"Did she say that?"
"Bethesda, I'm in no mood to be teased."
"She only meant that I had been accepted by the other women here on the Palatine. The women who matter, anyway.
Thanks to Clodia."
"Is that all she meant?"
"What do you mean, is that all? Think of it, of where I come from, who I am. I dreaded it when we moved from the farm back to Rome, into such a house, such a neighborhood. I never let you see how I felt, of course, but it was just as I feared. They treated me very badly at first."
"Treated you badly?"
"Ignored me, shut me out. But after tonight, things will change. The others will treat me differently. As if I were one of them."
This struck me as highly unlikely, but I shrugged. "Why not? Almost anything seems to be possible in Rome these days."
For some reason Bethesda took offense at this comment and didn't say another word to me all the way home.
Diana had stayed up for us. She demanded that her mother tell her everything about the party. While they settled in Diana's room, talking of what the women had worn and how they had dressed their hair, I escaped to our bedroom.
I stripped off my toga and put on a shabby tunic. I kept a lamp burning so that Bethesda could find her way around the room. I lay down on the sleeping couch and shut my eyes against the flickering light, but I couldn't sleep. I had drunk too much, eaten too much, heard too much poetry. From down the hall I could hear Diana's and Bethesda's muffled laughter. The sound reminded me of the sound of distant laughter in the garden, when Clodia had kissed me…
I had asked her for something, hadn't I? The poison, that was it! The gorgon's hair, so that I could compare it to the same stuff that Eco had given me to safeguard. Again, I had come home without it. Of course, I didn't really need Clodia's sample to make the comparison; I remembered clearly enough what the stuff had looked like. I had held it up to the lamplight, while Chrysis twisted in the corner and sobbed…
I shifted on the sleeping couch, determined to fall asleep, but the laughter from Diana's room kept me up, and my thoughts kept twisting endlessly in space, like Chrysis suspended upside down from the ceiling. Finally I got up and reached for the lamp.
There was a little storage room down the hallway from our bedroom, cluttered with rolled rugs and folded chairs and wooden boxes. After a brief search I found the strongbox amid the jumble. I tried to remember where I had hidden the key, and then realized I didn't need it. The little lock on the strongbox had been broken.
I took the box into the bedroom and set down the lamp so that it would light the inside.
There wasn't much inside the box-a blood-encrusted dagger that had been important at another trial, a few letters and some other mementos that I didn't want anyone else to touch. Among them was the little pyxis of poison that Eco had asked me to keep for him, not wanting to have it in his own house with the twins.
I picked up the pyxis by the rim of the lid, which came open. I gave a jerk, thinking I had clumsily spilled the contents, then realized there were no contents to be spilled.
The pyxis was empty. Only a few traces of poison remained, com-pacted against the inside corners of the box, identical to the crumbly yellow powder that Clodia had shown me.
What did it mean?
I set the pyxis aside and looked in the strongbox again, thinking the poison must have spilled inside. I saw no yellow powder, but I did see something else, a small object easily overlooked: an earring. It was a simple design, a little silver crook with a green glass bead for ornament. I recognized it at once; it was one of Bethesda's old earrings.
The crook of the earring was bent. I looked again at the broken lock of the strongbox. The metal facing was scored with tiny scratches. The aperture was small; the crook of the earring would have been ideal for poking inside.
What had happened was obvious: the earring had been used to force the lock.
I sat and stared dumbly at the earring, the strongbox and the empty pyxis, at first puzzled, then stunned, then furious.
Diana and her mother gave a start when I pushed aside the curtain and stepped into the room. I held the empty pyxis in my outstretched hand.
"Can you explain this?" I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
They both looked at me as if they hardly knew me. Would I have known myself in a mirror at that moment?
Neither of them spoke. "I asked if you could explain this." I said. They stared at me dumbly.
"Very well. It needs no explaining." I held up the earring. "You must have been in a considerable hurry, Bethesda, to have left this behind. That was careless, very careless. Didn't you realize I'd find eventually?"
She stared blankly at the earring. "Please, Bethesda, don't pretend that you don't recognize it. Even I recognized it, and you claim I neve notice jewelry! It's one of a pair that you've had for years." I sighed
suddenly more sad than angry. "Did gaining her favor mean so much to you? Did you not know how she would use the poison-not just to fool the court, but to make a fool of me!" I snapped the pyxis shut and threw the earring on the floor. Diana gave a start and drew against her mother, frightened. For a moment I felt ashamed, but then my anger returned. I paced the floor.
"She's made a fool of you as well, can't you see that? Inviting you to her party, giving you that abominable statue, making you think you could belong to her circle. Sharing shameful secrets with you, whispering behind my back in the garden! She made up whatever you wanted to hear, I imagine. She's had a lot of practice at that. It's what she does with her lovers, so why not with you? Did you really think she wanted to be your friend, a woman who talks about her ancestors as if they were gods, stooping to share gossip with a woman who was born a slave?"
I stopped my pacing, trying to quiet my rage, but I only grew angrier. I clutched the pyxis so hard that the corners cut the palm of my hand. "Wife, you have taken part in deceiving me! Do you deny it?"
Bethesda made no answer.
"You have deliberately deceived me! Do you deny it?" "Mother-" said Diana, clutching at Bethesda's arm. Bethesda covered the girl's face and pulled Diana against her breast to quiet her. "Do you deny it?" I shouted.
Bethesda looked steadily into my eyes, shrewd and unflappable to the last. "No, husband. I do not deny it." "You took part in deceiving me?"
"Yes."
We stared at each other for a long moment. Bethesda never blinked. I threw the pyxis on the floor and left the room in a rage. My shouting had roused Belbo, who rushed after me as I raced out the door and up the night-dark street.
The polite manner of knocking on a door is with the foot, but that night I used my fist to bang on Clodia's door. The banging reverberated in the still night air, loud enough to wake neighbors, I thought, but the slaves took a long time to answer. Did the noise frighten them, or did they simply think me rude? At last a slotted peephole slid open and two eyes peered out. Even in the darkness I recognized them by the single brow above them.
"I want to see your mistress, Barnabas."
"It's late. You can see her tomorrow at the trial."
"No, I must see her tonight."
The eyes studied me dispassionately. I realized how I must look, wearing my sleeping tunic, my hair mussed. The peephole closed. I paced back and forth on the narrow doorstep while Belbo stood in the street behind me, yawning and blinking.
At last the door opened. I slipped inside, but Barnabas closed the door in Belbo's face.
He led me through the foyer, down the steps and across the garden By the light of a few low-burning lamps I was able to see that the garden was not entirely deserted. Coupled figures moved and whispered in the shadows. Suddenly, like a fawn in the forest, a naked girl went running across our path, taking great bounding strides. It was the girl who had dined with Senator Fufius. She turned her head and gave a startled laugh as she passed, then vanished. A moment later Fufius, naked and drunk, went chasing after her.