I found Hermes waiting on a bench in the atrium. He looked up, annoyed, when I gestured for him to join me.

"You look like you ducked out and went to a tavern," he said. "Are you going to have to lean on me all the way home?"

"Nonsense," I said. "No one gets drunk on vintage as fine as I've been drinking." We left the house and walked toward the Forum.

"I've attended at banquets in houses as fine as this," he said. "I never realized the guests were puking from sheer joy."

"You are a vulgar little rascal," I chided. "You should not speak about your betters in such a fashion."

"You ought to hear how we slaves talk about you when there are no freemen about."

"You aren't earning yourself any favors this way," I warned him.

"Hah. You probably won't remember-uh-oh." His eyes went wide and so, I confess, did mine. A crowd of brutal-looking men swaggered toward us, blocking the narrow street. In center front was the ugliest of the lot: Publius Clodius Pulcher.

"Uh-oh, indeed," I muttered. "Hermes, be ready to back my play."

"Back you? What can you do against that lot?" The boy's voice quivered with terror.

"Just watch and keep your wits about you," I said reassuringly. I picked a level spot. To my left, a flight of steps led between two buildings to a higher street. Behind us, the street was relatively clear, but it ascended steeply. While I was by no means drunk, I wished belatedly that I had been more moderate with the Caecuban.

"Metellus! I have the feeling that you have been avoiding me! I am hurt!" He grinned his ugly, oily grin. Clodius had been making no formal calls and was dressed only in tunic and sandals. These latter were ordinary brown leather, although he was entitled to the thick-soled red buskins with the ivory crescent at the ankle. Even his tunic was the workingman's exomis, the Greek type that leaves the right shoulder and half the chest bare. Clodius, man of the people.

"You know how dearly I cherish your company, Publius," I said. "You have but to call at my house during my morning reception."

His laugh was loud and false. "When did a Claudian ever come calling on a Metellan?"

I waggled a finger at him. "Careful, Publius, your patricianship is showing. People might think you were wellborn, and you'll have wasted all that slumming and hanging around with low company."

"He's drunk," said one of the thugs.

"Drunk is as good a way to die as any," Clodius said. "Get him."

"Just a moment," I said, holding out a palm. "You have the advantage. Give me a moment." Ceremoniously, I removed my toga and folded it.

"He wants to make a fight of it," Clodius said. "I wouldn't have given him credit. Go ahead, Decius. Afterward we'll wrap you up in it, and you won't look so bad when your servants come to carry you home. You'll look better than poor Appius Nero did after you murdered him."

"I didn't kill him, Publius, you did, or maybe it was Clodia."

He went into his vein-popping routine again. "Enough of this! Kill him!"

As I have already said, running in a toga is futile. Since I was no longer encumbered with mine, I bounded like a deer up the steps to my left. When I reached the street at the top of the steps, I turned right, downhill. I survived the next few seconds only because Clodius and his men were temporarily surprised by my bolting. Only a fool could have expected me to stand and fight against such odds, but men are capable of endless folly, and Publius Clodius of more than most men.

Nonetheless, I could almost feel their breath on my heels as I dashed down the street, with startled pedestrians dodging out of my way. Romans were all too familiar with the sight of a man running for his life and knew how to behave accordingly. I mentally vowed a goat to Jove, asking him to cloud the eyes of the people before me. My greatest fear was that someone would recognize Clodius behind me and would try to stop me to curry favor with him.

I was far from Milo's territory and I did not know what Clodius's strength might be in this area. If I could make it to the Subura, I would be safe. Clodius and his men would probably not make it back out alive. Unfortunately, to make it all the way to the Subura I would have to be as swift and enduring as that Greek who ran with the news from Marathon to Athens. I cannot recall his name just now.

Our fine new colonial cities have beautiful, wide boulevards, flat as a pond and straight as a javelin. Rome has none. The streets I ran on rose and dipped, bent in serpentine curves or sharp angles, narrowed without warning and transformed into steps with no order or reason. This worked to my advantage, because I was recently returned from military service and Celer had insisted that his officers train as hard as the legionaries, to include broken-field running in armor. This stood me in good stead as I dodged, hopped, turned and leapt over the occasional recumbent drunk.

Clodius had no athletes in his following, and most of his ex-gladiators were well-drilled in arms but not in running. When I risked a glance over my shoulder, I saw that Clodius was close behind, but he had lost all but three or four of his men. The odds were getting better all the time.

I came to a warren of low wineshops and whores' cribs. The road had narrowed to an alley and took a right-angled turn to the right. On both sides rows of low doorways gave access to tiny cubicles and the services of their inhabitants. I ducked into one, and such was my state of heightened awareness that I still remember the sign above the doorway. It read: Phoebe: Skilled in Greek, Spanish, Libyan and Phoenician (this did not refer to languages). Price: 3 sesterces. 2 denarii for Phoenician. The smell within was rank, and from the back of the room came heavy breathing and the sound of flesh slapping rhythmically against flesh. I had my dagger and caestus out, and when a shadow crossed the doorway I lunged. There was a sharp indrawing of breath and the man toppled, clutching his belly. The face was bearded. Not Clodius, worse luck. Another man tripped over the one I had stabbed, and I kicked him in the jaw as he fell. I barged out the doorway, swinging at the first face I saw, and felt a jawbone crack under the bronze spikes of my caestus. Someone swung a curved short sword at me and I felt it draw a cold line along my shoulder, missing my throat by a finger's breadth. Before the man with the broken jaw had a chance to fall, I got my unwounded shoulder into him and sent him crashing into Clodius.

With a single leap I cleared the tangle of bodies and flailing limbs and was running at top speed down the alley. I passed a crowd seated in the open front of a wineshop, and they whistled and clapped in appreciation. In the years since, I have sometimes had cause to wonder what the Phoenician style might be. It must have been complicated. Two denarii was awfully expensive for a girl in that part of town.

My shoulder began to sting, but the fire in my lungs was worse. The alley opened onto a small plaze in front of a temple of Vertumnus. This gave me my bearings, and I ran toward the temple with the sound of sandals slapping close behind me. A few more of Clodius's men must have caught up with him. I veered to the right and went down the narrow street that ran between the temple and a towering tenement. Unwillingly, I had to slow down and tread carefully. The pavement before a tenement is often slick, because the wretches who inhabit such places are often too lazy to carry their chamberpots to the nearest sewer opening and just dump them into the street. Squawks and thuds behind me told me I was correct in being cautious.

The road began to level out, and I began to feel a bit of hope that I might get out of this alive. The great, hulking building just ahead of me was the Basilica Aemilia. I was looking at its unornamented rear, and I knew that if I could just get past it, I would be in the Forum, where even Publius Clodius might hesitate to murder me. My sides were cramping and my lungs were working so hard that I felt as if blood were about to burst forth from them.