Davus stepped into the garden. From the satisfied, slightly stupid look on his face, I suspected that he and my daughter had found their own release from the strains of life at some point during the night. And why not? I tried to suppress a twinge of envy.

"How is-?" Davus's question was cut off with a yawn as he stretched his arms above his head, disarranging the folds of his toga.

"Bethesda is no better… but no worse," I said, hoping I spoke the truth.

"And where are we off to this morning, Father-in-Law?"

At the height of Milo's power, when he ruled a veritable army of street gangs in competition with Clodius, he and his wife, Fausta, had lived in one of the city's more imposing houses, a worthy habitation for the daughter of the dictator Sulla and the husband from whom she expected great things.

That house and its contents had been confiscated by the state and sold at auction not long after Milo's exile from Rome. Fausta, though she remained married to Milo, refused to accompany him to Massilia. Without a house, where was she to live and by what means? As it turned out, the law included a provision for an abandoned wife to reclaim her dowry from the first proceeds of confiscated property. Fausta's dowry had been considerable, and after the auction she managed to get much of it back. With that money she had moved into a smaller, more humble dwelling on the far side of the Palatine Hill from my own. She was not exactly poor, but she had fallen a great distance in the world.

"What will this one be like?" asked Davus, as we headed out.

"What do you mean?"

"So far, I haven't known quite what to make of all these women."

I laughed. "What can I tell you about Fausta? On the one occasion when I met her, which was shortly before Milo went into exile, she was taking a bath with two of his gladiators-and she invited me to join them. That sort of behavior was what ended her first marriage, before Milo. She was seeing two lovers on the side-so goes the story-and being rather blatant about it. One was a fuller who owned a wool-washing operation. The other was a fellow called Macula, on account of a birthmark on his cheek that looked like a stain. Her twin brother, Faustus, made a crack about it: 'Seeing that she has the personal services of a fuller, I don't see why she doesn't get rid of that "Stain"! My sister's behavior is less than immaculate.' "

"Immaculate," Davus repeated slowly, grasping the pun.

"Exactly. But Fausta's husband didn't find the situation quite so amusing. He divorced her for adultery. Then she married Milo. Several steps up socially, for him. For her, he must have seemed a good prospect. Perhaps Milo's ruthlessness appealed to her; maybe it reminded her of her father. Who knew his career would end in murder and exile just a few years later?

"The scandals started the very day after their wedding, when Milo came home and caught her in the act with a fellow named Sallust. Milo gave Sallust a sound thrashing, which was of course his legal right-indeed, Milo could have killed him, and it wouldn't have been murder-and confiscated his moneybag for a fine.

"But Fausta was incorrigible. Not long after the incident with Sallust, she invited not one but two lovers to come over one afternoon. Then Milo showed up. One of the fellows managed to hide in a wardrobe, but Milo caught the other, dragged him out of the bedroom, and proceeded to beat him to a pulp. Meanwhile, the first fellow slipped back into Fausta's bed, and the two of them made mad, passionate love to the sound of the other fellow screaming and begging Milo for mercy. Before you point out the obvious, Davus, I will: Fausta enjoys being caught."

He frowned. "And perhaps Milo enjoyed catching her. Otherwise, why didn't he divorce her?"

"Because Fausta's connections were too valuable to him, politically and socially. Her dowry was valuable, too. Not all marriages are like yours with my daughter, Davus, based on"-I almost said blind lust, but that would have been unfair-"based on mutual love, desire, and respect. Some marriages are based on other considerations-power, money, prestige. Especially marriages among the Best People or those aspiring to join their ranks. Which isn't to say that Milo and Fausta didn't find one another attractive. I think there was a definite spark between them-her, all ginger hair and voluptuous curves; him, all hot tempered and hairy chested.

"Eventually things settled down between the two of them. Maybe Milo finally scared off all her lovers! He tended to his political career. She appeared beside him as his dutiful wife. Who could doubt that one day he would be elected consul, and she would be a consul's wife? Then came the murder of Clodius, and Milo's career went up in smoke."

"Why didn't Fausta divorce him? Especially if she didn't want to go into exile with him, and he was never coming back?"

"I don't know, Davus. Shall we ask her?"

The slave who opened the door had the overfed, oversexed look of a grizzled gladiator gone to seed. That made him a walking contradiction; how many gladiators live long enough to go to seed? Two smoldering eyes peered at us from beneath a single bristling eyebrow, but he was probably cleverer than he looked. How else had he survived long enough to acquire a few gray hairs, not to mention the plum job of waiting on a highborn lady with a special appreciation for gladiators? I wondered how many men he had killed in his life to arrive at this particular perch. He crossed his arms while I gave him my name and requested a few moments of his mistress's time. His forearms were the size of my thighs and covered with ugly scars.

With a jolt, I suddenly recognized him: Birria, one of Milo's most prized gladiators. He had been directly involved in the skirmish with Clodius that day on the Appian Way. He was also one of the gladiators who had been lounging with Fausta in her bath on the occasion when I met her. I was surprised Milo had not taken Birria with him, knowing the slave's reputation as a trained killer. Perhaps Birria had been part of Fausta's dowry settlement and so had remained with her. He had gained a great deal of weight since I last saw him, and not much of it was muscle.

Birria left us in the foyer while he went to announce us. The house was even gloomier and more bereft of ornaments than I had expected. One feature did catch my eye, however. It gave me quite a start.

It is the custom of Roman nobles to display busts of their illustrious ancestors in niches in the foyers of their homes. In Fausta's foyer, there were only one niche and one bust. Pacing the little room, turning on my heel, I abruptly found myself face-to-face with the image of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the dictator.

I had met him once. Like so many others, I had been charmed-and a little terrified. An appetite for pleasure and for cruelty had radiated from him like the heat of the sun at midsummer; men averted their faces in Sulla's presence, fearful of being scorched. His example-winning a bloody civil war, attaining absolute power and using it to behead his enemies, reforming the state in his image and then turning his back on it-had haunted Rome for two generations. Depending on one's political point of view, his legacy had either broken the Constitution, or else failed to shore it up enough-and in either case had generated a series of disasters that led directly across the decades to the present moment, with the Republic paralyzed and Rome holding its breath for the arrival of a second Sulla. He had been dead now for over thirty years, but the eyes that peered from the marble image in Fausta's foyer still had the power to chill my blood.

From somewhere deeper in the house I heard the sound of a man shouting. The words were indistinct, but the tone was angry and demeaning. Who was shouting? Who was being shouted at?