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‘My mother would’ve been proud of that one,’ she said.

Claudia saw tears in her eyes and clasped her hand across the table with both of her own, to share the weight of Gia’s feelings.

The words sat on her tongue, held back by the bars of her lips.

I love you.

But the remains of the day washed over her, making her think of the protesters and the graffiti, making her sickened, her skin crawling, as all of the palace ghosts seemed to crowd around them.

She looked up to see a servant watching from the shadows and quickly released Gia’s hand, sitting back and upright.

Later, when they retired to her rooms, Claudia caught her handmaids Aurelia and Nadira whispering in the cool quiet of an empty corridor. They silenced as she approached but Claudia was sure she heard the name of Sappho on their lips.

‘The servants are whispering about me. Should I be concerned?’ asked Claudia, as she and Gia undressed and climbed into bed, lying on their sides with their fingers entwined. ‘Should I interrogate them, or ignore it? What if they’re plotting against me? My handmaids have close access to me, in a way others do not.’

‘You’re their ruler. Being slandered comes with the territory. It doesn’t mean they’re conspiring to kill you.’

‘I think they were speculating, about us,’ whispered Claudia. ‘I am sure I heard the word Sappho.’

‘Maybe they just like poetry?’ suggested Gia lightly.

‘The first graffiti was within the palace grounds. It must’ve been one of my staff. One of them has seen something or heard something. About us. Perhaps we haven’t been careful enough.’

‘People just like to gossip, that’s all – especially about women. They’ve never had an empress before. You are something different, something new. It’ll take time for them to adjust to the idea.’ She smiled and reached for Claudia. ‘Let me distract you from worrying.’

But Claudia sat up abruptly. ‘Why this, though?’

Gia groaned and slumped back on the pillows.

‘It feels very personal,’ Claudia said. ‘If they’d called me stupid or unattractive or promiscuous, that would feel like a general insult to all women, but to call me Empress of Lesbos suggests a person with grounds for suspicion, if not intimate knowledge.’

‘And so what? They can’t prove anything either way.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s already out there. If enough people say it, it will become true,’ said Claudia.

‘I mean, it is true, isn’t it?’

Claudia felt that gut-twisting shame again. She pictured her father and brother watching over her in spirit, laughing as they clinked glasses. She couldn’t drive them from her mind, their voices echoing as she imagined what they would say. Her brother had always had choice comments to share about her manly peasant friend, as he’d put it.

They would tell her she was perverse and twisted, just like them, and even though she felt neither perverse nor twisted, Claudia could not shake the cold of this fear. It was as if they were haunting her through this graffiti, through this gossip, relishing in her misery, even if it was only so in her own head, in her own regurgitated memories.

‘I don’t understand why you’re so threatened by words etched on a wall,’ said Gia.

‘I don’t need the public knowing about my private affairs. It makes me weak.’

‘Who cares what they say? You’re the empress.’

‘No emperor can survive being a mockery,’ said Claudia. ‘The people will lose respect for me. I am barely holding on to power as it is. If this catches on, I shall be the joke of Rome.’

‘You’re ashamed,’ said Gia, frowning.

‘No, that’s not it,’ said Claudia defensively. ‘I am ashamed of many things, including myself, but never us. Never you.’

‘I don’t want to be a liability to you,’ Gia said.

‘You’re not,’ said Claudia quickly.

‘It feels like I am. It feels like it’s a problem, us being together, like I’m standing in the way.’