The Seven Wonders: A Novel of the Ancient World (Novels of Ancient Rome)

“Oh, what a snob you are, cousin! I daresay you’ll find the wealthy men of Halicarnassus to be as refined as those of Ephesus or Rhodes or even Athens. They know your poetry.”

“Do they?” Antipater pricked up his ears.

“Indeed, they do, and it’s a great disappointment to me that I won’t be able to introduce you as my dear cousin Antipater of Sidon, since you’re supposed to be dead. When word of your ‘death’ reached Halicarnassus, you were the talk of all my gatherings.”

“Was I?” Antipater could not suppress a smile of pleasure.

“Everyone agreed that the world had lost its greatest poet.”

“Well, perhaps not the greatest,” said Antipater, trying to sound humble.

“In your honor, the girls and I took turns quoting your epigrams about Myron’s cow, and we debated which was cleverest. Have you ever actually seen that statue in Athens? And can any statue really be so lifelike?” She quoted:

“Had Myron not fixed my hooves to this stone,

I would have gone to pasture and left you alone.”

Antipater tittered with delight and matched her with another of his epigrams:

“Calf, why nuzzle my flank and suckle my udder?

I am the cow of Myron, not your mother.”

I rolled my eyes and cleared my throat. Greeks and their epigrams! Given all the poems Antipater had written about that cow, such an exchange could go on indefinitely.

Bitto sighed. “Alas, I shall have to introduce you as Zoticus of Zeugma, and no one will be at all impressed. But you’re so good at making verses on the spot, I’m sure you’ll win them over. Well, I’m glad that’s all settled.”

Antipater blinked, suddenly realizing he had been outflanked. “Bitto, I never agreed that I would attend these parties of yours.”

She shrugged. “If you prefer, you can sequester yourself in the library while they’re going on. You’ll be glad to see that I managed to keep every scroll my husband collected. For a while I thought I’d have to sell them, before my parties proved successful. There’s a complete set of The Histories by Herodotus in there. He was born in Halicarnassus, you know.”

Antipater’s eyes lit up. “I suppose, on those evenings when you play hostess, Gordianus and I can use the time to better acquaint ourselves with Herodotus.”

Speak for yourself ! I wanted to say, but bit my tongue. Bitto saw the look on my face and laughed. “We shall see,” she said. “But look—we’ve lost the sunlight here in the garden. You can almost see Aphrodite shiver. Shall we move to the balcony?”

She led us to a terrace on the downhill, west-facing side of the house. The view was spectacular. To the left I could see the glittering harbor, to the right the hilltop crowned by the Temple of Ares, and looming directly before us, my mind still hardly able to accept its reality, was the vast Mausoleum. The lowering sun was directly behind the golden chariot atop the monument, framing it in silhouette like a flaming halo.

For a long moment we stood in silence at the balustrade and took in the view. Gradually, I realized I could hear someone talking. Some distance below us and to one side, I looked down on the balcony of a neighboring house, where two women dressed in black sat side by side, the older one reading quietly aloud to the younger. That the reader was older I could tell by flashes of silver amid her blond hair, most of which was contained in a netlike snood. The younger woman’s head was uncovered, and her unpinned hair seemed to float like a golden cloud about her face, catching the last rays of the sunlight. Her black gown covered her arms and legs, but she appeared to have a long, slender body. She listened to the older woman read with her head tilted back and her eyes closed, her expression as serene as if she slept. Her features were lovely. I judged her to be not much older than myself.

Bitto followed my gaze. “My neighbors,” she said, lowering her voice, “Tryphosa and her young daughter-in-law, Corinna.”

“Are they in mourning?” I asked.

“They wear black because of a death in the household, yes. Whether they mourn is another question. I’d advise you to keep your distance from those two.” She looked sidelong at Antipater. “And if you wish to fix your disapproval on a misbehaving widow, cousin, turn your attention from me and consider Corinna.”

“That harmless young creature?” said Antipater. “She’s lovely.”

“Quite,” agreed Bitto. “And possibly deadly.”

“What!”

Tryphosa must have heard his exclamation, for she stopped reading and looked up at us. Corinna opened her eyes at the interruption, glanced at her mother-in-law, then also looked in our direction. At once she reached for a black veil pinned to her gown and pulled it over the bottom half of her face. Her eyes, I saw, were a bright blue. Something in her gaze unsettled me—or was I only imagining it, because of what Bitto had just said about her?

“Greetings, Bitto,” the older woman called out.

“Greetings, Tryphosa.”

“Are you having a party?” Was there a note of sarcasm in the woman’s voice?

“These men are houseguests,” explained Bitto. “This young one is Gordianus, who’s come all the way from Rome, and this is his tutor and traveling companion, Zoticus of Zeugma. Zeugma—that’s in the part of the world you come from, isn’t it, Corinna?”

Above her veil, the younger woman’s blue eyes widened a bit. “Yes, Zeugma is in Commagene,” she said, in a voice almost too low to be heard. “But I’m sure your guest and I have never met.”