Then I saw another familiar face. He hung back from the rest so that I only glimpsed him between barrages of hugs and kisses. The look on his face was not so much of joy as of intense relief clouded by embarrassment.

Davus was alive after all.

"I thought Davus must be alive. I hoped it was so," I said, reclining on my favourite couch with my right arm holding Bethesda beside me. We had eaten inside, then pulled chairs and couches for everyone into the garden to enjoy the last of the day. The weather was mild for the Ides of March, which was of course more like April, figuring in the leap-month. Butterflies flitted amid the columns of the peristyle. The plants all around were beginning to quicken and stir with the spring. The statue of Minerva, I noted ruefully, remained broken and prostrate where she had fallen.

"But I thought he was surely dead," said Eco, peering at Davus as if still unsure of the evidence of his eyes. Davus blushed under his scrutiny.

"Until a few days ago, I thought the same thing," I said. "My last glimpse of Davus on the Appian Way was of a dead man, or so I believed. Our captors thought so, too, and left him for dead."

"I hit my head," said Davus quietly, lowering his eyes. "They must have dragged me off the road, behind a tomb. I woke up hours later with a nasty bump on my head."

"And when did you realize the truth?" asked Bethesda, lazily tracing her fingertips over my earlobe and neck.

"When I reread Diana's letter to Meto. She made no mention of Davus, but she knew that we had been attacked and abducted on our way back to the city. How? It was possible that some passerby witnessed the attack, happened to recognize Eco or me, and felt obliged to inform the family. Possible, but not likely. It was also possible that whoever came upon Davus's corpse, if indeed our abductors had left it in the road, just happened to recognize him as my slave and returned him to the family, and that from his condition and the place where he was found, and the fact that we were missing, Diana could have inferred that we had been attacked and abducted. That chain of possibilities seemed unlikely. The simplest thing is often the true thing. Davus must have survived, I reasoned, and brought home the tale of the attack. That seemed unlikely, too, but I wanted to believe it, and so I quietly did. I am more pleased than I can say to discover that I was right. To have first lost Belbo, and then you…"

Davus continued to blush, and would not look me in the eye.

"But we are all well, all together," I said, pulling Bethesda closer to me. The warmth and firmness of her body – the simple, solid reality of it – felt incredibly good to me. With my other hand I reached out to Diana, who sat on a low chair to my left. She smiled and lifted her chin as I stroked her black, shimmering hair. Surely there was no finer or more beautiful thing in all creation, I thought, than Diana's hair. Yet even as she smiled, there seemed to be an anxiety that clouded her face and would not disperse. Perhaps she could not quite trust that all was well again, after so many long days of worry.

Eco reclined on a couch across from me, with Menenia beside him and Titus and Titania at his left hand. We talked for a while longer, about our captivity, about the state of things in Rome, about Bethesda's success in bending Pompey's guards to her will. The sky darkened and stars began to appear. After a while, Eco and Menenia sent the twins to bed and retired to their room for the night. Davus withdrew, and a few moments later Diana left the garden as well, still looking uneasy. Bethesda and I were alone.

She brought her face close to mine. "I missed you," she whispered.

"Oh, Bethesda, I worried for you so much."

"I worried for you, too, husband, but that's not what I said. I said I missed you." She smoothed her hand over my chest and down towards my legs, ending in a place that made her meaning unmistakably clear.

"Bethesda!"

"But husband, you must be voracious after so long."

It was a curious thing, but during our time in the pit I had experienced hardly any amorous impulses or fantasies at all. A few times, purely for physical relief, I had tended to myself while Eco slept. I assumed he had done the same, though probably more often. And on a few occasions, I had resorted to a certain fantasy involving a certain highborn lady and her red and white striped litter. But for the most part I had retreated from my body as much as I could. Denying pleasure was perhaps a way of also denying the more imminent prospects of pain and death. It was as if I had been buried alive – which was not far from the truth.

Now I was free and back in Rome at last, safe and fed and surrounded by my loved ones. But I was also tired, exhausted by four days of riding and still not fully recuperated from the debilitating effects of our captivity. Much, much too tired for what Bethesda wanted, I thought… and yet the movements of her hand began to stir me, and her warmth seemed to pour a kind of vitality into my body, bringing me fully to life again. I felt myself sinking into a state beyond words or caring, like a stone dissolving into water.

"But not here," I whispered. "We should go… inside…"

"Why?"

"Bethesda…!"

So we did it there in the garden like young lovers, not once but twice, with the moon for a lamp. The night air grew chilly, but that only made the places where our flesh touched burn all the warmer.

Only once did I have the sensation that we were being watched, but when I looked around it was only the head of Minerva that looked back at me, lying sideways in the grass. I ignored her until we were finished the second time. When I looked again, she still seemed to be watching me, with a look of hurt in her lapis lazuli eyes. And when will you tend to my needs? her expression seemed to say – as if single-handedly I could put the goddess of wisdom together again and return her to her pedestal.

Bethesda and I eventually retired to the bedroom, but at some point in the night I got up to relieve myself. The hulking shadow I saw across the garden alarmed me at first, until I realized who it was.

"Davus!" I whispered. "Why are you up? Pompey's guards take the night watch."

"I couldn't sleep."

"But you should. I'll' need you fresh and alert tomorrow."

"I know. I'll try to sleep now." He began to walk off, slump-shouldered. I touched his arm.

"Davus, I meant what I said tonight. I thought we had lost you for good. I'm glad it wasn't so."

"Thank you, Master." He cleared his throat and looked away. What was wrong with him? Why did he feel so guilty?

"Davus, no one blames you for what happened."

"But if I'd known how to ride a horse -"

"I've ridden horses all my life, and they pulled me off my mount with no trouble at all."

"But nobody pulled me off my horse. I was thrown! If I'd stayed on, I could have ridden for help."

"Nonsense. You'd have stayed and fought, and they'd have killed you for certain. You did your best, Davus."

"And it wasn't good enough."

Where had he come by such a conscientious nature, having been a slave all his life? "Davus, Fortune smiled on you. The horse threw you, you were left for dead, and you're alive today. Fortune smiled on all of us. We're still here, aren't we? You should let that be enough."

He finally looked me in the eye. "Master, there's something I have to say. You said you were glad to find out I was still alive, but you can't know how glad I was today, when you showed up at the door! Because – well, I can't explain it. I wish I could, but I can't. May I go now?"

"Of course, Davus. Get some sleep." He lumbered away, tongue-tied and close to tears. I thought I understood. Minerva, who could see everything from the place where she had fallen, must have had quite a laugh at me that night.