Antonia never talked about her family. She bore that dreadful burden entirely alone.

"I am discreet!" Caenis blazed angrily.

"It's political!" hissed the usher.

"I know how to keep my mouth shut." Any sensible slave did.

It was not enough. Maritimus clucked and bustled off again. Caenis resigned herself to frustration. She wondered what crisis had upset Antonia.

Now she was seeing the world and her own place within it through fresh eyes. Working in a private house felt wonderful. She had already witnessed at close hand how Roman government was conducted. Like most family matters, it was based on short-term loyalties and long-term bad temper, pursued in an atmosphere of spite, greed, and indigestion. Caenis had never had a family; she watched with delight.

Whatever had disturbed her mistress this particular evening, the young secretary already appreciated the background: the Emperor Tiberius, whose famous brother, Drusus, had been Antonia's husband, spent the last years of his bitter reign in depraved exile on the island of Capri; it had come to be accepted in Rome that he would never return here again. He was already over seventy, so the question of a successor was never far away.

Since Augustus had first based his political position upon his family ties with Julius Caesar, ruling Rome had become an inheritable right. Between genuine accidents and the grappling ambition of their fearsome womenfolk, most of the male heirs had gone to their graves. The Emperor's own son, married to Antonia's daughter, Livilla, had died in rather odd circumstances eight years before. By default the choice now fell between Livilla's son, Gemellus, and his cousin Caligula. A fine pair: Caligula, who when barely into his teens had seduced his own sister here in Antonia's house, or Gemellus, who was deeply unpleasant and permanently sickly. But if Tiberius died in the near future, Rome would be left to these two very young boys, while immense power was also being wielded by Sejanus. Maybe Sejanus would prefer another solution.