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“I want him to bring me his medicaments.”
    Ignatia at twenty-four would have been attractive if she were not so harried; she had pretty blue-green eyes and a heart-shaped face framed by dark-blonde hair which she wore in a simple knot at her nape. In an unornamented palla of cherry and a stola of soft plum over it she could have been appealing, but only looked washed-out; she caught her lower lip in her teeth and thought before speaking. “Do you want me to go, or shall I send Octavian or Chemba?”
    “You had better go, not a slave, and certainly not your brother,” said Adicia at her most peevish. “Chemba may know every street in Roma, but he knows nothing about medicaments, and I have no notion of what Octavian would say to Sanct-Franciscus, if he would do as I require at all. Since he started meeting with the Christians, he has been unreliable. I’m surprised he’s in the house today, rain or no rain.”
    “He’s fourteen,” Ignatia said in her brother’s defense. “You can’t expect him to understand your situation.”
    “Why not? You did. As soon as I fell ill, you cared for me, and there was no nonsense about it,” said Adicia, this instance of rare praise taking her daughter by surprise.
    “There was no one else to do it but your slaves,” she said.
    “Which is as good as saying there was no one to help me, not who could be trusted.” Adicia fixed Ignatia with a hard stare. “At least you did not consent to be married to the first man who showed interest in you, as your sister did. Myrtale leaped at Quillius—it was embarrassing.”
    “She has been very happy with him. You’ve read her letters. She has so much to tell us about Naissus and Moesia: what interesting places she has seen!” Ignatia enthused, hoping to turn the conversation.
    “She flaunts her happiness, and never comes to Roma.” Adicia sighed. “If only your father had not been killed, or that I had died in his stead.” This was an habitual lament with her, and she began to weep. “It may have been considered an accident, but I know his enemies were in the crowd and used the riot to cover his murder. But no one listens to me—no one!”
    “Mother,” Ignatia warned, bending over to wipe her face. “You must not do this. You’ll make yourself worse.”
    “If it would end my suffering, why shouldn’t I?” Adicia exclaimed. “There is no justice in this world. None at all.”
    “Then resign yourself to it,” said Ignatia, renunciation in every aspect of her demeanor. “It is all that is left to do.”
    “You say that easily enough.” Adicia’s petulance made her face sag.
    “Easily enough,” Ignatia repeated. “Because I know whereof I speak.” She reached for the jug of water and filled a cup with it. “You need to drink this.”
    “No,” said Adicia with stubborn determination. “If I drink now, I will have to use the latrine before you return, and that would mean summoning Benona or another of the slaves to assist me. No. I will wait for you to come back.”
    It took all Ignatia’s patience not to offer a sharp rejoinder, but she managed to say only, “You must do as you think best,” before she left the room and went to get her long, oiled-wool paenula to protect her against the weather. As she started across the atrium, the rain struck her face and she dabbed at it with the sleeve of her stola. “Starus! Starus!” she called out as she reached the entrance to the house. “Ready the biga. I must go out of the city.”
    Starus, the steward of the house, had been a slave of the Laelius family all his life, and so he enjoyed a greater freedom than many of his fellows. “Going to get that foreign physician again, are you?”
    “Yes. I’ll want Philius to drive me. On a day like this, he must be in the stable, not out in the paddocks.” She knew Starus wondered why she preferred the head groom to the household driver, and so explained, “Philius is a better driver than Mordeus in bad weather; he