I shook my head. "I thought it was Clodia! I thought Clodia would stop at nothing to destroy Marcus Caelius, but in the end she was desperate to save him-from himself! And I thought that you would do whatever you could to stop Milo from carrying out such a mad scheme, but your only desire was to see him destroy himself."

"Paradoxes amuse you, don't they, Finder? I told you, I've no patience with playwrights' devices, similes, metaphors, and such. Ironies and enigmas displease me even more. But I do know when the final act is over." Fausta reached for the pitcher on the table beside her and filled the cup to the brim. "You'll forgive me if I don't offer you a cup as well," she said, lifting it to her lips.

I gave a start and reached for the cup, but too late. She had swallowed the contents in a single draught.

Fausta put down the cup. Her eyes glittered. She blinked and swayed slightly. "The poison merchant promised me that this one would act much more quickly and without… too much… pain." She grimaced. "The liar! It hurts like Hades!" She gripped her belly and staggered out of the room, into the portico off the garden. "People will say I did it out of grief. It's an honorable thing for a widow to take her own life… after her husband dies in battle. Sulla's daughter shall bring no shame to his memory!"

Fausta collapsed to the floor. Birria, who had been pacing the garden, gave a cry and rushed to her. He knelt and scooped her up. Her eyes were open, but she was as limp as a sack of grain in his arms, already dead. He threw back his head and let out a howl. Tears streamed down his face. "No!" he cried. He stared up at me. "What have you done to her?"

"She did it to herself," I said, pointing to the doorway and the little tripod table just inside.

Birria spied the pitcher and the cup. For a long moment he stared into Fausta's lifeless eyes. Finally he released her. I heard a slither of metal as he pulled his short sword from its scabbard. I started back, but the blade was not for me. Kneeling over Fausta, he turned the sword against his belly and braced himself. A look came over his features such as one sometimes sees on the face of a gladiator in the arena at the end-a look at once resigned and defiant, contemptuous of life itself.

Birria drew a last breath and fell onto his sword. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he let out a gasp. Blood poured from the wound and trickled from his lips. He pitched and heaved for a moment, then stiffened, then collapsed across the body of his mistress.

"Egypt!"

Bethesda delivered this pronouncement in much the same fashion that she had announced her previous, sudden insights into a cure for her illness. How she arrived at these revelations, where the knowledge came from, and why she trusted it, I had no idea. I only knew that where once she had uttered, "Radishes!" and the household had gone on an expedition in search of radishes, now she uttered, "Egypt!"

A trip to Egypt would cure her-that, and only that.

"Why Egypt?" I asked.

"Because I came from Egypt. We all came from Egypt. Egypt is where all life began." She said this as if it were a fact that no one could possibly dispute, like saying, "Things fall down, not up," or, "The sun shines during the day, not at night."

I had thought she might say: Because Egypt is where we met, Husband. Egypt is where you found me and fell in love with me, and Egypt is where I intend to reclaim you and purify you of the transgression you committed with another woman. But that was not what she said, of course. Did she know about Cassandra? I thought not; she had been too preoccupied with her own illness.

Did Diana know? Not for certain, perhaps, but Diana had to suspect something. So far, she hadn't confronted or questioned me. If she had suspicions, she kept them to herself-more for her mother's sake, I suspected, than for mine. What was done was done, and the important thing was to keep peace in the household, at least until her mother got better.

"I must return to Alexandria," Bethesda announced at break fast one morning, and not for the first time. "I must bathe once more in the Nile, the river of life. In Egypt I shall either find a cure, or I shall find eternal rest."

"Mother, don't say that!" Diana put down her bowl of watery farina and gripped her stomach. Had her mother's words upset her digestion-or was Diana, too, falling prey to some malady? She was nauseous as many mornings as not. It seemed to me that a curse had fallen on all the women in my life.

This was the first time that Bethesda had explicitly mentioned the possibility of dying in Egypt. Was that the real point of the journey she insisted on making, and was all her talk of a cure a mere pretense? Did she know that she was dying, and did she wish to end her days in Alexandria, where her life had begun?

"We can't afford it," I said bluntly. "I wish we could, but-"

There was a noise at the front door, not a friendly or respectful knocking, but a loud, insistent banging. Davus frowned, exchanged a guarded look with me, and went to answer it.

A moment later he returned and spoke in my ear. "Trouble," he said.

"Stay here," I said to the others, and followed Davus to the foyer. I looked through the peephole. On my doorstep a pair of hulking giants flanked a small ferret of a man in a toga. The ferret saw my eye at the peephole and spoke up.

"It's no good hiding behind that door, Gordianus the Finder. A man can avoid the day of reckoning for only so long."

"Who are you, and what are you doing on my doorstep?" I asked, though I knew already. Since the annihilation of Caelius and Milo, the moneylenders and landlords of Rome reigned supreme. Any organized resistance to them had evaporated. Trebonius was said to favor creditors quite blatantly now in any negotiation he brokered between them and their debtors; those who had sought relief before the stillborn insurrection had received much better deals than those who were seeking relief now.

"I represent Volumnius," said the ferret, "to whom you owe the sum of-"

"I know exactly how much I owe Volumnius," I said.

"Do you? Most people have difficulty calculating the interest that accumulates. They almost always underestimate the amount. They don't understand that if they miss making even a single payment-"

"I haven't missed a payment. According to the agreement I made with Volumnius, the first installment isn't due-"

"-until tomorrow. Yes, this is merely a courtesy call to remind you. I presume you will have the first installment ready for me, first thing in the morning?"

I peered out the peephole at the faces of the ferret's two henchmen. Both had hands the size of small hams and small, beady eyes. They looked too slow and stupid to be gladiators. Their sort was good for only one thing, overpowering and intimidating victims smaller and weaker than themselves. The sum of their brainpower combined was probably below that of the average mule, but they could probably follow simple orders from the ferret-"Break this fellow's finger," say, or, "Break his arm," or, "Break both arms."

"Go away," I said. "Payment isn't due until tomorrow. You've no right to come harassing me today."

"Harassing you?" said the ferret, flashing a wicked smile. "If you call this harassment, citizen, then just wait until-"

I slammed shut the little hatch over the peephole. The noise it made was as feeble as I felt at that moment. "Go to Hades!" I shouted through the door.

I heard the ferret laugh, then bark an order at his henchmen to move on, then the sound of their footsteps receding.

Davus frowned. "What are we going to do if they come back tomorrow?"

"If they come back, Davus? I don't think there's any doubt about that."