Blood Debts

by Ashley Gardner

  I heard Cassia’s light steps behind me as I walked out the door.

  “Why on earth are you going to the baths when you’re a wanted man?” she asked, quieting her voice so the patrons of the wine shop wouldn’t hear. “You’ll be dragged to prison.”

  I looked back at her. Cassia’s dark eyes held fear, a lock of her hair escaping to brush her cheek.

  “No one has come to fetch me is because they know I won’t run,” I said. “If I’m arrested at the baths, at least I’ll be clean.”

  I turned away before she could argue. Strangely, she did not. When her voice came to me as I reached the landing, it was hushed.

  “I’ll prove it wasn’t you, Leonidas,” she said. “Marcianus and I will prove it.”

  I believed her. I’d never met a person with as much clarity of thought as Cassia. She’d explained, when I’d remarked upon this once upon a time, that if I considered her intelligent, it was because her father had been a brilliant teacher and writer, and he’d taught Cassia how to think. She didn’t believe herself to be unusually clever—she thought she’d never live up to her father’s greatness.

  No matter. I had faith in Cassia. She, a Greek woman and a slave, had more honor and loyalty in her than most Roman men who’d been raised to such concepts. She’d not thank me for the comparison, but it was true.

  Instead of heading for the small bath complex I usually frequented, I walked to the Campus Martius and the Baths of Agrippa.

  I preferred my friendly bathhouse near the old wall under the shadow of an aqueduct, where slaves and freedmen, along with plebs from the Aventine and the lower slopes of every hill, mingled without inhibition.

  The more ostentatious baths, like the ones built by Agrippa seventy and more years ago, also welcomed slaves and freedmen. But it was understood, if not ruled, that we’d keep to ourselves and not interfere with the enjoyment of our betters. The patricians and equestrians also saw no reason not to order any slave they saw to do their bidding, even if it was said slave’s afternoon off.

  I sought the Baths of Agrippa today because large bath complexes were founts of all gossip. If anyone knew anything about Selenius and his murder, it would be discussed in the caldarium.

  I made for the Campus Martius via the Pallacinae neighborhood and its lines of shops shaded by colonnades. I welcomed the coolness under the arches, fading into the crush of shoppers and merchants on this fine summer morning.

  Rome would celebrate the festival of Fortuna soon, and Cassia and I would join the festivities, which would involve the death of unfortunate animals, a feast, and plenty of wine. I’d eat a morsel of meat to honor the gods, but I didn’t have much taste for cooked flesh. The wine I’d drink until I couldn’t stand.

  I skirted the enormous portico of the Saepta Julia, which had seen gladiatorial games in its vast center. A building crane rose somewhere behind it, men on a high rooftop manipulating a stone block into place on some new edifice, while the crane’s great wheel slowly turned.

  I walked past the Pantheon of Agrippa, funded by the man who’d dedicated many public buildings to the honor of the great Augustus. Cassia told me Agrippa was to have been Augustus’s heir and the next princeps, but he’d died too soon. Perhaps the uncertainty of these times could have been mitigated, she liked to say, if he had lived.

  I paid little attention to politics except to avoid the intrigues that swept the city from time to time, resulting in entire families dead or exiled. I preferred to be a nobody not doing anything in particular, rather than a patrician in a hilltop villa wondering when the Praetorian Guard would come for him.

  The bath complex I entered on the other side of the Pantheon was grand. Columns soared to a lofty ceiling held up by caryatids, paintings of lavish landscapes and villas covered the walls, and a mosaic of Neptune in his chariot pulled by sea serpents flowed across the main floor.

  I stripped down in the apodyterium—the changing room—and found an eager attendant who helped me rub oil into every inch of my grimy skin. I even poured oil over my head, my hair kept shaved close enough that I could clean it that way. The attendant, who asked me incessant questions about what it had been like in the amphitheatres smacking my sword into my friends’ guts, finally turned away to the next bather. I left for the gymnasium, which was under the open air.

  I’d been to these baths only once before, but one of the trainers there, a former gladiator himself, long retired, welcomed me. He had wooden practice swords in a rack, and he and I hacked at posts set up at intervals around the room while the sun poured down on us.

  The routine of the thrusts and steps returned to me, so familiar I could go through them while my mind floated.

  The exercise shook off my fog. As it did, I realized something that others might not—a gladiator doesn’t slice with his sword—he stabs. We’d been taught that a hard thrust was more effective than a swipe. I would have stuck my sword straight into Selenius’s throat, not tried to cut him open.

  The killer, I reasoned, must have come and gone through the tunnels. The shopkeeper and the two Gauls in the macellum had seen me enter, but they’d seen no one else, according to Cassia. That meant the murderer had either been a person they saw in the market every day and so didn’t notice, or he’d come in and gone out through the tunnels, as I had. An avenue I would explore this afternoon, when the shops were quiet again.

  The trainer admired my patterns and asked me to show him a few moves. We sparred in slow motion, attracting much attention from the other bath-goers. I kept my movements slow and deliberate, knowing that if my body felt the moves of true combat, I might instinctively go for the kill, no matter that our swords were carved from wood.

  I ended the bout first, saying I needed to get on with my day. The trainer took my sword, slapped me on the shoulder and told me I could spar with him any time—he’d welcome the relief from tedium.

  We parted. I fetched my strigil and had another attendant scrape the dirt and sweat I’d raised from my body, the oil taking it easily away.

  I drew a crowd during this ritual. Each time the attendant flicked away the accumulated gunk, men would dive for it, scooping it in a cloth or small dish. The oiled sweat of a gladiator could be made into an unguent, which was believed to heal and give strength. The blood of a dying gladiator had even more potency, but I had no intention of giving them any of that.

  I ended the entertainment by walking to the tepidarium, plunging into the pool to wash away what remained of the oil. Then I swam, stretching my limbs. I’d learned to swim as a boy fishing in the Tiber, far upstream of Rome. I remembered little of my childhood, but the cool rushing water under the sunshine came back to me as I floated across the pool.

  I refreshed myself with a quick dunk in the cold pool in the next room, then walked to the caldarium and eased myself into the scalding hot water. Many bathers choose to move from cold to tepid to hot, but I preferred to go from freezing directly to heat.

  My muscles softened and relaxed as I lolled on a bench in the water. I leaned my head against the tiled wall and let myself doze.

  “Did you do it, Leonidas?” A man’s voice drifted to me. “Did you kill the money-changer?”

  I opened my eyes. I first saw the reds, yellows, and blues of the painted wall, a faux window opening to green trees of a lavish garden.

  Next I saw who’d spoken, a youngish man with his short dark hair plastered to his head by the water, his limbs slim but muscled.

  I didn’t know him, but in a city of a million inhabitants it wasn’t surprising. His question meant word had spread. The fact that I hadn’t been dragged off to the Tullianum to await trial and execution meant there was doubt.

  “No,” I said.

  He seemed to believe me. “But you were there. You saw him.”

  “Yes.”

  The man was undaunted by my clipped answers. “I heard about his sister. Such a pity.” He shook his head with the air of one confident such tragedies would never happen to him.
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br />   “His sister?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant. “What has happened to her?”

  “It was long time ago. A few years anyway.” He leaned closer to me, thrilled to be the one to impart the tale. “She was violated by another money-changer. This Selenius’s friend.”

  He gave me a nod and withdrew, as though allowing me time to digest the information.

  Poor woman. To be raped and then have her brother die violently was much to bear. I wondered if someone was out to gain vengeance on Selenius’s family. Such things happened. I’d suggest to Cassia that we find out who’d attacked the sister—he might be the murderer.

  “They say you did it,” the man went on. He’d inched imperceptibly nearer to me. “So many saw you wandering about yesterday, but all say you had no blood on you at all. They also saw you with a boy. For enjoyment?” He wiggled his brows up and down.

  “No.” I snarled the word so fiercely the young man scooted down the bench again.

  “Then what were you doing with a boy?”

  Did he have nothing to do all day but chatter in the bath about other people? Probably not. If he was a patrician, he was probably an aedile, on the first rung of the ladder to senator. A pampered man’s pampered son.

  I realized I had to have some explanation for Sergius. I was a man people noticed, and they noticed what I did. “He was lost,” I said, my voice retaining its growl. “I took him home.”

  “Ah.” Disappointment coated the word. The young man slid a little closer again. “My father imports the best wine. He gives me as much as I want for my own purposes. Share some with me?”

  The hope in his eyes was unmistakable. There was no shame in a man lying in bed with another man as long as he did not do it to excess and kept his liaisons private. I preferred women, who were softer, smelled better, and were far less arrogant.

  “No,” I said abruptly and rose from the pool.

  If I’d been any other freedman, the lad might have had his servants beat me for rudeness, but a hero of the games was given some latitude.

  I stepped out, leaving him staring after me. Maybe the sight of my naked body would sate him for a while. I turned around briefly and let him see the rest of it—the least I could do for his information, whatever good it might do me.

  He was wise enough not to pursue me, and I returned to the changing room, dried off and donned my clothes.

  If nothing else, being clean made me feel better. Now my stomach growled, reminding me I had missed several meals.

  I left the Campus and its many entertainments and returned to the street of shops in the Pallacinae. I found a tavern and squeezed onto a stool at the corner of a table, asking the harried barmaid to bring me lentils and whatever vegetables they had cooking.

  She returned before long with a bowl of lentils and limp-looking greens, along with a crackling piece of bread. I dunked the bread into the broth and scooped up the lentils and veg, enjoying every mouthful, though the broth was weak and the vegetables old. The wine was indifferent as well, but I drank it down, thirsty after the hot bath.

  I realized, when I was finished, that I had no money to pay. I’d given Marcella and the man who’d applied the strigil my last coins. Cassia hadn’t known I was short of funds, or she’d have made certain I had at least the price of a meal.

  I confessed my lack of coin to the barmaid. “My slave will be along later with it.” Cassia would be vexed, but she believed in paying our debts as quickly as possible.

  The barmaid, who had shining black hair and skin tanned from hot summers, cocked her head and assessed me. “No matter.” She gestured for me to follow her. “Come with me.”

  I assumed she’d lead me to the back to wash up or stir pots of beans, but she took me up a flight of stairs to a tiny room dimly lit by a small square window. It had a slab of a bed covered with reeds, much the same as my own.

  The barmaid began to undress. I remained in the doorway, not sure how to tell her she’d be disappointed.

  I didn’t have the chance. The barmaid caught my hand and dragged me to the bed, busily kissing me while she untied my belt and dragged off my tunic.

  Then she proceeded to use me thoroughly. I don’t think she noticed that this former gladiator couldn’t raise his sword. She had me flat on my back, finding creative ways to take pleasure from me and my body. I’d been with women plenty—I’d been a fixture at a brothel near my ludus—but this woman, as much as she tried, delighted nothing in me.

  I thought of Selenius’s sister and her defilement. No doubt hers had been far more violent and terrifying, but I had an inkling of what she’d felt. She hadn’t been a person to the man who’d taken her, only a body to be used.

  But that was what a gladiator was, wasn’t it? A fighting body, performing for money? It was why we were infamis, and why a barmaid thought I’d be more than happy to pay for my dinner by letting her play with me.

  By the time she wore herself out and fell asleep, the afternoon had come, heating the city. I slipped away, sliding on my tunic and moving quietly down the stairs into the street.

  I felt unclean, so I stepped into the baths close to home and washed my body all over again. It cost an as to enter this complex, but I told the attendants that Cassia would come by to pay later. They knew both of us and acquiesced. No paying my way with my body again today.

  I was known and accepted in this bath complex, so I had to talk with men I’d become acquainted with while I soaked. That is, they talked, and I mostly nodded. But I learned why the vigiles had broken off their hunt for me last night and I hadn’t been arrested by the cohorts this morning.

  Apparently, the garum shopkeeper had reported seeing a man come out of the macellum, but hadn’t first seen him going in. The cohorts were now looking for this person, who had been described as dirty, young, and frightened. I had a feeling I knew who they were talking about.

  The sky was darkening by the time I left the baths and made my way home. Cassia wasn’t there when I arrived.

  I stood in the doorway of our little apartment, looking over the room, my bed in the far corner, Cassia’s little bunk on the other side of the table. A balcony opened to my right, larger than most as it was poised on the flat roof of the shop below.

  I always knew when Cassia was out, and not because our domicile was so small I’d notice at once. I could walk in with my eyes closed and know she wasn’t here.

  The air was different, empty. Silent. Cassia was often humming or singing softly. Her two long stolae hanging on pegs near her bed and her cloak for cooler weather looked forlorn and waiting, as did her spare pair of sandals tucked neatly against the wall.

  The table held her writing tools, tablets and stylus, papyrus and charcoal sticks, lined up exactly even with one another. In the middle of the table was the cup Sergius had dropped, stuck together again, the cracks in the clay almost invisible.

  I lifted the cup, examining the crude drawing, running my finger over the letters that meant my name. Leonidas. A name that hadn’t been my own, but Leonidas was who I became.

  When I heard her step behind me, a tightness in me loosened. Cassia began speaking as soon as she saw me, her words flowing around me.

  “Nonus Marcianus told me how to mix a paste that would mend it in a trice,” she said, motioning to the cup in my hand. “I saw him this afternoon, as I wandered about on all my errands.”

  I heard her unwind the palla that kept her head covered from the sun and mitigated the offense to men who disapproved of a woman running about by herself. Slave women did not have the same restrictions that patrician and equestrian women did—a Roman lady should stay at home and not show herself, unless she traveled in a covered litter or sedan chair with attendants. Cassia’s former mistress had insisted Cassia never leave the house unless she was muffled, to keep shame from the household, she’d said.

  Cassia went on she set a basket on the table. “When you take it to Sergius, perhaps I could go with you? To see the hills again, breathe air tha
t doesn’t have the stench of Rome in it would be …”

  She stepped next to me and inhaled as though trying to find the clear air of Campania in the heart of this city.

  The breath cut off. I looked down to see her staring at me, her expression changing from her usual animation to bewilderment. She delicately sniffed again, then turned away, color rising in her cheeks. She blinked rapidly, ducking her head so I would not see.

  I realized that though I’d bathed again after the tavern, the scent of the barmaid and her zeal must linger. Cassia would know what it meant.

  I opened my mouth to explain, but Cassia bent over the table, her back to me, her chatter resuming. “I went to the tavern while I was out and found us dinner—lovely, fresh endives and some greens, and there’s bread left over from this morning. What did you learn at the baths?”

  Chapter 7

  Cassia laid out our dinner, as she did every night—a meal prepared by the tavern at the end of our street and a flask of wine from the shop downstairs. She’d instructed the tavern keeper exactly how to make the food I was used to, and now he and his wife prepared the dishes and had them ready as a matter of course.

  I watched while Cassia poured two cups of the wine from a small flask, sweetening it with honey. She talked all the while, even though she’d asked me what I’d found out, never letting me speak.

  I sat down and chewed through a salad that had been flavored with lemon, almonds, and a drop of honey, and endives roasted with a little vinegar and salt. The barley had been cooked in a rich broth of vegetables—I suspected some leftover pork ended up in the vegetable broth as well, but I didn’t fuss. The meal was fresh and good, a far cry from the one at the other tavern.

  As I ate, Cassia told me about her afternoon.

  “I saw Selenius’s sister, Selenia,” she said as she neatly sliced off a bit of endive. “She has much to do preparing for her brother’s funeral and helping her son take over the shop. She is shattered, Selenia is, but young Gaius seems capable enough. He’s nineteen and has been assisting his uncle for several years, and at least understands the business. Gaius knows all about the forgeries, by the way.”