A sudden twitch at the corner of his mouth turned into a smile, as a hand belonging to someone hidden behind the door slipped across the gap and made its way onto the slave's backside. The visible patch of wrist moved in a sinuous fashion, like a wriggling snake. The young doorkeeper gave a ticklish start and flexed his muscular forearms. "She should have taken me with her," he sighed, "but I'm managing to stay busy."

"Did she leave any word for me?" asked Trygonion, exasperated. "She must have!"

From just beyond the door I heard a woman's laugh, then a smiling face appeared, pressed cheek to cheek with the burly doorkeeper. "Don't worry, she didn't forget you," the woman trilled. Her voice had a cultured accent and her chestnut hair was extravagantly put up, though a few stray tendrils had escaped the pins and combs. The lines around her eyes and mouth had been skillfully softened with makeup, but I could see she was no longer young. "Barnabas is teasing you! Aren't you, Barnabas? Wicked!" She playfully bit the slave's ear.

Barnabas laughed brusquely and jerked away, freeing his ear from the woman's gleaming white teeth and his buttocks from her grip. "Off with you, then!" she said, laughing and snapping her fingers. "Go on! I'll tend to you later." She growled deep in her throat and clicked her teeth. The door slave departed.

"It's a Hebrew name, you know," she said, turning back to us. "Barnabas, I mean. Clodia says it means 'consolation.' She should know!" The woman laughed, and I caught the smell of wine on her breath.

"What did Clodia say about me?" demanded the gallus.

"About you, Trygonion? Hmm, well, we all know where your name comes from, don't we?" She looked at him knowingly.

"Never mind!" snapped the gallus. "What did she say before she

left?"

The woman's expression soured, undoing the illusion of her makeup. "Oh, all right, then. She said she simply couldn't stay indoors for another instant, and she's been dying to get down to her place on the river for days, so she told Chrysis to call for her litter bearers and pack up a few things and off they went in a cloud of dust. She asked me to come along, but I told her I was too, too despondent and in great need of consolation. Ha!" She barked out a laugh, showing perfect white teeth. "So, since I was staying, Clodia asked me to please give you a message if you should happen to come around, to tell you that you and your" – she looked at Belbo and me blearily, as if noticing us for the first time – "your friends, or whatever, should trot down to the river and meet her there. Is that clear enough?"

"Yes, thank you," said Trygonion curtly. He turned around and hurriedly strode away, taking the longest steps his short legs would allow.

"Cut off their balls and see what pests they turn into," the woman muttered between clenched teeth. She shrugged and slammed the door.

"Horrible woman!" Trygonion said as Belbo and I caught up with

him.

"Slow down," I complained. "Who is she?"

"Just a neighbor. Nobody. A cousin or something. I don't have money for a litter, do you? I suppose we can walk."

Which we did. As we made our way down the western slope of the Palatine, through the cattle markets, across the bridge and up the west bank of the Tiber, at several points I considered telling Trygonion that I had changed my mind and was turning back. What was I doing, after all, coming at the summons of a woman I had happily avoided until now, to discuss a matter from which I had deliberately distanced myself? Blame it on Cybele, I thought, as I followed her priest, his parasol held resolutely aloft.

It is a sign of wealth and good taste to own a green patch on the banks of the Tiber. Such estates are something of a cross between a park and a garden; the owners call such grounds horti. There is usually a structure of some sort-sometimes no more than a rustic retreat with quarters for the groundskeeper and a few guests, sometimes a whole complex of buildings. The grounds themselves are often a mix of wilderness and cultivation, depending on the size of the property, the owner's proclivities and the gardener's skill; patches of tall grass and woodland may be interspersed with rose gardens, fishponds, fountains, and stone-paved walkways adorned with statuary.

Clodia's horti were unusually close in. A hundred years ago, the property must have been well out in the countryside, but the city had greatly expanded since then. It was an enviable location for a piece of riverfront property and must have been in her family for generations.

The impression of great age was reinforced by the grounds them-selves, which on such a warm, windless day had the feeling of a place where time stopped long ago. The immediate approach was a long, narrow lane bordered by sprawling berry bushes which met overhead, shading the way. This tunnellike path opened onto a broad field of grass kept closely mown by a pair of goats which bleated at our approach. Facing the meadow and perpendicular to the river, which was almost entirely obscured by an intervening stand of dense trees, was a long narrow house with a red-tiled roof and a portico running along the whole front. The open meadow was as private as any walled garden in the city, for the view on all sides was shielded by tall cypress trees and majestic yews.

"She won't be in the house, but I suppose we can take a look all the same," said Trygonion.

We crossed the meadow and stepped under the shade of the portico. Trygonion rapped on the nearest door, then pushed it open and stepped over the threshold, beckoning to Belbo and me. Each room of the long house opened onto the next, and every room had its own door onto the long portico, so that one could walk from end to end of the house either along the shaded outdoor walkway or through each room in succession.

I could tell at once that the house was empty. It had the feeling of a place left unoccupied all winter, which had not yet been brought back to life. The air was still and cool inside, the walls and the sparse furnishings exhaled a slightly musty, odor, and every surface had a thin coating of dust.

We followed Trygonion slowly from room to room as he called

Clodia's name. In some of the rooms, dropcloths covered every object. In other rooms the cloths had been pulled away, apparently quite recently, for they still lay carelessly crumpled on the floor. Having acquired a furnished house on the Palatine, I know a few things about furniture. The pieces I saw in Clodia's house on the Tiber were of the sort which fetch astonishing prices at auction nowadays, especially among our burgeoning empire's new rich who have no such treasures in their obscure families-sleeping couches saved from the flames of Carthage, their plush cushions so faded that the exotic patterns can barely be made out; gilded cabinets and trunks with massive iron hinges of a sort no longer made; ancient folding chairs that the Scipios or the Gracchi brothers might have sat on.

There were paintings as well, in every room, and not theatrical wall paintings such as are fashionable among the wealthy nowadays, but portraits and historical scenes painted in encaustic on wood and mounted in elaborate frames. These were darkened by age, their smooth surfaces covered by a skein of very fine cracks. Collectors set great store by these qualities, which time alone creates and which cannot be mimicked by human artists. There were also tiny sculptures mounted here and there on pedestals, none of them taller than a man's forearm, in keeping with the small scale of the rooms, and all of rustic subjects to match the rustic mood of the place-little statues of Pan and Silenus, of a slave boy pulling a thorn from his foot, of a wood nymph kneeling on a rock.

We came to the end of the house and stepped back onto the covered portico. Trygonion peered toward the woods on the opposite side of the meadow, where I could see nothing. "No, she wouldn't be over at the kitchens or the slave quarters or the stable," he said. "She's down by the water, of course." We set out across the meadow again, toward the grove of trees along the river. In their shade, we came upon a statue of Venus- not a small, decorative object like those in the house, but a magnificent, towering bronze upon a marble pedestal. The goddess looked out on the water with an expression of almost smug contentment on her face, as if the river flowed merely to give music to her ears, and the city on its further bank had been erected for no other purpose than to amuse her.