At the third mile marker I reached a large estate. A towering hedge blocked my view of the land. I passed a massive iron gate closed across a pretty lane lined by evergreen cypress trees. The drive cut through landscaped grounds to a distant compound house set back by the river. On the opposite side of the gate, the impenetrable hedge gave way to a row of larger cypress grown close enough to block the view toward the river.

“Cat! Here!” Bee peeked through cypress branches.

I hopped over the roadside ditch and shoved through the branches. Before I could inform her of what an idiot she was to go tramping off without me, she dragged me out of sight behind the cypress. Inside the estate grounds, we hid in a copse of trees of white-barked alder, ringed by yet more cypress. The trees concealed a set of marble benches whose bases were carved with what I first took for serpents and then realized depicted swimming dragons with tapered wings, elongated muzzles, and smoky breath.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” I demanded. “Any terrible calamity could have befallen you! Anyway, I’m so aggravated, Bee, because nothing is going as planned!”

She listened as I explained what had happened. “I trust you did not suffer any mistreatment while staying overnight there!”

Sadly, I blushed, thinking of how we had started on the bed and ended on the table.

“Not that I need hear any details!” she said, laughing. “I have come to agree with the Romans in this. An excess of passion is clearly the sign of a undisciplined mind.”

“Vai is not undisciplined!”

She smiled in the manner of a general contemplating sweet victory. “I wasn’t talking about him.”

In the distance dogs began barking, a clamor that built to a frantic yipping. We leaped to our feet.

“Fiery Shemesh!” Bee exclaimed. “I thought we would be safely hidden here!”

A huge dog with teeth bared charged through the trees, followed by a slavering pack of equally gigantic hounds. They erupted into a deafening frenzy of yips and barks as they surrounded us. I brandished my cane, wishing desperately that it were a sword.

“Behave!” she proclaimed in her orator’s voice. They ceased barking and flattened themselves, ears back. Waggling forward, they acted like courtiers who have fallen out of favor and wish to regain the approval of a mercurial queen. She deigned to allow them to lick her hand and grovel at her feet.

“Gracious Melqart, Bee! You have always had a way with dogs, although I cannot imagine why except that dogs have no discrimination whatsoever, for they will adore anyone who feeds them!”

At the sound of my voice, several growled.