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Papa withdrawn the charge now that he’d gotten his painting back? Had he allowed Agostino to be pardoned? Blood rushed up to my ears and fury seethed in me. I leveled at that man who was my father a hateful look he’d never forget. He had no conscience, no honor, no concern for anyone but himself. I’d never call him Papa again. He would never hear me say the word he loved.
    Numb, barely knowing what I was doing, I pushed my way through the crowd. My skirt was stepped on. I yanked it free. Stumbling out the door into an inferno of glare, I turned in the opposite direction from home and lost myself in unfamiliar streets. I kept hearing the Locumtenente’s words: The prisoner is pardoned. Heat waved up from the street. I passed the Campo Vaccino and the Palatino. Pardoned . Free.
    Banishment. That was ludicrous. Gratuitous. All Agostino needed was Cardinal Borghese to state that his ceiling was unfinished. Agostino could have sanctuary in the cardinal’s residence. Banishment meant nothing in this city run by the pope. All that humiliation for nothing. Not disputing the claim  . . . Small vindication, unheard in the roar of the pardon. There had been no statement of my innocence, no reparation of any kind. In the public eye, I was still a stained woman. What had I thought? That I’d be able to walk out of there as pure as Santa Maria?
    Putting one foot dully before the other, I walked all the way to the southern edge of the city, to the Porta Appia, through the arch and out the Via Appia into the open countryside. Cicadas made their metallic scraping hiss, like an irritating ringing in the ear. Houses were abandoned. The stucco had fallen away, showing bricks and stones beneath. Arches led nowhere. Broken walls and sunken tombs were overgrown with anemone, blue cornflowers and orange poppies. It was a fantasy of ruin, a life lost in every stone.
    I sat on a crumbling wall under the shade of a tall umbrella pine and tried to rub the ache out of my back. A thundercloud billowed on the horizon. Oh, why didn’t it just come here and wash everything away—me, Papa, Agostino, the Tor di Nona, Rome itself. A smooth, white stone with a vein of sparkle glinted through the dust on its surface. I picked it up to throw, but I didn’t know where to hurl it. What would a single stone do against the universe?
    I kicked sand over an anthill and watched the blind frenzy of creatures of no consequence. Hundreds, thousands of ants—they reminded me of the thousands of nameless, hapless legionaries who had marched to war on this road centuries ago, had fought and lay waiting to die, their parched lips unnoticed in greater pain. They were persons of no consequence. Armies dying like ants, ants dying like armies—itwas all pitiful. Bigger things than my own life had happened here, and smaller.
    I remembered a story Sister Graziela had told me about Christ walking here. Peter, fleeing Rome, had asked him, “Domine, quo vadis?” and Christ had answered, “I am going to Rome to be crucified a second time.” Shamed, Peter turned back to face his own martyrdom, maybe from this very spot. I’d have to turn back too. I closed my eyes and breathed slower to let the new truth settle and find a spot to live in me—how hard the world was going to make me.
    Graziela had said I might have to wait until my Susanna and the Elders would be famous for Rome to know my innocence. It might never be famous. I spat on the stone to get off the powdery film and started back, looking for Peter’s footprints on the dusty cobbles.
    I went to Santa Trinità instead of home, and found Graziela weeding in the herb garden behind the cloister. I bent down to help her, though I hardly knew which were plants and which were weeds. She didn’t make me tell her about the trial. Her calmness helped to settle me. Finally I asked, “In the story of Susanna, what happened to the old men? When Susanna