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lifted a hand and regarded his long, calloused fingers. “It wasn’t my doing. These fingers were commanded by another power. What’s more, the few tesserae I salvaged from the street were almost exactly enough, and the colors matched the girl’s flesh and hair and the colors of her garment. How could that have happened without the Lord’s intervention?”
    John made no reply. He did not believe things happened because of the intervention of the Christians’ god.
    The mosaic maker seemed not to notice the Lord Chamberlain’s silence. He made the sign of his religion and continued. “I secretly took one action to protect her innocence. I made certain she was looking straight out into the world, so that she would never catch a glimpse of the behavior of the pagan deities in her sky.”
    Why had Glykos wanted such a portrait? Given his reputation, he may have thought that thrusting a mosaic daughter into the care of blasphemous deities would taunt the god of the Christian emperor who was about to betray him. John asked Figulus whether the tax collector had revealed the reason for his request.
    Figulus shook his head. “I have often wondered. Was it the result of a terrible upheaval of the humors? Perhaps at the very end, despite his wealth and power, Glykos realized his daughter was his true treasure. Being a worldly, grasping man, he expressed his love for her, as he did for material things, by asserting his ownership. By attaching her image to his wall. He was not altogether a villain. He paid me liberally in gold coins before I left.”
    John looked around the workshop. Figulus’ older sons were still laboring assiduously with their tesserae. The infants had curled up and gone to sleep under the table like a couple of cats. Perhaps for a man who led a comfortable life it was easy and desirable to think the best of evil men.
    “Everything you’ve told me has been interesting, Figulus. I know Glykos was beheaded and his body cast into the sea. As for his family…his daughter…I don’t even know the girl’s name. Did you learn that?”
    “Agnes, Lord Chamberlain. That’s what Glykos called her. I heard afterward that she and her mother were thrown out onto the street with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. It would have been more merciful to execute them both.”

Chapter Eleven
    “Being thrown on the streets isn’t necessarily a death sentence,” Anatolius pointed out. “Agnes probably turned to prostitution. If so, we were correct about the meaning of that tattoo on her body.”
    “I suspect Figulus would consider a woman’s employment by Madam Isis or one of her colleagues to be worse than a death sentence,” John replied.
    He had arranged to meet with Anatolius at the Baths of Zeuxippos. They sat on curved benches beside the central fountain, under the gaze of the tight-lipped, bronze Demosthenes. The splash of falling water, amplified by the cavernous space, masked the echoing slap of sandals on tiles and the conversations of those passing by.
    “I was careful not to make direct inquiries about the situation,” John continued. “So far as Michri and Figulus are concerned I wished to commission repairs. I don’t want word of these investigations reaching the wrong ears.”
    “Particularly since we don’t know whose head sports the wrong ears. If nothing else, Cornelia will be pleased.”
    “It will please me, too. I’d prefer Cornelia didn’t venture out alone.”
    “I’m glad I don’t have a family to worry about,” Anatolius observed. “Besides, if I did I might not be able to trot around to half the brothels in the city on your behalf. Not that I’ve had any luck tracking down that tattoo yet. I can continue to look, but now that we know the model for your mosaic belonged to court, it might be easier to check in those circles.”
    “Isis will keep an eye out for us too, now you’ve alerted her to the search.”
    “John, I was wondering…about Zoe…do you intend to