"I suppose I'm in a bit of trouble," I said sheepishly. "Your mother-"

"Mother's gone to bed," said Diana, quietly.

"In the middle of the day?"

"She became dizzy while we were in the market. She felt so poorly, she had to come home at once." Diana frowned. "I hope it's nothing serious."

That was the first appearance of Bethesda's lingering illness, which was to cast such a deep shadow over my household in the months to come.

X

"I suppose you ate your fill of those stuffed dates at Antonia's house, and we needn't go looking for anything more to eat before our next stop?" I said to Davus.

"They were very good," he said.

"I'll have to take your word for it. I'm afraid our hostess spoiled my appetite."

"She seemed like a very unhappy woman."

"Typically, Davus, you understate. I suppose we should try to be sympathetic. It can't be easy being married to a fellow like Marc Antony."

"Unhappy," he repeated thoughtfully, "and bitter. She spoke very harshly of Cassandra. She said she'd have killed Cassandra herself if someone else hadn't already done so."

"Yes, Davus, I heard what she said."

"So where are we off to now, Father-in-Law?"

"I'm thinking it's time I paid a call on a certain famous actress who keeps a house near the Circus Maximus."

Davus nodded, then reached inside his toga. He produced a stuffed date and popped it into his mouth.

He saw me staring. "I'm sorry, Father-in-Law. Would you like one? I have plenty more."

"Davus! What did you do, slip a handful into your toga while I wasn't watching?"

"Antonia said to take as many I wanted," he said defensively.

"So she did. You should have been an advocate, Davus. Cicero himself couldn't split a hair more finely."

It wasn't hard to find the house we were seeking. Everyone in Rome knew who Cytheris was, and everyone in the neighborhood of the Circus Maximus knew where she lived. An old woman selling plums from a basket-they should have been made of gold for what she was asking-pointed us in the general direction, down the wide avenue that runs along the south wall of the circus. We passed a troupe of acrobats practicing in the street, much to the delight of a crowd of children. A team of chariot racers all dressed in green came walking by. They were covered with dust, with whips wrapped tightly around their forearms and snug leather caps on their heads. I asked their leader for more-specific directions.

He was straightforward enough when he gave them, but as we were walking off, he yelled after us, "Mind you don't let Antony catch you!"

"Or the fat old banker, for that matter!" added one of his companions, cracking his whip in the air to a chorus of raucous laughter.

As Antonia had said, it was a very respectable-looking house, tucked away on a narrow, quiet side street. I noted the fig tree her slave must have used to climb onto the roof of the neighboring house so as to look down into Cytheris's garden, spying on the actress and Cassandra.

Davus knocked. We waited. I told him to knock again. The sun was well up. Apparently Cytheris and her household kept late hours. I was not surprised.

Finally a puffy-eyed young woman opened the door. She was strikingly beautiful and strikingly unkempt, with her auburn hair hanging unpinned and tangled and her sleeping tunica pulled off one shoulder. Her informality revealed much about the household. Women like Cytheris were rare: a slave from a foreign land who had managed, by cunning and beauty, to become an independent, successful freedwoman. Finding herself in Rome without blood relations, it was natural that she should surround herself with slaves who were almost as much friends as servants, companions whom she could trust and confide in and to whom she gave a far greater latitude than a haughty mistress like Antonia (or Fulvia or Terentia) would ever allow. Such slaves would share to some degree in their mistress's notorious debauchery; they would stay up late with her and likewise sleep late, and think nothing of answering the door in dishabille.

The woman who answered the door looked Davus up and down, eyeing him rather as he had eyed the stuffed dates at Antonia's house. Though her hazel eyes eventually settled on me, acknowledging that the senior of the callers was more likely the one in charge, she seemed not really to see me, and certainly not with the riveting attention she had devoted to Davus, as if I were not a man but the shadow of one. Thus do we become more and more invisible as we grow older, until people fail to see us even when they look straight at us.

And yet… Cassandra had seen me. To her, I had not been invisible; to her I was still a vivid presence, a man of flesh and blood, vital, robust, existing in the moment, teeming with life and sensation. No wonder I had been so vulnerable to her; no wonder I had fallen so completely under her spell…

My thoughts, wandering, were drawn back to the moment by the young woman's laughter, which was sharp but not cruel. "You look like you could use a drink!" she said, evidence that I was visible to her after all-a gray, glum-looking man in a toga.

"I'll leave it to your mistress to decide whether she'll offer me one," I snapped.

"My mistress?" She raised an eyebrow. Suddenly I knew that I was talking to Cytheris herself. She saw the moment of realization on my face and laughed again. Then her expression became more serious. "You're Gordianus, aren't you? I saw you at the funeral. I saw this one, too…"

"This is Davus, my son-in-law."

"Married, then?" She said the word as if it were a challenge, not a disappointment. "You'd both better come inside. My neighbors are endlessly fascinated by everyone who comes to this door; they've probably already seen you and run off to spread more gossip about me. Their own lives must be frightfully boring, don't you think, for them to be so fascinated by a simple girl from Alexandria?"

She swept us inside, slammed the door shut behind her, then led us through a small atrium and down a short hallway. The rooms we passed were small but exquisitely furnished. Dominating the little garden at the center of the house was a statue of Venus on a pedestal, only slightly smaller than life-size. At each of the garden's four corners were statues of satyrs in states of rampant excitement, partially concealed amid shrubbery as if they were lurking and stalking the goddess of love. Was this how Cytheris viewed herself and her suitors?

"You're wondering why I answered the door myself," she said breezily. "You Romans, always so strict about that sort of thing, so insistent on decorum! But really, if you knew what I've put the poor slaves through over the last two nights! It's only fair to let them sleep a bit late this morning. Or is it still morning?" She stopped beside the Venus and squinted up at the sun.

I looked around the garden and saw the aftermath of a drunken party. Chairs and little tripod tables were scattered about, some lying on their sides. Wine cups were abandoned here and there; flies buzzed above the crimson dregs. Various musical instruments-tambourines, rattles, flutes, and lyres-were piled helter-skelter against a wall. On the ground beneath one of the lurking satyrs, half-hidden amid the shrubbery, lay a handsome young slave, snoring softly.

"It's this one's job to answer the door," said Cytheris, walking up to him. I thought she was going to give him a kick, but instead she looked down at him with a doting smile. "Such a sweet little faun. Even his snore is sweet, don't you think?" Then she did give him a kick, but gently, prodding him with her foot until he finally stirred and rose groggily to his feet, brushing leaves from his curly black hair. He saw that his mistress had company and without being told gathered three chairs and set them in the shade, then disappeared into the house, blinking and rubbing his eyes.