Dido has barely been dead three months and Amara feels tears prick her eyes. She blinks, not wanting Priscus to notice. It is strange to have him in her home. The last time they met, she and Dido were enslaved. Priscus was a regular customer, paying their pimp to spend the night with Dido, while his friend Salvius paid for Amara’s company in the bedroom next door. Now she is a freedwoman paying for his services. She suspects neither of them quite know how to treat the other after this change in fortune.

He stands back from the wall again, looking over his work. “I believe it is finished.”

Amara steps forward. “May I see?”

“Of course,” Priscus climbs down from the platform, finally leaving his painting in view.

Dido is standing with one hand to her heart, the other pointing across the garden. Amara gazes at her dead friend. Priscus has captured the perfect symmetry of her face, the softness of her mouth, and most of all her eyes, dark with a sadness she could never hide. Grief hits Amara then and she turns away. Priscus reaches out before dropping his hand, perhaps afraid his touch will offend her. It is a while before she trusts herself to speak. “I can never thank you enough for this.”

“It has been my pleasure,” he says. “It gives me some comfort to think her beauty is not entirely lost.” Priscus stands next to Amara, leaving enough space between them to show his respect. “But can I ask you something? Why did you choose to remember her like this?”

He gestures at the walls surrounding them and Amara takes in the scene, so different from the woman he has just painted. A stag with a human face is being ripped apart by hunting dogs, their muzzles slick with blood, teeth sharp in wide open mouths. Through the stag’s mangled body, white ribs are poking and the red of his heart. It is Acteon, transformed into a stag by the goddess Diana, only to be torn to pieces by his own hounds. The price he paid for seeing the goddess naked. Diana points at him as he dies, turning Dido’s melancholy into a mark of cruel indifference.

“She had the purest heart,” Amara replies. “Who else could Dido be but the virgin goddess?”

They both know she has avoided his question. Priscus bows his head in agreement, too polite to press further. “Of course.”