But I imagined the lovers had done little sleeping in this bed. They would have met here in the day; it seemed doubtful that Aemilia could have escaped her parents' vigilance after dark. It was a bed for the waking hours, a bed for loving, not sleeping. The bed where their baby was made.

The thick mattress was covered with a linen sheet, haphazardly tucked at the corners. A woolen coverlet was thrown over it. Several pillows were scattered about. The bed had a rumpled, used look. Both Numerius and Aemilia were no doubt used to having their beds made by a slave, and either did not know how to do it themselves or did not care to. Keeping house was not how they spent their time in this room.

I pulled off the coverlet and cut open the stitches. There was nothing hidden inside.

I pulled off the linen sheet. It was too sheer to conceal anything. It gave off a faint odor. I held it to my nose and smelled jasmine, spikenard, the scent of warm bodies. For an instant I imagined it wrapped around Aemilia, clinging to her. I imagined the two of them lying side by side, with only the sheet to cover them. I shook my head to clear it.

The pillows and the mattress were the most likely places to conceal something. I pulled them off the bed and saw several pieces of parchment hidden beneath the mattress, atop the webbing of straps strung between the sideposts. If they were Aemilia's Greek love poems, copied out in her own hand, I had no desire to read them. But how could I determine what they were unless I examined them?

I looked at the first poem. The handwriting was self-consciously fancy, painfully childish. The words were not.

When I look at you I can no longer speak.

My tongue is broken. A thin flame runs under my skin.

I see nothing. My ears roar. Sweat pours down me.

A trembling seizes me all over.

I am greener than grass. I feel close to dying.

Somehow this can be endured, when I look at you…

Sappho, of course. What love-smitten teenage girl could resist the poet of Lesbos?

I forced myself to read the other poems, one by one. The words made my face flush hotly.

Finally, having read them all, I examined the pieces of parchment front and back. I walked to the window and held each one to the light, looking for signs of invisible lemon ink or perforations that could be a code, but saw nothing of the sort. The love poems were only that, bits of Sappho and my old friend Catullus copied out by a daydreaming girl to pass the hours between visits to her lover. Incriminating, to be sure, but only if shown to her parents.

Standing at the window, from the corner of my eye I noticed Mopsus down on the street corner. He waved at me. I glowered, shook my head, and refused to look back at him. I had specifically told him not to wave, which would only attract attention to us both. When I ignored him, he only seemed to wave more frantically. I determined to thrash him with my tongue when I was done. I stepped away from the window.

Beneath the bed I noticed a wide shallow bowl. I moved the bowl to the floor in the middle of the room. I knelt and dropped the poems into it. I reached into my tunic for the flint box I had brought for the purpose, and concentrated so hard on striking a spark that I didn't hear Androcles's footsteps in the hall outside. I gave a start when he pushed open the door and stuck his head inside.

"Master! There's a man coming up the stairs!"

I suddenly understood why Mopsus waved so frantically. I looked back to Androcles. "Come inside then, quickly!" I whispered.

Androcles slipped inside, then turned to shut the door. He was too late. The door caught on something. Androcles pushed hard, but to no avail. A man's foot was thrust into the breach. Androcles gave a little squeal of panic.

Fingers wrapped around the edge of the door. Androcles threw his whole body against it, but he was no match for the man on the other side. The door relentlessly began to open.

I dropped my flint box. I reached for the knife. I rose to my feet and braced myself, my heart pounding.

"Master, I can't stop him!" cried Androcles.

Slowly but steadily the door opened, until the sunlight from the window fell upon the quizzical, artificially darkened face of my old friend Tiro.

XI

"A rather good view of the Capitoline," Tiro noted, gazing out the window. "I wonder how much an apartment like this lets for on the open market?"

After stepping inside and patting a startled Androcles on the head, Tiro had made a leisurely circuit of the room, noting the emptied trunk and stepping over the mattress and pillows strewn on the floor, and came to rest at the window.

"Tiro, what are you doing here?"

He lowered his gaze. "That boy down there, staring up at me as if I were a gorgon- isn't he one of yours, Gordianus?"

I walked to the window and waved to Mopsus to show that all was well. Visibly relieved, he pantomimed coming up to join us, but I shook my head and signaled that he should continue keeping watch.

"Androcles," I said, "go back to the head of the stairs and stand guard, as you did before. Perhaps we can avoid being surprised a second time."

"But, Master," Androcles protested, "isn't this the assassin you had us follow for you the other day?"

Tiro raised an eyebrow.

"I never told them any such thing. The boys have more imagination than common sense. Go, Androcles."

"But, Master-"

"I shall be perfectly safe. At least, I think I will be." It was my turn to raise an eyebrow at Tiro. Once Androcles was out of the room, I repeated the question I had asked him before. "What are you doing here?"

He tapped his nose. "The same thing you are, I imagine. Following my nose."

"Following me, you mean."

"Perhaps."

"Do you make a habit of trailing after me every time I leave the house?"

"No more often than you follow me, I imagine."

"Why today, then?"

"Because yesterday Numerius's young lover paid you a visit."

"How do you know they were lovers?"

"I know all sorts of things."

"And how did you know she came to see me yesterday? Were you watching my house, or were you following her?"

He shook his head. "Gordianus, you can't expect me to tell you everything, any more than I expect you to tell me all you know. Still, I think it might serve both our interests if we were to pool our knowledge. About Numerius, I mean."

"You're looking for the documents he told you about, aren't you?"

"Aren't you, as well, Gordianus? Since we're looking for the same thing, why not help each other find it?"

I didn't answer.

Tiro stepped to the middle of the room and knelt beside the bowl with Aemilia's poems. The flint box lay beside it. "You were about to burn these before I arrived," he observed. "What are they?"

"Nothing to interest you."

"How can you be sure of that?"

I sighed. "They're erotic poems copied out by a lovesick girl. Aemilia told me they were here. She asked me to burn them. I see no reason to do otherwise."

"But they might not be what they seem."

"They're not what either of us is looking for, Tiro."

"How do you know that?"

"I know!"

"But you'll let me take them, won't you? What harm could there be in that, Gordianus? I'll burn them myself, once I've had a chance to thoroughly examine them. No one else will ever see them."

"No, Tiro!"

We looked at one another for a long moment, neither willing to look away. At last he rose to his feet and stepped away from the bowl. "Very well, Gordianus. I can see that you won't be swayed. What obligation do you owe to this girl?"

I didn't answer, but knelt by the bowl and recommenced striking the flint. A spark flew into the bowl. The dry parchment ignited. The flame was tiny at first, then spread along the edge of the parchment. I watched the words catch fire: A thin flame runs under my skin. I see nothing…