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back his ears and ignored him.
    â€œGet him in!” said my aunt, and we could all hear the panic in her voice. “Quickly! Before someone comes and sees him.”
    Appia fetched the whip we use to drive the oxen on the grinder. My father raised it threateningly, but Incitatus took exception to this and reversed determinedly away from the stable door, dragging me helplessly with him.
    â€œStupid boy!” said my aunt, but neither she nor my father dared actually use the whip on Incitatus. Horse or no horse, he was one of Rome’s consuls and a member of the emperor’s household.
    â€œAt least take off the purple robe,” said my mother.
    But no one dared to do that, either, and while we were all standing around wondering what to do next, there was a loud knock at the yard gates.
    The dogs barked. Everyone froze where they stood, with the exception of Incitatus, who gave me a hard nudge with his nose and began to walk over to the inviting double doors of the bakery. I pulled him up, but my mother shook her head and gestured to me to take him in there.
    This time he didn’t hesitate but marched straight into the dark, sweet-scented building. I can’t say I blamed him. It was a palace compared with that small, doggy stable. My mother closed the door behind us, and I heard my father quiet the dogs and ask who was at the gates.
    â€œQuintus and Lucius,” came my brother’s voice. “Let us in, quick!”
    Even behind the bakery doors I could hear the monstrous sigh as everyone let out their breaths together. The gates creaked, and the handcarts rattled in. I knocked. My mother opened the doors a crack and let me out.
    â€œHave you heard the news?” Lucius was saying.
    â€œWhat news?” said my father.
    But my brother waited until the gates were firmly closed and bolted and the family gathered in a close huddle around him before he would say any more. Even then he whispered as he told us what he had heard.
    â€œIt isn’t certain,” he said, “but they’re saying on the street that Little Boots is dead.”

Chapter Seven
    Y ou would expect us to celebrate, perhaps, to clap and cheer and dance around the compound with delight. We didn’t. Instead a silence fell over us, so profound that even the dogs stopped their energetic activities and slumped down in the dust.
    Behind the bakery doors Incitatus whickered anxiously, and I heard the thud-thud-thud of more of his golden droppings landing on the spotless floor. Every one of us hoped that what we had heard was true, but every one of us, from my aged grandmother right down to my seven-year-old cousin, was thinking the same thing.
    It was a trick.
    It would be just like Little Boots to do something like that: spread the word that he was dead and then, while people are celebrating and sacrificing victims to the gods, send out his soldiers to arrest them all for disloyalty. Then he could confiscate their property and use the proceeds to finance his perverted pleasures, and send them to the Circus Maximus to fight his professional gladiators, or cut off their hands and string them around their necks, or feed them to his lions and alligators and other dreadful beasts.
    But we would not fall into that trap. We stayed silent. Incitatus whickered again, and I opened one of the doors so he could see us.
    â€œWe continue as usual,” said my grandmother at last. She spoke softly, afraid of eavesdroppers. “We do nothing and say nothing until we smell the smoke from his funeral pyre.”
    â€œNot even then,” said my father. “I would need more proof than that.”
    â€œWho will be emperor next?” said my little sister, Tiberia.
    â€œShhh,” said my mother. “Hold your tongue.”
    We had a plan then, about how to react to the rumor. But we still had a serious problem on our hands.
    â€œWhat are we going to do about the consul?” I said.
    â€œThe best plan,” said