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work. You belong in the garden, playing with Aulus and looking after little Beth. Why do you think I became so upset when I found that you'd left the house to go visit that woman and taken no one with you for protection?"
    Tears welled in her eyes. Since our return to Rome, it seemed to me that a change had come over her. What had become of the strangely aloof young slave girl I had taken as my concubine, then married? Where was the self-contained, autocratic matron of my household, who kept a cool exterior and never showed weakness?
    I took Bethesda in my arms. She submitted to the embrace for a moment, then pulled away. She was as unused to being comforted as I was to comforting her.
    "Very well," I said quietly. "In the future, I shall be more careful when I leave the house. Even though the house of 'that woman,' as you insist on calling her, is only a few steps away." I decided not to tell her about my excursion to the seedy, dangerous Subura.
    "You'll be going back there, then?"
    "To Calpurnia's house? Yes. She's asked for my help."
    "Something dangerous enough to pique the gods' interest in you, no doubt?" said Bethesda tartly, having recovered from her tears. "Something to do with all those scrolls you've brought home with you?" She eyed the bag slung over my shoulder with the suspicion of those who have never learned to read.
    "Yes. Actually . . . there's something I need to tell you. Something I need to tell everyone. Can you gather the family in the garden?"
     
    They reacted more strongly to the news of Hieronymus's death than I had anticipated.
    Bethesda wept—perhaps that was to be expected, given her new propensity for tears—but so did my daughter, Diana. At the age of twenty-four, she was quite the most beautiful young woman I had ever known (even allowing for a father's prejudice), and it pained me to see her loveliness marred by an outburst of weeping.
    Davus, her hulking mass of a husband, held her in his brawny arms and wiped the mist from his own eyes. The last time I had seen him weep was when Bethesda and I arrived home unexpectedly from Egypt and found that everyone feared that we were dead. Poor Davus, thinking we might be lemures, first was scared half out of his wits—of which he had few enough to spare—then cried like a child.
    Their five-year-old son, Aulus, was perhaps still too young to understand the cause of their grief on this occasion, but seeing his mother in tears he joined in with a piercing wail that set off an even more piercing cry from his little sister, Beth, who had recently learned to walk and tottered to his side.
    My son Rupa was the newest addition to the family (by adoption, as anyone could tell by seeing the two of us side by side; he had the blue eyes, golden hair, and muscular frame of a handsome Sarmatian bloodline). Rupa had hardly known Hieronymus. Nonetheless, caught up in the family's grief, he opened his lips and, despite his muteness, let out a sound of despair as poignant as any line ever uttered by Roscius on the stage.
    Even the young slaves, Mopsus and Androcles, who could usually be expected to exchange taunts at any sign of weakness, bowed their heads and joined hands. The brothers had been very fond of the Scapegoat.
    "But, Papa," said Diana, fighting back her tears, "what was he doing in Calpurnia's employ? Something to do with Massilia? Hieronymus hardly had the personality to be a diplomat. Besides, he swore he would never go back there."
    I had decided to tell them as little as possible about the specific nature of Hieronymus's activities for Calpurnia. To be sure, I was not certain myself exactly what Hieronymus had been up to; I had not yet read the reports Calpurnia had given me. Beyond that, I saw no need for any of them to know such details, especially Diana, who more than once had expressed a desire, bordering on an intention, to someday do exactly what Hieronymus had done—to follow in my footsteps as a professional ferret for the rich and