The crook of the earring was bent. I looked again at the broken lock of the strongbox. The metal facing was scored with tiny scratches. The aperture was small; the crook of the earring would have been ideal for poking inside.

What had happened was obvious: the earring had been used to force the lock.

I sat and stared dumbly at the earring, the strongbox and the empty pyxis, at first puzzled, then stunned, then furious.

Diana and her mother gave a start when I pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the room. I held the empty pyxis in my outstretched hand.

"Can you explain this?" I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

They both looked at me as if they hardly knew me. Would I have known myself in a mirror at that moment?

Neither of them spoke. "I asked if you could explain this." I said. They stared at me dumbly.

"Very well. It needs no explaining." I held up the earring. "You must have been in a considerable hurry, Bethesda, to have left this behind. That was careless, very careless. Didn't you realize I'd find eventually?"

She stared blankly at the earring. "Please, Bethesda, don't pretend that you don't recognize it. Even I recognized it, and you claim I neve notice jewelry! It's one of a pair that you've had for years." I sighed

suddenly more sad than angry. "Did gaining her favor mean so much to you? Did you not know how she would use the poison-not just to fool the court, but to make a fool of me!" I snapped the pyxis shut and threw the earring on the floor. Diana gave a start and drew against her mother, frightened. For a moment I felt ashamed, but then my anger returned. I paced the floor.

"She's made a fool of you as well, can't you see that? Inviting you to her party, giving you that abominable statue, making you think you could belong to her circle. Sharing shameful secrets with you, whispering behind my back in the garden! She made up whatever you wanted to hear, I imagine. She's had a lot of practice at that. It's what she does with her lovers, so why not with you? Did you really think she wanted to be your friend, a woman who talks about her ancestors as if they were gods, stooping to share gossip with a woman who was born a slave?"

I stopped my pacing, trying to quiet my rage, but I only grew angrier. I clutched the pyxis so hard that the corners cut the palm of my hand. "Wife, you have taken part in deceiving me! Do you deny it?"

Bethesda made no answer.

"You have deliberately deceived me! Do you deny it?" "Mother-" said Diana, clutching at Bethesda's arm. Bethesda covered the girl's face and pulled Diana against her breast to quiet her. "Do you deny it?" I shouted.

Bethesda looked steadily into my eyes, shrewd and unflappable to the last. "No, husband. I do not deny it." "You took part in deceiving me?"

"Yes."

We stared at each other for a long moment. Bethesda never blinked. I threw the pyxis on the floor and left the room in a rage. My shouting had roused Belbo, who rushed after me as I raced out the door and up the night-dark street.

The polite manner of knocking on a door is with the foot, but that night I used my fist to bang on Clodia's door. The banging reverberated in the still night air, loud enough to wake neighbors, I thought, but the slaves took a long time to answer. Did the noise frighten them, or did they simply think me rude? At last a slotted peephole slid open and two eyes peered out. Even in the darkness I recognized them by the single brow above them.

"I want to see your mistress, Barnabas."

"It's late. You can see her tomorrow at the trial."

"No, I must see her tonight."

The eyes studied me dispassionately. I realized how I must look, wearing my sleeping tunic, my hair mussed. The peephole closed. I paced back and forth on the narrow doorstep while Belbo stood in the street behind me, yawning and blinking.

At last the door opened. I slipped inside, but Barnabas closed the door in Belbo's face.

He led me through the foyer, down the steps and across the garden By the light of a few low-burning lamps I was able to see that the garden was not entirely deserted. Coupled figures moved and whispered in the shadows. Suddenly, like a fawn in the forest, a naked girl went running across our path, taking great bounding strides. It was the girl who had dined with Senator Fufius. She turned her head and gave a startled laugh as she passed, then vanished. A moment later Fufius, naked and drunk, went chasing after her.

Barnabas led me into the red-paneled room off the garden. He set a lamp on a small table and left. I had plenty of time to study the nymphs and satyrs on the walls before Clodia appeared in the doorway. Her hair was unpinned and hung down past her shoulders. She wore a transparent white robe belted only at the waist, so that it was open between her breasts. The naked patch of flesh shimmered in the red light reflected off the walls. She smiled wearily.

"If you wanted to stay, Gordianus, why did you leave? Ah yes, to take Bethesda home. But now you're back. Did someone at the party catch your eye?" She moved sinuously toward me, her eyes heavy-lidded, a faint smile on her lips.

"You had a slave tortured today for no reason."

The lids became heavier. The smile stiffened. "That again? Please, Gordianus, surely a man of your age has accustomed himself to the ways of the world."

"Some things a man never gets used to. Lies, deceptions, conspiracy. "

"What are you talking about?"

"And bribery, of course. That's what the silver was for, wasn't it? Not for purchasing slaves to testify, but an outright bribe, nothing more or less-so that when the time came I would do whatever you wanted. The man whose honesty was boasted of by Cicero himself-that's why you wanted me in the first place, thinking I'd come in handy somehow or other. Ah, yes: we'll throw the fellow in Cicero's face on the last day of the trial. Let Cicero spin out his oration, then have this fellow who Cicero says is honesty personified take the stand and make Cicero look like an idiot. Did you think you could buy me with silver? Or have you

never met a man whom silver, or that smile of yours, couldn't purchase?" "Really, Gordianus, it's awfully late in the evening -" "-and late in the trial for me to be upsetting your scheme. The

supposed delivery of the poison at the Senian baths-were you behind

that as well?"

"Don't be absurd!"

"Perhaps it was a part of your scheme, perhaps it wasn't. But what-ever your intention, something went wrong. The evidence against Caelius that you hoped to capture, or manufacture, never came together. You realized that the mere allegation that Caelius wanted to poison you was too thin to impress the judges. So you came up with this further scheme. How did you know there would be poison in my house? Or did Bethesda just happen to volunteer the knowledge, and you instantly saw how to make use of it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. I told you, Gordianus, it's

late-"

"Did you merely fake the symptoms? Your brother's physician could have told you how to do that, once you showed him what kind of poison you'd come up with. Or did you actually swallow a bit of the stuff, letting him advise you on the dose-not enough to kill you, certainly, but just enough to make you sick, to make your performance perfect, to be sure that you fooled me and everyone else. Yes, I think that would be more like you, to exercise your dramatic flair to the limit, to court a bit of danger, to play for the highest possible stakes. But to hand that poor slave girl over to the torturers for the sake of authenticity-that was really going too far, Clodia, even for you. Of course, you could be sure that she'd tell them the story exactly as you wanted, since they'll only hand her back to you once they're finished, and if she hasn't done her job properly you can make things even worse for her. This absurdity of torturing slaves to get at the truth-"