Most Wanted by Kate Thompson

Author:Kate Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter Nine

For the first time in as long as I can remember, my mother didn’t get me up in the middle of the night to help with the bread making. I woke to the sounds of the handcarts in the yard and the creak of the compound gates as they opened.

Incitatus was already up and nosing around in the marble basin where we’d put his oats the day before. There were fresh droppings in the straw, but you had to look very hard to see any gold in them now, because most of it had already passed through his system.

I got up and fetched him more oats, then drew water and filled up his trough. He made a big show of splashing at the water with his nose before he drank it, and I wondered whether he was used to having it warmed for him or whether we were insulting him and ought to be giving him wine instead. But he blew sweet breath into my face and stood quite contentedly as I groomed his mane with my mother’s comb and polished his coat with her best silk shawl. I liked it very much, this job. It was better than delivering bread any day.

My mother brought me breakfast and some fruit for Incitatus, and afterward, because there was nothing left to do, I climbed back into bed and went to sleep again. I dreamed that I was riding into battle alongside Little Boots’s father, the mighty Germanicus, but I got left behind because my horse was lame. When I looked down, I saw its hind legs were missing, and Little Boots was crouching beside me, roasting them over an open fire.

That afternoon when everyone had returned from the deliveries, we had another family gathering in the yard. The streets were full of rumors and speculation, and it was impossible to know what was true.

Lucius had heard that Little Boots had been murdered by members of the praetorian guard and that they killed his wife and baby daughter as well, but since the praetorian guard existed to look after the emperor’s personal safety, it seemed impossible to us.

Other people were saying that the whole thing was a trick, as we had feared, and that there were public executions taking place beside the palace and that the streets were running with blood. This couldn’t be confirmed because no one had the courage to go anywhere near there, and the streets surrounding the palace were unusually quiet and empty.

My father had heard that Little Boots’s body had been taken to a private garden and they had tried to cremate it, but there hadn’t been enough wood for a proper pyre and they’d had to bury what was left of him.

And someone else told my cousin that rioters had overrun the forum and that there was no longer any kind of government in the city.

But the maddest rumor of all, the one that cheered us all up and gave us a good laugh, was that there were plans afoot to crown Claudius as the next Caesar.

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