"I didn't really know her. No one seems to have known her."

"Not part of your household?"

"No. I'm only attending to her funeral because-"

"A foreigner then, visiting the city?"

"I'm not sure."

He slammed shut his record book and brandished his stylus at me. "Then go away and don't come back until you are sure."

I reached across the counter and grabbed the front of his tunic in my fist. "She died four days ago, here in Rome, and you will enter her death into the registry."

The clerk blanched. "Certainly," he squeaked.

It was only as I gradually released him that I realized how hard I had been clutching his tunic. His face was red, and it took him a moment to catch his breath. He made a show of reasserting his dignity, straightening his tunic, and slicking back his hair. With great punctiliousness, he opened his register and pressed his stylus to the wax. "Name of the deceased?" he asked, his voice breaking. He coughed to clear his throat.

"I'm not sure," I said.

His mouth twitched. He bit his tongue. He kept his eyes on the register. "Nevertheless, I have to put down something for a name."

"Put down Cassandra, then."

"Very well." He pressed the letters crisply into the hard wax. "Her place of origin?"

"I told you, I don't know."

He clicked his tongue. "But I have to put something. If she was a Roman citizen, I have to know her family name; and if she was married, her husband's name. If she was a foreigner, I have to know where she came from. If she was a slave-"

"Then write, 'Origin unknown.' "

He opened his mouth to speak then thought better of it. "Highly irregular," he muttered, as he wrote what I told him. "I don't suppose you know the date of her birth?"

I glowered at him.

"I see. 'Birthdate unknown,' then. And the date of her death? Four days ago, you said?"

"Yes. She died on the Nones of Sextilis."