Justina. Our father’s pet name for me when I was little. Justina, because I looked as grave as a judge. No one calls me Justina anymore—no one except Flavia, who is a thousand miles away, and must not be allowed to worry.

Marcus worries. Something has made him unhappy, but he still fi nds time to worry for me. “Eat something, Lady Julia. Keep up your strength.” He thinks I am mad.

“Goodness, child, you really are much too thin,” the Empress said to me last week. Her manner toward me has never changed: calm, regal, polite. If anything, she looks at me with faint pity.

Because of my uncle? Or because I am mad?

I ate a little, when he was gone in Germania. But now he is coming back. I had a letter after Saturninus was killed, and what was in it melted the fl esh from me in the space of a moment. But then I looked at the letter again, and there was nothing in it but brusque pleasantries. Do I imagine it all? The images—they are so disjointed. I close my eyes and the only thing unwavering is the fl ame.

Vesta, goddess of hearth and home, ask the Fates to cut my life short. It is taking much too long to starve.

Fourteen

THEA

BRUNDISIUM, A. D. 90

MY master was plump, bald, smiling, and airy, but two deep lines appeared on either side of his mouth when he was angry and turned him from a harmless praetor to a cold and furious judge. The two lines were very deeply graven today as I came into the sunny little atrium to stand before him on his silver couch. This was going to be bad.

In a few clipped words he told me. “I’m so sorry, Dominus,” I said in low tones. “It won’t happen again.”

“You’ve said that before, Thea. It always happens again.”

“I’ll be more careful this time, Dominus. I promise.”

“I’ve lost a good deal of money. And it’s more than money.”

“I know.” He’d never been so angry before. I winced.

“You know how rare Assyrian double pipes are?” Larcius glared. “I had to import them all the way from Thebes! Bought from the most tightfisted old haggler of an Arab the world has ever seen! And where are my Assyrian double pipes now? Smashed to smithereens by that ghastly child of yours!”

“He was playing gladiator,” I said weakly.

“He’s gladiating me out of house and home,” Larcius said darkly.

“And it’s not just the pipes. He gave one of my choirboys a bloody nose yesterday.”

“He was just roughhousing. It’s just—well, he plays hard.” He loves me hard . . . I turned the thought away. “He’s waiting to apologize now, Dominus. He’s very sorry.”

My son came in on cue. His hair was plastered flat with water, he reeked of soap, and he wore the least destroyed of his tunics. He didn’t really look meek, as I’d hoped, but he had achieved a sort of foreboding silence. “Vercingetorix.” I prodded him to stand in front of Larcius. “You have something to say to our master.”