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and Peter and I might join you? If only it could be so! And what happened with Nikodemos?”
    “Oh, he escaped without any difficulty!” Cornelia clapped her hands and rocked backwards on her precarious perch. “I lost the wager, but it was a small price to pay for learning the trick.”
    “He explained how it was done?” John’s mouth went dry as a large swell caused the ship to lurch and Cornelia with it.
    “After I told him I wanted to use it for an act to be called the Nikodemos Mystery Escape. He was flattered, you see, when I explained the idea would be he was captured by pirates…”
    The deck creaked as the Minotaur lurched abruptly. Cornelia gave a cry and began to topple backwards.
    John leapt forward and grabbed her. Suddenly her weight was pressed against him. He staggered backwards, arms around her.
    His heart was in his throat. “You almost fell into the sea,” he managed to say.
    She smiled up at him. “When you ride bulls you learn how to fall in whatever direction you wish, just as when you travel with a troupe, you learn to make a home wherever you find yourself.”

Chapter Six
    Anatolius lit the terra-cotta lamp on the table by the door of John’s study. The flame illuminated what the gathering twilight beyond the diamond-paned windows did not. The room was sparsely furnished. A table, a scattering of three-legged stools, a desk, all guarded by a solemn-eyed little girl John called Zoe, who now glowered at him from her wall mosaic.
    “Sorry to barge in when John’s away,” Anatolius said to the mosaic girl. “I suppose I’ll end up talking to you myself if I stay in this house long enough. In fact, as you see, I already am.”
    He felt like a snail in a strange shell. He told himself to make a note of the image, then remembered he no longer wrote poetry.
    The odor of burnt verse haunted the air.
    Lighting lamps was a task for John’s servants. Unfortunately, Peter had left with his master and Hypatia was assisting at Samsun’s hospice, which was still overwhelmed by plague victims. The only person left in the house besides Anatolius was Europa. She had taken to her room as soon as her mother and Peter had left, according to Hypatia. If she had emerged during the day, Anatolius hadn’t seen her.
    He was aware of Zoe staring at him. The shifting firelight brought her glass eyes to life.
    “Have you seen her, Zoe?”
    “Nooooo…” came the whispered reply.
    Anatolius stepped back in a panic.
    From behind him came a deep, muffled laugh.
    He spun around. His hand went to the blade concealed in his robes. Not that the puny weapon would have been any protection, he immediately realized. The figure filling the doorway held an upraised sword. The intruder had his free hand half buried in a bristling red beard, pressed over his mouth to stifle a laugh.
    It was Thomas, who glanced back over his shoulder, trod into the room, and sat down.
    Anatolius began to speak.
    Thomas shook his head. “Let’s not wake anyone. I’m afraid I’m in desperate trouble, Anatolius.”
    “That explains why you couldn’t keep yourself from laughing out loud just now.”
    Thomas grimaced. “I couldn’t help it. If you’d seen yourself, gaping at that mosaic like it was a demon come to life. Surely you’ve laughed on the bloody field of battle, even though it’s strewn with the limbs of your dead comrades?”
    “Actually, I haven’t,” Anatolius replied. And neither have you, he thought. He didn’t believe Thomas’ endless battlefield stories any more than he believed it when the Briton claimed to be a knight.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “John. Is he terribly angry at me?”
    “He isn’t here.” In a furious undertone, Anatolius related all that had happened in Thomas’ absence. “So John has been exiled,” he concluded, “and Peter and Cornelia followed him. I expect we’ll never see them again.”
    Thomas’ face had gone as white as bone and suddenly his big shoulders shook. He