"Sir," he burst out, "the reason I've brought you here, what I'm really after . . . is mercy . . . mercy for my only child, my beloved daughter Catia . . ."

"What?" exclaimed Pudens, who sounded as if he'd nearly choked.

Arpocras and I exchanged knowing glances.

I bade Catius Magnus explain, trying to be reassuring in my manner. He was almost unmanned by whatever troubled him, close to tears.

Explain he did, somewhat incoherently, though this was, of course, an educated and articulate man. Yes, he had a daughter. I had seen her briefly when we entered the house, a pretty girl of fourteen or fifteen, who had bowed to me demurely, then been led away with apparent haste by two large serving-women. At the time I had wondered if the girl might be ill. Now it was clear.

The girl was, or professed to be, despite her father's every effort to dissuade her, one of "those of Christ", called "Chrestianoi" by the vulgar provincials. She had been led into this vice by a servant - who had since been disposed of a lewd woman who acted as pander between the headstrong Catia and her lover, one Charicles, son of Damon. Now Catius Magnus knew Damon slightly through his business, a respectable enough fellow, a grain merchant, pious enough in his observances of the gods. Prejudice aside, the match might not have been impossible. True, Damon and his son were not even Roman citizens, but Greeks - and when this was mentioned, my good Arpocras shot me an offended glance, as if to say, And what is wrong with that?

Otherwise young Charicles was handsome and pleasant, and his family was rich. Not impossible, though he could be nearly as wild as the girl.

So Charicles and Catia became lovers in secret, and in secret descended into much more serious matters. They became Christians. Using various deceits, with the full connivance of Catia's servant, they secreted themselves, night after night, to a necropolis outside the city, where they participated in the abominable rites of the Chrestianoi. The leader of the cult seemed to be some awesome personage, a thaumaturge called the Masked One, who promised, among other things, that his followers would live forever in the flesh and need never fear death. This presumably would allow them to continue in carnal rites until the end of time, when their dead Christ would also rise from the dead, return to them, cast down the gods and rule the world.

"Of course . . . of course . . ." Catius Magnus was almost too beside himself to continue speaking. "It is complete rubbish. I knew it. Damon knew it -"

"Damon knew it?" Arpocras asked.

"Yes, yes. He did. As one father to another, he came to me. He asked my help. He was as appalled as I . . ."

"I should think," interrupted Pudens, "that a father would be able to control his daughter, and another - even if he is a Greek -"

Arpocras cleared his throat irritably. Pudens continued. "- even if he is a Greek, would be able to control his son." "Have you any children, sir?" Catius said with surprising sharpness. It put Pudens off his balance.

"No, I don't."

I waved my hand dismissively, and Pudens said nothing more. To Catius Magnus I said, "Nor do I. Friend Arpocras has two sons, who are far away. But I think we understand -"

"Can you, sir? Can you really? Can you appreciate how a father's love for his child might come into conflict with his duty?"

"Duty must prevail," I said quietly.

"Indeed, sir, it must. Damon and I resolved to do our duty. I ordered my daughter kept under close watch. I got rid of the evil serving-woman. Damon was going to send his son away on a very long trading trip away north somewhere across the sea, wherever they get amber. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But then your instructions were published -"

"I was but repeating those of the Emperor himself, who graciously advised me," I said.

"Of course. Caesar's guidelines cannot be questioned. And, I assure you, none of the local officials did question them. That was Damon's grief. It broke his heart. It killed him well before his time."

"Killed him?" Arpocras asked, "How?"

I could sense the man's true grief, his own fear, his confusion, his desire to fulfil his duty as a Roman citizen, and he had only my deepest sympathy. Here was a man who would do, I was sure, the brave and correct thing at the end.

"It killed him, by the failure of his heart, when the police began to inquire after Christians, and, far from attempting to hide his guilt, the young fool Charicles proclaimed his allegiance openly. He even named Catia as a fellow conspirator. He laughed at the judges, claiming that he had no fear of them at all, because death could not touch him, that if they killed him, he would be resurrected immediately. Now, shocking as all of this was, we couldn't quite put it out of our minds that this was one of our neighbours, a child who had played in our streets, who might yet be saved if properly guided. Damon wept and got down on his knees, begging his son to repent. Others enjoined him. I did. But in the end I had to try to save my daughter. She shrieked like a fury when brought into the court, clawing at the women who restrained her. That, I think, inadvertently helped, because I was able to convince the judges that she was mad. In the end, though, Charicles was crucified, and Damon, with a dignity that would befit even a Roman, merely announced that he would retire to his house and not emerge again. He died within a few days."

There was a long pause. Night had long since fallen. Within the house, we were shielded from both city noises and those of nature. Silence prevailed, in the gathering dark. A servant entered the room, offering to refill everyone's wine cups, but was waved away.

Pudens, large and corpulent fellow as he is, squirmed uneasily as he reclined. The couch creaked.

"A truly terrible story," I said at last, "but I don't see how I can actually help you. The girl is under no legal judgment, having been declared insane. Perhaps Arpocras, who is very learned in the medicines of the Greeks, can prepare a potion to calm her mind."

"Thank you," said Catius Magnus. "Thank you . . ." For a moment he seemed too emotionally exhausted to say much more. But then he rallied. "I fear . . . what I am truly afraid of . . . is that this matter is not over. Nothing is over with. The Masked One of the Chrestianoi still haunts the night. Some of his followers have been caught, but they will not give up his secret. My daughter would tell nothing, even -"

"There are ways, you know," Pudens said, "to get anybody to confess anything."

"Gods!" exclaimed Arpocras. With one savage look he shut up Pudens. I could only concur. We were hardly going to ask Catius Magnus to torture his own daughter!

It took some persuading to get him to continue, but at last I got the extraordinary heart of the story out of him.

"The matter is not over," he said, "not merely because some masked criminal is still on the loose, but because his promises have turned out to be true. His followers can indeed transcend death. I know this is so. The boy Charicles has come back from the dead and I myself have seen him!"

Now that, I confess, put even me at a loss. I believe there are such things as ghosts. I had a long discussion with Licinius Sura on the matter once. Both of us knew many stories. The one about the philosopher Athenodorus renting the haunted house, wherein he discovered and laid to rest a chained spirit, is rather famous. But what, I could only ask myself, was I, as an Imperial representative charged with legal and financial investigations, supposed to do? I wasn't sure I had any jurisdiction over ghosts.

It was Arpocras who came to my rescue, who cut his way through the dark clouds of superstition which were gathered all about us.

"What, exactly, did you see, sir?"

"First I heard. The servants told me that the girl was talking to someone in the night, calling out in the darkness. The servants were terrified. They thought she was summoning demons. I thought, alas, that she really was mad, and it wasn't just a convenient plea to save her life for a time. But to be sure I stood by the door to her chamber one night - and I heard her call out, addressing her beloved Charicles - and, incredible though this may seem, I heard the boy reply. I recognized the voice. It was Charicles."

"But you didn't see him?"

"Oh, I saw. He said he would return again when the moon was dark. I don't know what that means. Perhaps the Chrestianoi fear the Moon Goddess. Anyway, I said nothing to my daughter, but noted how as the time of the dark of the Moon approached, she grew calmer, but more anxious, as if expectant. This time I did what might sound a little ridiculous. I climbed up on the roof of our house. There I was above my daughter's room. Her window looks out over the sheds and stables by our wall, into the street, where there is a broad space at the edge of a few trees, with a stone bench. You've seen the place.

"On the appointed night, then, with all the servants in their rooms at my orders, I watched from the roof. My daughter came to the window right below me. She called out something I couldn't quite make out, some kind of prayer or incantation, and Charicles answered. Her words then were of joy, of how much she loved him and wanted to be with him. He promised that she would be soon, despite anything her 'cruel jailer' - meaning me - could possibly do about it, because the power of the Masked One was greater than that of the whole Empire or even the gods. 'How can I know this?' says she. 'Please, give me some proof?' Isn't your faith strong enough, even after all we've been through?' I am afraid,' says she. 'I am weak. Please.' She wept piteously, and Charicles assented. 'Look at me, Catia. Do you not recognize me?' There was a light over among those trees, as if someone had uncovered a lantern, and there sitting on the bench was the youth Charicles. He looked - though of course it was hard to tell under the circumstances - pale and strange in a way I could not quite define. But it was Charicles, all right. He raised his hand.

"At that point Catia let out a cry, and I was so startled, I admit, that I nearly lost my grip on the roof. I slipped. A couple of loose tiles crashed into the paved yard below, and the light among the trees went out. By the time I could clamber down and summon a couple of manservants, and we could get outside to those trees, we found only the empty bench. There was no sign that anyone had been there."

"No sign?" said Arpocras.

"What would you expect? We didn't find the lantern." "How was your daughter?" I asked.

"The nurse found her on the floor. She had fallen into a swoon, which became a delirium, from which she has only imperfectly recovered."

"How long ago was this?"

"But two nights before you arrived in the city."

Again I wondered how I, who am trained as a lawyer and to some extent as an engineer, could be of any particular assistance. It continued to seem more a matter for a physician - or a priest.

Catius Magnus looked at me, helplessly.

"Couldn't you . . . make up some document . . . declaring her to be innocent because of her illness, now and into the future?"

I explained that no law can absolve someone for a crime they may commit in the future.

"Then I have no hope," said Catius Magnus. "It may take years, but this will destroy my daughter. As long as she thinks her boy is alive - as long as he is alive - she will believe in the magic of the Chrestianoi. I can only restrain her for so long. When she grows up, as an adult woman . . . perhaps after I am gone . . . she will continue to proclaim her adherence to these cultists. And she will have to be punished, as the Emperor's guidelines have clearly laid down. She will not recant, I am certain of that. So what am I to do? I can only pray uselessly to the gods, and mourn."

Again there was a moment of awkward silence, and again it was my indispensable Arpocras who saved us.

"I think we can help, sir. I think we can look into this." I saw that for once he and Pudens were of one mind. I didn't let on that I was the one who didn't quite follow. So we remained for several days as the guests of Catius Magnus. His daughter was kept out of sight. I inquired once of the serving women, and they said that "The Mistress" was sleeping calmly. There was no other mistress in this house, as Magnus's wife had died some years before and he had not remarried.

But she couldn't sleep all the time, could she, even if drugged? Sooner or later she would get into more trouble. I appreciated my host's dilemma.

Nevertheless, I kept myself occupied with official business. The financial records of Heraclia Pontica were in arrears, like those of so many others in this province. There were the usual improprieties, an aqueduct that cost three times as much as it should, a theatre that never seemed to be finished . . .

It was Arpocras who made more intimate inquiries. He asked to see the girl, and said that he found her awake, not at all delirious, but closely guarded by muscular women the size of small oxen, and the look on her face was one of absolute, venomous hatred for him and for all of us.

He went out into the town and asked certain questions. One afternoon he deposited a small lump of matter on my desk.

"What is that?"

"Wax, sir."

"So it is. 'What of it?"

"I found it on the bench across the street, by the trees." "I confess I don't see the significance."

"If someone used the kind of lantern which has a candle in it, as opposed to an oil-lamp, it might leave such droppings."

"So? I am sure many of the citizens possess such lanterns."

"But I do not think they use them while sitting on that bench in the middle of the night."

"Perhaps that is so -"

"It means that someone was actually there, sir, as Catius Magnus reported."

"I didn't think he was lying. You don't mean -?"

"No, sir, I don't," he said, at his most inscrutable.

What we finally decided to do, following a suggestion which came, inevitably, from Arpocras, and to which I assented, was to attend one of the midnight orgies of the Chrestianoi. This was the only way to gain the answers we needed, and to bring our host's agony to an end.

It raised a tactical problem. It hadn't been too hard for Arpocras to learn when and roughly where the cultists met. It was an open secret among the lower orders of the town. Some dreaded these meetings as the manifestations of demons, which would bring plague and doom on us all. Others anticipated them. It seemed that the infection was quite widespread . . . and all too many believed the impossible, apocalyptic - a term the Chrestianoi used - prophecies of the Masked One. I had to admit that these were not at all like the beliefs of the criminals over whose trials I had presided at Nicomedia, but what respectable Roman can possibly know much about these strange matters? Is it possible that there are differing factions and even various nations of Chrestianoi right before our eyes, invisible to all but fellow believers?

But I drift from my theme. The immediate problem was how to attend the meeting without giving alarm. We tried, one last time, to convince the girl to cooperate.

She spat in Arpocras's face.

"You can kill me," she said, "but I will not betray them. I am not afraid of you."

Arpocras, showing a manner I had never before seen in him, yanked the girl's head back by the hair, held a small knife to her throat, and said, "We'll see how fearless you really are."

"Go ahead. I will rise again . . . as Charicles has risen and you never will."

"It's useless, Arpocras," I said.

He let her go and put his knife away. He sighed. "Yes, it is. But I have something here which is not." He revealed a small, stopped phial, which he set on a tabletop.

The two muscular serving-women held the girl Catia firmly while Arpocras forced her mouth open.

"Would you open that for me, please?" he said to Pudens, indicating the phial. Pudens opened it, and, as the Greek nodded, poured the contents down the girl's throat. He held his hand over her nose and mouth, and, struggle though she might, she eventually swallowed.

Her father looked away.

"She is not harmed," said Arpocras. "The potion will merely make her docile. She is unlikely to speak, but if she did, her words would be slurred, as if she were drunk. But if we guide her, she will be able to walk, and if we arrive in her company, and are not ourselves recognized, perhaps it will be enough." He looked at me, as if to say wordlessly, It's the best I could come up with.

It would have to do. All there was left for us to do was to disguise ourselves. Arpocras wore a Greek cloak. Catius Magnus, Pudens, and I wore the plain togas of citizens, but without the stripes of a senator or a knight, which might attract too much attention. That the clothing we donned was not entirely clean was for the best.

We draped our togas up over our heads, like hoods, to hide our faces. We could only hope that perhaps the Chrestianoi maintained this custom of covering the head when at religious services . . . in any case, luck was with us. It looked like it was going to rain. It was a dark, windy, overcast night.

At the time appointed, we made our way, the girl between us, with her either arm held by Pudens and her father, out of the city of the living, into the city of the dead. There among the many tombs - some of them alleged to be of Homeric heroes; I could imagine Arpocras and Pudens chattering about them under happier circumstances - we waited, seated on a flat stone. We had with us a lantern with a candle inside it, but kept it covered.

I felt a little spray of rain on my face. The night was, indeed, turning foul. A storm approached from across the sea. The air started to turn cold. I saw that the girl Catia's teeth were chattering, even though the expression on her face was completely blank. She stared forward, into nothing.

But it was by following her gaze that I saw the first sign. A cloaked, furtive shape moved among the tombs. Then there was another, and another. They were all around us. I fancied for a second that we had been overwhelmed and surrounded by some army of beasts, something that crawled up out of the earth or out of graves.

Someone whistled. Someone else began to play, very faintly, on a flute.

"We cannot conceal ourselves," whispered Arpocras.

We stood up, Catius Magnus and Pudens holding the girl, Arpocras holding the covered lantern under his cloak.

There were little outcries of surprise, but then the cultists - for so they were, ordinary men and women and even a few children, all of the meaner sort - saw that the girl was with us, and this soothed them.

They parted before us and bade us proceed, and so we did proceed into a low area, where running water had cut away part of a hillside, and some of the tombs seemed about ready to tumble down on our heads. Far away, lightning flashed. Thunder came a while after. The rain was more than spray now, light, but persistent. I will admit that I was afraid, that every superstitious fear which we try to banish away by philosophy and reason came washing back over me like a tide. I feared the wrath of Hecate, absurd as that seemed. I feared hungry, angry ghosts, and the demons of the Chrestianoi, who might well reach up through the muddy earth and pull me down into that underworld of fire and torment the Chrestianoi supposedly believe in.

We proceeded to the mouth of a cave, where a rude tent had been set up, as if to extend the cave mouth out among the tombs. There the Chrestianoi seated themselves, on stones or on the bare ground. Some food and wine was passed around. I had heard of this from the prisoners at Nicomedia, the "love feast" of the Christ-followers. It was hardly a feast. We all took a few mouthfuls of whatever was offered, and pretended to give some to the girl Catia, who sat among us as if she had walked in her sleep.

Someone got out - strange as it may seem - a small wooden cross, and reminded those assembled of Christ, who had died on a cross and risen again. Prayers and chants followed, as if to a god. My companions and I mumbled and pretended to follow along. I noticed, to my alarm, that the girl was actually mouthing the words.

Then someone cried out, "Behold! Our prophet comes and brings with him the martyr who has been resurrected!"

There was a flash, like lightning, but inside the cave. I don't know what it was, but I smelled a foul, sulphurous smoke. I didn't have time to consider the matter further, because there, illuminated by two uncovered lanterns at the back of the cave, stood the infamous Masked One, who wore a beaten silver mask fashioned like the rising sun - that is, the rays spread out from the sides and the top, but not the bottom, giving it the overall shape of a fan. He wore a black robe. I couldn't see his hands. Either closely-fitting gloves covered them or he had painted his hands black. The effect was to make the mask seem to float in the air.

Then he began to speak, in a loud, resonant voice.

"I, the foremost disciple of the risen and true Christ, of Jesus of Nazareth, who died, as you know, in Judea in the time of Tiberius, but rose again - and I say to you that on the night he rose he came to my house to tell me, first of all those he loved, that he had indeed risen; and he bade me go forth into the world and continue his work, raising up our believers from out of their graves, so that they might never die. I was his most intimate friend, the only one to whom he revealed all his secrets. Those others who claim to have the truth have but part of it. To me alone he revealed the mysteries of the inner light, which is in all of us and in all things, which shines through the flesh and will never die. He said to me, Lo, I am as the risen sun in glory.

"Now there is one among us here tonight who has suffered a great loss, whose heart has been torn by the seeming murder of one she loved -"

All eyes turned to us, and to the girl. I froze. Pudens and Catius Magnus looked terrified. Arpocras seemed as expressionless as some ancient, grim statue.

The girl struggled and moaned.

"Yes," said the Masked One, "I can offer you another glimpse of your beloved Charicles. He cannot yet lie in your arms, my dear, for the path back from death is long and hard. Every day I must accompany him for a time on his journey. But you may see him again. Look -"

Another lantern was uncovered. A dark curtain was drawn aside, and there, seated in a niche of stone was a young man, naked but for a strip of cloth about his loins. I could see that he had indeed been crucified. The horrible wounds on his wrists and feet were not healed. His eyes were open. His expression was completely blank. Did anyone else notice that his bare chest did not rise and fall, that he was not breathing?