Persona Non Grata Read Online Free PDF

wearing the key around his neck, just as their father had.
    Ruso lowered himself onto the trunk and sat tapping out an impatient rhythm on the lid with both hands. He had traveled a thousand miles to find out exactly what sort of crisis his family had fallen into. Now the details were only inches away, but he had no access to them. Just as there had been no access to the details of the horrendous debts his father was incurring in a misguided attempt to bolster the family’s good standing and satisfy Arria’s demand for a nice house. Those too had been locked away in the dark secrecy of the trunk.
    He got to his feet and limped across to the window. The air outside was no cooler. A couple of the cicadas had started singing again. He gazed north across the green of the vine trellises to where distant wooded hills were dark against the sharp blue of the sky. Closer, something was shaking the leaves of the vines. He heard voices. Someone laughed. The top of a ladder appeared above the green, then sank away again. The farm slaves would be scrambling up amongst the trellises, cutting the grapes with curved knives and tossing them into baskets.
    Three fat bunches dangled almost within reach of the window. Ruso wondered whether it was a good year for the vines. Lucius would know. Despite having spent most of his childhood here, Ruso had deliberately avoided learning anything about farming. It was an obstinacy of which he was no longer proud. Still, no amount of farming lore would help if the family really were about to be the subject of a seizure order.
    He had once accompanied his father to the auction of a bankrupt neighbor’s property. It was like seeing an old person stripped naked in the street: All the neighbor’s battered pots and pans, ancient bath shoes, blankets and bedsteads— even a baby’s discarded feeding bottle—lay shabby and exposed in the sunshine, while strangers glanced over them, wrinkled their noses, and walked away. His father had stayed, bidding much too high for an old cart and a couple of hoes with worm-eaten handles while the neighbor stood grimfaced and his wife wept. At the time, Ruso had been too young to understand that his father was offering them the only kindness that was then possible.
    His thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock at the door. He had given orders that he was not to be disturbed, unless Lucius— It wasn’t.
    It was his sister-in-law.
“Cass!”
“Gaius! They told me you were here. What a lovely surprise!”
    Surprise? Evidently Lucius had not even told his wife about that letter. When Ruso managed to extricate himself from the hug he said, “Thanks for all the parcels.”
    While Lucius had sent urgent appeals for cash, his wife had softened them with gifts of winter woolens and jars of food from home and pictures drawn by the children.
    She stepped back. “You look tired. I’ve told the bath boy to light the fire. Lucius will be home soon. He’s doing some business in town. How are you? We heard about that dreadful rebellion in Britannia. Is that how you hurt your leg?”
    “Not exactly,” confessed Ruso. “It was an accident.”
    “Oh, you poor thing! But is it true they had to send extra troops in?”
    “It’s mostly sorted out now,” he assured her. He was not sure whether he was allowed to reveal that Hadrian had sent in the fresh troops not just as reinforcements but as replacements for serious losses. “I haven’t seen you to congratulate you on, uh—” He suddenly realized he did not know the name of the dribbling toddler.
    “We called him Gaius, after you—didn’t you know? Everyone says he looks just like you.”
    “Do they really?”
    “Oh, yes!” Cass beamed at him, evidently thinking it was some sort of compliment.
    “The children seem very . . . lively.”
    “They’re dreadful, aren’t they?” she agreed, as if it were something to be proud of. “But we’re so fortunate. Five healthy children! Every day I give thanks for them. You