“Isn’t the old man’s wife going to kick up a bit of a stink if we walk in with two naked girls though?” Marcus looks nervously at Dido. Amara wonders what they both talked about on the walk from the Forum.

“It’s the Vinalia! Girls are meant to be naked!” Quintus protests. He turns to Amara. “What do you think?”

Both men are looking at her, waiting for an answer. Briefly, she considers the state of her and Dido’s clothes. The colors are bright, but she knows the fabric marks them out instantly as cheap. There are few crimes as great in Pompeii as poverty. A naked entrance will trumpet their status as prostitutes, but perhaps not as objects of total contempt. She tilts her head toward Dido, a silent question, and gets a little shrug in answer. Amara smiles broadly at Quintus. “I say naked.”

He whoops with delight, helping her out of her cloak and handing it to one of the long-suffering slaves in his retinue. Then he gets to work enthusiastically on her toga, removing it in a couple of tugs. Amara notices the clothes-bearer is the old man with the purse. He averts his eyes rather than look at her.

“Are you sure?” Marcus asks Dido, undoing her brooch, fingers fumbling from drunkenness. “You don’t mind?”

“You’re so kind to ask,” Dido says, head down as she steps out of her toga.

“Perfect.” Quintus turns from one woman to the other, both now standing naked and shivering on the threshold of Zoilus’s house. “In we go.”

They walk over a fine black-and-white mosaic of a snarling dog, elongated the length of the narrow hallway, and emerge into the biggest atrium Amara has ever seen. It is at least five times larger than the one at Chremes’s house, her only real point of comparison. The mosaic from the entrance ripples outward in ever more intricate patterns, flowing into other darkened chambers that surround the hall. A table of solid silver stands beside a large pool to collect rainwater. Moonlight from the opening at the ceiling’s center glows on its polished surface, and its pale reflection wavers in the water. Other precious objects—goblets, plates and lamps—are piled in a heap on top. Many look like gold. Put together, she knows it would cost several times the price Felix paid for her.

Behind her, their new masters’ slaves negotiate with Zoilus’s doorman, identifying the party as invited guests. The doorman doesn’t sound happy about something, no doubt the presence of two naked women. She hears the word actresses repeated in the murmured discussion.

“This way,” Quintus says, waving a hand airily, as if he were leading them into his own home. “The master will be in the dining room with his guests.”