“Welcome! welcome!” she shrilled, clicking her tongue and dropping her hands to lift her long brown robe out of the dust. “You are from Rhodos? From the Hypateion?”

Rhita smiled and nodded at her. The cart jerked to a sudden stop and the driver gave the Kelt some small assistance in dropping her luggage to the curbside. “You can’t stay here, you know,” the woman told the Kelt sharply. “No men here.”

“He’s my bodyguard,” Rhita said.

“My dear, bad as things are for us in the Mouseion, none of us need bodyguards! He’ll have to stay elsewhere. You are Reee-ta Berenikē Vaskayza?”

“Yes.”

The woman hugged her briskly. “I am Jorea Yallos, from Galatia. Your houseguide. You study mathematics?”

“Yes.”

“Fascinating. I study animal husbandry in the school of agriculture. I have been told to show you your quarters and answer your questions.”

Rhita’s hopes fell when Yallos urged her to the upper floor and bustled before her along a dark hallway. “We appreciate your coming here. I’m sorry we can’t do better for you. In the summer, these rooms cool off more quickly at night. In the winter, that’s not what you want. They’re comfortably warm during the day, however.” She withdrew a large iron key and inserted it into the padlock, pocketed both lock and key, and pushed and kicked the thin wooden door open. It scraped sadly over the broken tile floor.

“Are you a daughter of Isis?” Yallos asked.

Rhita entered the room. It was like a cell in a monastery, with a pair of small windows mounted high in the outer wall and a leather bed pushed into one corner. Behind the door, a wobbly stand supported a chamber pot and bowl. Against the right hand wall, a scabrous wooden desk had been propped under a faded mural of the Kanopic Isis with her small, wide-eyed, feathered infant son and protective snake.

“No,” Rhita managed to answer.

“Pity. Dorca, the woman here before you, a lovely helper, she was quite fond of Isis. You can’t redecorate without the women’s council’s permission.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Rhita said. She gestured for Lugotorix to bring in her luggage. He squeezed through the door with traveling case and wooden boxes under both arms, gently lowered them to the floor, and stood to one side, away from the suspicious Yallos.

“He’s a Kelt, isn’t he?”

“From the Parisioi,” Rhita affirmed.

“There are plenty of Kelts in Galatia,” Yallos said. “I’m of Nabataean and Hellenic ancestry, myself.”

Rhita nodded politely.