In the agora, outside a temple, there was a gruesome wooden statue of a man being tortured. He was fixed to a cross by nails through his palms and feet, he had scars of whipping, and his face was distorted by pain. It was painted in full color, just to make the blood and everything more obvious. It was hideous, and yet also beautiful. I couldn’t look away from it. There were a couple of paintings in the Botticelli book that I now realized were also depictions of this story—in one he’s flanked by an angel and a person dressed in long hair, with a sad old man and a dove hovering behind. In the other a person and an angel are flinging themselves around at the foot of the cross. I had always wondered what was going on in those pictures. But Botticelli’s man pinned to the cross seemed peaceful and happy, and also the least interesting thing in the pictures. Here he was clearly in agony.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“Yayzu,” Aristomache said.

“They did that to him?” I said, appalled. I looked at Father. Clearly he had very good reasons for not letting people know he was really a god.

He smiled down at me. “Not a nice way to die,” he said. “Suffocation is what actually killed them. It took days sometimes. It was a Roman method of extreme punishment.”

“Why do they have that there?” I asked, as Maia opened her mouth to defend her beloved Romans.

“Yayzu returned from the dead,” Aristomache said. “And through him, so will we all. He conquered death, not just for himself but for all of us through all of time. He went through that to save us all. Looking at the cross reminds us not that he died, but that he went beyond death, and so will we all.” Even Maia looked moved. Father smiled again, a smile that made me uneasy.

Just then I spotted Ficino and Erinna on the other side of the agora, deep in conversation with a group of strangers. Ficino was always easy to pick out in a crowd because of his red hat. I waved, but they didn’t see me. I was looking at them, so I was surprised when I looked back and saw that a burly man in a floppy Phrygian cap had joined us. He was wearing leggings and a tunic, not a kiton. Since it was a festival, I assumed it was a costume for a play. He was about Father’s age, clearly one of the Children.

“Aristomache, Maia, Pytheas, joy to you,” he said. “What a surprise to see you here.”

“Kebes,” Father said, nodding. I took an involuntary step backward. This was Kebes? Apart from his fancy dress, he seemed so ordinary.