After a moment, the fortune-teller lifted her head, and Ulrika was startled by the unusual aspect of the face, which was long and narrow, all bone and yellow skin, framed by the streaming black hair. Mournful black eyes beneath highly arched brows looked up at Ulrika. The woman almost did not look human, and she was ageless. Was she twenty or eighty? A brown and black spotted cat lay curled asleep next to the fortune-teller. Ulrika recognized the breed as an Egyptian Mau, said to be the most ancient of cat breeds, possibly even the progenitor from which all cats had sprung.

     Ulrika brought her attention back to the fortune-teller's swimming black eyes filled with sadness and wisdom.

     "You have a question," the fortune-teller said in perfect Latin, eyes peering steadily from deep sockets.

     The sounds of the alley faded. Ulrika was captured by the black Egyptian eyes, while the brown cat snoozed obliviously.

     "You want to ask me about a wolf," the Egyptian said in a voice that sounded older than the Nile.

     "It was in a dream, Wise One. Was it a sign?"

     "A sign of what? Tell me your question."

     "I do not know where I belong, Wise One. My mother is Roman, my father German. I was born in Persia and have spent most of my life roaming with my mother, for she followed a quest. Everywhere we went, I felt like an outsider. I am worried, Wise One, that if I do not know where I belong, I will never know who I am. Was the wolf dream a sign that I belong in the Rhineland with my father's people? Is it time for me to leave Rome?"

     "There are signs all about you, daughter. The gods guide us everywhere, every moment."

     "You speak in riddles, Wise One. Can you at least tell me my future?"

     "There will be a man," the fortune-teller said, "who will offer you a key. Take it."

     "A key? To what?"

     "You will know when the time comes ..."

2

AS ULRIKA ENTERED THE garden behind the high wall on the Esquiline Hill, she pressed her hand to her bosom and felt, beneath the silken fabric of her dress, the Cross of Odin, a protective amulet she had worn since she was a child. She felt its comforting shape and reassuring hardness against her breast, and tried to tell herself that everything was going to be all right. But the ill-ease she had awoken with that morning had stayed with her all day so that now, as a red-orange sun began to set behind Rome's marble monuments, Ulrika could hardly breathe. She wanted everything to be normal again. Even things that, just one day ago, had annoyed her, she would welcome on this late afternoon. The issue, for example, of everyone's expectation that she marry Drusus Fidelius.

     Ulrika did not want to be disobedient. Rome raised its daughters to be wives and mothers. All of her friends were either married or betrothed (except for poor deformed Cassia, whose cleft lip guaranteed a lifetime of spinsterhood). No other aspirations were considered. A young woman onher own, without the protection of a man, was a rarity. Even widows were taken in by male relatives. Ulrika had confided in her best friend her wish not to marry, Drusus Fidelius or any man, and her friend had declared, "But no girl chooses to remain unmarried! Ulrika, what would you do?" Ulrika had no answer other than to say that she had always had the vague feeling that she was supposed to do something else. But what that was, she could not say. Her mother had trained her in basic healing arts, the manufacture and use of medicines, knowledge of human anatomy and how to diagnose illness, but Ulrika did not want to follow in her mother's profession, she did not wish to be a healer-woman.

     As she stood in the garden and watched the guests arriving for the dinner party, she thought: Roman men greet their womenfolk with a kiss on the cheek, not out of affection but to see if they detect alcohol on their sisters or daughters—so controlling the men are. But Ulrika had heard that women in Germania were treated with greater respect and equality by their men.

     Ulrika had flowered into womanhood among Rome's villas and streets and temples. She had known crowded and noisy cities, and a life of luxury in a fine house on the Esquiline Hill. But what of alpine forests shrouded in mist and mystery? Ulrika had devoured every book there was on her father's people, the Germans—had absorbed their culture and customs, their beliefs and history. She had even learned to speak their language.

     To what end? she asked herself now as she watched the guests arriving in the courtyard of Aunt Paulina's house. She recognized them all, ladies in flowing gowns, gentlemen in long tunics and handsome togas. Had it all been in preparation to travel to the land where she truly belonged? It would not be an easy journey. Her father, Wulf, had died long ago, before she was born. And if he left behind kinfolk, Ulrika would have no way of knowing who they were, how to find them. She knew only that he had been a prince and hero of his forest people, and that he had bequeathed to her a bloodline of Rhineland chieftains and mystic seeresses.

     A breeze wafted through the garden, stirring branches and leaves and the finely woven linen of Ulrika's long dress. She wore the latest fashion, which called for layers, an effect created by wearing a knee-length overdress as well as multiple shawls, all in varying lengths and shades of blue rangingfrom deep azure to the hue of the morning sky. Her long hair was braided and knotted at the back of her head, and concealed beneath a flowing saffron yellow veil, called a palla, that covered her arms and fell below her waist. Gold earrings and bracelets completed her wardrobe.

     She shivered. If I am destined to leave, when and how would I go?

     "There you are, my dear."

     Ulrika turned to see her mother enter the garden. Selene, at forty, was poised and graceful, her slim figure draped in layers of fine linen in reds and oranges. Her dark brown hair was swept modestly to a knot at the back of her head and hidden beneath a scarlet veil.

     "Paulina said I would find you out here," Selene said as she approached her daughter with hands outstretched.

     Lady Paulina was a widowed noblewoman, and this was her house. Ulrika called her Aunt Paulina, as she was her mother's best friend, a woman who moved in Rome's highest circles. Paulina only invited the most elite citizens to her table, and Ulrika's mother, Selene, being a doctor and a close friend of Emperor Claudius, was one of them.

     Ulrika linked her arm with her mother's, and as they neared the house, they came upon three men of stiff, military bearing debating a point of battle strategy. They wore long white tunics, their bodies draped in purple-edged togas. Seeing the two women, the men paused to greet them and introduce themselves, and when one, an archly handsome man with white teeth set in a tanned face, identified himself as Gaius Vatinius, Ulrika felt her mother stiffen. "Commander Vatinius?" Selene said. "Have I heard of you, sir?"

     One of the other men laughed. "If you have not, dear lady, then you have ruined his day! Vatinius would be shattered to know that there was one beautiful woman in Rome who did not know who he was."

     Hearing the strain in her mother's voice, Ulrika looked more closely at the man Selene had addressed as "Commander." He was tall, in his early forties, with deep-set eyes and a large, straight nose. His handsomeness was severe, as if he had been chiseled from marble, his manner arrogant as the hint of a smug smile played around his lips.