Murder in Megara by Eric Mayer

at him she dunked it in her wine and forced a mouthful down.
    ***
    The day became as hot as the morning sun had promised. Cornelia uncrated a set of silver dishes and pondered whether she and John should begin using the triclinium for their meals. Situated on the ground floor, it was more convenient to the kitchen. Hypatia would not have to carry plates of food up the stairs.
    She went to look over the triclinium where the crudely rendered waterfall in one corner caught her attention. It’s as if we were logs in a river, helplessly carried toward destruction, and about to go over a raging torrent like that, she thought. Helpless and nobody willing to throw a rope to rescue us. Nor wanting to, which was even worse.
    Then she began to notice the satyrs hiding in the painted bushes, and the peculiar, childish drawings of stranger beings apparently added to the wall murals more recently. They made her uneasy, even in the daylight. Was there a story behind them?
    She went across the courtyard and to keep busy began to check the amphorae of oil stored for market. Most were empty. The bundle of vegetation Hypatia had tied together was still hanging into the amphora in which the dead mouse had been found. What was it Hypatia had said she had used, coriander?
    She began to consider what needed to be purchased in the market for the week, although she wasn’t certain how the trip into Megara could be made safely. Corinth was less than a day’s journey. Would it be better to take a wagon there for supplies, a larger city where no one would pay any attention to a few strange faces? Or perhaps Athens, just a bit farther?
    Perspiration ran down her sides, tickling her ribs. Suddenly she decided she needed to bathe. It wasn’t just her sodden clothes or the gritty dust from the courtyard that had stuck to her. It was everything that had happened recently. The hatred of the city. Murder. The City Defender barging into their home, poking into every corner.
    The bath was on the ground floor. In contrast to the triclinium its mosaics featured a city scene which gave the user the impression of bathing in a public fountain in a forum. Perhaps the artisans who had decorated this country house had indulged their senses of humor at the expense, in both senses of the word, of the owner.
    The hypocaust was not working, but on a day like this tepid water would be a relief. She left her clothes in the cramped vestibule and went down the steps into the pool. It was not large, but larger than the one in John’s city house. The dome overhead was blue but sooty from lamps that burned in wall niches during the evenings. She couldn’t tell whether the vague white shapes flying in the mosaic overhead were intended to represent clouds or angels.
    Angels, she eventually decided, given a domed church dominated one side of an open square, just as the Great Church loomed over the vast plaza of the Augustaion near the imperial palace in Constantinople. There was even a stylite on a column, getting a clear view down into the bath, along with numerous classical Greek statues, marble sculptures rendered in miniature with tesserae.
    Cornelia sluiced herself down and pushed dripping hair away from her face. As she stretched out her arms, letting the air play luxuriously over her wet body, she noticed several carefully detailed pedestrians facing in her direction.
    â€œGo ahead, don’t bother moving. Stand there and stare if you must. I don’t care. On a day like this I’d happily bathe in the Hippodrome on race day if I could feel cool!”
    She reached up and toward the dome and writhed sensuously, a move from long ago days when she’d danced after leaping from bulls for a living. “There, are you happy or would you like more?”
    â€œMore, definitely,” came a voice from the doorway.
    â€œJohn! How long have you been standing there?”
    â€œHardly an instant!” He marched naked into the room and down