“Hello, Mother,” I said. I made it sound meek. “We were forced to spend Julia’s first birthday becalmed off Otia… Are you going to congratulate me on my new status as a pillar of the state religion?”
“Don’t give me any of your silly nonsense,” scoffed Ma.
As usual, I had done what I thought she wanted, only to find her unimpressed.
VI
THIS HAD TURNED into a tiring day. First, I had had to dance around Petronius Longus while he showed his pique; now here was Ma. She had various complaints: primarily why I had let her favorite, Anacrites, come home from Tripolitania half dead from the wounds he acquired in the arena. Playing gladiators had been his own idea, but I would get the blame for it. Luckily, it meant he was back as a lodger at Ma’s house for further nursing, so she was not entirely upset.
“Why are you letting the poor thing go back to his job at the Palace?”
“Anacrites is grown up, Ma. His career decisions are nothing to do with me.”
“You two worked so well together.”
“We made a good pairing for the Census. That’s over now.”
“You could find other work to share.”
“Neither of us wanted to remain in partnership. I showed him up.”
“You didn’t like him, you mean.” Ma kept insisting that I did not really know Anacrites; that I had missed his fine sensitivity; that I belittled his talent. My own theory was that anyone who had tried to persuade an exotic foreign potentate to murder me should be allowed to run his own life-after being sealed in a barrel and dumped a thousand feet under the sea. Somewhere rough off Britain, preferably. “You never gave him a chance. Listen, Anacrites has his sights set on running a new branch of the security services. You could help him with that, Marcus-”