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assignment.”
    Anatolius looked skeptical.
    “It’s quite true,” John assured him with a thin smile. “Cornelia would like my bath repaired and its mosaic renovated. Its style and workmanship, not to mention its subject, are such that it was obviously the work of the same man.”
    “It’s a pity mosaic makers don’t sign their work. They must not have the egos of poets. Think how much easier your task would be!”
    John agreed. “There’s also the tattoo I’ve described to you. That will certainly narrow down the chase. Even though nobody claimed her body, someone is certain to know about a missing woman with such a distinctive marking.”
    Anatolius looked thoughtful. “The culprit must have feared she could be identified by the tattoo or he wouldn’t have tried to conceal it with the dye. A scarab with a cross over it, you said. A peculiar combination.”
    “The cross was crudely done and somewhat blurred. From what remained, it might once have been an ankh. An Egyptian marking, like the scarab.”
    “Do the two together signify anything?”
    John shrugged. “I spent a few years in Egypt. I was not preoccupied with studying the culture.”
    “One thing we do know, whatever the tattoo means, they are usually on women of the class employed by Isis, not to mention actresses and the like. I’d be happy to make appropriate inquiries among those ladies.” Anatolius looked at his littered desk and sighed. “It’ll make a change from winding up estates and trying to trace elusive heirs.”

Chapter Eight
    A burst of laughter greeted Anatolius as a girl clothed in rose-scented perfume and a wisp of silk admitted him into Isis’ house. A gilded Eros beside the door announced the business of the establishment.
    A niche by the entrance was piled higher than usual with the daggers and swords everyone in the city carried but which were not allowed inside. Most of their hilts were elaborately worked, some bejeweled. Anatolius added his own blade to the armory.
    The sound of merriment emanated from a room opening off the hallway.
    The girl noticed Anatolius’ glance in its direction. “It’s that Egyptian magician called Dedi, sir. Madam arranged for him to entertain a group of patrons.” She half turned to look over her shoulder, obviously eager to get back to the performance. The silk mist she wore rose revealingly with the movement.
    Anatolius was about to instruct her to take a message to Isis when the madam herself emerged into the hall. Isis was middle-aged and comfortably plump. She wore considerably more silk than her employee.
    “Anatolius! What an unexpected pleasure! And how well you timed your visit! Do come and see the magick this diminutive ornament to the empire is performing. I’ll wager the Patriarch would anathematize all of us, if he only knew what the fellow was doing!”
    She placed a finger to her lips. “And he may well find out,” she whispered in mock horror. “I recognized at least one deacon from the Great Church. No doubt he will claim he was here to gather information on the blasphemous goings-on taking place nightly in my house, although that’s not what I hear from his favorite girl.”
    Isis grasped Anatolius’ arm and pulled him toward the open doorway of a room decorated by a life-size statue of Bacchus in classical Greek style, attended by several marble satyrs engaged on various lewd pursuits. A crowd lounging on cushions strewn amidst the statues guffawed at the antics of an olive-skinned little man at the far end of the room.
    Or, rather, Anatolius realized, at the talking skull on the table beside Dedi.
    The skull was chattering about the Patriarch’s private life and secret pleasures while Dedi’s carp-like mouth did not move, except to pucker itself into an expression of outrage.
    “Blasphemy!” Dedi suddenly shouted at the skull. “You wouldn’t dare utter such scurrilous untruths if you were alive!”
    He leaned forward toward the crowd and whispered loudly,