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time, keeping an eye on new burials. Fresh earth makes for easier digging, and there’s less chance they’ve been robbed already.”
    “I’m sure you’ve kept a close watch on this grave,” John said. “Has anyone visited?”
    The caretaker emitted a wheezing snort. “Who’d visit such a one except you two? If that’s really what you’re up to. Or maybe her good friend the Lord Chamberlain? Do you know, in the course of my duties I once met a man who claimed he was the Lord Chamberlain. It’s my belief he was a rogue intent on stealing bones to pass off as saints’ relics.”
    He paused. “There’s quite a brisk trade in relics. Every church in the city is filled with them and more than a few might have come from this cemetery if the truth be told, but not while I have kept watch. Anyhow, I was about to haul the fellow I was telling you about off to the authorities when a cat rescued him. Yes, it leapt right at me and that supposed Lord Chamberlain got away. Perhaps the cat was a demon. Perhaps they were both demons. Perhaps the real Lord Chamberlain is a demon. They do say the emperor is a demon and walks about the palace at nights with no face. Take care, my friends. Don’t linger until night falls.”
    Chuckling to himself with a sound akin to a hoarse crow, the pale guardian of the dead turned and shuffled off without a word of farewell, dusty tunic flapping around spindly legs.
    Cornelia stared at John.
    John gave a thin smile. “Yes, I was the man he remembers. It was during the time I was investigating my friend Leukos’ murder. I came to visit the grave.”
    They walked to Leukos’ simple tomb, a vault which was in reality nothing more than a thin layer of plaster over a mound of dirt.
    John felt the faint breath of a breeze against his face. He was aware of the almost imperceptible trembling of grass at his feet, forming a contrast to the stillness of the denizens of the cemetery he could see in his imagination, the stillness of his friend who had been gone for seven years already.
    “So many things in the present point back to the past,” John observed. “When we’re young, everything leads to the future.”
    “It depends on what direction you turn your gaze, doesn’t it?”
    John laughed softly. “You prove my point. You’ve just reminded me of those nights in Egypt. Remember while the rest of the troupe slept, we’d lie in our tent and ponder Marcus Aurelius?”
    “And wonder whether we were the only couple within a week’s ride who were lying in their tent discussing Marcus Aurelius!”
    “I’d wager we were the only couple consisting of a Greek mercenary and a bull leaper who discussed him.”
    “You never knew any other bull leapers?”
    “No one else has recreated that ancient sport as far as I know. The skill was lost. To the past.”
    “How long had you been in Alexandria before we met?” Cornelia asked with an innocent look.
    “Only a day or two,” he replied, suppressing a smile. He added, in response to the unspoken question, “Not enough time to drink the dust out if my throat, much less warm a woman’s bed.”

Chapter Six
    As they arrived home, John and Cornelia were greeted by the sound of Peter lustily singing a lewd marching song. His off key rendition continued to drift downstairs as they stood in the atrium, a sure sign the old servant was as deaf to their entrance as he was to the effect of his own painfully out-of-tune vocalization.
    “It’s livelier than that morbid old hymn written by Justinian,” Cornelia remarked. She ran a hand through her dark hair. “I really must visit the baths. My hair feels like a gorse bush and I’m dustier than the belly of a cart ox.”
    “I’d be happy to escort you.”
    “Why, John? I’m perfectly used to going out and about by myself, you know that.”
    “It makes me uneasy,” John admitted. “I’ve been contemplating engaging a bodyguard for you.”
    Cornelia put her hand on John’s arm. “Better yet, you