the stairs and carefully descended, taking unsteady steps. I reached the bottom, negotiated the hallway, and came to the curtain that hung over Cassandra's doorway.
I whispered her name. My voice was hoarse and feeble. I spoke her name again, louder. There was no answer.
I pushed aside the curtain. The room was completely bare. Not even the pallet remained.
I stood for a long time, feeling nothing, waiting for my head to clear. Suddenly I was desperately thirsty. I moved to the doorway. As I was stepping through, my foot struck something concealed amid the folds of the curtain. I stopped to pick it up. It was Cassandra's leather biting stick.
Had she left in great haste? Or had someone else cleared out the room? Cassandra had so few possessions, it seemed hardly possible she could have forgotten such a personal object. If she had over looked it somehow, surely she would have missed it and come back for it.
Where was Cassandra?
I left the building and walked down the street, shielding my eyes against the sunshine. I felt that sense of unreality that comes from having slept a very long time and waking at an odd hour of the day. I walked down the Street of Copper Pots, wincing at the clanging of metal against metal. I found a public toilet and emptied my bladder. I found a public fountain and splashed my face, then drank until my thirst was quenched. I was famished, but that could wait.
I took the shortest route toward my house, cutting across the Forum. Amid the formal squares and ornate temples, my sense of unreality only deepened. I seemed to be walking in a dream.
'Gordianus!'
I turned around and confronted one-armed Canininus. The rest of the chin-waggers stood in a group nearby. One by one they looked up from some heated discussion to stare at me.
'So you are alive,' said Canininus, 'even if you look half-dead.'
Mild-mannered Manlius stepped closer, followed by the others. 'Gordianus! Your family is worried sick about you. Your son-in-law and that crazy Massilian have been scouring the city for you. They say you went off somewhere on your own yesterday and never showed up for dinner. They were here not an hour ago, along with those two little mischief makers, asking if anyone's seen you. Where have you been?'
Volcatius, the old Pompeian, flashed a lecherous grin. 'I'll bet I can guess. You know the old Etruscan proverb: when a man's gone missing, it's because of a miss. Am I right, Gordianus? Was she worth the trouble you'll face when you get back home?' He tittered.
'Meanwhile, you've missed the best gossip in ages,' said Canininus. 'Milo and Caelius were both spotted right here in the city, together, only this morning.'
'It's a fact!' said Manlius. 'Someone saw them heading from the Subura toward the Capena Gate with an entourage of very rough-looking fellows-some of Milo's notorious gladiators, most likely. They were posing as master and slave-'
'Caelius playing the master, of course, since he's the one with the brains,' said Canininus. 'As soon as they were outside the gate, they mounted horses that were waiting for them and sped like lightning toward the south. What do you make of that?'
I shrugged. 'Another wild rumor?' I managed to say. Despite the water I had drunk, my mouth was as dry as chalk.
'Never mind Caelius and Milo,' said Volcatius. 'Gordianus never answered my question. Who was she, Gordianus? Some cheap whore in the Subura? Or one of those great ladies you occasionally call upon in your line of work? She must have put you through quite a marathon if you're just now staggering home.'
I pushed past him and hurried on. I tripped on an uneven paving stone and heard laughter behind me.
'She's crippled him!' cried Volcatius. 'I want to meet this Amazon.'
'You needn't be rude,' Manlius called after me.
'Gordianus thinks he's too good for the likes of us,' said Canininus. 'He never comes around anymore. When we do see him, he goes stalking off in a huff like a…'
His voice receded behind me. I walked as fast as I could, heading for the steep pathway at the far side of the Forum that would take me home. Inside the folds of my tunic, I clutched Cassandra's biting stick.
'Where in Hades have you been?'
The tone-frantic, furious, and relieved all at once, implicitly warning me never to do such a thing again- reminded me of Bethesda. How many times over the years had I heard that precise tone when I returned home from some scrape I had gotten myself into? But it wasn't Bethesda who rushed up to me in the foyer, looking fit to be tied. It was Diana.
I told my daughter the truth-or part of it. That I had met unexpectedly (for me, if not for them) with Milo and Caelius in the Subura on the previous day, that they had put forward a proposition that I refused, that they had forced me to swallow a soporific of some sort, that I had only just awakened and had made my way straight home.
'What were you doing in the Subura in the first place?' asked Diana, frowning. 'How is it that Milo and Caelius were able to find you? Did they have you followed, or did they just happen to come upon you? What sort of drug did they give you?' Diana had inherited my own inquisitive nature, but she had yet to master the rules of a successful interrogation. Ask too many questions at once and you invite the overwhelmed subject to shrug helplessly and give no answer. That was exactly what I did.
'Everyone in the household is out looking for you,' she said. 'Davus is down at the fish market. Hieronymus is at the Senian Baths. I sent Mopsus and Androcles over to Eco's house to find out if he'd turned up anything. We've all been mad with worry.'
'What about your mother? This must have been especially hard on her.'
Diana sighed. 'I managed to keep it from her. She didn't come out of her room even once yesterday, so she didn't see the rest of us all flustered and in a panic when you didn't show up for dinner. But she did ask for you later, and I had to make up something on the spot-a lie about you spending the night away from the city because an old client needed to tap your memory about a trial from years ago. I don't think I could have fooled her if she wasn't so unwell. As it was, she just nodded and turned her face away and pulled the coverlet around her neck. How can she be cold when the weather's so hot? But at least she didn't realize you were missing, so she didn't have that worry to add to her illness.'
'How is she today?'
'Better, I suppose, because she's determined to go out. A little while ago she sent for one of the slave girls to come help her dress. She says she wants to go to the market. She says she's thought of something that might make her better-radishes. She says she must have radishes.'
A few moments later, Davus arrived home. He was so glad to see me, he let out a roar and lifted me high in the air, squeezing the breath out of me. Diana shushed him and told him to put me down at once because Bethesda was coming and mustn't see him making such a fuss. Davus obediently put me down, but couldn't stop grinning at me.
Bethesda stepped into the room. Dressed in a freshly laundered stola, with her hair combed and pinned, she looked slightly pale but better than I had seen her in quite some time. She gave Davus a sidelong look but said nothing and shook her head ruefully, no doubt wondering once again how her daughter had come to marry such a grinning simpleton.
'Radishes!' she announced. Her voice was hoarse, but surprisingly strong.
And so we made our way-slowly, to accommodate Bethesda-down to the market, in search of the latest commodity Bethesda imagined might provide a cure for her malaise.
We walked from vendor to vendor, searching in vain for a radish that would satisfy Bethesda's discriminating gaze. I suggested that Bethesda might look for carrots instead. She insisted that the soup she had in mind would allow no substitutions.
At last Bethesda cried, 'Eureka!' Sure enough, she held in her hands a truly admirable bunch of radishes-firm and red, with crisp, green leaves and long, trailing roots.
The price the vendor named was exorbitant.
'Perhaps I could manage with just two radishes,' said Bethesda. 'Or perhaps only one. Yes, one would do, I'm sure. I imagine we can afford one, can't we, Husband?'
