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“He must have,” Sebastianus said. “The man who tutors Georgios’s daughters is also my aunt’s private theologian. The information could have passed that way.”

“They were all at the temple,” Klaudia said. “I didn’t give it any thought at the time.”

I grabbed a sweet roll from the tray. “Fabius wanted to be sure that nothing about me or his time in Corlivo got back to his own family. They are all staying with Georgios.”

“What a hypocrite,” Klaudia said.

“They’re all hypocrites,” I said. “Georgios, Jovinian, who knows who else—each with a public face and a very different private face.”

“People might disapprove of us,” Don said, “but at least we’re not afraid to live as we truly are.”

Sebastianus met his eyes. “Well said, my friend.”

“It’s not enough,” Klaudia said. “We could be bolder. We could step outside our villas and gardens and stand for something more.”

Sebastianus slumped back in his chair and gazed up at the star-strewn sky.

xviii

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON SEBASTIANUS AND I RELAXED in the cool of his study drinking light fruit wine. We seemed to have reached a sort of equilibrium: a stasis where we remained at a carefully calibrated distance from one another, close enough for conversation and the occasional casual touch, but no nearer. It was as though we were both afraid of what might happen if we upset this delicate balance. But I was more aware of him, of his comings and goings, his movements around the villa and grounds, than I had ever been.

I finally told him the detailed story of my trip to Casa Violetta. When I described the two children, he exhaled a plume of fragrant smoke from his pipe. A look of sorrow crossed his face.

“I’ve been thinking about it ever since,” I said. “It reminds me of something Cassius said a few weeks ago.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“He said he was surprised that there were enough children born to Corlivo courtesans to fill the training school. There were more than a hundred girls there.”

He took another puff. “What of it?”

“There was an infusion we all drank to prevent conception. Even those of us who were still tirae. Perhaps it is not always effective?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“And another thing,” I continued. “There would be nearly as many boy children. Where are they?”

His frown deepened. A thin stream of smoke drifted from his mouth.

“I never saw any children,” I said. “Never.”

“It’s an adult sort of place,” he said. “The children are taken away, or kept away, so they don’t interfere with the visitors’ relaxation.”

“I suppose so. But still, the more I think about it, the stranger it seems.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

“And of course, it all makes me think of my own mother. What made her leave me in a nursery and then go—where? Where did she go? There must be some way I can find out.”

“I wish I knew.”

Cassius’s cold had improved, but Cornelia had been ill, tossing and turning with a fever. I thought about her as I went to the bookshelf and ran my hands across the leather spines of several volumes. “Should we send for a medicus for Cornelia?”

“No,” Sebastianus said. “Don is better than any medicus I’ve ever known. He learned battlefield medicine as a young man and broadened his knowledge as we traveled. There’s nothing a university-trained medicus or apothecary could teach him.”

I perched on the edge of the table. “He told me he was a slave when he was a younger man.”

Sebastianus repacked his pipe. “I’m surprised he told you that. He shares that with very few people.”