I kept it a secret. I was fifteen, a bit older than your Diana. My father had just betrothed me to my cousin Quintus, but with Father away from Rome the wedding had to wait. That was quite all right by me. I wasn't eager for marriage, like some girls. But of course, if I had been married, then perhaps… " She took a breath and went on. "Uncle Marcus had always looked at me in a certain way. You know what I mean." The other women nodded sympathetically. "Perhaps it was the betrothal that set him off, thinking that once Quintus took me he would never have the chance again. One day, at the family horti, he caught me alone." She took a deep breath. "Afterward, one wonders how the gods could allow such a thing to happen."

"You never told your stepmother?" said Bethesda.

"I hated her then. I hated her even more after what Uncle Marcus did. He was her brother, after all. I didn't trust her. I thought she might take his side."

"What about your own brothers?" said Diana.

"I should have told them. I did tell Publius, but not until many years later, after Uncle Marcus was dead."

"But your sisters-surely you told them," said Bethesda.

"My half sisters were closer to their mother than to me. I couldn't trust them not to tell her. No, the only person I told was an old slave woman who had been with my father since long before I was born, and I told her only when I began to realize that Uncle Marcus had planted a baby in me. She showed me what to do, but she warned me that if I aborted the child I might never be able to have sons."

"A Roman superstition!" Bethesda clucked her tongue.

"Still, it proved to be true. That was another reason I never told my husband about what Uncle Marcus did to me, and what followed; Quintus would have blamed me for giving him a daughter instead of a son. He would probably have blamed me for tempting Uncle Marcus. It's the way men think. Quintus knew he wasn't the first, but he never knew about Uncle Marcus. He died, never knowing."

I listened, disturbed, and then astonished by what Clodia did next: she leaned forward and took Bethesda's hand, the one Diana was not already holding, and pressed it between her palms. "But you said that it was the same with you, Bethesda-that you kept it a secret."

Bethesda lowered her eyes. "Who could I have told? A free Roman girl might have recourse to law or family-but an Egyptian slave girl in Alexandria? The man had done the thing often to my mother while she lived; she told me that the master's abuse would kill her in the end, and it finally did. After she died, he turned to me. I was much younger than you were, Clodia, not even old enough to bear a child. He did the thing to me only once, or tried to. I suppose he thought I would be docile, like my mother, but after the things she had told me I knew what to expect and I decided I would die before I let him have his way with me. He tied my wrists with a rope, the way he had tied her so many times. He liked to hang her on a hook on the wall. I had seen her like that, seen what he did to her, and when he tried to do the same things to me a kind of madness came into me, the madness the gods put into men and women to give them strength beyond their bodies. I was more limber than he realized. I wriggled free. It turned into a battle. I bit him as hard as I could. He threw me against the wall, so hard I thought I'd been crushed like a beetle. I couldn't breathe. My heart stopped beating. He could have had his way with me then. He could have killed me. He was a powerful, respected man. No one would have thought the less of him for the death of a slave. No one questioned the death of my mother. No one would have questioned my death."

"Oh, Mother!" Diana drew closer to her. Clodia bit her lip. Chrysis bowed her head. Bethesda's eyes glittered, but her cheeks remained dry. "I lay on the floor, stunned. I couldn't move, not even a finger. I waited for the sky to fall. But do you know what he did? He turned as white as a cloud, mumbled a curse and left the room. I think the shade of my mother must have spoken in his ear, shaming him. Instead of having me killed, he simply got rid of me. He sent me to the slave market. I was not a very satisfactory slave, apparently." She managed a brittle smile. "Men would buy me and return me before the day was done. I was sent back to be resold so many times that the man at the slave market made a joke of it. I was still young. I suppose I was beautiful-almost as beautiful as you, Diana. But word spread among the buyers that I was poison, and no one would bid on me. Finally, of course, the right man came for me. I think it must have been a whim of the goddess the Romans call Venus that sent him to the slave market that day, with barely enough coins in his purse. I was the cheapest slave on the block, and still he could barely afford me!"