One litter remained, a little farther off than all the others. When my eyes fell on it, my heart skipped a beat. Its occupant couldn't be seen, except for a finger that parted the closed drapes just enough for her to see out. But I knew that litter, with its red-and-white stripes, all too well. Eight years ago its occupant had been one of the most public women in Rome, notorious for her flamboyance and high spirits. Then she had dragged her estranged young lover into the courts and made the grave mistake of crossing Cicero. The result had been a disastrous public humiliation from which she had never recovered. Then her brother (some said lover) Clodius met his end on the Appian Way, and her spirit seemed to have been snuffed out altogether. She had retreated into a seclusion so complete that some thought she must be dead. She was the one woman in Rome-before Cassandra-who had threatened to break my heart. What was Clodia-beautiful, enigmatic Clodia, once the most dangerous woman in Rome, now all but forgotten-doing there that day, lurking incognito amid the litters of the other women?

I gazed from litter to litter, my head spinning. To see these particular women all gathered in one place at one time was more than remarkable; it was astounding. And yet, there they all were, their various litters scattered before the burning pyre like the pavilions of contending armies arrayed on a field of battle. Terentia, Antonia, Cytheris, Fulvia, Fausta, Calpurnia, and Clodia-the funeral of Cassandra had brought them all together. Why had they come? To mourn Cassandra? To curse her? To gloat? The distance made it impossible to read the expressions on their faces.

Beside me, Diana crossed her arms and took on the hard, shrewd look so familiar to me from her mother. "It must have been one of them," she said. "You know it must have been one of those women who murdered her."

I felt a chill, despite the heat of the flames. I blinked at a sudden swirl of smoke and cinders and turned to look again at the burning pyre. The fire had consumed yet more of Cassandra, had taken another portion of her away from me, and I had missed it. I opened my eyes wide despite the burning smoke. I stared at the blackened remains upon the upright bier reduced now to a bed of glowing coals. The musicians played their shrill lament. The mourners raised their cry to heaven.

How long I stared at the flames, I don't know. But when I finally turned to look behind me again, all seven of the women with their litters and their entourages had vanished as if they had never been there.

II

The last time I saw Cassandra-truly saw her, looked into her eyes and beheld not just her mortal shell but the spirit that dwelled within-was on the day of her death.

It was shortly after noon on the Nones of Sextilis, a market day, or what passed for a market day in Rome in those times of shortage and mad inflation. Bethesda felt well enough to go out that day. I went along as well, as did Diana. My son-in-law, Davus, accompanied us. In those uncertain days, it was always wise to bring along a big, hulking fellow like Davus to play bodyguard.

We were on a quest for radishes. Bethesda, who had been ill for some time, had decided that radishes, and radishes only, would cure her.

We made our way from my house on the Palatine down to the market on the far side of the Capitoline, not far from the Tiber. We walked from vendor to vendor, searching in vain for a radish that would satisfy Bethesda's discriminating gaze. This one was pitted with black spots. That one was too elongated and soft. Another had a face on it (leaves for hair, straggling roots for a beard) that looked like a dishonest cobbler with whom Bethesda had once had a row. To be sure, none of these radishes looked particularly appetizing to me, either. Despite the best efforts of the magistrates put in place by Caesar before his departure, the economy was in constant turmoil, with no end in sight. I make no claim to understand the intricacies of the Roman economy-production of food, transport to market, borrowing against future crops, the care and feeding of slaves and the cost of replacing runaways (a particular problem these days), the constant, grinding tug of war between creditors and debtors-but I do know this much: A war that splits the whole world in two results in a paucity of radishes fit to eat.

I suggested that Bethesda might look for carrots instead-I had seen one or two of those that looked edible-but she insisted that the soup she had in mind would allow no substitutions. Since this was a medicinal soup, meant more for her recovery than for my nourishment, I kept my mouth shut. A vague, lingering malady had been plaguing Bethesda for months. While I doubted that any soup would rid her of it, I had no better cure to suggest.

So the four of us strolled from vendor to vendor, searching for radishes. It was just as well that we weren't looking for olives, since the only ones to be had were selling for the price of pearls. Moldy bread was easier to find, but not much cheaper.

Behind me I heard Davus's stomach growl. He was a big fellow. He required more food than any two normal men to fill his belly, and in recent days he hadn't been getting it. His face had grown lean, and his waist was like a boy's. Diana made a fuss over him and fretted that he would dry up and blow away, but I suggested we needn't worry about that as long as Davus still had legs like tree trunks and shoulders like the arch of an aqueduct.

"Eureka!" Bethesda suddenly cried, echoing the famous exclamation of the mathematician Archimedes, although I doubt she had ever heard of him. I hurried to her side. Sure enough, she held in her hands a truly admirable bunch of radishes-firm and red, with crisp, green leaves and long, trailing roots. "How much?" she cried, startling the vendor with her vehemence.

He quickly recovered himself and smiled broadly, sensing a motivated buyer. The price he named was astronomical.

"That's robbery!" I snapped.

"But look how fine they are," he insisted, reaching out to caress the radishes in Bethesda's hands as if they were made of solid gold. "You can still see the good Etruscan earth on them. And smell them! That's the smell of hot Etruscan sunshine."

"They're just radishes," I protested.

"Just radishes? I challenge you, citizen, to find another bunch of radishes in all this market to match them. Go ahead! Go and look. I'll wait." He snatched the radishes back from Bethesda.

"I can't afford it," I said. "I won't pay it."

"Then someone else will," said the vendor, enjoying his advantage. "I'm not budging on the price. These are the finest radishes you'll find anywhere in Rome, and you'll pay what I ask or do without."

"Perhaps," said Bethesda, her dark brows drawn together, "perhaps I could manage with just two radishes. Or perhaps only one. Yes, one would do, I'm sure. I imagine we can afford one, can't we, Husband?"

I looked into her brown eyes and felt a pang of guilt. Bethesda had been my wife for more than twenty years. Before that she had been my concubine; she was practically a child when I acquired her in Alexandria, back in the days of my footloose youth. Her beauty and her aloofness-oh yes, she had been very aloof, despite the fact that she was a slave-had driven me wild with passion. Later she bore my daughter, the only child of my loins, Diana; that was when I manumitted and married her, and Bethesda settled into the role of a Roman matriarch. That role had not always been a comfortable fit-a slave born in Alexandria to an Egyptian mother and a Jewish father did not easily take to Roman ways-but she had never embarrassed me, never betrayed me, never given me cause for regret. We had stood beside one another through many hardships and some very real dangers, and through times of ease and joy as well. If we had become a little estranged in recent months, I told myself it was merely due to the strain of the times. The whole world was coming apart at the seams. In some families a son had taken up arms against his own father, or a wife had left her husband to side with her brothers. If in our household the silences between Bethesda and me had grown longer, or the occasional petty arguments sharper, what of it? In a world where a man could no longer afford a radish, tempers grew short.