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I never received either list, and to my discredit, I never asked for them again.

After the incident with the pomegranate, a change came over our lady. She refused to keep to her room, dressing with desperate elegance after fretting over each detail of her makeup and attire. She threw frequent and elaborate dinner parties, arranged poetry readings and plays in the atrium; one night she amazed her guests by unveiling a caged tiger from Asia Minor for their inspection. Alone, though, those who knew her well would note she spent more time before our household gods, lighting incense, sprinkling salt over fresh barley cakes, murmuring prayers with an urgency she had never demonstrated before.

Crassus was courteous, soft-spoken and as solicitous as always. He never failed to take his wife’s hand as they walked through the house; he brought her little trinkets and made sure to compliment her on her hair or a menu she had prepared. But his voice was just a little too loud, her gaiety a little too forced. The genuine affection of decades, a vase of subtle and delicate craftsmanship, had cracked and chipped. We watched as our lord and lady toiled to glue each tiny fragment to the whole with kindhearted routine and time-worn habit. Every one of us prayed that they would succeed at their task, and that when their work was done, no one would be able to see the imperfections. We prayed, because we knew better than to hope.

In Junius, having been at home less than two months, we fled the city, a month earlier than most, taking refuge in our Baiaen villa to escape not only the heat, but the extravagant parties that preceded the aristocracy’s departure just after the elections were announced in Quintilis. So it was that my lord made himself unavailable to stand for consul as he had agreed with Caesar. Pompeius, too, was absent, having sailed for Sardinia, Sicily and Africa to negotiate the purchase of desperately needed grain to feed the 300,000 mouths of Romans citizens who depended on the state to sustain them.

We tarried in Baiae and did not return to the city until October. Livia stayed behind, asking and receiving permission from Crassus to remain in Rome over the summer. The city suffered its worst bouts of illness in the heat and humidity of the season; my brave healer would do what she could in our master’s clinic, opening its doors to all, with his blessing. Crassus left both guards and provisions to feed and heal the sick, and though his name was imprinted on every sack of grain and every ampulla of medicine, I cannot believe his sole motive was selfish.

Fate had just returned Livia to me and now, laughing, was dragging me away from her again. Oh, it must have been great fun for the immortals to play this foolish game of hide and seek, concealing Livia from me, then allowing me to find her, then pulling her away again. Thus it had been ever since we had met, she as a child, me newborn to the house of Crassus. I pined for her when we were apart, and wept when we were reunited. Since that first kiss under the statue of Apollo in the garden of Crassus, a memory twenty years old yet fresh as a new-picked flower, I was no longer master of the heart that beat inside my own breast, but slave to a desire postponed and never satisfied.

Oh, for the love of reason! Surely you who read these scrolls must agree this kind of hand-wringing whining is utter drivel. Can love and wisdom coexist? Do not think it for an instant. It is widely known that Aristotle defined love as “the composition of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” First of all, he was talking about friendship, and second, I have it on good authority that at the time he uttered those words, he was falling down drunk.

One has to be at least as ancient as I am now to see that if you try to make sense of life, if you look for patterns and meaning, not only are you bound to be disappointed, you are likely to waste a good deal of precious time.

As we neared the city late in the day, the tombs of the wealthy sprang up like mushrooms on either side of the Via Appia, each vying for prominence, crowding up against each other until the left side of the road succumbed to the shadows of these tall and lavish castles of the dead. A bulwark of beggars, arms waving like undersea flora in the tide of our passing, hugged the curb on the opposite side, still awash in the warming sun. Only those few creatures too sluggish of thought or foot were left almost unseen in the gloom.

Riding at my place just behind dominus, I was applying needless energy with helpless gusto worrying over something over which I had no control. As you may imagine, this was a pastime I visited with zealous frequency. Presently, I was ticking off the preparations Curio would have had to oversee and complete within the hour to adequately, which is to say, perfectly prepare for our homecoming. Had the furniture been cleaned? Had the masks of the ancestors been dusted? Was the house warm enough? What about supper? Had the gardens been pruned? Were there fresh flowers in every room? Had the house gods received their offerings? The list went on and on until even I began to tire of my finikin disquiet. Why should I fret? Lucius was a younger version of myself; left to maintain our Roman residence while we sought the cooler breezes of Baiae, I knew I would find everything in pristine order. Which is precisely when a more insidious thought crept in to harass my better self. Wouldn’t I love to find just one small thing with which to find fault: a lamp wick untrimmed, a corner not swept, a pillow not plumped, something to chide the ever-flawless Lucius Calpurnius Curio? Of course I wouldn’t.

I diverted my mind’s energies to screwing tight the taps on my mind’s caustic, leaky faucet and concentrated instead on nothing at all. I had only a moment’s rest from myself when, from her raeda, lady Tertulla leaned out a window and called the procession to a halt. Being closest to her carriage, I leapt off Apollo, my dark brown bay, and inquired how I might assist her. “Follow me,” she said, opening the door and stepping down onto the road. Immediately surrounded by a troop of guards, she brushed them aside and headed for the shadowed curb. Only Crassus seemed unperturbed. He did not know what she was up to, but was not about to come between her will and her objective. His six senate-appointed lictors crowded about him, their eyes busy.

Tertulla approached a boy who looked no more than twelve (I later learned his small frame had suffered in this world for fifteen years). He was wrapped in rags, sitting on the curb with an empty begging bowl between his legs. His hair looked as if it had never been cut, or washed. Something about his eyes was off and unsettling-they were too far apart and their focus lagged behind whatever drew their attention. In addition, his head struck me as too large for his frail shoulders. These defects, however, faded to insignificance in the light of the boy’s startling, beatific expression. He was looking up at us with the most innocent, guileless smile I had ever seen upon man or woman. He positively beamed, as if he had been sitting there waiting for this precise moment his entire life. The effect was multiplied by his outstretched arms: they did not seem so much a supplication for alms as an urgent wish to be picked up and held.

Then I saw his hands.

What I beheld was the result of no accident. Someone had deliberately cut off the majority of the poor child’s fingers, leaving him with only the thumb and third finger of each hand. An involuntary shiver ran through me as I imagined the transformation in his trusting aspect when that mutilation was perpetrated. It had to have been deliberate-what kind of accident could leave such a perfect array of carnage?

Domina snapped me out of my morbid speculation. “That smile-I saw it from the carriage. I had to stop to behold this wonder.”