wrist that held her, sawing till she felt something give. At the same time her left hand swept across his neck, severing the vein that bulged just beneath the surface. There was irony in the choice of her attack, but there was much more blood.
Pío stood up straight, as if listening to the sound of a more urgent call. Inside him, a clock began its inexorable count backward to zero, every diminishing moment market by a surge of escaping of blood. Suddenly it was as if Sabina and I were no longer in the room. He shoved her aside; with his good hand, he ripped the chain from the wall. He picked Nestor up in his arms and said, “Push hand here. Hard.” Not waiting for Nestor’s horrified muscles to awake from their paralysis, he took his lover’s hand and pressed it to his wound. Blood bubbled between the little Greek’s fingers and poured down Pío’s side. Nestor was crying.
Sabina followed them, but it was impossible for me to rise. Pío carried Nestor through the house, out into the front gardens, gathering the rest of the astonished household as if he had walked through a spider web and everyone else was a captured fly attached by sticky ropes, unable to do ought but be dragged along. Betto and Malchus raced to him with swords drawn, but as they neared it became obvious their skills would not needed. With each step down the gentle slope between house and gate, Pío’s pace faltered. Blood trailed from his neck and wrist, painting erratic crimson lines on the white gravel. Nestor used both hands to staunch the flow but Pío’s neck was slippery and his jolting steps made the task impossible. Nestor begged for Pío to set him down, but the man from Hispania had his heart set on the iron gates. In the end that heart would betray him; with each ragged beat it pumped more of his life out onto the perfect landscape.
At last Pío stepped onto the Sacra Via. Below him, the greatest city in the world sprawled like the octopus he used to spear as a child. Freedom, he had learned, could not be priceless, for its value was less than freedom and home combined. In this hard, unforgiving place, the salt spray tang never filled his nostrils, the smell of grilled mackerel and onions never made his mouth water, and the sight of fishing boats anchored in waters so clear that the red and yellow hulls seemed to float in mid-air, this was only a vivid but distant memory. The village of his youth had receded to a few faded images. He looked up and smiled; at least the same blue vault arced here and in his mind’s eye. It was enough. Gently, he set Nestor on the paving stones and sank slowly to his knees. He was very tired.
“Pío!” Nestor keened, “don’t leave me here!” He reached up with bloodied fingers. “Don’t let them do this to me! Take me with you, I beg you!”
Pío looked down and said, “Yes, amor, you come with me.” He lay down beside Nestor and put his once powerful hands about Nestor’s throat. “Momento,” he said. Their foreheads touched. “Can you see them?” Instead of tightening, Pío’s grip relaxed.
In a little while, Malchus and Betto eased Nestor up off the stones and brought him back into the house. They came back with a cart for Pío and left him the guardhouse; Boaz’s men were there within an hour to dispose of the body.
***
Of the nine of us present for that midday meal, four had not eaten figs: Pío, Livia and two of cook’s helpers, Mercurius and that woman who cried “how could you” on the day I first met Pío. Her name, I regret, escapes me.
“I’m certain,” Sabina told Crassus that night. “It was tincture of henbane.” Tertulla stood uncomfortably by her husband, but was determined to participate in the running of their home. She had even insisted on helping with the cleanup, discarding her palla for an old tunic and scrubbing the tiles of the atrium on her hands and knees with the others.
“Diluted, henbane opens and calms the breathing passages,” Sabina said. “The bottle I keep in my stores is gone. My records show that it was three-eighths full, so unless someone ate every fig in the bowl, the dose would not be fatal.”
“And a non-fatal dose?” asked Crassus.
“Depending on how much was ingested, delirium, paralysis. Brief unconsciousness.”
“You must put