“Don’t test me, Catullus,” Gaia said. “I will not hesitate to send you to bed too.”
Catullus grinned wolfishly. “Believe me, I would relish it.”
Aelius threw an olive at him. “Please let us change the subject.” He turned to his mother. “You’ll be happy to know I’ve confirmed the availability of a country villa. All that remains is to decide when we leave. I feel I should stay in town at least through the election. How about the day after? Will that give you enough time to pack up the house?”
“That’s only a week away,” Gaia said with a frown.
“With respect,” Catullus said, “don’t you think you should see how the election turns out before you make plans to leave?”
“The outcome is all but certain,” Aelius said. “Will you pay us a visit in the country, Catullus?”
Catullus snorted. “Fat chance. You forget I was born a rustic. I’ve had enough of trees and horse dung. Escaped to Rome the first chance I got.”
Aelius hardly thought Catullus’s sprawling family estate on Lake Benacus qualified as “rustic,” but he kept that observation to himself.
“Do I still get a horse?” Max piped up.
“That sounds rather dangerous,” Gaia said. “You could fall and break your neck, or get trampled.”
Max glowered. “I would never fall.”
An argument ensued over the relative safety of horseback riding. As Gaia and Max bickered, Catullus leaned over to speak quietly in Aelius’s ear. “Do as you like, but you might find that it behooves you not to count your chickens before they hatch, as Aesop says.” He gave Aelius a glance laden with some unknown significance, then turned away to take a swig of wine, leaving Aelius to contemplate what he meant.
Aelius sifted through the piles of papers, scrolls, and wax tablets in his study, trying to achieve a semblance of organization so he could pack everything into the chest sitting open on his desk.
He glanced over the tablets, using the flat end of a stylus to rub away the writing on anything he didn’t need to preserve.
One tablet, covered in a few lines of neat handwriting, caught his attention. It was the letter Crispina had written in response to his apology for his awkward behavior at their first meeting. He ran a gentle thumb over the delicate writing, feeling the ridges and indentations of the wax. He’d forgotten he saved this. He thought back to those early days, when he’d been scheming to win her hand because he thought her family’s clout would give him an advantage in the election. How wrong he’d been.
He picked up a stylus and rubbed away the words, returning the wax to a smooth, blank surface. He left her name for last, but eventually it, too, disappeared from the thin layer of wax. Soon, all reminders of her would be similarly erased from his life. He needed a fresh start, a new home that wasn’t filled to the brim with ghosts of their life together.
He stacked the tablets in the bottom of the empty chest, then loaded in some carefully sealed inkwells and a handful of styluses and reed pens. He reached for a pile of papers, but a noise from elsewhere in the house caught his attention.
“Aelius?” his mother called, sounding alarmed.
Aelius lurched to his feet and hurried from the study. He found his mother standing in the atrium with Malchio. Malchio hefted a basket filled with eggs and vegetables, clearly just returned from the market.
“What is it?” Aelius asked.
Gaia nodded to Malchio. “Tell him what you overheard at the market.”
“I don’t know if it means anything, sir, but I thought…if you didn’t already know…”
“Yes?” Aelius was impatient to hear whatever had caused his mother’s consternation, but he tried to keep his tone mild.
Malchio took a deep breath. “People were talking about how a man named Epidius Verus has dropped out of the tribune election, sir.”
Aelius blinked. “That can’t be right.”
“I’m only telling you what I heard, sir,” Malchio said.
“Of course. Thank you for the information.”
Malchio bowed his head and hurried off to the kitchen with his basket.
Aelius paced in a tight circle, running over this new piece of information in his mind.Epidius Verus dropped out.But why?
Gaia watched him, chewing her lip. “What does this mean?” she asked quietly.
