It was just as well he was mumbling to himself; anyone close enough to his drunken ramblings would have heard him confess to the murder of an elderly Illyrian soothsayer, in between the curses with which he damned the man for expiring without telling him the truth about his future in plain language.

In the tablinum of the Cornelii house, where Aulus had at one time conducted all his business, an increasingly angry Quintus was reading the will. Cholon heard the words that set him free and even though he had known it was coming, he was again overcome with emotion. It was not the manumission which angered Quintus, it was money; a sizeable sum had been bequeathed to the Greek so that he would be, in freedom, more than comfortable. A fortune already gifted to the Lady Claudia could not be reclaimed and Titus, too, was left a sum enough to avoid the need to beg for corporeal sustenance from his brother. But to top it all came the bequest to the dependants of those who had died at Thralaxas, laid out in a codicil that Cholon had brought back from Illyricum. Quintus first questioned its veracity and, once persuaded that the terms must be met, complained that he would be ruined. It was nonsense of course, as Claudia observed.

‘My dear Quintus, you are just not the richest man in Rome any more. I dare say your father had faith in you to gain that accolade on your own merits.’

The long day ended with each of the Cornelii going to their own suites, to harbour their own thoughts. Quintus had with him a list of his father’s numerous debtors and was looking through it to see whom he could force into early repayment. Titus had visited the family altar on his way and paid private obeisance to his father’s memory, aware that he had been in awe of the man when he was alive and was even more so now that he was dead. Cholon went to the slave quarters for the last time to cry himself to sleep. Tomorrow he must look for a place to live; he could not abide the idea of residing under a roof of which Quintus Cornelius was the master.