“Has it been a trying day, then?” Caeso asked as he withdrew a clean cloth for wrapping.
Dihya shot a grin at Lucretia. “She’s been proposed to.”
Caeso’s dark eyebrows rose. “Really? Are congratulations in order?”
“No,” Lucretia muttered. “I rejected him.”
“It was Lucius Avitus Felix. Do you know him?” Dihya continued.
“Yes, of course,” Caeso said. “In fact, I supply the bread to his household. He’s quite picky—only the finest flour—but then again, I suppose he can afford to be.”
Dihya rested her hands on the wooden counter, leaning close and lowering her voice. Lucretia didn’t miss how Caeso’s cheeks flushed beneath his tanned skin as Dihya put her mouth within a handsbreadth of his face.
“Do you think you could poison him?” Dihya asked in a whisper. “He doesn’t need to die…just make him alittlebit uncomfortable.”
Caeso cleared his throat, his gaze flicking from Dihya’s eyes to her mouth.
“She’s joking,” Lucretia hastened to say. “We’ll take two of the cakes, please.” She handed over a few bronze coins.
Caeso broke away from Dihya and took the coins. He laid two cakes on the cloth, then added the other two, tying the cloth neatly around them. “Take them all. This late in the day, I’ll probably not be able to move them.”
“You’re too kind,” Lucretia said with a nod of thanks.
Dihya rewarded the young man with a gleaming smile as she hefted the package. “You’re going to plump us up if we’re not careful!”
Caeso’s eyes swept over Dihya’s body from head to toe, and his ears turned as pink as the berries atop the cakes. “I-I’m sure that won’t be a problem,” he stammered.
Lucretia took pity on him and steered Dihya away. “We’ll be back soon, no doubt,” she said to Caeso in farewell, and they turned back toward their office.
Once out of earshot of Caeso, Lucretia looped her arm through Dihya’s. “Have some mercy on the poor man.”
Dihya cast her a confused look. “What do you mean? Oh, I was only joking about the poisoning.”
Lucretia shook her head with a smile. Dihya’s obliviousness was amusing, as her mind was sharp as an arrow when it came to matters of business. “Of course.”
Lucretia worked until late afternoon, drafting replies to merchants who wanted to know if she was interested in another shipment of lavender-flower honey from southern Gaul, or to alert her that a poor harvest in Hispania would drive up the price of olive oil.
Shipping ventures like Lucretia’s depended on networking with merchants who didn’t want the hassle of buying, crewing, and sailing their own ships. Instead, Lucretia took on the risk and expense of maintaining a fleet, and the merchants sold their cargo directly to her at a favorable price. Lucretia’s ships then distributed that cargo throughout places like Gaul, Hispania, and northern Africa, returning laden with wares from those regions that would be transported down the Tiber to Rome for a handsome profit.
Cornelius had mostly concentrated in the western Mediterranean, and Lucretia had maintained that focus. Felix, on the other hand, concentrated on the eastern part of the sea, areas like Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt. Those eastern regions yielded wares with higher profit margins and also traded with far eastern lands for luxury goods like silk and spices, which was how Felix had managed to accumulate so much capital.
Once the shadows lengthened, Lucretia set aside her work, bid Dihya goodnight, and returned home. The atrium of her house was quiet, lit with flickering oil lamps at this hour, and the scent of dinner cooking wafted from the kitchen. The last rays of sunlight glanced off the central pool, beneath where the atrium opened to the sky.
Now, she remembered the unpleasant matter from earlier—Marcus’s thieving. She’d forgotten all about it after Felix’s visit and the other demands of the day. But she had to confront Marcus, even if she already knew it would end in nothing but another argument.
With a sigh, she went to Marcus’s room. The door was closed. She tapped gently on it. “Marcus?”
A grunt sounded from within. She took that as an invitation and eased open the door.
Her gangly son faced her with arms crossed over his chest, a scowl on his face. She noticed straightaway that he wore a different tunic than the one he’d worn this morning when he left for school. Her eyes flicked to fabric balled in the corner of the room—the old tunic, no doubt.
“What do you want?” Marcus snapped, drawing her attention back to him.
She frowned. “As if I need a reason to speak with my son?”
He rolled his eyes. Dirt streaked one of his forearms, and there was a scrape on his jaw. Her lips tightened. It wasn’t the first time he’d come home with the signs of having gotten into a fight,and she’d chided him many times for engaging in violence. She held back from scolding him again, though. Better to focus on one infraction at a time.
“I was reviewing my accounts and noticed ten denarii missing.” She fixed him with a steady stare. “Would you happen to know anything about that?”
